World War 2
Hitler's Revenge Weapon's
In the early hours of the 13th of June 1944, a small, pilotless aircraft with small stubby wings flew across the English Channel and plunged to earth roughly 25 miles from London. There was a huge explosion but no casualties. The first of Adolf Hitler's Vergeltungswaffen, or Revenge Weapons, had arrived in England.
Developed by the Luftwaffe, the V-1 was cheap and easy to produce and was guided to its target by a gyroscopic autopilot. The Germans planned to bombard London with 500 V-1's each and every day. The flying-bomb was not particularly accurate, but London was a very big target. By the end of August 1944 approximatly 21'000 people in the London region had been killed or seriously injured by the 'Doodlebugs', as the V-1's were dubbed. A new wave of evacuation began for the English capital's residents. At night thousands sheltered in the Underground 'Tube' railway network of the city, just as they had done during the Blitz.
What made the V-1's particularly terrifying was the fact that it could be clearly heard approaching. When the doodlebug's guidance system told its motor to stop, there was 15 seconds of silence before it dropped out of the sky. If the engine cut out after the V-1 had flown overhead, you were safe. If not, the 15-second silence might be your last.
By the autumn of 1944 the V-1 menace had been overcome by fast fighter aircraft, massed anti-aircraft batteries firing shells armed with proximity fuses, and the capture by the Allies of the V-1 launching sites in northern France. Then, on the 8th of September, a new menace appeared; The V-2 rocket. Designed and developed by the German Army, or more specifically Wernher Von Braun; a rocket scientist graduate student, headhunted personally by Hitler and the Nazi Party, to create weapons of mass-destruction.
The V-2 rocket could not be shot down, and it gave no warning of its approach, climbing to about 75 miles before hurtling towards earth at four times the speed of sound. In all, 1'115 V-2's fell on England - 517 of them in the London area. Over 1'000 V-2's were also fired by the Germans at the port of Antwerp during the closing months of the war, to deny the Allies the use of its harbour.
On the 27th of March 1945 the last V-2 to reach England exploded in Kent. Two days later the last V-1 fell to ground about 20 miles from London. The V-weapons had caused extensive damage and killed nearly 9'000 people in Britain. They had given the British a nasty few months and had forced the Allies to devote considerable resources to deal with them. But none of this halted the build-up of Allied forces in Europe or even manage to break civilian morale.