So, were these things spray-and-pray, or was there some kind of a terminal guidance system?
Minimally so, Ya pointed it in a direction, when it ran out of fuel, it dropped like a rock and detonated
Strictly point and pray. Unguided missles.
Yes. When it stopped buzzing it was coming down. If you heard it stop you wanted to find shelter right away.
FRom wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
it did have a gyro and also had a “timer” that when met, would cause it to plummet on the targeted area.
Guidance system
The V-1 guidance system used a simple autopilot to regulate height and speed. A weighted pendulum system provided fore-and-aft attitude measurement to control pitch (damped by a gyromagnetic compass, which it also stabilized). There was a more sophisticated interaction between yaw, roll, and other sensors: a gyromagnetic compass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control each of pitch and roll, but it was angled away from the horizontal so that controlling these degrees of freedom interacted: the gyroscope stayed trued up by feedback from the magnetic field, and from the fore and aft pendulum. This interaction meant that rudder control was enough without a separate banking mechanism.
A countdown timer driven by a propeller (actually a vane anemometer) on the nose found when target range has been reached, accurately enough for area bombing. Before launch the counter was set to a value that would reach zero upon arrival at the target in the prevailing wind conditions. As the missile flew, the airflow turned the propeller and every 30 rotations of the propeller counted down one number on the counter. This counter triggered the arming of the warhead after about 38 miles[3]. When the count reached zero, a solenoid attached to a small guillotine was activated, cutting the air hose from the servo to the rear elevator and allowing a spring to fully depress the elevator causing the V-1 to dive[4]. While this was originally intended to be a power dive, in practice the dive caused the fuel flow to cease, which stopped the engine. The sudden silence after the buzzing alerted listeners that the V-1 would impact soon.
With the counter determining how far the missile would fly; it was only necessary to launch the V1 with the ramp in the rough direction and the autopilot controlled the rest.
We used to have a ball bombing their launch sites.
They ran out of fuel and fell.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus