The V-1 Flying Bomb

The V-1 Flying Bomb

 

The V1 has the distinction of being the world’s first operational cruise missile. It had its first flight in 1942 and was being used against Britain in large numbers by 1944. It had a range of 250km, carried an 850 kg warhead, and flew at a speed of 640 km/hr. It was propelled by a pulse jet engine which made a distinctive sound and resulted in the nickname “Buzz bomb”. The guidance of the V1 was provided by a simple autopilot which used a gyroscopic guidance system. The V1s were fired on a daily basis towards Britain and the attacks stopped only once the Allies managed to overrun and capture the launch sites.

 

 

 

The Nazis built nearly 10,000 of these destructive weapons. But the fact was, only 25% of these missiles managed to hit their targets. An effective combination of Anti-Aircraft guns, barrage balloons and fighter aircraft worked in coordination to shoot them down. The V1 was launched from a steam catapult and has the distinction of being the first air launched cruise missile as well, and the trend of air launched cruise missiles continues even today due to its effectiveness. The He-111 bomber served as a launch platform for the launch of V1s from the air.

 

 

The British faced a severe problem when the V1 started falling. They thought that it would be easy to intercept these missiles once they entered British airspace as they employed a combination of fighters and anti-aircraft guns to shoot down these missiles, but it proved to be a great problem as the V1 flew at an altitude of 600-900m which was just out of effective reach of the light anti-aircraft guns and just below the minimum optimum range of the heavy anti-aircraft guns. The British countered this problem with new electronic technology. The Anti-aircraft shells were fitted with a proximity fuse and the guns were directed by fire control radars. A proximity fuse is a small radio transmitter fitted at the tip of the shell which senses an object close to it and explodes, preferably near a target. Fire control radars helped to direct these shells effectively to the incoming V1s and thus the British were able to rapidly increase the number of V1s they could shoot down. The radar had once again saved Britain.

 

There was this other interesting method which Britain used, to intercept the V1s. It was in a way, daring and dangerous and involved making actual physical contact with the airborne missile. The RAF Spitfires would fly alongside the missile and level with the V1s wings. Then the pilot would maneuver the wingtip of his fighter under the wingtip of the V1 and make a slight roll movement with his plane so that the V1 lost its current course and toppled into the countryside. This method was employed due to a peculiar problem with shooting it down. The V1 had a sheet steel skin which rendered machine gunfire from aircraft useless. So the fighters had to use cannons to shoot it down. If these cannon shells managed to explode the warhead of the V1, then the resulting explosion would destroy the plane if it was anywhere near, and almost always the fighters were close enough to suffer the fallout of a mid-air V1 explosion. The toppling method worked quite well if the missile was toppled harmlessly into an empty countryside or the sea.