msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) (02/11/91)
From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) I checked my copy of R. V. Jones's "Most Secret War" (aka "The Wizard War"; 1978, reprinted 1990, Coronet, ISBN 0-340-24169-1) and found that the item I submitted earlier was not quite right. During World War II the British did use the tactic of pairing the impact location of one missile with the impact time of another, to fool the Germans into changing the aiming point. However, they did not have this information published in the press; rather, they gave it to the German spies (all of whom had been captured and were working for the British). Also, the tactic was invented for use against the V-1's, not the V-2's. The deception was helped by the fact that the British completely prevented German reconnaissance flights over London from mid-1941 to mid-1944; and then when the Germans did get photos, part of the city was under cloud. So they couldn't tell which damage was recent, or how the hits were really distributed over the city. Jones also gives some figures about these weapons which differ somewhat from those I have seen posted here. He says that the V-1 had a 2000-pound warhead of which 1800 pounds was explosive, while the V-2 carried 1 ton, i.e., 2240 pounds -- I forgot to The maximum range of the V-1 was 155 miles; the V-2, 207 miles. During the V-1 campaign, from June 15 to about September of 1944, the Germans launched 8,617 V-1's against London from sites in France, and 8,696 against Antwerp (these cities were not the only targets but they were the primary ones). A further 400 were air-launched. This implies an average launch rate of something over 200 a day. Only 2,340, or about 1/4, reached the London Civil Defense region. The V-2 campaign started on September 7, 1944, and by 7 months later, there had been 1,190 launches and 169 launch failures against London, and 1,610 launches against Antwerp. The average launch rate was therefore only about 13 per day. 501 V-2's, or about 3/8 of the attempts, reached the London Civil Defense Region. Jones's intelligence people were able to deduce most of the crucial facts about the V-2 before the campaign started, despite having to contend with ridiculous claims from so-called experts. He estimated shortly before the campaign that the Germans had about 1,000 of the rockets stockpiled. He says that many of the brass whom he had to deal with seemed terrified of this; they fixated on "rockets!" and didn't notice that the total explosive payload of all these missiles would be comparable to a single day's bomb drops on Germany. Incidentally, Jones refers to the V-1 as the FZG76, but never as Fi103. -- Mark Brader "We may take pride in observing that there is not a SoftQuad Inc., Toronto single film showing in London today which deals with utzoo!sq!msb one of the burning issues of the day." msb@sq.com -- Lord Tyrell, British film censors' chief, 1937 This article is in the public domain.
swilliam@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Williams) (02/12/91)
From: swilliam@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Williams) The V-1s were "stoppable"; that is, there was defense against the V-1s. There were anti-aircraft gun batteries set up to shoot them down, and fighter planes also could shoot them down. The V-2s, by comparison, were unstoppable. There was practically no defense against the V-2s other than attacking the launcing pad (very difficult as they were portable and hard to find) and attacking the V-2s on railroad cars. The V-2s flew in arcs 60 miles above the earth and four times the speed of sound. Hence, planes and artillery guns can't knock them out of air. One interesting story about V-2 from a diary book written by an American GI (combat engineer) in World War II. He and his buddies were waiting in a chow line joking and kidding. Then out of sudden a big BANG! Everyone was knocked down hard by the blast and covered with earth. Then everyone started getting up wondering what had happened. They had not heard any aircraft flying over nor any high pitch whistle of artillery shell coming in. Then all of sudden they heard a rocket engine screaming toward them. Everyone jumped down trying to bury themselves under anything. This rocket engine scream finally died away. Then someone said that it was a V-2. Sure enough, a V-2 had hit a hill several hundred yards away, leaving a BIG crater. Then the American soldiers started looking up in the sky now and then to see if any more V-2 was coming in. Eventually, some soldiers cracked from fear of V-2s.
msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) (02/15/91)
From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) I wrote: > ... [Jones] says that the > V-1 had a 2000-pound warhead of which 1800 pounds was explosive, > while the V-2 carried 1 ton, i.e., 2240 pounds -- I forgot to The missing end of the sentence is: "note whether he says how much of that was explosive." -- Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com "I'm a little worried about the bug-eater," she said. "We're embedded in bugs, have you noticed?" -- Niven, "The Integral Trees"
swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Steve Williams) (02/21/91)
From: swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Steve Williams) | There were 2 basic tactics for shooting down V1s, the first involved | the 3.7" gun batteries ... The second tactics was for the foolhardy | only, ... involved the pilot of an aircraft flying VERY close to the | missile and using the turbulance around the wingtips of the aircraft | to make the V1 wobble in flight and then crash. The second tactics was not necessarily for the foolhardy - sometimes it was the last resort. I know of one instance when one British pilot (in his Spitfire, I believe) got behind a V-1 and crept within the machine gun range. He didn't want to get too close ... then he pushed his gun button .... nothing happened ... the machine guns had frozen ... the pilot did some thinking ... he didn't want to let the V-1 go because it might fall on a city and kill civilians ... what should he do ... then he decided to risk it and flew abreast of the V-1 ... moved his right wing under the left wing of the V-1 ... easy, easy, that thing contains a lot of explosive ... gently nudged its left wing ... it worked! ... the V-1 wobbled out out of its predesignated flight path and crashed harmlessly. That British pilot certainly risked his life for the civilians. Steve Williams | "An expert is a person who has made all the Department of the Navy | mistakes which can be made in a very narrow David Taylor Research Center | field." -- Niels Bohr, Danish Scientist