Rocket missiles have been used in warfare throughout all of history to strike fear and inflict ruinous destruction among one's foes. Unless guided by sophisticated equipment, they are frequently inaccurate and often strike unintended targets. The US is spending huge bucks to develop a missile-defense shield that thus far appears to work about as well as the old Star Wars missile-defense system did decades ago.

Rocket-missiles were used by the Nazis during World War II with much greater psychological effect than physically destructive results on the Allied war efforts. As early as 1930, German rocket scientists were working on a pilotless bomb that years later became the much feared V-1 buzz bomb, and on a long-range rocket that subsequently became the more accurate and even more feared V-2 rocket. There was also a V-3 rocket being developed that would have fired clusters of 300 bombs per hour from underground cannons that might have caused chaotic havoc among the Allied fighting forces and British civilians, had the war not ended before this weapon was ready to be used.

Although Werner Von Braun is arguably the Father of American space rocketry, he and his team of German rocket scientists almost helped the Nazis win World War II. As the war was entering its final phase in Europe, the Americans captured Von Braun and his best rocket scientists before the Soviets (who were also looking for them) were able to locate them. A US team that was specifically searching for Von Braun's group on orders from Washington, found them first. They were shipped to the US where they worked on developing a rocket capable of carrying astronauts to the moon. The V-2 was the prototype for the huge rockets that enabled the Apollo program to succeed in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, improved versions of the V-2 and Apollo rockets still constitute the backbone of all our space launchings.

As an OSS radio operator in World War II, I was stationed in Hurley, a small riverbank village in the Thames Valley located 30 miles west of London. The Hurley area was hit dozens of times by V-1 buzz bombs that had overshot their targets in London. The pilotless bombs emitted loud harsh buzzing sounds that could be heard miles away as they flew at low altitudes from Nazi launch sites across the Channel - making them difficult to spot once they had passed over the coast. When they ran out of fuel, the motors would stop. The flying bombs would then fall to the ground in a graceful, often unseen, arc, where they exploded about three interminably long seconds after the raucous buzzing ended. The British, who had been through the Blitz, were dreadfully afraid of V-1s, but most Americans were not because we hadn't experienced the Luftwaffe's unnerving Blitz bombs. The few seconds of absolute silence between the cessation of loud discordant buzzing and the powerful explosion were excruciatingly unbearable because you never knew whether you would fall victim to the inevitable exploding bomb that followed. The Buzz bombs that struck densely populated cities such as London caused great fear as well as much destruction among the closely packed buildings. Those that hit rural areas caused little damage but were psychologically terrifying nevertheless.

Once, as my radio operator group ended a night shift at dawn and came out of our radio shack located on a hill high above the Thames Valley, a V-1 struck the other side of the valley. A thunderous explosion was heard shortly after a never-to-be-forgotten blinding flash was seen which rivaled the rising sun.

I had only one, albeit highly memorable, experience with the more powerful, more terrifying V-2 rockets that flew unseen and mostly unheard high up through the stratosphere before descending at increasing speeds to clobber London with sudden unexpected deafening explosions. I had arranged to be off-duty for several days to go into London to visit museums, historic sites, theaters, and music halls, and to attend my first-ever opera (Madame Butterfly) at famed Covent Garden. While registering in a hotel late at night, I heard what seemed to be drum rolls of a parade outside. I turned away from the front desk for a brief second to look out the window before realizing that it was after midnight - when no parade would be taking place. I turned back to ask the clerk about the strange noise, but he was nowhere to be seen. After a tremendous explosion was heard, he reappeared from under the desk where he had taken cover as soon as he heard the rattling sounds that he knew presaged a V-2 strike. The missile decimated several buildings down the street from the hotel. It wasn't until years later that I figured out what had probably caused the rattling sounds. Shock waves speeding ahead of the accelerating falling missile may have triggered vibrations in the hotel windows that tricked me into thinking the noises were due to ratatat-tat sounds of drums during a parade.