September-October - Air Defense Artillery

~ecretPhase of the ""yit19 Bomb
By Major E. S. Watkins, British Army
Phase One of tlw Gying bomb attack on London is now
istory,and well known history at that. It begins with the
o\"aIAir Force raid on Peenemunde on August 17, 1943,
n'event that set back the menace by some months. The
enacerevived again in the autumn of 1943, when the SuremeCommand
knew that an attack was now being mount-
Ibut did not know exactly when it would start. There were
aysof tension as the preparations for Operation Overlord
earedtheir climax. vVould the attack precede the invasion?
ould it be launched at the same moment as the invasion?
Vould the Germans fail to complete their preparations in
ime? Each supposition demanded different deployment of
hedefenses. Each was answered on June 13, 1944, when
hefirst three bombs fell in London. Now Britain, and the
orld,would see what, if any, was the answer to V-I.
Then followed three months of concentrated attack.
ometimes a hundred a day were launched, all through the
ummer weather, and London and Southern England coninued
to work and wait and listen for that all too familiar
oarthat mounted so fast, and for that sudden silence as the
otorcut out. They listened, too, through that interminable
auseof five seconds or so before the crash of the explosion.
[hen you knew if it had come for you or not, but you did
ot know, just then, if it had taken your family, your home
>rfriends.
But after two months of this the line in France began to
ove. The Seine was reached and crossed. Paris fell, and,
hile Londoners kept an appreciative eye on the advance to
he east they followed with even greater personal interest
he advance up the Channel coast. Beauvais was taken and
he Somme reached. The armies were getting nearer to the
aunching sites in Pas de Calais now. vVould the Germans
ight to hold them, just for the sadistic pleasure of killing a
ew more civilians, or were they really and truly thrashed in
rance? The tide could not be held and by the end of the
irst week in September you could no longer look across the
hannel from Dover at hostile territory. The Germans had
one. And so, to the layman, did it seem that the menace of
he Hying bomb had gone, too. Now perhaps you could
leep, and breathe again.
In fact, the position was quite different. London and
Southern England had two further trials through which to
pass. Phase One of the Hying bomb was over. Phase Two
about to begin. There was still V-2, the rocket, to come.
And, finally, in March, 1945, came Phase Three of the
Hying bomb attack. It is just as well that we did not know
it at the time.
V-2 is a different story and has rather overshadowed that
of the Hying bomb. Phases Two and Three are worth describing,
for it is a success story, a story of ordinary gunners,
of the men and women, who manned the antiaircraft guns
of Britain under Antiaircraft Command. It is this kind of
success story. In the first week of Phase One, in June,
1944, the gunners shot down 17 per cent of the bombs that
were possible ttirgets. In the seventh week of the attack
from t~ ';~si::1their percentage had mounted to 74 per cent.
In the last week of the final attack, in March, 1945, the
percentage had mounted to 85 per cent. They were the
same guns throughout. Skill, training, mounting experience
and new fire control instruments changed those figures.
Preparations to meet Phase Two began some time before
the attacks from the Pas de Calais finished. It became
known that the Germans were experimenting with the
launching of Bying bombs from an aircraft already airborne
and it was expected that this line of attack would obviously
be used, if and when the ground launching sites were
overrun and lost. That, in fact, is what happened.
There are certain advantages in launching the Hying
bomb in the air and certain disadvantages. The first advantage
is that your base can be put farther back. The
R.A.F. attacks on the sites in Northern France did not
knock them all out but they certainly handicapped their
use, partly by the damage to the site and apparatus, partly
by the dislocation caused to the supply routine. To be in
a position where you need not carry your bomb farther forward
than a German airfield had big advantages, even at
that stage of the defeat of the Luftwaffe.
\iVe do not know enough yet to be able to dogmatize on
whether a launching from the air is technically easier than
a ground launching. It looks as though it should be. For
one thing, the bomb has Bying speed at the moment of release.
Nor are you so dependent on the very complicated
mechanism required for the ground launching. Accounts
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