How V2 menace terrorised Whitehall

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(Filed: 28/02/2005)

Top secret papers reveal that flawed intelligence led to fear of 100,000 deaths in London in first month of rockets. Ben Fenton reports
Telegraph

Flawed intelligence brought the Government to the brink of panic at the threat of Hitler's weapons of mass destruction and led to the drawing up of plans to run war-time Britain from underground, formerly top secret papers reveal today.

An emergency committee set up to predict the damage that V2 rockets could cause warned Winston Churchill that more than 100,000 Londoners would die in the first month of the bombardment, with the same number severely injured.

Spies, led by MI6, discovered in early 1943 that V2 rockets, codenamed Big Ben, were being built by Germany and believed they could strike London at the rate of one an hour carrying 10-ton warheads.

The amount of high explosive expected to rain down on the capital was the equivalent to a Hiroshima nuclear bomb every seven weeks.

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