OTD in Space - September. 6: First V2 Rocket Launches at Sea

On this day in space. In 1947, a rocket launched from an aircraft carrier for the first time. The rocket was a V-2 missile that was captured from a German manufacturing site by the Allied forces at the end of World War II. V-2s were the world's first long-range guided ballistic missiles. Wernher von Braun, a famous aerospace engineer, invented them for Nazi Germany before he was secretly moved to the U.S. and started working for NASA. Von Braun and the seized V-2 missile parts were brought to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where NASA assembled the parts and started experimenting with launches. The first V-2 to launch at sea blasted off from a U.S. naval ship called the USS Midway in a mission called Operation Sandy. The aircraft carrier sailed a few hundred miles south of Bermuda for the launch. After liftoff, the V-2 started tilting midair and only made it to an altitude of 15,000 feet before falling back to Earth. And that's what happened on this day in space.