大象传媒

Incredibly, 60 years have elapsed since our country actually did come under fire from weapons of mass destruction. I refer of course to the notorious V-weapons.
Browsing through a book in our local library recently, I was surprised to find so little had been written about this significant and terrifying period of our country鈥檚 history. They were dismissed as crude weapons of little strategic importance that could not be aimed at any specific target.
That was not the intention. Their purpose was vengeance as their name 鈥� Vergeltunngswaffe 鈥� (revenge weapons) implies, and their target was the civilian population of London and the South East. In 1944, they were scientifically superior to anything our armed forces possessed, and had they been available for use in 1940, our country would have been brought to its knees within 3 months.

I doubt whether the writer of that book had ever experienced the heart-stopping moment of a V-1 engine cutting out immediately overhead, or indeed had witnessed the horrific scene in the aftermath of a V-2 incident.

It was the late evening of Tuesday 13th June 1944 just one week after the Normandy landings of D.Day. An alert had sounded, and we could hear the distant rumble of anti-aircraft gunfire. We decided at once to take refuge in the Anderson shelter in the back garden. Hardly had the last wailing note of the siren died away when we heard the sound of a low flying aircraft. The noise from the aircraft grew louder. It was a strange sound unlike the familiar throbbing of A Heinkel or Dornier but more like a cross between an un-silenced motor cycle engine at full throttle and a pneumatic drill.

So powerful were the sound waves that the oil lamp in the shelter vibrated on its metal stand. The aircraft passed overhead and went on for a little way then the engine stopped abruptly. There was silence for a few seconds and then a heavy explosion. It was as if the aircraft had crashed. Almost immediately after another aircraft was heard, the same thing occurred again, the engine cut out and after 10 seconds there was a further explosion.

At first we thought maybe our anti aircraft gunners had suddenly developed marksmen鈥檚 skills and that the aircraft were being shot down, but the incidents were repeated all night long. It was quite frightening; the noise from the engines was over powering. The next day we heard on the news that we were under attack from pilotless planes. The V-1 flying bomb had arrived.

I was 16 years of age and employed as a post room messenger at the headquarters of Philips Electrical in Shaftesbury Avenue central London. I went to work the next day and during the day more missiles came over. They were clearly visible, and we watched as they raced across the sky at about a thousand feet or less with flames shooting from their exhausts. Aerial warfare had taken on a new and more deadly phase. Our office block at nine storeys high, was one of the tallest in the area. It was decided that in order to warn staff of impending danger, an observation post would be set up on the roof, utilizing the lift motor room for the accommodation of the observers.

Accordingly, all male employees over the age of 16, had to take their turn at this hazardous duty on a roster system in half day shifts at a time, and with 2 observers per shift. The routine was as follows: the observers would be warned by a radio signal relayed from the G.P.O when enemy missiles were within 30miles of London. This warning would be conveyed to the staff in the building by a 5second sound on a hooter through the public address system. No further warning would be given unless a missile was observed to be heading close and likely to hit the building or to fall nearby. Whereupon the observers would sound a series of short blasts on the hooter and then dive for whatever cover they could find. After the thing had exploded, and then provided there were no more in the immediate vicinity, the observers would return to their post and announce on the P.A system 鈥淗ello everybody, imminent danger appears to have passed.鈥� On one occasion, I was in the canteen which was situated on the eighth and top floor of the building. There had already been a preliminary alert. It was lunch time and the canteen was full. We heard the sound of a V-1 approaching and we received the imminent danger signal as the engine cut out. There was near panic, as everybody scrambled, some dived under tables sending crockery flying in all directions, others including myself lay flat on the floor.

A heavy explosion shook the building as the missile landed in Tottenham Court Road; close by near the Paramount cinema. A number of staff were reluctant to work on the upper floors, and some would not use the canteen but in reality if a doodle-bug had struck the building the chances of survival would have been remote, regardless of which floor one was based.

Fortunately for us, our building escaped but there were a number of near misses some of which caused a heavy loss of life and left many severely injured, notably in The Aldwych, in Brewer Street and in Tottenham Court Road.
Since my job included running messages in Central London and the West End and occasionally to the South London suburbs of Brixton and Balham where Philips depots were situated, I was frequently forced to take cover, when a V-1 cut out over head.
Believe me there are few situations more frightening.
The devastating effects of a single V-1 can be judged by the fact that in a street close to my former home in West Ham, 3 blocks of 8 terraced houses now occupy the site laid waste in 1944.
Other notable victims of the V-1 were West Ham trolley bus depot in Greengate Street Plaistow, hit by a V-1 at 7-45am on 23rd July 1944 where a number of staff were killed and injured and buses destroyed, and Upton Lane School. The latter was completely destroyed, mercifully without loss of life, as the incident occurred at night. There was little defence against these missiles, the anti aircraft guns would blaze away in hopeless frustration as they flew across the sky at speeds between 400 and 500 mph, like miniature jet planes, their exhausts thundering. A few were shot down by fighter air craft, but only the Gloster meteor- the first operational jet flighter-had any success. This was an extremely hazardous process since these missiles carried a 2000lb high explosive war head.

Launched from sites in the Pas de Calais region of Northern France the V-1 had a maximum range of just over 100 miles before its fuel supply ran out. The journey time from launch pad to target was around 15 minutes. Although a terrifying and destructive weapon, responsible for the death of several thousand people the V-1 was always apparent by the sheer noise and vibration from its jet engine. Because of the geographical location of the launching sites it was the southern suburbs of London which suffered most from this missile. The boroughs of Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Wandsworth, each received more than 100. My home district of West ham fared better with only 68.

I remember a popular American song at the time titled 鈥楲ay that Pistol Down Babe鈥� where the words were changed to reflect the topical situation. It went something like this:

鈥楩irst you hear the engine then you hear it stop
Then you dive for cover, then it goes off pop
Oh shoot that doodlebug down boys, shoot that
Doodlebug down
Hitler鈥檚 secret weapon, shoot that doodlebug down鈥�

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