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A comment on D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided Normandy's Fate. Parent comment

Re:D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided No... by WalterBright on Thursday June 07, 2018 @05:21AM (#17254434)
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.

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Re:D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided No... by Waterluvian on Thursday June 07, 2018 @08:24AM (#17255128)
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.
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Re:D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided No... by WalterBright on Thursday June 07, 2018 @06:27PM (#17260894)
> 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.

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Re:D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided No... by tntn on Thursday June 07, 2018 @12:27PM (#17257350)
> 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.

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Re:D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided No... by WalterBright on Thursday June 07, 2018 @06:24PM (#17260873)
> rocketry leads to jet planes

They were developed independently of each other.

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