With the beginning of the V-1 onslaught shortly after the Normandy landings, it was important to destroy as many of these cruise missiles or drones as possible before they were able to reach their intended targets. Now the V-1 was not exactly the most accurate weapon of war, but being the first, you have to consider that even getting it into operational service was quite a feat. It was basically operated by a gyroscope and aimed in the general direction of its intended target. The small propeller on the front of the missile operated a mechanism inside that told the V-1 how far to fly. It then shut off the pulse jet engine and it turned into a bomb that simply fell to earth. Using it on pinpoint targets was not its intent. It was much better suited to cities, and large ones at that. Like London.

Since these aircraft flew at about 350 knots, there were not all that many aircraft that could catch it and shoot it down. Not to say that aircraft were the only defense, as a considerable percentage were shot down by anti-aircraft fire and some were destroyed by barrage balloons. Aside from their speed, they made for pretty easy targets as they flew straight and level so were not difficult to track. As mentioned, catching them in an airplane was difficult. Many could only do it in a dive and then it was a one shot deal. Those planes in service that could fly with them, though just barely, were the latest Griffon powered Spitfires, the Hawker Tempest, and later the Gloster Meteor. The Mustang was also able to do a fair job of things and the V-1s were shot down by P-47s, Beaufighters, Mosquitos and others.

This was primarily a British show. There were V-1s destroyed by USAAF aircraft, but those were more happenstance than anything. The RAF soon set up squadrons in the path of the 'Doodlebugs' as the British called them, and set up patrol schedules and safe areas (where they wouldn't get nailed by their own A-A), specifically to tackle the problem.

Thanks to the huge number of V-1s launched, quite a few pilots became aces against the type and in a relatively short period of time. Now whether they were really considered aces as they would be against manned aircraft is something the book does not discuss, but downing these drones was not without its dangers. For one thing, if the V-1 was destroyed at too close a range and it blew up (which it often did), it could severely damage the attacking aircraft or even cause it to crash, killing its pilot. For another, there was a sort of 'V-1 fever' that caught some pilots and there were several cases where attacking aircraft were cut off by other planes aiming for the same target.

Then there was the issue of running out of ammunition. Although the RAF takes credit for the first instance of 'tipping', it was actually a USAAF pilot who performed this maneuver first by brushing the wingtip of his Mustang under the horizontal stab of a V-1 and flipped it over, causing the gyro stabilization to fail and the bomb to crash. About a week later, an RAF pilot performed this same maneuver, only used the V-1's wing.

The author has done a superb job of telling the story of the campaign against the V-1. Even when the French sites were overrun, the bombs kept coming from sites in Holland and from those air launched by He-111s. The threat continued until the end of the war, though on a much diminished scale. Chock full of period photos and a bevy of pilot reports, the book covers the entire campaign. Typical of this series, there are many pages of full color profiles of the aircraft that participated. The appendix is particularly large as it lists every pilot that scored against the 'buzz bomb'. An excellent read and a great reference book. Pick it up when you see it.

October 2013

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