Hardy, USN) At the close of the Second World War, German rocket engineers under the direction of Wernher von Braun were engaged in developing the A9/A10: a powerful two-stage missile capable of reaching across the Atlantic Ocean to attack New York and other American cities. The A9/A10 development effort was part of a larger program called Project Amerika, which was dedicated to the creation of specialized bombers, rockets, and other weapons, to be used in Germany’s eventual conquest of the United States. If it had ever been completed, the A9/A10 would have been the first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in history. Instead, it became the theoretical model from which later ICBMs would be built. The program came to a halt in 1945 with the surrender of the German military, but Wernher von Braun and a number of his fellow scientists were quietly whisked away to America, where they became the core of the rocket and missile research programs for the U.S. military. Having foreseen the collapse of the Nazi regime, von Braun’s team had managed to conceal and protect many of their blueprints and research papers.
