2 Operation and effectiveness

The first test flight of the wonder weaponWonder weapons is the term given to very advanced weaponry whose design, production or deployment in the field of battle is impractical or ill timed. Such weapons are radical departures or improvements of the arms or machinery used at the time and are oft V-1 was in late 1941 or early 1942 at Peenemünde. Early guidance and stabilization problems were finally resolved by a daring test flight by Hanna Reitsch, in a V-1 modified for manned operation. The data she brought back after fighting the unwieldy V-1 down to a successful landing enabled the engineers to devise the stabilization system described above.

The first offensive launch was from June 12 to June 13, 1944. The Allies had previously organized a heavy series of air attacks on the launch sites (beginning in December 1943) and now also attacked the V-1s in flight (see Countermeasures below). Due to a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability and guidance errors, only a quarter successfully hit their targets.

Once the Allies had captured or destroyed the sites that were the principal launch points V-1s aimed at England, the Germans switched to missile launches aimed at strategic points in the Low Countries, primarily the port of Antwerp.

Although most V-1s were launched from static sites on land, from July 1944 to January 1945 the Luftwaffe launched a number of V-1s from Heinkel He 111 aircraft flying over the North Sea. This would also have been the launch method for the proposed piloted version of the weapon, and is how the very earliest experimental versions of the V-1 were tested. Late in the war, it was hoped to use the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber to deploy V-1s, either by towing them aloft, or by launching them from a "piggy back" position atop the aircraft. Neither Ar 234 concept was employed before the end of the war.

Almost 30,000 V-1s were manufactured. Approximately 10,000 were fired at England up to March 29, 1945. Of these, about 7,000 were "hits" in the sense that they landed somewhere in England. A little more than half of those (3,876) landed in the Greater London area.

An almost equal number were shot down or intercepted by barrage balloons. When the V-1 raids began, the only effective defense was interception by a handful of very high performance fighter aircraft, in particular the Hawker Tempest.

In the London area, roughly 5,500 people died as a result of V-1 attacks, with some 16,000 more people injured.

3 Intelligence

The codename Flak Ziel Gerät 76, was somewhat successful in disguising the true nature of this device, and it was some time before references to FZG 76 were tied to the V83 pilotless aircraft (an experimental V-1) which had crashed on Bornholm in the Baltic, and to reports from agents of a flying bomb capable of being used against London. Initially British experts were skeptical of the V-1 because they had considered only solid fuel rockets as a means of propulsion, which put the stated range of 130 miles (209 km) out of question. However when other types of engine were considered they relented, and by the time German scientists had achieved the needed accuracy for the deployment of the V-1 as a weapon British intelligence had a very accurate characterisation of it.

A deception concerning the V-1 was played on the Germans using double agents. M.I.5 arranged for these agents to provide Germany with damage reports for the June 1944 V-1 attacks which implied that on average the bombs were travelling too far, while not contradicting the evidence presumed to be available to German planners from photographic reconnaissance of London. In fact the bombs had been seeded with radio-transmitting samples to confirm their range, but the results from these samples were ignored in favour of the false eye-witness accounts, and many lives may have been saved by the resulting tendency of future V-1 bombs to fall short of built up areas.

4 Countermeasures

The British defence against the V-1 was codenamed Operation Diver. Anti-aircraft guns were redeployed in several movements: first in mid-June 1944 from positions on the North Downs to the south coast of England; then a cordon closing the Thames Estuary to attacks from the east. In September 1944 a new linear defence line was formed on the coast of East Anglia, and finally in December there was a further layout along the Linconshire-Yorkshire coast. The deployments were prompted by the ever-changing approach tracks of the missiles which were in turn influenced by the Allies' advance through Europe.

Anti-aircraft gunners found that such small, fast-moving targets were difficult to hit. At first, it took, on average, 2500 shells to bring down a single V-1. The average altitude of the V-1, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet, was in a narrow band between the optimum engagement heights for light and heavy anti-aircraft weapons. These low heights defeated the rate of traverse of the standard British 3.7 inch mobile gun, and static gun installations with faster traverses had to be built at great cost.

Barrage balloons were also deployed against the missiles, but the leading edges of the V-1's wings were equipped with balloon cable cutters and fewer than 300 V-1s are known to have been destroyed by hitting cable.

Fighter defences had also been mobilized as part of Operation Diver. Most fighter aircraft were too slow to catch a V-1 unless they had a useful height advantage. Even when intercepted, the V-1 was difficult to bring down. Machine gun bullets had little effect on the sheet steel structure, and 20 mm cannon shells had a shorter range, which meant that detonating the warhead could destroy the intercepting fighter as well.

When the attacks began in mid-June of 1944 there were fewer than 30 Tempests in 150 Wing to defend against them. Few other aircraft had the low altitude performance to be effective. Initial attempts to intercept V-1s were often unsuccessful but interdiction techniques were rapidly developed. (These included the hair-raising but effective method of using the airflow over an interceptor's wing to raise one wing of the Doodlebug, by sliding the interceptor's wingtip under the V-1's wing and bringing it to within six inches of the lower surface. Done properly, the airflow would tip the V-1's wing up, overriding the buzz bomb's gyros and sending it into an out of control dive. At least three V-1s were destroyed this way.)

The Tempest wing was built up to over 100 aircraft by September; Griffon -engined Spitfire XIVs and Mustangs were polished and tuned to make them almost fast enough, and during the short summer nights the Tempests shared defensive duty with Mosquitoes. Specially modified P-47 Thunderbolts (P-47Ms) with half their fuel tanks, half their 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns, all external fittings and all their armor plate removed were also pressed into service against the V-1 menace. (There was no need for radar—at night the V-1's engine could be seen from 16 km (10 mile) or more away.)

In daylight, V-1 chases were chaotic and often unsuccessful until a special defence zone between London and the coast was declared in which only the fastest fighters were permitted. Between June and mid-August 1944, the handful of Tempests shot down 638 flying bombs. (One Tempest pilot, Joseph Berry, downed fifty-nine V-1s, another 44, and Wing Commander Beaumont destroyed 31.) Next most successful was the Mosquito (428), Spitfire XIV (303), and Mustang, (232). All other types combined added 158. The still-experimental jet-powered Gloster Meteor, which was rushed half-ready into service to fight the V-1s, had ample speed but suffered from a readily jammed cannon and accounted for only 13.

By mid-August 1944, the threat was all but overcome—not by aircraft, but by the sudden arrival of two enormously effective electronic aids for anti-aircraft guns, both developed in the USA by the Rad Lab: radar-based automatic gunlaying, and above all, the proximity fuse. Both of these had been requested by AA Command and arrived in numbers, starting in June 1944, just as the guns reached their free-firing positions on the coast.

Seventeen per cent of all flying bombs entering the coastal 'gun belt' were destroyed by guns in the first week on the coast. This kill rate rose week on week to reach 60 per cent by 23 August and 74 per cent in the last week of the month, when on one extraordinary day 82 per cent of all targets available to the guns fell. The kill rate increased from one V-1 for every 2500 shells fired to one for every hundred.

5 After the War

After the war, the armed forces of both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with the V-1 in an assortment of scenarios. The most successful was a U.S. Navy experiment to mount V-1s on submarines. This was called the KGW-1 Loon , which was an adaptation of the U.S. Army's JB-2 Loon .

6 See also

Flying bomb at the National Air & Space Museum

• Media Files :
• Selbstopfer, the piloted version of the V-1
• List of missiles
• German missiles of WW2
• List of World War II jet aircraft

7 References

• King, Benjamin; Kutta, Timothy (1998). IMPACT. The History of Germany's V-Weapons in World War II. Rockville Center, New York: Sarpedon Publishers. BooksEnthsiast.com.

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