On the 23rd of June 1944 a Spitfire pilot tried a new and rash method of dealing with a V1. He flew alongside the missile and according to the official RAF history 'threw the flying bomb on its back by tipping it with his wing so that it fell out of control'. News soon spread and every hotshot pilot was soon keen to have a go. One Polish pilot of No.316 squadron sucessfully flipped the wing of a V1, only to watch in horror as it rolled back and snapped the end off his own light alloy wing. He made a hasty but safe landing.
The jet engine of the V1 had an eerie sound.Once heard it was never forgotten. Witnesses described the sound in different, vivid ways: * A train trundling over a wooden bridge. * A sinister grunting. * A washing machine. * A cough, clattering like a diesel truck. * A load of biscuit tins rattling. This particular engine note led to the British nicknames for the V1- the 'doodlebug' or the 'buzz bomb'. The British people soon learned that while a V1 puttered its noisy way across the sky. they were safe. The danger came when the engine cut out. Flying bombs were loaded with only enough fuel to reach their target. When this ran out, the engine failed and the missile dived. Civilians described a 'dreadful silence' that lasted about twelve seconds-the time from the engine stopping to the V1 exploding.
Some 6,725 'doodlebugs' reached Englnd of which 2, 242 hit London and 1,444 landed in Kent. However 51.5% of all the missiles that reached the English coast were destroyed by the defending fighters or anti-aircraft artillery. Only a handful of aircraft types stood a chance of catching a V1 in flight-The Tempest V, Spitfire IX and XIV, Mustang III and Mosquitoes. Yet the skies seemed full of many older and slower planes keen to take a pot shot at the V1s (and generally getting in the way of the 'Experts' of 150 Wing and the Polish 316 Squadron). * In all 1,771 V-1s were destroyed by fighters: 638 by Tempests 428 by Mosquitos 303 by Spitfire XIV 232 by Mustangs 158 by slower fighters (Typhoons, Spitfire Vs, IXs or XII) 13 by Meteor Jet fighters * 1, 460 were shot down by anti-aircraft guns * 231 were caught by Barrage Balloons The V1 offensive resulted in the deaths of 6, 184 civilians , with a further 17, 981 people injured.
The V-1 offensive against England commenced at 3.30 am on Tuesday 13th June 1944. The first salvo of ten missiles resulted in four sucessfully crossed the channel to fall on English soil. Only one managed to reach its intended target of London-This landing on a railway bridge at Bow in the east of the city. Railway tracks were torn up, nearby houses and a pub were seriously damaged, and the flying bomb claimed its first victims: Six people were killed including an eight month old baby, and thirty others were seriously injured . In addition some 200 Londoners were made homeless. No mention was made to this attack in the following morning's newspapers and many presumed that the explosion had been caused by a crashing aircraft. The War Cabinet however were already aware of the German's deployment of this fearsome secret weapon, whose launching sites had already been under RAF bombing attack for some months previously. It would not be until the One o'clock news bulletin by the BBC on Friday 16th June that the public first learnt the truth about this deadly form of attack. However, to keep the Germans misled about the effectiveness of the flying bombs on England, the Chief Censor, Admiral Thompson, had ordered that the press should refuse to report the locations of any V-1s incidents, which were to be kept deliberately unspecific. In addition no mention was to reported of any enemy plane (either manned or unmanned) which was shot down over English territory, Air raid warnings over London were also not to be reported, and orbituary notices about civilian deaths caused by German bombing attacks were to be limited to no more than three per postal district.
