Myths abound, however, about its role during the war. Because it travelled faster than the speed of sound, it couldn’t be heard until it hit – hence the terrifying silence. It tumbled in space but when it re-entered the atmosphere, its fins kept the nose pointing forwards like a dart. The system had an accelerometer to ensure the engine cut out at the right speed.” It tipped the rocket over until it was at an angle of about 45 degrees, and travelling at 5600 kilometres per hour. “The inertial guidance system in the nose was controlled by gyroscopes. “The rocket launched vertically with its engine firing for only a minute,” says Neufeld. The V-2 had a simple guidance system using graphite jet vanes to deflect the exhaust and air vanes to control roll. And in many ways it left a dual legacy – it was the origin of cold war intercontinental ballistic missiles, but also of space-launch vehicles.” “It was the first large-scale rocket powered by liquid propellant – liquid oxygen and 75 per cent alcohol fuel,” he says.

He says the V-2 was a technological breakthrough. Michael Neufeld, curator of the V-2 exhibition in Washington, is a historian and author of The Rocket and the Reich. Its importance is also recognised worldwide, with V-2s on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, the German Museum in Munich, and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. Seventy years on, the rocket retains the power to inspire visceral fear, and its place in the atrium is fitting and poignant.

The rocket is among diverse artefacts demonstrating the iconography of Britain’s past conflicts – including a Spitfire plane, a car mangled by a bomb during the recent Iraq conflict, and standard army biscuits.

Few of these missiles exist today, but a V-2 rocket, measuring more than 14 metres high, has taken centre stage in the £40 million atrium at London’s Imperial War Museum.

Rocket launcher 2.0 add engine