I'm watching WWII in color and when they got to late 1944 and the rockets, I was pretty floored. I thought, "holy crap that was close. Imagine what could have been if they had mature rocketry even just five years earlier..."

The real "secret weapon" of the Allies was radar. Radar controlled anti-aircraft guns, and radar controlled artillery acted as a "force multiplier" by putting the munitions on the target. Radar also crippled the U-boot fleet, enabled the Allies to respond effectively to attacks, and enabled seeing through the weather.

Not much. The V-2's guidance system was primitive, and so where it hit was fairly random. Force has to be concentrated on targets of military value to be effective.

Consider the vastly more bombs dropped on Germany day and night, far more than V-2's ever could have dropped. Aside from destroying the oil infrastructure, it's hard to see the military value of destroying city after city, and that bombing was much more precise than the V-2s.

For rockets to be effective, one needs either precision guidance or a nuclear warhead.

I was thinking more about how rocketry leads to jet planes. But also, my understanding was that bombs were awfully inaccurate. Not that pre-gps long range missiles are any better. My understanding was that the ramjet rockets were pretty terrifying too and did hit cities often.

> did hit cities often

Randomly hitting a city has a very small chance of hitting anything with military value.

> terrifying

Sure, but it turns out that terrifying citizens tends to harden their resolve to fight on, rather than surrendering. On both sides.

> Not that pre-gps long range missiles are any better.

They were much, much better.

EDIT: It appears the V2 in testing had a 4.5km CEP, while he minuteman III has a 200 m CEP.

> rocketry leads to jet planes

They were developed independently of each other.

That is a really great series that has a lot of depth.

Necessity is the mother of invention.