Best case scenario for Nazi missiles

San Marco Launch site?

"For a launch site that can put payloads into orbit, the two most important considerations are a) large empty spaces for a great distance eastwards and b) as close to the equator as possible."
China!? anyone, I never heard them having problems with launching rockets over populated territory. :p

Actually, China's main launch site is in Inner Mongolia. Which is pretty much like Baikonur/Tyuratam in terms of range safety.

Point taken on the San Marco (or Sea Launch) stuff, though. Assuming Japan won, there shouldn't be any problem with launching them from some mid-Pacific area, which is just about perfect: very close to Equator (directly on it, depending) and with a huge range safety area (big enough that you can deorbit whole space stations into the area safely!)
 
If they win I am sure they can fetch a nice clean strip of land from someone.
Morocco, at the same distance from the equator as Cape Canaveral and plenty of empty room to the east. + west in case they want to fire against the rotation of earth. Maybe polar orbits are a bit more problematic from morocco, but they can launch those from another spot.

Italian Somaliland seems handy...
 
Actually, China's main launch site is in Inner Mongolia. Which is pretty much like Baikonur/Tyuratam in terms of range safety.
This is what I was aiming at.


On February 15, 1996, during the flight of the first Long March 3 B heavy carrier rocket carrying Intelsat 708, the rocket veered off course immediately after clearing the launch platform crashing 22 seconds later. It crashed 1,850 meters away from the launch pad into a nearby mountain village, destroying 80 houses according to the official count, and killing more than 500 civilians according to unofficial Chinese sources.[16]
Quoted from wiki. I was surprised to find anything about it on wiki, given Chinas known internet censorship. Given the footage and Chinas "openness" background I wouldn't be surprised if 80 housed and 500 deaths could be a low estimate.

It doesn't look like such a desolate place to me with a village 2 km from the launch pad. I must admit I don't know what the Chinese changed to improve safety, but I remember hearing about them taking safety more serious nowadays. This doesn't change my original point on Germany being able to launch rockets in populated area's though. Keeping a burned down city secret must be a piece of cake for them.

Edit: It seems that China has got 3 launch sited now and will take a new one into use in 2013 on Hainan Island.
 
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The Wasserfall sistem could have been very usefull, as Speer recalls in his memories. A ground-air missile against which there was no known defence (as it was the first one). If Germany could have eliminated or greatly reduce danger from the air in the first half of 1944, things could have been different.
The shoulder-fired weapon was not a missile. The Luftfist was a multiple-rocket launcher, with salvos of six to nine unguided rockets, but it would have been a very welcomed weapon for german ground forces in places like Falaise.
Unfortunately for Wasserfall, a Jammer to counter it, could have come fairly quickly into service, as one of the A4/V2 "mules" used to delevop Wasserfall's command guidance system, crash landed in Sweden, & the Allies managed to obtain & analyse it's guidance system, after making a deal with the Swedes....
(Ironically, the Allies thought, as a result of the analysis of the "Mule's" debris, that the V2 itself used a radio command guidance system, rather than an inertial guidance system, & plans were accordingly made to jam it's "guidance" system...).
As for Luftfist, I can imagine it being used as a anti-Light armour or "Bunker-blaster" weapon, for urban combat, in addition to a Manpad anti-air system...
After all, the 6-7x30mm rockets it contained, could do a lot of damage to soft skinned vehicles...
 
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