大象传媒

Message 2 - v1 or v2?

Posted on: 24 November 2003 by martinbeckett

Thanks Paul.

I've not heard that the engine cut out on a V1 was a design fault before. I thought it was more to do with the amount of fuel they were loaded with. The engine stopped when the fuel ran out.

If it was a design fault then from the German point of view it was a very fortuitous one because it ensured that most flying bombs fell where they would do the greatest amount of damage, i.e. in the Greater London area. I remember seeing a map once which plotted all the V1s which fell on London. The heaviest concentration of falls was roughly just south of the Thames. Knowing this, British intelligence managed to feed back false information to the Germans which made them think that most of the V1s were actually overshooting London and falling north of the city itself. In their efforts to correct this and make more fall on central London, the Germans shortened the range presumably by loading even less fuel. The effect of this was to make the V1s engines cut out even sooner than they did before so that they were much more likely to fall in country areas of Kent and Surrey well to the south of London.

Yes the V2s were a type of early ballistic missile.

Even though the Imperial War Museum records do list a V2 as falling near Palmers Green railway station on 26 October 1944 I don't think it was the cause of the incident I remembered from school.

For one thing, if the IWM list is accurate about the time of this V2 landing then it was about 3 hours after school finished. Secondly we would have no warning of a V2.

The pictures I have of the incident at Palmers Green station don't show a very large crater. That has always puzzled me. But what you say about the penetration of a V2 below ground could well be the reason. The pictures also show blast damage in the street next to the station but the houses don't look severely damaged.

Just recently I had an email from someone who is buying a house in a different road not that far away from the railway station, and they told me some other nearby houses had to be completely rebuilt after the war because of damage. They are trying to get me a copy of a report which describes what happened and when. If that turns out to be a different incident from the V2 which we know about, I think it might be the key to my mystery.

Message 3 - v1 or v2?

Posted on: 24 November 2003 by paul gill - WW2 Site Helper

Thanks for that. Most people think V1's ran out of fuel.

My info comes from the excellent 大象传媒 book the Secret war by Brian Johnson p157. This book also mentions the report back by the 'spies'!

"A small propeller on the nose turned a log which measured the distance flown and could be preset. At a given distance the elevators were fully deflected and the aircraft dived. This sudden application of negative G caused the engine to cut out giving some warning to those on the ground. It was unintentional and ..late in the campaign, the German designers of the V1 altered the control so that the elevators were slowly deflected. The bomb then dived under power."

The V2 hit at around 3800 mph, the V1 at a fraction of that.

Fuel probably wouldn't be the best way of limiting distance anyway as consumption would be affected by daily atmospheric conditions and range would take many times longer to adjust. Any extra fuel would add to the bomb's effectiveness.

I'm absolutely certain that you were right about the time. Either there was a separate incident, which I'm sure you'd have heard or there was a mistake in the time and type recorded. I suspect the latter.
There is an article you might like to read about someone who tracked V1's and V2's in order to determine their origins.

A1993098.

Its still done of course!

I'm interested to know what you find.

Paul

Message 4 - v1 or v2?

Posted on: 25 November 2003 by martinbeckett

Hi Paul

You are quite right about how the range of a V1 was set. I looked it up in R V Jones' book which has a similar title to the one you mentioned. I read the book years ago but had forgotten the description of the flying bombs.

According to Jones description the distance travelled by a V1 was controlled by arranging for that small propeller to cut the fuel supply and put the bomb into dive mode after a set number of revolutions had been counted. If it was set up properly, then the bomb would land at the right range. This still depended on factors such as the wind strength during a flight.

Jones' book also has maps of where V1s landed in London when the flying bomb attacks began. There were definitely more in the south and east of London than the north.

The V2 incident at Palmers Green station is listed as Big Ben Incident #106 in the IWM list and the time is stated as 18.45. Times were sometimes deliberately misreported so that German spies would pick up false information about V2 landings. But that time fits with the memory of a school friend who also lived in Palmers Green. It could not have been what caused the alarm at my school, but the strange thing is that I have no recollection of that V2 at all although it was still only about 1/2 mile from where we lived.

I feel sure there must have been another separate incident of some kind in the vicinity of our school and during school hours.

Message 5 - v1 or v2?

Posted on: 31 January 2004 by delboy

There used to be a web site where one could find the complete working and repair instructions for the VI. I have copied many items including cut-out and detailed drawings of the VI.
It is true that the VI had a small propeller in the nose which was set by a counter for distance. At the required distance the counter in the nose triggered a switch electrically and this fired a small explosive charge in the tail section ailerons puting the VI into a nose dive. The remaining fuel would then move away from the fuel injeted carburettor so stopping the engine. This was a design fault which was never able to be corrected, fortunately.

I would think it fairly certain that your bomb would have been a VI if your teacher had time to warn you, as having experienced both the VI and V2, I can state that no one could tell if a V2 was approaching or about to explode.

Message 6 - v1 or v2?

Posted on: 31 January 2004 by paul gill - WW2 Site Helper

Think this V1 is going need a lot of repair Delrey :)

I'd assumed they would have used an electric motor to make it dive. I presume the explosive charge was just simpler and cheaper given the weapon was never meant to be accurate.

I've previously mentioned Gwen Reading's story.
A1993098

The forum is also interesting as Gwen elaborates on precisely how the missile trajectory was obtained. In the 1990 Gulf war the same work was done on Scuds using satellites.

paul