ABSTRACT
The ballistic missile age began in earnest at 6.43 p.m. on 8 September 1944, when a German V-2 rocket landed in Staveley Road, Chiswick, in west London.1 In fact, a rocket had landed in a Paris suburb earlier that day, but the Chiswick incident, in which 2 people were killed and 20 injured,2 is generally acknowledged as the first operational use of a ballistic missile. Sixteen seconds later another V-2 landed harmlessly in Epping Forest.
