Posted on 11/06/2018 12:00:27 PM PST by DFG
Archaeologists have discovered the exploded remains of a German V1 "flying bomb" that crashed in a forest in 1944 on the way to its target in London.
The dig has turned up several key metal parts from the unpiloted V1, a predecessor of today's guided cruise missiles. It was one of thousands of"retaliation weapons," or "Vergeltungswaffen," launched by Nazi Germany in the last months of World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
...a predecessor of today’s guided cruise missiles...
The approved way to down the V1 is shown with the Spitfire’s wing about to be used to whack the V1 wing and cause it to roll off uncontrolled.
All they had to do was find them in the first place, which they did have radar for...and coast watchers...
On the day in 2015 when my daughter and I visited the sites of Agincourt and Crecy (near each other, northwest of Paris south of Dunkirk, southwest of Waterloo, west of the Ardennes) we saw a well-stocked V-1 museum near Crecy.
Impressive the number of V-1 launched, and near-complete waste of money and effort spent flying them near-randomly towards London. Yes, they had a much larger warhead than a “traditional” railroad gun, but the actual effect of the V-1 and V-2 were negligible in the total war.
Much reconnaissance and Allied air force bomber effort was spent by the Allied air forces trying to stop them, so the V-weapon “distraction” did reduce the number of bombs falling on German cities.
That’s brilliant.
I did not know that.
If memory serves, V1s were armed with amatol which as explosives go, is fairly stable. If the trigger can be safely removed, it should be a fairly safe operation to disarm.
See where it says that “Trump is a Nazi” on the nose of the missile?
The V1 barely had any guidance system at all, and was cheap to build, and a terror weapon. Sez here over 9400 were launched against Britain, so accuracy wasn't all that critical anyway, and another 2500 against Antwerp after the Allies took it. It's also a bit mindblowing that the V2 (the first human-built object to reach space, btw; never went into orbit) was built in the thousands (almost 2800 launched against Britain alone), and in the years after the war formed the basis for the ballistic missile and space programs all over the Earth.
I read somewhere that the V3 (planned but not built) was going to be radar guided by receiving radio waves for a direction. Then either by range or by intersecting radio wave of a different frequency, they would cut their engines. This would have resulted in a FAR more accurate “bomb”
"...and fighter pilots learned to tip the V1s off-course with the turbulence from their wings..."
That would clear up the "fender bender" issue that I'd wondered about.
I'm just glad that America's German scientist were better than the Soviet's German scientist for the "Space Race".
Neat visit.
America’s German scientists had a reason to work better.
From “Flying for the Fatherland,” the story of Hanna Reitsch, describing a test flight by Hanna of a manned V-1: “The landing skids were not strong enough to survive a fully loaded landing. Tests had however to be made simulating with the full weight which would be carried during the planned one way trip. For these a water-tank was built into the fuselage with a plug operated by a lever so that the water could be jettisoned. While Hanna was flying with no engine at 18,000 ft the plug-hole froze. At 4500 ft she attempted to drain the tanks, but the plug was still frozen into the hole as she glided fast towards the ground. It was not until she was only a few hundred feet from the ground that her desperate efforts to move the lever succeeded, just in time for the water to leave the tank before she landed. She was, as she commented, lucky: she would not have survived a high-speed landing had the aircraft still been laden with the water.”
Apparently, it was easy enough to fly, but landing was always dangerous. Hanna said it “glided like a piano.”
Yeah. Maybe I should read the article. Tip vortices would definitely cause a problem for the lower wing.
But I heard about this as a kid in the ‘60s, that the Spits would just give ‘em a calibrated whack. Maybe an interpretation that observers on the ground saw.
“I did not know that”
You would be impressed with what I don’t know
Bernoulli’s principle
During Vietnam, I would have liked it if we had mass-produced a large number of V-1-style cheap cruise missiles (with better guidance) and sent them towards Hanoi and Haiphong instead of our B-52s. Have them expend lots of expensive surface-to-air missiles trying to down cheap air-to-surface missiles, while leaving our B-52s out of range of their SAMs.
Fast prop planes would put their wing under the buzz bomb’s wing and tip it over sending it out of control. Great sport!
The V2 was the ultimate terror weapon that the Germans used against London and most of southeast England. Even during the last months of the war, the Germans were launching V2’s against civilian targets in London.
I think it was towards the end of 1944, or early 1945 when a V2 struck a crowded Woolworth’s in downtown London and killed hundreds when the building collapsed.
They say, even today, you can still see occasional gaps in the housing that was caused by V2 attacks or even from the earlier Blitz bombing.
Hanna was pretty awesome.
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