JEWELLLW@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU (Larry W. Jewell) (02/20/91)
From: "Larry W. Jewell" <JEWELLLW@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
Here's an account of Buzz-bomb Busting <whew!> from "The Battle of the
V-Weapons 1944-45" by Basil Collier;
"The fastest aircraft had such a small margin of superiority over the
V-1 in point of speed that it was found expedient to modify some of them,
even to the extent of stripping off their paint and polishing their exter-
nal surfaces, to make them just a little faster. The missiles, crossing
the coast at roughly 340 miles an hour and reaching their top speed of
roughly 400 miles an hour as they approached London, covered the thirty
miles to the southern edge of the gun-belt in five minutes. <The article
goes on to discuss the AAA belt mentioned elsewhere in the group.>
"The essential problem for a pilot aiming to bring down a flying bomb
before it reached the gun-belt, or at any rate short of the balloon-bar-
rage, was not, however, to find enough speed to catch the quarry after a
stern chase for which there was seldom room, but to put himself in the
right position to intercept. If he was flying high, and the terrestrial
background was not too confusing, he might hope to see a missile to land-
ward of him and catch it up by diving on it; but more often success depend-
ed on his spotting one which had not passed him. Shell-bursts, signal-
rockets and a running commentary from radar stations, or Royal Observer
Corps Centres could all help him, but much of the help had to come from his
own eyesight. Once he had picked out his target, the problem of bringing
it down was all his, unless another pilot happened to have chosen the same
missile and forestalled him. Different pilots had different ideas as to
how the business should be done, but generally the approved method was for
the attacker to put himself on the same course as the target, allow it to
draw up with him, and fire obliquely at it from a safe distance of not less
than 200 yards as it went by. The temptation to come to closer grips with a
target which could not fire back was strong, but at least five pilots were
killed in the course of the offensive because they gave way to it and had
their machines wrecked by the explosion of missiles at to short a range.
Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps merely because they liked unorthodox
methods <pilots! :-)> or did not trust their shooting, some pilots prefer-
red not use their guns at all, but to get so close to a missile that they
could tip it over by putting a wing under it and then banking sharply, or
capsize it simply by letting their slipstream play on it. A few missiles
are said to have been made by similar treatment to turn on to new courses
which took them out to sea."