March 1945 – end of the V-1 flying bomb campaign
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.
The V1 generally flew at around 3,000 feet at speeds of between 350 and up to 400mph, accelerating as the fuel was burned and it became lighter. The missile’s guidance system was crude, the course was pre-set and a simple propeller-driven distance log on the nose of the bomb automatically cut the pulse-jet engine and deflected the elevators to set the bomb into a dive after a set number of revolutions. If V1s got through the defensive screen, their 1870 lb (850 kg) explosive warhead created a massive blast effect, typically extending across a radius of 400-600 yards, which could kill large numbers of people, inflict terrible blast injuries and create massive damage to buildings. In inner London suburbs where terraced houses were packed together, up to 20 would totally collapse and brick walls would be pulverised into small fragments by the explosion from a V1. Anyone unlucky enough to be close to the impact site would be blown apart or otherwise would suffer crush injuries from falling masonry. Many were trapped below collapsed buildings and had to be dug out. Further away from the impact site awful injuries were inflicted by shards of flying glass.
Eighty years ago, in March 1945, it was thought that the V1 threat had largely been negated by the sophisticated and effective defensive screen of fighters and anti-aircraft guns set up in southern England, and by air attacks against the V1 launch sites and construction and storage facilities. In addition, the Allied advance in Europe had overrun the flying-bomb launch sites in France and Belgium. However, on 3rd March the V1 campaign against Britain recommenced with the launching of extended-range V1s from the German-occupied Netherlands. The new variant of the V1 had a range of 250 miles compared with 150 miles for the original version. In addition, V1s could be air-launched from modified Heinkel He 111 bombers. The last V1 to reach England unmolested, landed in a field close to a sewage farm at Datchworth near Hatfield, Hertfordshire on Thursday 29th March 1945. Two more were shot down by anti-aircraft fire that day. In the 27 days that month, between the re-opening of the campaign on 3rd March to the bombardment ending on 29th March, 275 of the flying bombs had been fired against England. Only 13 reached London.
During the campaign against the V1s, RAF and USAAF fighter aircraft operated by day and night on standing patrols over the English Channel to intercept and shoot down inbound ‘Doodlebugs’ over the sea. On the coast, anti-aircraft gun batteries engaged the V1s as they crossed it. Behind the anti-aircraft gun line there was an overland fighter engagement zone. Finally, barrage balloons, flying tethered from open spaces around London, provided a final line of defence. Eventually, some 2,000 barrage balloons were deployed and they brought down over 230 V1s. Between them, the fighters, the anti-aircraft guns and the balloons destroyed almost 4,000 V1s in total. The Allied fighter pilots involved in the battle against the V1s shot down almost 2,000 of the flying bombs, but sadly 72 of those pilots and crew members lost their lives during the campaign. Some died as a result of flying bombs exploding in front of them and some were lost due to accidents in the very bad weather that they were sometimes forced to fly in, defending the line.
During the whole campaign, some 10,000 V1s were launched against the UK. Of these, 7,488 crossed the British coast and 3,957 were shot down by the defences. Of the 3,531 that were not shot down, 2,419 landed in the London area, approximately 30 hit Southampton and Portsmouth and 15 air-launched V1s landed across Greater Manchester, hitting Oldham, Bury, Salford, Didsbury, Stockport, and Hyde. In total 6,184 people were killed and 17,981 people were injured by V1s.
Meanwhile, between September 1944 and March 1945 around 1,400 V2 ballistic missiles were also launched against England. Due to their trajectory and speed (the V2 impacted at 3,000mph) there was no effective defence against these missiles and the V2 attacks killed an estimated 2,754 people in London and injured thousands more. Fortunately, despite the havoc they caused, and partly as a result of the delays in development caused by Bomber Command’s raid on the rocket site at Penemunde on17/18th August 1943, the V2s came too late to change the course of the war and Allied ground forces were already closing in on the launch sites. The final two V2 rockets impacted England on 27th March 1945. One of these killed 34-year-old Ivy Millichamp in her home in Orpington, Kent. She became the final British civilian casualty of the war on British soil.
As well as those killed in England by the V1s and V2s, we should also remember the thousands of prisoners and slave workers who were forced by the Nazis to build these weapons and who died as a result of the dreadful conditions.
LEST WE FORGET
