World War II saw the appearance of numerous revolutionary armaments on
both sides of the conflict that would radically change the nature of
warfare, from jet aircraft to the ballistic missile and the atomic bomb.
The greatest conflagration in history also saw the conception of the
first surface-to-air guided missile systems, technology pioneered by
German scientists and engineers through an extensive development program
which ran from 1942 to 1945. Although the program did not achieve its
main objective - to introduce a functional weapon system into the
Luftwaffe air defense network - German research and development in most
aspects of the technology was ahead of comparable research in the United
Kingdom and the United States.
The history of the transfer of German SAM technology to the Allies after
1945 has previously been overshadowed by the well-published transfers of
the V-1 and V-2 guided missiles. This book presents the first complete
history of Germany's wartime development of surface-to-air missile (SAM)
technology, how the Allies acquired this secret research towards the end
of World War II in Europe and in the early postwar period, and how they
then exploited this knowledge.
