#maikafer

Nr.123 The German V1 flying bomb aka Buzz bomb or doodlebug.

TheV-1 flying bomb(German:Vergeltungswaffe1 “Vengeance Weapon 1” was an early cruise missile and the only production aircraft to use a pulsejet for power.

Its official RLM aircraft designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bombordoodlebug and in Germany as Kirschkern(cherrystone)[c]orMaikäfer(maybug).[d]

The V-1 was the first of the so-called “Vengeance weapons” series (V-weaponsorVergeltungswaffen) deployed for the terror bombing of London. It was developed at Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1939 by the Nazi GermanLuftwaffe at the beginning of the Second World War, and during initial development was known by the codename “Cherry Stone”. Because of its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched into England were fired from launch facilities along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts.

The Wehrmacht first launched the V-1s against London on 13 June 1944, one week after (and prompted by) the successful Allied landings in France. At peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fired at southeast England, 9,521 in total, decreasing in number as sites were overrun until October 1944, when the last V-1 site in range of Britain was overrun by Allied forces. After this, the Germans directed V-1s at the port of Antwerp and at other targets in Belgium, launching a further 2,448 V-1s. The attacks stopped only a month before the war in Europe ended, when the last launch site in the Low Countries was overrun on 29 March 1945.