German World War II Rocket Unearthed in England

ST MARY’S PLATT, ENGLAND—Kent Online reports that archaeologist brothers Colin Welch and Sean Welch have uncovered remnants of a German V2 terror rocket that detonated in southeast England in 1944. Such rockets could travel at speeds of up to 3,300 miles per hour. “The rockets would enter the earth at an angle, in this case a trajectory of about 70 degrees,” Colin Welch said. Underground stone stopped this rocket’s travel, and so its remnants were found closer to the impact point than other V2 terror rockets impact sites the team has excavated. The researchers recovered this rocket’s combustion chamber, where liquid oxygen mixed with alcohol to produce its great speed. Rust and grime covering the rocket parts will be removed during the conservation process in an effort to find source codes that would tell researchers the factories in which the parts had been made. “If only we had known at that time, we could have bombed that factory and solved the threat of the V2s,” Sean Welch explained. To read about the operation that thwarted Nazi Germany's atomic plans, go to "The Secrets of Sabotage."