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V1 Flying Bombs and our own Duck Alert

The V1 - "the doodlebug" - was what nowadays would be called a "stand off bomb". A small pilotless aircraft with about 500 lbs of high explosive in its nose, it was propelled by a pulse jet, otherwise known as an athodyd, imposed over the rear of the fuselage. It flew on a preset course from launching pads round the continental channel ports to London as its main target.

The only antidotes were a chain of anti-aircraft guns which shot at it as it crossed the coast. These were fairly effective as by that time they were radar guided and the bomb flew on a fixed course at a predictable height.

The other was an unsuccessful Hawker aircraft named the Typhoon, powered by the unreliable Napier Sabre engine. When the engine worked it was the fastest thing in the sky. When the Air Ministry proposed to drop its development, a famous pilot named Roland Beamont persuaded the authorities to continue with it as a countermeasure to the Vl onslaught. This became the Hawker Typhoon mark 1 and was fast enough to overtake the Vl, which flew at about 400 mph. By flying alongside and tipping it over by putting its wing under that of the flying bomb it caused the control gyros to topple and thus it would fall in the relatively under populated fields of Kent.

At the beginning of the German V1 campaign I was attending Cranbrook public school, but spent school holidays at home in Ewell. We lived at no. 63 The Green, Ewell.

The house had a quarter acre rear garden. Early in the war my mother, who was of a practical nature, had the bottom quarter fenced off. The right half was a chicken run with a chicken house which I mostly built myself. The left half was a duck run with a duck shelter made of old packing cases. I also dug a hole and supplied the ducks with a duck pond. I remember them being hugely and delightedly pleased with it.

The duck family consisted of an Aylesbury drake named George. His Aylesbury wife was Gracie. George was also provided with a harem of four Khaki Campbell lady friends, who were at the time the big layers of white duck eggs. Aylesburys lay only a few blue eggs.

The doodlebugs made a pulsing noise like an old fashioned single cylinder motorcycle.

George could sense the approaching doodlebug long before we could. If you saw George rushing about at high speed rounding up his lady friends by grabbing them by the neck feathers and herding them one by one into the duck house, you knew that a V1 was on its way towards you.

Some several minutes later you heard the thing itself and took cover.

Once I saw one of the things approaching, its motor cut out and it started to dive towards us, then it found some more fuel, started up again, lifted its nose and flew over to fall in West Ewell.

George by that time had his lady friends securely in the duck house.

In those days the skies were always full of aircraft. George did not like them. Ducks do not have binocular vision so if an aircraft flew over him, he would cock his right eye upwards to look at it. If it flew away that was all right. We supposed that he had an inbuilt sense for watching out for marauding birds who would dive on, and raid, his family.

Sad to say I never knew what became of George and his friends, but I suspect they ended up on a plate as someone's Christmas dinner!

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