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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

3. A Weapon That Killed More of its Makers Than the Enemy

During its nine months of deployment, the V-2 rocket killed 2754 people. Most of them were not soldiers, but civilians whose deaths, while tragic, did not impede the Allied war effort by much.

By contrast, over 20,000 workers, mostly slave laborers, died while manufacturing the V-2. That gave the rocket the tragic distinction of being the only weapons system in history whose production cost more lives than did its actual use. Thus, when contrasting the cost with the results, the V-2 literally produced little bang for the buck.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.