Re: Fast And Furious 7 Vengeance Hits Home
Katja Gains
Rescue teams and civilians help to recover a casualty after a V1 attack at Clapham in south London on 13 June 1944, the day the first flying bombs hit London. A week before, on D-Day, Allied armies had invaded German-occupied France. Soon after that first V1 strike, Soviet armies launched a massive offensive against German forces in Poland. From the skies over Germany, British and American bombers were able to raid German cities at will. In the face of this disastrous strategic situation, Germany deployed its 'revenge weapons' (Vergeltungswaffen) in a bid to terrorise British civilians and undermine morale. Nazi propaganda hailed these weapons as 'wonder weapons' (Wunderwaffe) that might turn the tide of the war.
The V1 flying bombs - also known as the 'doodlebugs' or 'buzz bombs' on account of the distinctive sound they made when in flight - were winged bombs powered by a jet engine. Launched from a ramp, or later from adapted bomber aircraft, the V1's straight and level flight meant that many were shot down before they reached their targets. This photograph was taken in flight by the gun camera of an intercepting RAF fighter aircraft moments before it destroyed the V1 by cannon fire. In this BBC recording, New Zealand fighter pilot Arthur Umbers describes shooting down a flying bomb. Umbers, commander of No. 486 Squadron RAF, destroyed 28 V1s, but was shot down and killed on 14 February 1945.
The crew of a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun keep watch for flying bombs, June 1944. Defensive measures against the V1 included massed batteries of anti-aircraft guns along the North Downs and the coast of south-east England, and the use of fast RAF fighter aircraft to shoot or 'tip' down the incoming flying bombs before they reached their targets. Anti-aircraft guns were responsible for the shooting down over 1,800 V1s. Similar numbers were downed by fighter aircraft and 200 were destroyed by barrage balloons.
The recording features live commentary on an interception by BBC correspondent Ian Wilson. The painting, A Tempest Shooting Down a Flying-Bomb (1944) by Roy Nockolds, shows an RAF Tempest fighter plane pursuing a V1 that has escaped a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. The image captures some tactical details, such as the deployment of anti-aircraft guns on the coast, which gave fighter aircraft free rein to intercept flying bombs over land.
In this recording, Canadian radio broadcaster Bill Herbert describes the scene at a captured V1 launch site near Cherbourg in the north-east of France on 27 July 1944. Pictured here is a modified V1 launch site at Belloy-sur-Somme, near Amiens, in northern France.
On the 13th of June 1944, a strange sight appeared in the early morning London sky. What looked like a short-winged plane half on fire tore through the sky at over 350 miles per hour with a distinctive buzzing engine noise. Onlookers didn't know it yet, but they had just caught a glimpse of the first Nazi Vergeltungswaffen or 'vengeance weapon' the V1. A few minutes later the engine cut out and the flying bomb went into a steep dive. The aircraft and its 1,800-pound warhead hit a railway bridge killing six and making hundreds homeless.
The V1 flying bomb was one of the most fear-inducing terror weapons of the Second World War. Thousands were killed and wounded by its warhead, but alongside those civilians are the forgotten victims of the V1 the people who made them.
Inside the Harz mountains in Germany tens of thousands of slave labourers from Mittelbau-Dora and its many sub-camps lost their lives in awful conditions as part of the V weapons programme. The V1 then is not just a symbol of Nazi attempts to fight the war in innovative ways, but of their greatest crime of all - The Holocaust.
The Combined Bomber Offensive were relentlessly bombing German cities the RAF flew at night under the cover of darkness and the American bombers flew throughout the day. Hitler was looking for a way to combat the bad propaganda that these terrible raids were having and so he looks to create these vengeance weapons as a way to show Britain that they weren't losing the war yet and they would still be able to fight back.
Germany wasn't just losing the bombing war, but the production war as well. That's why pilotless bombs were such an appealing idea. It was relatively simple to produce, used cheaper materials than aircraft, and avoided the expenditure of vital manpower over British skies. All of which meant that Germany could strike back against the Allies in a much more cost-effective way. But how did the V1 actually work?
Well, the most common way of launching a V1 was by ramp, but it could also be launched from a modified aircraft. Once in the sky, it was powered by a pulse jet engine which gave it a top speed of between 340 and 400 miles per hour. A relatively simple guidance system used gyroscopes to regulate its speed altitude and bearing on target. The bomb then flew for a predetermined amount of time, at first out to a maximum of 150 miles and then 250 miles later in the war. After that, the engine cut out and the bomb fell into a steep dive to the target.
The people of Britain called the V1 missiles 'buzz bombs' or 'doodlebugs' because of the distinctive almost like motorbike sound that the V1s produced. People on the ground below started to recognise that if they could hear that buzzing noise the V1 was potentially approaching or flying above them. But as soon as that noise stopped that's when the danger really hit because they realised that the fuel had been cut to the engine it meant that the V1 was probably on its dive and potentially you were in a lot of danger.
Harold Chisnell, National Fire Service in Twickenham: "I think it was damage to morale more than anything because you saw those coming over and you waited for them to cut out and you didn't know where they were going to cut out and I think, from the point of view of the public, that was the worst thing for morale that we had during the war."
Catherine Bradley, Driver with Auxillary Territorial Service: "Well, it was just coming and then I heard it click and saw that it was coming for me and it only dropped about three or four hundred yards past me and it hit a tram. Oh it was terrible. That was another shave."
With a warhead of over 1,800 pounds, the V1 had the potential to cause huge devastation. The vast majority of V1s would be launched on London from sites across the channel in the Pas De Calais. At first in dribs and drabs, then growing to over 200 a day. At 4:25am on the 13th of June 1944, just a week after D-Day, the first V1 fell on London.
It landed in Grove Road in Bow and destroyed a railway bridge and nearby homes. 6 people were killed, 30 people were injured, and 200 people were made homeless. The devastation sent shock waves across Britain.
John Barlow, Air Raid Warden in Dartford: "I said it's got a sheet of flame from its tail. It's like a plane with the wings cut off to one-third the length and I am quite sure that the chap at the other end was convinced that I had been drinking all day."
Pamela Pullen, Schoolchild in London: "It very nearly hit our house. the wing of the bomb hit a tree at the end of our garden and my mother my grandmother and myself were in the house. But we were in a Morrison Shelter then inside and we had to wait for firemen to come and get us out. And we were covered in soot and the smell of soot takes me straight back to that."
Although the British public were just meeting the V1, Allied leadership had been aware of the weapon for some time thanks to information from resistance groups and aerial photography. This is the photograph from which Flight Officer Constance Babington Smith confirmed the existence of the V1.
Churchill received reports that Germany had been experimenting with new technology at a place called Peenemnde on the German Baltic coast. So in 1943 bomber command launched a raid on Peenemnde which destroyed many of the assembly shops and the laboratories there.
If the Germans had been able to launch their attacks at the time they'd planned the results might have been far more devastating. For over a year the RAF have been waging a war against the new weapon, blasting its experimental stations, destroying many of its bases, they are still doing it.
It was attacks like these on test sites and production facilities which eventually forced V1 construction underground as the Allies gained further control of the skies over Europe. Meanwhile in Britain concern was mounting. In this image, you can see the impact of three separate V1 attacks in Lewisham in London. Entire streets were being levelled in a single hit and thousands were being made homeless.
This series of photographs is particularly heartbreaking. They show a man who went for a walk with this dog while his wife was cooking Sunday lunch. He returned home to find his house completely destroyed with her inside.
The blast of the flying bombs and rockets exceeded anything London experienced in the earlier Blitz. Day and night men women and children were being killed and maimed. Hundreds of thousands of houses were destroyed and damaged and by September alone nearly a million needed some sort of repair.
The fear that this weapon induced meant that the British needed to find ways as quickly as possible to counteract it. The V1's straight and level flight meant that many were shot down before they even reached their targets by anti-aircraft guns along the north downs and the southeast coast. RAF fighter aircraft could also shoot down or tip the wings of the incoming flying bombs before they reach their targets. Pilots had to dive from higher altitudes to get close enough to the V1s. The wing tipping required impressive levels of skill from the pilots. If they misjudged the distance they could risk colliding with the V1. About 200 V1s were destroyed by barrage balloons which were large balloons tethered to the ground and they raised steel cables which would collide with the V1 and knock it off course. And finally, attempts were also made to identify and bomb V1 launch sites before the weapons could even be launched.
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