Posted on 11/06/2018 12:00:27 PM PST by DFG
Archaeologists have discovered the exploded remains of a German V1 "flying bomb" that crashed in a forest in 1944 on the way to its target in London.
The dig has turned up several key metal parts from the unpiloted V1, a predecessor of today's guided cruise missiles. It was one of thousands of"retaliation weapons," or "Vergeltungswaffen," launched by Nazi Germany in the last months of World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
They just put the tip under the buzz bombs wingtip and gave a yank back on the stick causing the gyros in the BB to topple and down it would go.
The US Navy “allowed” their proximity fuses to be used by British coastal AAA. By that time, it was mostly the V1 that was the target.
(The USN didn’t want it reversed-engineered, so it was used only over water until late in the war, maybe the Battle of the Bulge)
Freeman Dyson made the same point. He was an intelligence analyst at Bletchley Park during the war and said they were more then happy to encourage Hitler to use all the V2’s he could since they were enormously expensive and did almost no damage compared to ordinary iron bombs. Most of the time they just drilled a hole in the ground.
Obviously fusing for airburts would have changed all that but they weren’t that far ahead, unlike the US...which we demonstrated in the summer of ‘45.
The USN had a mini-biplane version in development during WWI.
Not to be outdone, the US Army hired Charles Kettering to design one for them, but the war ended the work on both.
Don't know what the ones fired at the Ludendorff Bridge did for collateral damage.
“but the actual effect of the V-1 and V-2 were negligible in the total war.”
The V2 is a fine example. It cost as much as the Manhattan project, literally killed more people building it than in its combat use. And it achieved roughly the effect of one 8th Air Force 1000 plane raid. By late in the war we could pull those off a few times a week.
The blockheads fired more V-2s against Antwerp than England.
I thought the first use of USN proximity fuzing was at Hurtgen Forest. And yes, the USN was extremely careful with that secret. It was a war winner.
Great photograph. Thanks for sharing.
"You want me to test fly what??!!"
I actually looked. :D
Yeah. Sheer genius, huh?
Wipe out your forced labor industrial capacity so you can inflict negligible casualties on your enemy.
It’s the story of the German weapons decisions throughout the war: overreaching technically, not understanding the development risks and timing.
Russians built simple, durable hammers (T-34) that they produced massively. Who said it? Zhukov? “Quantity is its own kind of quality”.
The other good example of Nazi infatuation with technosolutions was the Jumo engine: the thing had to be overhauled about every 10-20 flight hours making it nearly worthless.
The USN anti-air proximity fuses were tripped by a small radar set in the fuse. The German overhead blasts in the H. Forest were triggered by conventional impact fuses (super-fast fuses) triggered by the fuses hitting the tree limbs and upper branches.
Equally important, the Germans were finally fighting on their own soil, and the US troops were no longer able to get intel from the local civilians. Instead, the local “civilians” hid German presence and altered Germans to US forces. So German artillery could be aimed in near-real time against the US soldiers.
From Wikipedia:
Vannevar Bush, head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during the war, credited the proximity fuze with three significant effects.[31]
It was important in defense from Japanese Kamikaze attacks in the Pacific. Bush estimated a sevenfold increase in the effectiveness of 5-inch antiaircraft artillery with this innovation.[32]
It was an important part of the radar-controlled antiaircraft batteries that finally neutralized the German V-1 attacks on England.[32]
It was used in Europe starting in the Battle of the Bulge where it was very effective in artillery shells fired against German infantry formations, and changed the tactics of land warfare.
At first the fuzes were only used in situations where they could not be captured by the Germans. They were used in land-based artillery in the South Pacific in 1944. Also in 1944, fuzes were allocated to the British Army's Anti-Aircraft Command, that was engaged in defending Britain against the V-1 flying bomb. As most of the British heavy anti-aircraft guns were deployed in a long, thin coastal strip, dud shells fell into the sea, safely out of reach of capture. Over the course of the German V-1 campaign, the proportion of flying bombs flying through the coastal gun belt that were destroyed rose from 17% to 74%, reaching 82% during one day. A minor problem encountered by the British was that the fuses were sensitive enough to detonate the shell if it passed too close to a seagull and a number of seagull “kills” were recorded.[33]
The Pentagon refused to allow the Allied field artillery use of the fuzes in 1944, although the United States Navy fired proximity-fuzed anti-aircraft shells during the July 1943 invasion of Sicily.[34] After General Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded he be allowed to use the fuzes, 200,000 shells with VT fuzes or (code named “POZIT”[35]) were used in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. They made the Allied heavy artillery far more devastating, as all the shells now exploded just before hitting the ground.[36] The Germans felt safe from timed fire because they thought that the bad weather would prevent accurate observation. The effectiveness of the new VT fused shells exploding in mid-air, on exposed personnel, caused a minor mutiny when German soldiers started refusing orders to move out of their bunkers during an artillery attack. U.S. General George S. Patton said that the introduction of the proximity fuze required a full revision of the tactics of land warfare.[37]
Early in Barbarossa when the Germans looked like they were going to rout the Russians, a German general observed a T-34, and remarked that if the Russians could mass produce them, Germany would lose the war.
Voice Over: But by December their joke was ready, and Hitler gave the order for the German V-Joke to be broadcast in English.
Radio: (crackly German voice) Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse, and von vas... assaulted! peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho.
What’s even more amazing than the V1 technology of the day - that photo was taken with an I-Phone!!
Hawker Typhoons were a big part of the hunter/killer squads looking for V-1s.
I thought the first use of USN proximity fuzing was at Hurtgen Forest. And yes, the USN was extremely careful with that secret. It was a war winner.The US Navy “allowed” their proximity fuses to be used by British coastal AAA. By that time, it was mostly the V1 that was the target.(The USN didn’t want it reversed-engineered, so it was used only over water until late in the war, maybe the Battle of the Bulge) - Calvin Locke
I, too, understood that the proximity fuse was first used on land in the Battle of the Bulge. Which was a sufficiently desperate ill to have inspired desperate measures, I suspect.The timing of the end of the war was, of course, unknown until the Battle of Berlin - and using proximity fuses to air-burst your ordinance instead of having it impact the mud first would make quite a difference. You certainly didn’t want the Germans doing it to us.
Itwas part of a longer tour across north Frnce. After a few days in Paris, we drove west to Mont St Michel. Then across the Peninsula to Normandy then north France, Belgium and back to Paris through Verdun.
1346: 669 anniversary of the English victory at Crecy
1415: 600 anniversary of the English victory at Agincourt
1433: 582 anniversary of the English siege of Mont St Michel
1815: 200 anniversary of the English victory at Waterloo
1914: 101 anniversary of the first German invasion through the Ardennes-Belgium woods.
1915: 100 anniversary of the French-Germany defeat/stalemate at Verdun
1916: 99 anniversary of the English stalemate at the Somme
1917: 98 anniversary of the English stalemate of the 3rd Battle of Ypres/Passandaele
1940: 75 anniversary of the second German invasion through the Ardennes-Belgium woods and passes
1940: 75 anniversary at the English retreat over the Dunkirk beaches and museums
1944: 71 anniversary of the American-English victory of Normandy invasion and its battles across France to Germany
1944: 71 anniversary of the third German invasion through the Ardennes-Belgium woods and passes
1945: 70 anniversary of the American victory in the Battle of the Bulge
Sobering to see so many invasion routes taking the same roads, the same villages and towns, crossing the same bridges and fords as in years past.
Yeah.
The Wehrmacht general staff had to put up with the Little Corporal’s stupid decisions even when they knew he was leading them to catastrophe.
Even with technical force multipliers they faced massive numbers in the Soviet divisions. If they had tactical nukes at the beginning of the war that would have made it work, but of course they didn’t. So it was a matter of time.
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