Terror from the Sky: The Doodlebug War

2007

Introduction

The Battle Begins

The doodlebug was terrible. One came over our house making that awful sound. When it was making the buzzing sound you knew you were safe but when it stopped that was when you had to worry. The sirens were going off and we ran down to the shelter at the bottom of our garden. The old couple next door didn’t. Suddenly, the noise stopped and there was this terrific bang. When we came out of the shelter the house next door was gone completely and all the windows and doors in our house had been blown out. The damage was so bad we had to move onto father’s boat for six months until they found us some housing. The old couple were killed outright.

Daphne Shuffell, survivor of a buzz bomb attack.

On 23 August 1944 Spitfire pilots from 402 Squadron saw something they had never seen before. Aircraft without pilots and without propellers shot past them at great speed as they crossed the coast of Britain. The huge flame that came from the back of their pulse-jet engines identified the unknown aircraft as V1 flying bombs.

The three doodlebugs roared in at around 400 mph when the Spitfires, out of Hawkinge, flying at 4,000 feet caught sight of them. Flying the new Mark XIV, with the Rolls-Royce Griffon engine, this version of the mighty fighter could just about catch them. The enemy buzz bombs were cruising at around 3,000 feet when the Spitfires attacked, diving on them.

The greatest danger to the pilots was the flying bombs exploding so close to their aircraft and blasting the pilot and his aircraft out of the sky.

The principal weapons against the V1 menace were Spitfires, Mosquitoes and the mighty Tempests - the only fighters that could out fly the doodlebug. Towards the end of the battle Mustangs were brought into the fray and with their engines boosted they were able to catch and destroy the V1s but they did so in limited quantities. The Tempest was the fighter of the moment. In the end the number of flying bombs destroyed by fighters and by anti-aircraft (AA) guns was almost equal but the Tempest wing had the largest tally out of all the ground and air units involved in defending the skies over Britain against this new menace.

The V1 was the first of Hitler’s secret ‘vengeance’ or reprisal weapons that he believed would turn the tide of the war. It was the very first of what we know today as the cruise missile. It had a rudimentary guidance system and flew on a specified course. Unlike today’s highly computerised cruise missiles that can fly over the contours of the terrain towards their targets, the V1 was launched in the direction of London and pretty much stayed on that course. But the objective was the same - to create terror in the population.

Known as a Vergeltungswaffen, the first flying bomb landed in Britain one week after D-Day on 13 June 1944. Called the buzz bomb because of the buzzing noise of its pulse-jet engine, it caused terror in the hearts of people when it came over. As long as the engine sounded people were safe, but when the engine cut out the V1 went into a dive and that silence, dreaded by all, resulted in a massive explosion.

Jointly designed by Robert Lusser of Fieseler and Fritz Gosslau of the Argus engine factory, the V1 was a development managed by the Luftwaffe and designated the Fi 103. Constructed mostly of sheet metal, the V1 was a simple device and usually took around fifty man-hours to assemble.

Once the missile had been launched and was clear of the ramp an autopilot kicked in that regulated height and speed using a weighted pendulum system designed to get fore and aft feedback that controlled the V1’s pitch. A gyro magnetic compass, which was set prior to launch by swinging in a hangar, helped to create a reaction between yaw, pitch and roll while the fore and after pendulum plus the feedback from the magnetic field kept the gyroscope trued up. Because of this interaction there was no need for a banking mechanism and once the V1 reached the target the fuel ran away from the pipes as the V1 descended and the power cut out. The V1 had two fuses, one in the belly and one in the nose, so there was usually an explosion when the missile crashed.

Intelligence reports had already shown that the Germans were working on radical projects as early as late 1942. Reconnaissance photos and reports from agents working behind the lines indicated the existence of ‘ski-ramps’ on the French coast generally directed towards London. Several intelligence reports had been received since 1942 about German long-range rocket experiments and Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered investigations into the German rocket developments be instigated right away. Soon he received reports on German experiments with jet-propelled aircraft, airborne rocket torpedoes (V1s) and heavy rockets all taking place on the German Baltic coast at Peenemünde.

It was here, at the German’s top-secret research establishment at Peenemünde in early 1942 that the first test flight of the V1 took place, which showed the Germans they still had to work out guidance and stabilisation problems. These were finally resolved when a V1, modified for manned operation, was flown by test pilot Hanna Reitsch. Fighting the controls, she managed to bring the V1 down to a successful landing and brought back the data the engineers needed to redesign the stabilisation system.

As intelligence reports mounted, Churchill was advised to order Bomber Command to attack Peenemünde. At the same time, the Home Office was preparing plans to evacuate women and children from London and Morrison shelters were moved into the capital city. Since the Blitz after the Battle of Britain in 1941-2 had ended the people of London had started to breathe more easily. Life had become a little better without the incessant drone of enemy bombers overhead and the explosions night after night. Little did people know they were about to face another Blitz.

The intelligence reports about the enemy’s secret weapons projects came from a wide variety of sources. For example, the person who spotted a tiny aircraft sitting on a ramp that was pointed out to sea at Peenemünde in a reconnaissance photograph was WAAF Constance Babington-Smith. Agent Michael Hollard, working in France, investigated a large building under construction near Rouen. Hollard managed to get a job at this installation and spotted a ramp that was being built facing towards London. He found similar structures as he cycled around northern France. The evidence could not be denied.

So on 17 August 1943 Bomber Command attacked Peenemünde with nearly 600 bombers, destroying assembly shops, labs and killing several high-ranking scientists. Forty-one bombers did not return to base. Rather than end the rocket production, the raid forced the Germans to move their work into the Harz Mountains, right inside a mountain itself, making their work impervious to Allied bombs.

In order to handle the flying bombs, the Germans created the special unit 155th Flakregiment, commanded by Colonel Wachtel. The German designation for the V1 was FZG-76. Fully loaded, the V1 weighed in at 2,150 kg (4,750 1b). The length was 7.90 m (25’ 11), the wingspan was 5.37m (17’ 7) and the height was 1.42 m (4’ 8"). The V1’s power plant was an Argus As14 pulse jet putting out 660 lb of thrust. The top speed of the V1 was 410 mph and it had an amatol warhead of 830 kg (1,832 lb).

Most of the 10,500 V1s that were fired at England up until 29 March 1945 were launched by ramps. Some 1,200 V1s were launched by specially converted Heinkel III twin-engined bombers after August 1944 when the launching sites were overrun. Almost 7,000 were considered as ‘hits’ as they landed in England with more than half of those landing in Greater London. The fighters, barrage balloons and anti-aircraft fire accounted for more than 3,000 V1s shot down or destroyed.

Originally the range of the V1 was 150 miles but as the launch sites were being overrun in France the range was extended to 250 miles so they could be launched from Holland. Almost 30,000 V1s were manufactured.

The first V1 that exploded on British soil did so in the early hours of 13 June 1944. It happened around 0400 hrs when a Royal Observer Corps member stationed in Kent saw the bright yellow flame coming from the back of a V1.

In his memoirs Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke states:

Last night the Germans used their pilotless planes (V1s) for the first time, but did little damage. Cherwell and Duncan Sandys came to COS [Chief of Staff’s] meeting where we discussed action to take and decided that we must not let defence interfere with the French battle!

The man in charge of the V1s was Lieutenant-General Erich Heinemann and he ordered Wachtel to get all the sites working right away. Owing to a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability and guidance errors, only a quarter of all the V1s launched ever got through to their targets but it was enough.

As the Allies moved forward, pushing out of the beachhead, they captured and destroyed the main sites in France that were aimed at England. The Germans then switched their tactics, using the sites still available to them to attack strategic Allied points in the Low Countries such as the port of Antwerp.

The only real defences against these fast-moving flying bombs were RAF fighters, barrage balloons and anti-aircraft fire. Destroying the V1s had to be done outside of London lest the stricken V1s exploded on the ground, achieving what they had been sent to do.

The Hawker Tempest was the main fighter used to combat the V1. By September 1944 there were more than 100 of them involved in the war against the flying bomb. Other aircraft such as the Spitfire XIV with its massive Griffon engine and the Merlin-powered Mustang III had to have their engines boosted to make them fast enough to catch the V1s. From June 1944 the Tempests shared night-time defensive duties with Mosquitoes.

Other American aircraft such as the P47M were also pressed into service and were virtually stripped of any extraneous equipment. Their fuel tanks were cut in half, their firepower halved and all external fittings and armour plating were removed to enable them to catch up with the V1s.

Chasing V1s could often be very chaotic and unsuccessful. Things got better when a defensive zone was set up from London to the coast allowing only the fastest fighters to operate. Tempests had the highest score of V1s shot down, more than 638 between June and mid-August 1944, with the Spitfires accounting for 303 and the Mustangs 232. Even the much-heralded jet fighter the Gloster Meteor, which was rushed half-ready into service to combat the V1s, managed to shoot down thirteen. Even though it had the speed, the Meteor’s guns often jammed.

Two electronic countermeasure aids for anti-aircraft guns also helped to stem the V1 tide. One was an automatic radar-based gun-laying device developed in the US and the other was the proximity fuse, which was also an American development. Once these were brought into service the kill-rate increased dramatically from one V1 brought down for every 2,500 shells fired to one for every 100 shells fired.

Despite these developments high-speed aircraft were still combating V1s, mainly launched from Heinkels, up until March 1945.

The major V1 offensive began on 15 June 1944 when 244 were launched on London, with seventy-three landing in the city and another seventy-one outside the city. But more than 100 didn’t get across the Channel. Wachtel knew the V1 was not completely ready and the number of bombs that crashed on take-off or never made it to Britain is a testament to the way the Germans rushed it into production. Hitler himself went to northern France to congratulate Wachtel, ordering all V1s to be launched against London. On 17 June one V1 smashed into the Guards Chapel at Wellington barracks, killing 121 people and wounding another sixty-eight. By the end of the next day more than 500 had been launched in total.

The staff meeting with PM at 5 pm attended by Tedder, Hill (from Stanmore), Pile (from ADGB), 3 Chiefs of Staff. Again, very few real decisions were arrived at. In my mind it is pretty clear and 3 essentials stand out:

Attacks by what can be spared from Overlord on launching sites

Barriers of fighters, guns and balloons in succession south of London

No sirens and no guns in London

We shall, I hope eventually get these, but it will take time.

Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 1939-45

Although 617 Squadron, flying the Avro Lancaster heavy four-engined bomber, attacked V1 sites with special 12,000-lb bombs, by 29 June more than 2,000 flying bombs had been launched at London.

Lord Alanbrooke again:

Up early to find that a pilotless plane had struck the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks during Sunday Service and had killed about 60 people! Amongst them to my great grief Ivan Cobbold! And on my own writing table was a letter from him written Saturday, sending me on a wire from the Duke de la Luna who is fishing at Cairnton and asking me to lunch this week! It all gave me a very nasty turn, and I cannot get him and poor Blanche out of my mind.

As far as the fighters were concerned the standard form of attack was to dive on the V1s and open fire then turn and climb quickly away to avoid flying into the debris. Some pilots, however, developed the method of flying alongside the V1, sliding a wingtip under the wing of the V1, then just tipping it over, upsetting its internal gyros so the flying bomb was knocked off course.

While the Allies overran the land-based sites the Luftwaffe switched to firing the V1s from the Heinkels that would usually operate over the North Sea. The Luftwaffe also proposed a piloted version of the missile, which presumably would have been a one-way trip for the pilot. From July 1944 to January 1945 V1s were launched by airborne Heinkels and there was a proposal to use the Arado 234 jet bomber as a launching vehicle for V1s. This would have been either by towing the missiles or in a piggyback arrangement with the V1 on top of the aircraft. Fortunately, this was never used.

By 5 July 1944 more than 2,500 people had been killed. The Air Ministry in the Strand suffered a direct hit with 198 people dead. Roughly 5,500 people died in London and another 16,000 were injured as a result of the V1 attacks.

In his memoirs Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke wrote about the excitement at the cabinet meeting in preparation for Churchill’s speech on the V1. Churchill wanted reprisals on small towns in Germany as a deterrent but Alanbrooke was against it.

The Germans, fully realise that we are at present devoting nearly 50% of our air efforts in trying to stop these beastly bombs, added to which about 25% of London’s production is lost through the results of these bombs! They won’t throw away these advantages easily. I am afraid however that Winston’s vindictive nature may induce him to try reprisals. I hope we shall succeed in stopping him.

Alanbrooke’s final entry on 19 July on the V1 was a personal one.

A nasty disturbed night with about a dozen flying bombs in the vicinity. The nearest landed 150 yards away at about 0300 hrs. It displaced the window frame of our sitting room and blew a lot of glass out of the surrounding houses. I heard it coming, thought it was coming unpleasantly close, so slipped out of bed and took cover behind my bed on the floor to avoid glass splinters.

CHAPTER ONE

Preparing for the Storm

Before we get to the day-by-day accounts of the doodlebug war it is necessary to put those operations into context. Air Marshal Roderick Hill KCB, MC, AFC, ADC in his report ‘Air Operations by Air Defence of Great Britain and Fighter Command in connection with the German Flying Bomb and Rocket Offensives, 1944-1945’ outlined the state of Allied Air Forces in the period leading up to operations against the flying bomb, which coincided with the landings in Normandy by Allied Forces.

In his report, Sir Roderick Hill set out the details surrounding the battle of the flying bombs and it is this report we shall use as a base on which to build the day-to-day battles against the V1.

In the build-up to the D-Day landings in western Europe the Allied fighter, tactical reconnaissance and bomber forces in the UK were combined into one force under the command of Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory KCB, DSO called the Allied Expeditionary Air Force. Part of this force was set aside for the air defence of the UK under the command of Air Chief Marshal Sir Roderick Hill.

This new force was a successor to Fighter Command and was called the Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB), coming into being on 15 November 1943 and lasting through until 14 October 1944 when the Allied Expeditionary Air Force ceased to exist and everything reverted back to Fighter Command. Sir Roderick Hill was Air Officer Commander-in-Chief ADGB and then for Fighter Command through to the end of the war.

He was responsible for the air defence of Great Britain and Northern Ireland while commanding Nos 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 60 and 70 Groups, as well as having operational control of AA Command, the Royal Observer Corps, Balloon Command and any other elements of air defence formerly under the control of Fighter Command. One other key responsibility included the development of interception methods and apparatus for eventual use in the ADGB and other theatres.

Although some of the squadrons in ADGB would play a part in the D-Day landings the role of ADGB remained a defensive one. ‘The Overall Air Plan issued by the Air Commander-In-Chief showed that my most significant responsibility even in that phase would be to stand guard over the bases,’ Hill wrote in his report on the ADGB. The challenge he faced with limited resources was to ensure the UK was securely defended so it could be used as a base for the operations leading up to D-Day and afterwards.

In order to succeed with this task some reorganisation of the limited resources available to ADGB was needed. In Scotland, for example, No. 14 Group was amalgamated with No. 13 Group. By 6 June 1944 the number of fighter groups had been reduced to four and the number of active sectors from nineteen to fourteen, which was less than half of those in existence at the end of 1941. Sir Roderick’s basic strength was fixed at ten day-fighter squadrons and eleven night-fighter squadrons. He also had another six night-fighter squadrons under his command from 85 Group, which were earmarked for the defence of the bases in Europe as the Allies moved out of their beachhead. Also earmarked for 85 Group were another six day-fighter squadrons, which were to be used to keep German aircraft from attacking the lodgement area in Normandy as well as performing other tasks as the need arose directly out of the operations in Europe. So, ADGB was responsible for the air defence of Great Britain, the lodgement area in Normandy and the waters in between.

In addition, Sir Roderick Hill also had fifteen more day-fighter squadrons that had been lent to the Second Tactical Air Force for the duration of the assault on Europe but which, in an emergency, would be used for the air defence of No. 11 Group in Kent. The total number of squadrons that ADGB could call upon for defending British skies was forty-eight, which was less than half the number considered necessary for air defence at the end of 1941 when the main theatre of war at that time was the Russian Front.

But much progress had been made in fighter interception, especially at night, since the Battle of Britain ended. ‘The German Air Force was known to have lost a great deal of its hitting power since those days and its offensive spirit had declined,’ Sir Roderick reported. Also, technical advances in methods and equipment on which the elements of air defence relied had been made since 1941. ‘Against this I had to reckon with the psychological difficulty of maintaining the fighting spirit of men placed on the defensive while their opposite numbers were fighting an offensive battle.’

Despite this and the limited resources available to him Sir Roderick was confident it would be enough to roll back anything that the Germans could throw at them.

The Allies were expecting a German air offensive against the UK to begin on or around the D-Day landings according to Sir Roderick Hill and these attacks were likely to consist of orthodox aircraft as well as the secret weapons. More than likely these two types of attacks would occur simultaneously. That was the expectation and estimate by the Allies.

Although the Allies knew the numbers of the German bomber force, they didn’t know how they would be used so they had to make some assumptions. The first of these assumptions was that the Germans would make minor daylight attacks along the south coast before D-Day and then on the beaches and anchorages afterwards. They also assumed that during the weeks preceding D-Day the Germans would make night-bombing attacks of up to fifty long-range bomber sorties a night for two or three nights a week, increasing to 150 sorties a night for short periods. The most probable targets for these attacks would be ports, troop and war materiel concentration areas on the south coast.

However, all of this was just theory but early in 1944 the Germans mounted several attacks on London and other cities, later known as the ‘Baby Blitz’.¹ ‘Thanks to the watch we were able to keep on its movements, these attacks did not take us by surprise,’ Sir Roderick wrote in his report. ‘The defences were ready.’

The Germans used their fastest bombers for this blitz and only stayed over England for very short periods. They suffered more casualties at the hands of the RAF during these raids than the Germans themselves were able to inflict upon Bomber Command’s long night flights over Europe. Faced with the organised and technologically superior defences the German navigation, target marking and bombing proved to be poor indeed, making the attacks virtually useless.

Sir Roderick wrote:

After this experience, I felt confident that we should be able to deal with any attempt by the German bomber force to interfere with the concentration of the Anglo-American land, sea, and air forces in preparation for the assault.

Attacks by the German secret weapons were something else again. By the end of 1943 few doubted that the Germans were preparing novel and disturbing means of aerial attack. A mass of information collected over a long period of time pointed to a long-range rocket of some kind and a pilotless aircraft. In his report, Sir Roderick states that this conclusion made the Allies more sure that the secret weapons would be used when they obtained evidence of new constructions in northern France they called ski sites² that were meant for launching the V1.

Sir Roderick had two methods of defence against the V1s. The first was a defensive offensive against the sites where the missiles were made or stored, the launch sites and the communications between them such as roads or railways. This of course was provided that these sites could be found. The other method was to attack the bombs once they were airborne.

The Chiefs of Staff decided to concentrate on the first method of attack in early December 1943. The Second Tactical Air Force and the US Ninth Bomber Command began bombing raids on the ‘ski sites’ on 5 December 1943. Also, RAF Bomber Command and the American Eighth Bomber Command were involved in these attacks. By the end of that year some 3,216 tons of bombs had been dropped on these sites. This amount of explosive was approximately the weight that fell on London in an average fortnight during the Blitz of 1940-41.

The effect of the bombing as far as the Air Ministry was concerned was that only twelve sites had been destroyed and a further nine damaged.³ But since the Allies had discovered eighty-eight sites in total by that time and suspected there was as many as fifty other sites, the neutralisation of all of them would be a long drawn-out affair lasting several months.

While these attacks were going on plans were being made by Sir Roderick and his staff officers to combat the problem of defending the country against pilotless aircraft. A document was given to Sir Roderick that outlined everything that was known at the time of the V1s. Sir Roderick wrote in his report:

According to this document, these missiles flew at something between 250 and 420 mph, at a height which might be anything from 500 to 7,000 feet. I was to assume that an attack by two missiles an hour from each of 100 sites might begin in February 1944.

The estimates provided to Sir Roderick were too broad to make detailed planning possible. On 20 December the Air Ministry replied to a questionnaire from Sir Roderick’s staff saying that they believed the V1s would probably fly at an average speed of 400 mph and at a height of 7,500 feet. But these estimates were later reduced to 350 mph at 7,000 feet, then 330 mph at 6,000 feet. As the bombing of the ‘ski sites’ got under way the estimates as to when the flying bomb campaign would start were also revised by the Chiefs of Staff.

Although Sir Roderick states in his report that he and his staff worked very closely with the head of Anti-Aircraft Command General Sir Frederick A Pile GCB, DSO, MC and his staff