Header image: James, Tom, and Dave from Runway25, along with Craig and Nicky from Crash Gate Aviation, hand over a cheque for £7,685 to OC BBMF, Sqn Ldr Mark ‘Suggs’ Sugden, raised in memory of Sqn Ldr Mark Long for the Flying Scholarship for the Disabled in his name.
Club members have an exclusive and fantastic opportunity to ask the BBMF questions on anything you’ve ever wanted to know about the Flight, for a videoed Q&A session which will be posted online.
Header image: A German V1 flying bomb diving onto London.
In today’s world we have become familiar with news of attack drones being used to hit targets. Both sides in the Ukrainian war regularly use drones, and in recent time we have also seen mass drone attacks by Iran against Israel and the use of drones by Houthi Rebels against shipping in the Red Sea. It is worth remembering that between June 1944 and March 1945 Britain was subjected to a sustained campaign of air attacks by unmanned air vehicles – attack drones – in the form of Nazi Germany’s Fieseler Fi 103 V1 (the ‘V’ stood for ‘Vergeltungswaffen’, vengeance or reprisal weapon), the ‘Buzz Bomb’ or ‘Doodlebug’ as it quickly became known to the British public. The V1 was effectively the world’s first cruise missile and the first to reach England impacted at Swanscombe in Kent on 13th June 1944.
