Deployment and Effectiveness of the Flying Bomb
Modern cruise missiles can deliver explosive payloads to their targets with pinpoint accuracy, flying at extremely low altitudes while self-navigating and correcting their course as necessary en route. The V-1 was their direct, if cruder, ancestor. Its guidance system was primitive by modern standards, but quite effective for its era and intended purpose: the missiles were simply placed on inclined ramps pointing in the target area’s direction. The missile could not take off under its own power over the short distance provided by the ramp, so it was launched with a steam catapult, similar to that used in aircraft carriers.
The heading was controlled by a magnetic compass, stability was maintained by an internal gyroscope, and altitude was controlled by a barometric altimeter. A rotating wind speed measuring device known as a vane anemometer measured distance and drove an odometer. When the odometer hit a preset mark corresponding to the distance to the target, it triggered a mechanism that cut off power to the engine. That caused the V-1 to tip over and dive, and impact fuzes in its warhead caused it to explode when it hit the ground.
The first of thousands of V-1s was launched against London on June 13th, 1944. It was crude, and highly inaccurate by today’s pinpoint standards. Indeed, so great was the V-1’s margin of error, that it was useless to aim it any specific target. Instead, the Buzz Bomb was a plain terror weapon, launched at area targets such as the sprawling London Metropolitan Area. The Germans figured that in such a heavily built up and densely populated area, wherever the bomb landed it was bound to hit something and cause some damage.
The Buzz Bomb was terrifying to civilians below, and the bee-like drone of its pulse jet was nerve wracking. Even scarier was when the buzzing stopped: that meant that the missile’s motor had cut off, and that the bomb had begun its terminal dive on whatever lay below. They were effective from a German perspective, causing roughly 23,000 casualties in England, and inflicting widespread terror and hardship. The flying bombs caused nearly as much damage in Britain within two and a half months in 1944 as the Blitz of 1940-1941 had inflicted over a period of twelve months. And the V-1 campaign cost Germany only a fraction of what it had expended during the Blitz.
Vast resources had to be deployed to defeat the V-1s. Defensive measures included rings of flak guns, barrage balloons that dangled cables to snag the flying bombs’ wings, and squadrons of fighter aircraft to shoot them down or tip them over with their wings. Many bombing sorties were also flown against suspected V-1 launch sites. The menace to London finally ended only after Allied armies in Northern France overran the last V-1 launch sites within the weapon’s 160 mile range. The Germans then shifted them to other targets under Allied control, such the vital port city of Amsterdam. It is estimated that between Allied countermeasures, and the V-1’s mechanical unreliability and guidance errors, only about 25 percent of the missiles launched actually hit their target areas.