V for Vengeance

Robert Harris always choses imaginative and fascinating topics for his novels. Where these work out well in the plots, such as in the Cicero novels, An Officer and a Spy or Fatherland, then the novels are a treat for the reader; when he is less successful (in my opinion), for example in resolutions of Conclave or The Second Midnight, the novels still remain intriguing and thought-provoking.

I worried V2 might fall into the second category when I began to read, but far from it. The story of the deployment of the Germans’ last secret weapon and the attempts by the British to thwart the attacks is told at a breakneck speed over the period of four or five days and nights. The two protagonists, WAAF officer Kay and German engineer Graf only meet in the final pages, but their stories are exhilarating and moving throughout. The roles of women in the British war effort and scientists in the German hold the interest and the twin tales are gripping, even if the resolutions come swiftly. I have sometimes enjoyed a Robert Harris novel but have felt let down by the ending (Conclave is a case in point), but I am so pleased that this one ended exactly as it did. Wholly satisfying.

5 Stars

A truly compelling and fascinating historical novel. The prose is excellent, the pacing relentless, the dialogue fully concise and in service to the action. The plot mainly serves as a superstructure for all the amazing information about the V2, the engineers and military, and the spies and victims of it's short reign during WW-2.

<i> As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.</i>

Beginning in September 1944, <b>over 3,000 V2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht</b> against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège.

<A href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket" target="blank">Wikipedia article on V2 Rockets</a>

<img src="https://www.allesoverboekenenschrijvers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Harris-V2-Recensie.jpg">
<a href="https://www.allesoverboekenenschrijvers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Robert-Harris-V2-Recensie.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>

The story immediately explodes into action in the first pages with Kay, the young WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) in a hotel room with her lover, just as a V2 crashes into a neighbouring building and explodes.

The story of the incredible technology, planning and execution of its launch follows from Kay's curiosity and a desire to do more than endlessly scan aerial photos of the V2 launch areas. Harris' exposition is spare and compelling, and the story provides an excellent vision of the launch areas and nearby cities in Belgium at the end of the war.

We also experience the German side from a scientist-engineer, Graf, through whose eyes and thoughts we see the technological miracle, as well as the evil of Hitler and his minions.

The prose and exposition are quite wonderful, Harris is in top form here. The book certainly did not seem to be 320 pages, and every page was terrific right up to the climax and quite-satisfying, semi-historical resolution.

<b>Note and quotes:</b>

Truly extraordinary technology for the 1940s, a triumph and a curse. A genius, Von Braun, with no impediments to his personal goal of reaching the moon, no matter how many would die to get there.

V2 cutaway
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/spacerockethistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/v2_cutaway.jpg">
<a href="https://i2.wp.com/spacerockethistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/v2_cutaway.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>

<i>Like a sprinter poised on her starting block a split second after the pistol was fired, the V2 at first appeared stalled, then abruptly she shot straight upwards, riding a fifteen-metre jet of fire. A thunderous boom rolled from the sky across the wood. Graf craned his neck to follow her, counting in his head, praying she would not explode. One second … two seconds … three seconds … At exactly four seconds into the flight, a time switch was activated in one of the control compartments and the V2, already two thousand metres high, began to tilt towards an angle of forty-seven degrees. He always regretted the necessity for that manoeuvre. In his dreams, she rose vertically towards the stars. He had a last glimpse of her red exhaust before she vanished into the low cloud towards London.</i>

V2 in transport cradle with V2 just launched in background
<img src="http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/V2-launch.jpg">
<a href="http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/V2-launch.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>
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<i>SIXTY-FIVE SECONDS AFTER TAKE-OFF, AT an altitude of twenty-three miles and a velocity of 2,500 miles per hour, an on-board accelerometer simultaneously cut off the fuel supply to the V2’s engine and activated a switch that armed the warhead fuse. The unpowered rocket was now ballistic, following the same parabolic curve as a stone flung from a catapult. Its speed was still increasing. Its course was set on a compass bearing of 260 degrees west-south-west. Its aiming point was Charing Cross station, the notional dead centre of London; hitting anything within a five-mile radius of that would be considered on target.</i>
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<i>A hundred miles to the east [of London], the V2 had reached its maximum altitude of fifty-eight miles–the edge of the earth’s atmosphere–and was hurtling at a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour beneath a hemisphere of stars when gravity at last began to reclaim it. Its nose slowly tilted and it started to fall towards the North Sea. Despite the buffeting of cross-winds and air turbulence during re-entry, a pair of gyroscopes mounted on a platform immediately below the warhead detected any deviations in its course or trajectory and corrected them by sending electrical messages to the four rudders in its tail fins. Just as Kay was fastening the second of her stockings, it crossed the English coast three miles north of Southend-on-Sea, and as she pulled her dress over her head, it flashed above Basildon and Dagenham. At 11.12 a.m., four minutes and fifty-one seconds after launching, travelling at nearly three times the speed of sound, too fast to be seen by anyone on the ground, the rocket plunged onto Warwick Court.</i>
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<i>An object moving at supersonic speed compresses the atmosphere. In the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the tip of the nose cone touched the roof of the Victorian mansion block, and before the four-ton projectile crashed through all five floors, Kay registered–beyond thought, and far beyond any capacity to articulate it–some change in the air pressure, some presentiment of threat. Then the two metal contacts of the missile’s fuse, protected by a silica cap, were smashed together by the force of the impact, completing an electrical circuit that detonated a ton of amatol high explosive.</i>

The devastation of a single V2 explosion
<img src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/10/1410356401929_wps_3_WW_II_Gemany_Rocket_Shell.jpg">
<a href="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/10/1410356401929_wps_3_WW_II_Gemany_Rocket_Shell.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>

Early Graf and Von Braun and their club
<i>They raised money for the Society for Space Travel at a stall in the Wertheim department store. (‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ declared von Braun, ‘the man is already alive who will one day walk on the moon!’)</i>
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<i>‘In Germany now there are three choices,’ Kammler told them. ‘You are shot by the SS, you are imprisoned by the SS, or you work for the SS.’</i>
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<b>Incredible. The Germans killed 4x as many of their own people during construction and launch of the 3,000 V2s as eventually died from being actual targets.</b>

<i>Twenty thousand people had died at Nordhausen making the V2, four times as many as had been killed by it.</i>


<b>Interesting Acknowledgements and Historical notes from Robert Harris</b>

THE BULK OF THIS NOVEL was written during the 2020 lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. For four hours every morning, seven days a week, for fourteen weeks, I retreated to my study and closed the door–a lockdown within a lockdown–and I would like to express my love and gratitude to my wife, Gill Hornby, and our two youngest children and fellow isolators, Matilda and Sam, for their good company and cheerful forbearance during this surreal interlude.

The genesis of this novel was an obituary in The Times on 5 September 2016 of ninety-five-year-old Eileen Younghusband, which described her work as a WAAF officer in Mechelen. I subsequently read her two volumes of memoirs, Not an Ordinary Life (2009) and One Woman’s War (2011). My fictional WAAF officer bears no resemblance to Mrs Younghusband,

Precisely what went on in Mechelen in the winter of 1944–5 is hard to establish, and I have had to rely on guesswork and some artistic licence.

Nevertheless, I would never have written V2 were it not for her disclosure of the existence of the Mechelen operation. I will always be grateful for her inspiration.

Robert Harris
<img src="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4000083.1567002376!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg">
<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.4000083.1567002376!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg" target="blank">Full size image here</a>


(( I will post on Amazon UK and Amazon USA at publication date ))
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My next review is as follows:-

"V2 The Brand New Second World War Thriller” written by Robert Harris September 2020 and Published In Hardcover and Kindle on 20th September 2020 320 pages ISBN-13 : 978-1786331403

The book was one that was truly superb and once started was almost impossible to put down and I read it very quickly as it was a really atmospheric and brilliantly researched historic mystery with lot's of period detail.

Rudi Graf has dreamt since childhood of sending a rocket to the moon. Instead, along with his friend Werner von Braun, he has helped create the world's most sophisticated weapon - the V2 ballistic missile, capable of delivering a one-ton warhead that travels at three times the speed of sound.

In a desperate gamble to avoid defeat, Hitler orders 10,000 to be built.
Now, in the winter of 1944, Graf finds himself in a bleak seaside town in Occupied Holland. Haunted and disillusioned, he's tasked with firing the V2s at London. Nobody understands the volatile, deadly machine better than he does.
Kay Caton-Walsh is an officer in the WAAF. She has experienced at first-hand the horror of a V2 strike. As the rockets rain down, she joins a unit of WAAFs on a mission to newly-liberated Belgium. Armed with little more than a slide rule and a few equations, the hope is that Kay and her colleagues can locate and destroy the launch sites.
But at this stage in the war it's hard to know who, if anyone, you can trust.
For every action on one side, there is an equal and opposite reaction on the other. As the death toll soars, the separate stories of Graf and Kay ricochet off one another, until in a final explosion of violence their destinies are forced together.

The author has done a really excellent job in his research on the background to his story and |I just could not fault it in any way and I have a particular interest in reading stories about the Second World War by other authors such as David Downing and the late Philip Kerr and even though he wrote it during the lock down he has not stinted on his research and has produced a really atmospheric book which I was bowled over by. It is one of a rare breed of novel that combines being a page turning thriller yet it is also literary and it blends compelling plotting with superbly realised human emotion and excellent period detail Robert Harris is a truly first class author. Strongly recommended. (Advance copy from the publisher in exchange for a fair review).

I have to say I’m a keen reader of Robert Harris novels. His subject matter is diverse and compelling. V2 is an absolute stonier if a story. It’s based on fact and brings some real people very much to life, along with the story behind the V2 rocket bombs.

I’d heard of V2s but knew little about how they worked or were developed. Thanks to the fascinating detail in this story, I’ve learned a great deal. The research appears to be meticulous and complex technical detail is presented in a way that makes it absolutely riveting. Who knew it was only minutes from launch to impact and they reached a height in excess of 25 miles? The effects were often devastating, particularly on civilians and this story outlines the desperate search to locate launch sites and put a stop to this new and deadly weapon. It highlights the complex relationships between Graf and Von Braun and the German military. It’s interesting to remember that Braun was given sanctuary in the USA after the war and their moon landing programme was reliant upon his expertise.

As expected, Harris has mixed fact and fiction in a way that makes powerful and compelling reading. It’s a book where you just need to read another chapter and another; totally immersive and a powerful and exciting plot with a range of characters who bring it all to life. I really enjoyed it and have little doubt it’ll be a best seller. My thanks to the publisher for an early review copy.

The basis for the book V2 by Robert Harris sounded excellent with fantastic scope for a very entertaining historical fiction story based during WW2, unfortunately the book itself failed to deliver and seemed to be more of a high level sypnosis of a novel. A definite missed opportunity

Not one I can recommend

What a story! I really enjoyed this book. Yet while it is fictional, and the characters are fictional, it is based on fact and incredibly well researched fact at that. For me, I actually found the acknowledgements at the back of the book the most poignant out of everything I read because it is these acknowledgements that made me realise how close this story was to what really happened during the war.

This wouldn’t normally be my choice of reading. It came up on Netgalley and I thought it sounded really good. I’m not normally that keen on books that are set in a backdrop to WW2 but this was a thriller and sounded a little different. I read a book last year that surrounded the women who were in the WAAF (Women’s Auxilliary Air Force) but that was a more romanticised version of events. Very different to this book, but obviously I didn’t realise that until I was well into the pages of this book. Would I have chosen it had I known it was going to be so technical? Probably not, and yet I found the whole story absolutely fascinating.

There is a lot of technical detail in relation to the V2, how it worked, how it was developed, then there was the maths….. but even for a non science person I did find it very interesting. The author has obviously done a lot of research and found it equally interesting to be able to explain it and put it into reasonably understandable layman terms.

The story is told from two different view points. A lot of the book is spent with Graf who, having developed the science behind the V2 is heavily involved in the launches of the bomb attacks, overseeing the last minute checks before they’re deployed. However he becomes ever more disillusioned with it all as his interest originally lay in space travel. It was his friend von Braun who sold the idea to Germany that they could develop a bomb capable of huge destruction but only with an ultimate dream of fulfilling his ambition to develop a space rocket.

The other part of the story involves the British side and the involvement of Kay-Caton Walsh an Officer in the WAAF who was originally tasked with studying photographic reconnaissance to try to locate where the bombs were being launched from, which after proving fruitless hit on the idea of retracing the bombs trajectory path back to where it came from using maths. Like I said before it is quite a technical story but don’t let that put you off, it’s well worth getting your head around because it’s so interesting.

I could go on and on about this book, it’s just so good. It kept me engrossed and the end just makes you think about everything. Not just about World War II but about more recent times, those at the top, so far removed from reality that they still act with stupidity and give no thought to the consequences of their actions for the wider good. Man just never learns!

Reading this was a fabulous way to spend a wild and wet summer holiday afternoon and evening.

What I love about Robert Harris is his ability to take a piece of history and then introduce fictional characters to bring things together, explaining what is going on, the motivations and the impact of what happened.

I'd read about the V2, but never before had I understood the human cost of creating them, the way they were perceived by the Nazi's and the impact (in more ways than one) that they had on London and Antwerp. Or, the brilliant way in which the scientists involved in the German rocket programme were able to skedaddle off to America.

The weakest point in the novel is Kay Caton Walsh, a WAAF officer, and her ability to leap into bed with people at the first meeting. Not sure how credible that was in the days before birth control, but that is a minor quibble.

What Robert Harries does so cleverly in this novel is to take two protagonists, and alternating chapter by chapter bring the story to life. Having a female British lead and a male German lead highlights how unpleasant life was on both sides and the difficult decisions people have to make. The German tries to save someone, the British character turns someone in.

Then there is the non judgmental way he handles the ambivalence, what happens in the end and personal responsibility is very deft.

I highly recommend this novel.

I am likely to be in a minority here but I found V2 to be nothing special. The reason for 3 stars is solely for the information regarding the "story of the V2" as, for me at least, all of the surrounding story could be applied to just so many other tales.

The most important question here is, is this book worth reading? If you want a book that you can read in an airport or on holiday, the answer is a definite yes. If you need something fictional that makes you think, I suggest that you will need to look elsewhere.

Reading V2 by Robert Harris was a first for me. Why? Because it's the first book I have read which was written during lockdown. Robert Harris did a brilliant job in bringing that period of the war to life. I found it so fascinating, especially the leap in technology from the V1 rocket, never realising how much further the V2 went in to the atmosphere, touching space itself. The ladies recruited to calculate the location of the launch pad had an interesting first lesson. It would have been more suited to plot a submarine's dive and subsequent resurfacing. I can quite see why the launch pads weren't successfully bombed if the intention was to calculate the parabolic path of the rocket. The V2 had to stand on its engine until it reached sufficient speed to deviate course. The RADAR (radio detection and ranging) units were able to see the launch a few seconds after take-off. They would have been best placed using trigonometry to calculate the launch point. Using calibrated indicators such as radar reflective teathered balloons within the radar's field of interest, a high degree of accuracy could be assured. Shocking to realise how much greater fatalities there were amongst the slave labourers who built the V2 factory than was ever delivered by the rockets themselves. The only real winner in the history of the V2 was von Braun and the other cohorts of Operation Paperclip and of course the Americans in using his knowledge.

I have to say this is the first book by Robert Harris that has left me cold. Usually his stories are gripping but I can’t say much happens here. The synopsis for the book, the back cover gumph, is really the whole of the story

Rightly hailed as a consummate storyteller, Robert Harris has released a lockdown-honed explosive WW11 story, focusing on the invention, manufacture and utilisation of the German V2 rocket, fired on London and Antwerp from 1944 onwards. Told through the perspective of both German and British characters, this is a fascinating recreation of the last months of the war.
At its centre are engineer Dr Graf, an increasingly reluctant participator in the German war effort, and Kay Caton Walsh, a WAAF officer, inspired by the real-life Eileen Younghusband who worked in Mechelen on the mathematical calculations needed to inform British reprisals after rocket attacks on London. This is a meticulously researched story. Whilst, occasionally, the technical details get in the way of the narrative, the author’s ability to plot, structure, inform and imagine results in a thoroughly compelling read. How fascinating, too, that a machine associated with all that is hateful, manufactured to terrify and destroy, would also inspire post-war space exploration.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Classic novel of Robert Harris. Brilliant.

WWII and all atrocities that horrific weapon as V2 brought to war maschine. Characters and atmosphere are spot on.

Very interesting and joy to read.

Robert Harris blends fact and fiction to relate the history of the V2 ballistic rockets developed in Germany, in 1944 it becomes increasingly clear to Nazi Germany that events are turning against them. The V2 is Hitler's last throw of the dice in his efforts to try and change the course of the war. He orders ten thousand V2 rockets with their one ton warheads, travelling at three times the speed of sounds, the targets primarily London and Antwerp. The damage and loss of life in London is horrific, with the British scrabbling around desperately to find a way of stopping the rockets by locating the launch sites, a task made considerably more difficult as the launch sites change. The German manufacture of the rockets places high levels of stress and pressure on the slave labour callously deployed to make the V2, the shocking loss of life, technical issues and problems plague the V2, raising the levels of unreliability.

When her affair with a married Air Commodore becomes more widely known, Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) officer, an embarrassed 24 year old Kay Caton-Walsh, an intelligence officer in photo reconnaissance, becomes part of a contingent of women heading to Mechelen in Belgium. These are very bright women under the leadership of Flight Officer Sitwell, using mathematics, working out the co-ordinates of the trajectory of the rocket, extrapolating the parabolic curve back to the launch point. This is not a danger free role as Kay is to discover. Rocket engineer, Dr Rudi Graf, is a disillusioned man, he never planned to be part of the Nazi war machine, responsible for the deaths of so many. Through Graf, Harris tells the story of the development of the V2, starting from Graf's childhood friendship with Professor Von Braun, their obsession with rockets, Graf wanting to build a spacecraft but inadvertently ends up at the strategic forefront of the Nazi war machine. Graf becomes suspected of sabotage by the Nazis.

What stands out in Harris's WW2 historical novel is the level of detail he provides on the V2, from its failure strewn history, the processes and interactions that lay behind the German teams launching the rockets, the SS pressure they are under, trying to meet their impossible targets set, working all hours, moving sites to keep the allies confused and at bay. He provides the same level of detail when it comes to the nightmare impact of the V2, the deaths and wide scale destruction in London, all of which Kay sees first hand during her visit to London, all of which conspires to drive her decision to help bring the war to an end as soon as possible in her work in Belgium. This novel is for who love their WW2 historical fiction, it is likely to particularly appeal to those interested in learning about the V2 and its impact in the war. A fascinating and insightful read. Many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for an ARC.

It is so pleasant to read a book written by a master at the top of his form. Robert Harris has produced a marvellous account of how the V2 rockets were invented and developed, the appalling toll they took in terms of deaths and in loss of morale at a time when the war seemed won and how the British found a way of locating where the rockets were being launched from.

You will ideally need a very limited knowledge of rocket science and applied maths and trigonometry to really appreciate but this is just rollicking good read with two wonderfully well drawn main characters and how their lives and perhaps even futures inter-twine.

An exceptional read and highly recommended.