Staveley Road is a road in

Chiswick Chiswick ( ) is a district of west London, England. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth; Chiswick House, a neo-Palladian villa regarded as one of the finest in England; and Full ...

in the London Borough of Hounslow which was the site of the first successful V-2 missile attack against Britain.

History

Staveley Road was built between 1927 and 1931 as part of the Chiswick Park Estate.

September 1944 explosion

On Friday 8 September 1944, a V-2 launched from Wassenaar in Holland, by ''485 Artillerie Abteilung'' at 6.37pm, landed in Staveley Road near the junction with Burlington Lane, killing three people (including a three-year-old girl), and injuring nineteen. The crater was thirty feet across. Earlier that day at 8.39am, a V2 had hit Maisons-Alfort in France, where six people were killed; the V2 had been launched from Petites-Tailles, near

Houffalize Houffalize (; german: Hohenfels; wa, Oufalijhe) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Luxembourg, Belgium.Sven Vrielinck: De territoriale indeling van België 1795-1963 Volume 1. Universitaire Pers Leuven 2000. page 48 ...

, in south-east Belgium by ''Lehr und Versuchsbatterie 444''. Eleven houses were completely destroyed, and another fifteen had to be extensively rebuilt. The area at the time had been partly evacuated. The explosion could be heard six miles away in central London. Within an hour of the explosion, government officials were arriving at the scene. The explosion has been shown in the 2015 production ''Hitler's Space Rocket'',IMDb
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ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

of Germany, and in the 1965 film '' Operation Crossbow''.

British knowledge of the V-2

General

Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma Wilhelm Josef Ritter von Thoma (11 September 1891 – 30 April 1948) was a German army officer who served in World War I, in the Spanish Civil War, and as a general in World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Th ...

discretely mentioned to General Ludwig Crüwell about the V-2, when being bugged by

MI19 MI19 was a section of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. During the Second World War it was responsible for obtaining information from enemy prisoners of war. It was originally created in December 1940 as ...

, so disclosing the rocket's propensity on 22 March 1943 - this was the first occasion that the British knew. Fritz Lustig was one of translators, father of Radio 4's

Robin Lustig Robin Francis Lustig (born 30 August 1948, London) is a British journalist and radio broadcaster, who has presented programmes for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4. Family Lustig was born in Stoke Newington, London, to Jewish refugees ...

RV Jones Reginald Victor Jones , FRSE, LLD (29 September 1911 – 17 December 1997) was a British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in by solving scientific and technical p ...

received most of his information on the V2 from the French spy Jeannie Rousseau. The general public was not notified about the existence of V-2 rockets until 10 November 1944.

References

External links

Timeline of V2 attacks

Chiswick Local History Society

BBC September 2004
{{coord, 51.4828, N, 0.265, W, type:landmark_region:GB-HNS, display=title 1944 in London 1944 in military history Buildings and structures in the United Kingdom destroyed during World War II Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Hounslow Chiswick Explosions in London History of the London Borough of Hounslow Monuments and memorials in London Streets in the London Borough of Hounslow V-weapons