So it looks like the R-7 (which launched Sputnik) was the first ICBM, and the range is way longer than the V-2s of ~15 years earlier, but I’m not easily finding a graph of range over those intervening years. (And the R-7 range is only about double the range of a WW2-era bomber, which further smooths the overall graph.)
[And, implicitly, the reason we care about ICBMs is because the US and the USSR were on different continents; if the distance between their major centers was comparable to England and France’s distance instead, then the same strategic considerations would have been hit much sooner.]
So it looks like the R-7 (which launched Sputnik) was the first ICBM, and the range is way longer than the V-2s of ~15 years earlier, but I’m not easily finding a graph of range over those intervening years. (And the R-7 range is only about double the range of a WW2-era bomber, which further smooths the overall graph.)
[And, implicitly, the reason we care about ICBMs is because the US and the USSR were on different continents; if the distance between their major centers was comparable to England and France’s distance instead, then the same strategic considerations would have been hit much sooner.]