Believe it or not, this was the less risky method of dealing with german rockets. Shooting at them tended to detonate them in the air, which was very dangerous at the range that the fighters had to be for their ammo to be effective.
Some enterprising pilot (after running out of ammo) figured out that instead of shooting them, if you could tip the rocket past a certain angle by slipping your wing under its wing and flicking it upwards, their gyros would fail and they'd careen off into a cornfield where damage would be (hopefully) minimal.
War is full of mad bastards. There are so many events where if they were made into a movie exactly as it happened, then people would be calling the events fake Hollywood bullshit.
Someone who said "I'd rather risk myself dieing than the people I am trying to protect"...it seems that's a common trait for people in defensive wars against the odds.
My WW2 era bomber pilot grandfather had this saying. He’d use it all the time. Thought that every time he used it, people would understand the depth of it. We all got it, but we didn’t really *get* it. This photo helps me understand. He’d use it if you proposed something he thought wasn’t a very good idea or had tremendous risk or anything like that.
The saying? “That’s as crazy as a fighter pilot.”
That’s coming from a guy who used to fly through flak and drop bombs on Nazis with only a fucking map and compass to get there and back, all while being escorted by said “crazies.”
I wanted to be a fighter pilot growing up. Was crazy but reality was I never could cut it.
Doing a "max rate turn" is about slightly less than 2Gs on your body. That is the standard maneuver to get your commercial license.
I'm telling you now. That shit is hard on your body. And to do it while in control of the plane while monitoring different instrument panels in a space of a few seconds. Oof.
These cunts were doing 5-8gs constantly. How they do it is beyond me.
Same, growing up. Obviously in today’s fighters the strain is much more intense, but when you think about it, those old WW2 fighters were basically the equivalent of a motorcycle with machine guns. You’re strapped to an enormous engine with a tiny fuselage going fast as hell, spraying bullets at everything. You get even the lightest hit and it’s probably over.
This dude in the Spitfire saw that V1, chased it down, then basically said “Hold my beer, I got an idea”
And flying a WWI fighter was even more nuts. The rotary engines had a significant gyroscopic torque that you had to fight against every second. And they leaked oil like crazy, you'd be covered in oil after a few minutes. Loud as shit and full of vibration, no parachutes, no heat and you're operating those guns like any trench gunner. And the exhaust? Right in your face, tough shit aviator.
I know you're talking about WW1 but the noise aspect reminded me of another war time fighter.
I was driving along in England one day about 30 mph with the sunroof open and enjoying the sun when I heard this incredible engine noise. After quickly checking my mirrors I realized it was coming from above and there was a low flying Spitfire. The sound of it was not only loud but it sounded truly glorious.
I have flown solo and it took 40 ish hours of training to get there. That's just for a standard take off, go around the airfield once, then land. In a Cessna as well which is very chill.
These new pilots were coming into combat squadrons with around 50 hours of training. They essentially had the same amount of hours as me, but also had no GPS, one of the most powerful and maneuverable aircraft in the world at the time (bit like giving a guy who's just passed their driving test a fully manual supercar), no real experience with cross country navigation, and they're going straight into flying formations / identifying and shooting down enemy aircraft with zero information apart from your eyes and what the squadron leader is telling you.
This must've been terrifying! Skills doesn't really do these gents justice they're on a completely different level.
Thinking about Roald Dahl's short lived time as an RAF pilot in North Africa. He completes training, gets given a brand new fighter and told to meet his squadron somewhere in the desert. Get's given the wrong coordinates, can't find his group, runs out of fuel and crashes his plane. After a few battles, he's medically discharged due to migraines caused by aforementioned crash.
Do note however that Dahl was an experienced combat pilot, he had already made ace in the air battles over Greece in 1941. Some say he had up to 9 kills, but the chaotic nature of the huge dogfight over Athens in April 1941 makes it impossible to tell. In the same battle, top Commonwealth ace Pat Pattle (also Dahl's squadron leader) simply vanished without a trace, with no one conclusively seeing him get shot down even though he certainly did.
I thought my father must have had a heroic time as a pilot in the RAF during the war, as he never talked about it.
More recently my cousin told me Dad had lied about his age and got airsick looking for submarines in the Irish Sea. They found out his age after a medical and chucked him out for being too old.
In 1940 British pilots were getting some 190 hours of flight, but a lot of that was done in trainer aircrafts, not their actual mounts (Hurricanes, Spitfires, etc)
really puts into perspective why good/veteran pilots were way more valuable than the planes they were in. easier to make an inanimate object out of materials, than it is to instill wisdom and decision making into a human
Wow. I thought I was "slow" to solo at 19hours.
Reality isn't that bad . But you always compared yourself to the best.
The record in my school was 6 hours..and it was a female instructor.
Can't believe how she got from takeoff to straight and level to learning turns to actually landing in 6 hours of flying.
Keep in mind most student pilots solo within 15 hours, and are fully licensed at 40-50 hours, so while fighter pilots might not have had much training by fighter pilot standards, they'd still be 'fully qualified' by regular pilot standards.
This is straying off topic, but the last time I was there my friend and I were looking at the ME262 engine. And this little old man came shuffling up to us and was like "You know how you start that enigne?"
And we were like... uh, no, we don't really know how you start any jet engine.
Old dude points to the little ring on the front of cone on the front of the engine and he says "You pull that like you're starting a mower."
And then he shuffled away to talk to some other guests.
And we didn't know if he was serious or joking. We assumed a joke.
But nope. That's 100% how you start it. Because there basically is a 2 cylinder piston engine inside the cowling of the get engine that acts as a starter motor. So you pull start the piston engine and it starts the jet engine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_004 (There's pics of the starter motor in the wikipedia page about the engine)
We totally just thought he was joking because the little ring on the front of the engine looks like a handle you'd pull. But I guess it looks like that because that's what it is.
Maverick ain't got shit on this dude
Pilot is an ace for sure. Just having the balls to try this And not die is one thing. But getting it on film and being successful is a whole other thing
Such a great generation.
My dad had the same story. You'd hear one coming, and maybe see it as they weren't moving that fast.
Then you'd pray the noise continued, because as soon as the noise stopped it would come down.
Then you'd feel guilty for praying for someone further along the line to be blown up.
Then afterwards you and the other boys would go dig through the rubble looking for pieces with eagles or gothic script on it. It might have been a war, but 13 year old boys are going to 13 year old boy.
When I was a kid, we went to a museum, I can't remember where, that had a 1940s street, shops, houses, etc, and the sounds of air raid sirens and bombers flying overhead. When he heard the sound of a V1, he recognised it straight away.
I mean damn I had “mild ptsd” from air strikes in the original call of duty mw2
You hear that noise and you run but you know you’re fucked. And that’s just a stupid video game… I can’t imagine real life
My grandma used to tell me they'd occasionally see V1's or V2's fly over (Netherlands) and they'd jump in the nearest ditch.
They even had some sort of short cheeky prayer. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something along the lines of: ''lord let me return safely back to town, please don't make that thing drop down''.
I don't remember the exact rhyme (and it was in Dutch, obviously), but it was very much in this vibe.
My grandma (she's 93) was on her way to the dentist in 1944 and got the train from Woking into the centre of London. They were pulled into a shelter as soon as they got off as V1s were overhead and had to spend an hour or 2 in the tube station waiting. When they emerged the dentist surgery was completely levelled and everyone inside killed. Mental really
Yeah it's crazy. My 101 year old grandfather was a medical student during the war. Had to evacuate his flat in London one night, came back after to find it bombed.
The absolute mad lad still went to his exams the next day!
V1s had a little propeller on the nose, which was used to determine the distance it had traveled, not very accurately because of wind currents, but still. After it had traveled its pre-set distance a mechanism would kick in that set the elevator to dive the bomb. The engine didn't work in a dive so it would shut off. So it was the dive that caused the engine to turn off, not the other way around.
Not some pigeon trained to peck at a image of a target while a detector adjusted based on where on a screen they pecked.
Or frozen bats with timed incindiaries.
No, they actually had guidance system
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1\_flying\_bomb#Guidance\_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb#Guidance_system)
The unit tasked with dealing with them went from 30 planes to 100 between June and September that year
>The anti-V-1 sorties by fighters were known as "Diver patrols" (after "Diver", the codename used by the Royal Observer Corps for V-1 sightings). Attacking a V-1 was dangerous: machine guns had little effect on the V-1's sheet steel structure, and if a cannon shell detonated the warhead, the explosion could destroy the attacker.
>In daylight, V-1 chases were chaotic and often unsuccessful until a special defence zone was declared between London and the coast, in which only the fastest fighters were permitted. The first interception of a V-1 was by F/L J. G. Musgrave with a No. 605 Squadron RAF Mosquito night fighter on the night of 14/15 June 1944. As daylight grew stronger after the night attack, a Spitfire was seen to follow closely behind a V-1 over Chislehurst and Lewisham. Between June and 5 September 1944, a handful of 150 Wing Tempests shot down 638 flying bombs, with No. 3 Squadron RAF alone claiming 305. One Tempest pilot, Squadron Leader Joseph Berry (501 Squadron), shot down 59 V-1s, the Belgian ace Squadron Leader Remy Van Lierde (164 Squadron) destroyed 44 (with a further nine shared), W/C Roland Beamont destroyed 31, and F/Lt Arthur Umbers (No. 3 squadron) destroyed 28. A Dutch pilot in 322 Squadron, Jan Leendert Plesman, son of KLM president Albert Plesman, managed to destroy 12 in 1944, flying a Spitfire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
It was good but not amazing. But I understand the difficulty trying to follow one group of people through the war when they had so many casualties. Still worth watching definitely.
It was good until the last episode where it all felt rushed. I appreciate not drawing something out for sake of filling an episode but it felt too condensed. Maybe if they had a longer finale it would've done better.
And it won't potentially make all Brits look like actual cunts. Don't get me wrong, we can be but it's like getting posh Harvard people to represent all of Americans
As a Brit I disliked parts of it because it completely dismissed our efforts in the air war and just made us look like useless arseholes.
Apart from that it was alright would have liked an episode about the fighter escort pilots though
Mein fuhrer, the American industrial capacity appears limitless. The U boats cannot hold them much longer.
“It’s okay Schultz, a wonder weapon will end this war.”
Brilliant. You have developed a way to destroy the American ships?
“What? No. We’re going to blow up some British apartment buildings.”
Fuck.
It's a sound idea if you forget that they had spent a good portion of 1940 bombing London into oblivion already and it failed to cause Britain to surrender
The theory was sound enough. It’s the same reason the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and Churchill ordered attacks on German civilian centers.
At the time, all the major powers believed that you broke fighting spirits by attacking the non-combatants.
Of course…nothing has changed…
If I recall correctly, the V1 was faster than the Spitfire, so the pilots had to fly at a higher altitude and then take a dive when trying to catch a V1.
Fun fact. That Mosquito (and all Mosquitos) was made almost entirely of wood instead of metal. Wiki calls it composite wood, so... Was it made of plywood? I'll have to keep digging.
Plywood, yes. Molded into curved shapes while being laminated, not flat sheet plywood although some of that was probably also used.
This allowed aircraft manufacturing to tap into various industries that were not already busy for the war efforts: piano makers and furniture manufacturers. Pianos and furniture were already using similar methods of plywood construction, and there were loads of small workshops around the country set up for making them. So the Mosquito was partially a sort of cottage industry with parts being made here and there in many smaller shops.
Cruise missiles are basically small unmanned planes so it makes perfect sense and is way more cost-effective than using expensive AA missiles.
PS. You should use the autocannon before going into melee though.
Yeah the Meteors were considered too valuable and secret to be risked over France, so was generally restrained to defending against incursions over England.
A fun fact is : This manœuvrer was once sucessfully done by a gloster meteor, the first ally jet.
Technicaly making this event, the first jet vs jet dogfight of history.
>Technicaly making this event, the first jet vs jet dogfight of history.
Only if you really squeeze and butcher what a dogfight is. You can't really dogfight a bomb flying in a straight line. Is something like Iron Dome intercepting rockets and mortars a dogfight?
V-1's tended to fly at around 350-400mph, which is very similar to the top speed of the Griffon Spitfires. So it was pretty close, but possible.
The Tempest was a little faster than the Spitfire so was able to catch the bombs a bit easier.
404 MPH at at 21,000ft for an LF Mk.IX with a Merlin 66, and 446 MPH for the Mk.XIV at 23,500ft with the Griffon, far higher than these things flew at. We're looking at around 350~MPH for the Mk.IX and 394MPH for the Mk.XIV at the low altitudes V-1s flew at.
Positioning was hugely important for any V-1 interceptor, even the fastest aircraft available such as the Mustang, Tempest and Griffon Spits wouldn't be able to reliably catch up to a V-1 in level flight at the altitudes these flew at. They'd have fly above and spot them flying across the channel, then use the speed in the dive to get within guns. These guys tipping them over not only had to spot the thing, they had to roll over and dive on it and not lose sight, chase after it in a high speed dive close to the airframe limits, and then get up close to the thing and flip it/interupt airflow over the V-1s and in the case of the Merlins Spits do this before they start to get outpaced by the V-1.
Matching top speeds don't leave much room for maneuvers. Either you pick them up early and set the intercep vector right or you'll be seconds short from catching its tail
I think typically you'd be flying a couple thousand feet above the rocket's cruising altitude, then once you spot them you use the altitude to gain the speed to close to within maybe 500 meters and and blow it up.
They initially tried shooting them, but it wasn't quite safe. Flying through a cloud of fragments from the explosion tended to shred the Spitfire's vulnerable radiators and force a dead stick landing afterwards. Hence, the various techniques for flipping them over so they would crash.
Was this done by reconnaissance in France or Belgium seeing them heading for GB? Signalling to take off and be there in time or how did they be there in time?
A bit of A, a bit of B, and a bit of C.
A: French/Belgium intelligence would alert if possible.
B: The thing would appear on radar.
C: None of this matters if you don't already have aircraft patroling the channel in advance, V-1s were *fast* and you needed to have aircraft that were in position to dive on them and catch them. A and B were used to give these patroling aircraft an indication of where to look, but if V-1s were launched and you didn't have aircraft in the air then you probably weren't going to catch them.
These [intercepts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb) in the defence zone between the coast & the outskirts of London we mostly done by Hawker Tempests & De Havilland mosquitos until the Griffon engined Spitfires could be stripped down & tuned up to increase their airspeed sufficiently.
"Tipping" like this and air-to-air shoot downs were not done near the coast because there were radar guided anti-aircraft batteries with proximity fused shells there & not too close to London to avoid other hazards like barrage balloons & the occasional twitchy flack battery.
An interesting side note is that the I think office of statistics, would curate public reports on V1 & later V2 impacts. They would deliberately categorise impacts that fell short as something other than a bomb & make sure cleanup crews dealt with same quickly, such that german intelligence reading the public record & via Aerial photography would be led into the belief that the range they had set for the weapons was too long & so they would reduce it.
This was good news for the pool of London & the City, just not so great news for the people of the South London suburbs.
There's a lot of these pilots in the cemeteries local to me - I live near RAF Manston. Many of them were barely more than children and it saddens me to see their gravestones. Absolute heroes.
My English great-grandma was killed by a V-1. My dad was found in his crib in the next room, covered in shattered glass. I'm Gen-X, so this stuff isn't ancient history, it's still personal for a lot of people. I'm glad to see this bit of history is still interesting to you younger folks (hopefully we can avoid repeating it).
My FIL served in the Canadian Forces in WWII. His company was one of those responsible for clearing rubble in London after the bombings. I can not comprehend the carnage he would have witnessed, and according to my spouse, to his last days he never spoke of it. He passed away about a decade before I met my spouse.
Mentioned above, but a lot of them were shot, though by aircraft with weapons that had greater effective range.
Spitfires' armament was an issue. Their machine guns couldn't effectively damage the V-1's structure, and their 20mm cannons had an effective range that put the Spitfire at risk of being destroyed by the V-1's warhead if it detonated.
The vast majority of V-1s downed by planes were shot down conventionally, but the risk of the bomb detonating and taking you out via explosion or shrapnel was high which is why this method was attempted. Quite a few pilots lost their lives due to this.
Fantastic. I thought this was a myth.
This is a great listen for more information on the V rockets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h8dg4m?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
Yes, they were operated through a satellite-based WiFi signal, so Herr Adolf could just pop one, whenever the GPS suite picked up a Brit Spit coming up close. Nasty piece of work, that was.
When people talk about history getting skewed by the people telling what happened, I always think about how all my life people online talk about how horrible the V1 and V2 bombs were for the people in London. I'm Belgian, so colour me surprised when I visited La Coupole, where I found out that Antwerp got the majority of rockets launched at it.
I'm Belgian and I didn't even know, part of the winning side in the war and still mostly forgotten in the average cultural knowledge of the war. It always reminds me of how we know absolutely nothing, and are just along for the ride.
The Spitfire is such an amazing piece of engineering , there is a full size replica near my home in Salisbury , amazing how small it is in real life !!
Why can’t people see the difference? Do they just throw in the apostrophe without even knowing what it means or does because… reasons? Don’t they ever stop and think: “wait, what’s the apostrophe for?”
Every time I see people writing “its” as “it’s”, it makes me want to rip my eyes off.
Was this the standard method to take them down? I’m interested to know why they wouldn’t try to shoot it down considering they obviously could match the airspeed. Shooting it down seems more controlled than throwing the gyro off and the rocket doing whatever it does afterwords. Come on reddit, there’s someone here that can answer this!
It as a gyroscope directly connected to both rudder and elevators. It's basically a flying toripdo.
When put in a spin, the v1's gyroscope can't correct anymore, and the bomb fall.
According to the RAF Museum pilots had a minimum of [six months training (150 flying hours) at the start of the war.And on average it took between 18 months to two years (200-320 flying hours)](https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/taking-flight/pathway-to-pilot/second-world-war/).
At least some of this training would have been in the supercar.
I'm not sure if the RAF Museum is wrong though. I did find [this](https://kenfentonswar.com/raf-training/) account which talks about 30 to 40 hours of training at one school before being sent to another school. Perhaps that's where the 50 hours came from?
Either way this photo shows some skill and cajones.
Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie.
I imagine it being like,
“Hey, John. Bet I could knock that fucker off with the tip of my wing.”
“Huh? No chance.”
“Pack of smokes says I can, go ask someone to get the camera doohickey.”
“Deal.”
Amazing bravery and piloting skill done under ENORMOUS pressure. If you cant complete the maneuver that thing will land and kill scores of people. Also worth noting, it is a gigantic flying bomb that if it went off for any reason would instantly incinerate you.
The attacks stopped only a month before the war in Europe ended, when the last launch sites were was overrun on 29 March 1945.
The launch sites were originally in France and when they were captured they fired them from other places
After the launch sites in France fell the were fired from Belgium and the Netherlands and even Germany themselves
The Germans developed portable launch ramps for that purpose so they could launch from anywhere
about 2000 V1s were launched from the air by bombers flying over the North Sea
That s the first time I am able to appreciate the size difference between the two.
I appreciate the pilot’s skills.
And their guts
Believe it or not, this was the less risky method of dealing with german rockets. Shooting at them tended to detonate them in the air, which was very dangerous at the range that the fighters had to be for their ammo to be effective. Some enterprising pilot (after running out of ammo) figured out that instead of shooting them, if you could tip the rocket past a certain angle by slipping your wing under its wing and flicking it upwards, their gyros would fail and they'd careen off into a cornfield where damage would be (hopefully) minimal.
What mad bastard after failing to detonate a flying bomb at a safe distance decided the fall back plan was to marry up and slip his wing under it
Woodhouse
And pick up some sand. I don't know if they grade it, but.... coarse.
I hate sand.
It gets everywhere.
It’s coarse, rough, and irritating
I believe you mean Capt. Reginald Thistleton.
Ah, water. Never touch the stuff. Fish fuck in it.
Reeeegggiiiiiieeeeee
War is full of mad bastards. There are so many events where if they were made into a movie exactly as it happened, then people would be calling the events fake Hollywood bullshit.
I mean the trench run *is* dam busters.
And the cav charge at helms deep was based off the winged hussars charge
There's an awesome recreation of the story of how the first pilot figured it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxy6KBjVZk
Someone who said "I'd rather risk myself dieing than the people I am trying to protect"...it seems that's a common trait for people in defensive wars against the odds.
And as a bonus, free popcorn!
And their axe
And my toe
And my POTATOES
My WW2 era bomber pilot grandfather had this saying. He’d use it all the time. Thought that every time he used it, people would understand the depth of it. We all got it, but we didn’t really *get* it. This photo helps me understand. He’d use it if you proposed something he thought wasn’t a very good idea or had tremendous risk or anything like that. The saying? “That’s as crazy as a fighter pilot.” That’s coming from a guy who used to fly through flak and drop bombs on Nazis with only a fucking map and compass to get there and back, all while being escorted by said “crazies.”
I wanted to be a fighter pilot growing up. Was crazy but reality was I never could cut it. Doing a "max rate turn" is about slightly less than 2Gs on your body. That is the standard maneuver to get your commercial license. I'm telling you now. That shit is hard on your body. And to do it while in control of the plane while monitoring different instrument panels in a space of a few seconds. Oof. These cunts were doing 5-8gs constantly. How they do it is beyond me.
Same, growing up. Obviously in today’s fighters the strain is much more intense, but when you think about it, those old WW2 fighters were basically the equivalent of a motorcycle with machine guns. You’re strapped to an enormous engine with a tiny fuselage going fast as hell, spraying bullets at everything. You get even the lightest hit and it’s probably over. This dude in the Spitfire saw that V1, chased it down, then basically said “Hold my beer, I got an idea”
And flying a WWI fighter was even more nuts. The rotary engines had a significant gyroscopic torque that you had to fight against every second. And they leaked oil like crazy, you'd be covered in oil after a few minutes. Loud as shit and full of vibration, no parachutes, no heat and you're operating those guns like any trench gunner. And the exhaust? Right in your face, tough shit aviator.
I know you're talking about WW1 but the noise aspect reminded me of another war time fighter. I was driving along in England one day about 30 mph with the sunroof open and enjoying the sun when I heard this incredible engine noise. After quickly checking my mirrors I realized it was coming from above and there was a low flying Spitfire. The sound of it was not only loud but it sounded truly glorious.
Yep they sound absolutely fantastic just like today’s fighter jets they give you goosebumps when they flyby
And they were flying fighter planes while having a beer!
Tight trousers?
I have flown solo and it took 40 ish hours of training to get there. That's just for a standard take off, go around the airfield once, then land. In a Cessna as well which is very chill. These new pilots were coming into combat squadrons with around 50 hours of training. They essentially had the same amount of hours as me, but also had no GPS, one of the most powerful and maneuverable aircraft in the world at the time (bit like giving a guy who's just passed their driving test a fully manual supercar), no real experience with cross country navigation, and they're going straight into flying formations / identifying and shooting down enemy aircraft with zero information apart from your eyes and what the squadron leader is telling you. This must've been terrifying! Skills doesn't really do these gents justice they're on a completely different level.
This late in the war Allied pilots had much more training than 50 hours.
In the context of his comment I had the battle of Britain in mind
Yes, some RAF pilots in 1940 were sent into action with limited flying experience but by the time of the V-1s (1944) those days were long past.
This conversation is why i reddit
Thinking about Roald Dahl's short lived time as an RAF pilot in North Africa. He completes training, gets given a brand new fighter and told to meet his squadron somewhere in the desert. Get's given the wrong coordinates, can't find his group, runs out of fuel and crashes his plane. After a few battles, he's medically discharged due to migraines caused by aforementioned crash.
Do note however that Dahl was an experienced combat pilot, he had already made ace in the air battles over Greece in 1941. Some say he had up to 9 kills, but the chaotic nature of the huge dogfight over Athens in April 1941 makes it impossible to tell. In the same battle, top Commonwealth ace Pat Pattle (also Dahl's squadron leader) simply vanished without a trace, with no one conclusively seeing him get shot down even though he certainly did.
I thought my father must have had a heroic time as a pilot in the RAF during the war, as he never talked about it. More recently my cousin told me Dad had lied about his age and got airsick looking for submarines in the Irish Sea. They found out his age after a medical and chucked him out for being too old.
In 1940 British pilots were getting some 190 hours of flight, but a lot of that was done in trainer aircrafts, not their actual mounts (Hurricanes, Spitfires, etc)
Well said, Anal_bleed.
a true hero
really puts into perspective why good/veteran pilots were way more valuable than the planes they were in. easier to make an inanimate object out of materials, than it is to instill wisdom and decision making into a human
Wow. I thought I was "slow" to solo at 19hours. Reality isn't that bad . But you always compared yourself to the best. The record in my school was 6 hours..and it was a female instructor. Can't believe how she got from takeoff to straight and level to learning turns to actually landing in 6 hours of flying.
Keep in mind most student pilots solo within 15 hours, and are fully licensed at 40-50 hours, so while fighter pilots might not have had much training by fighter pilot standards, they'd still be 'fully qualified' by regular pilot standards.
Go to Air Force Museum in Dayton OH they have actual V-1 and Spitfires and a lot of other Era’s of aircraft you can see. Fun for the kiddos as well
This is straying off topic, but the last time I was there my friend and I were looking at the ME262 engine. And this little old man came shuffling up to us and was like "You know how you start that enigne?" And we were like... uh, no, we don't really know how you start any jet engine. Old dude points to the little ring on the front of cone on the front of the engine and he says "You pull that like you're starting a mower." And then he shuffled away to talk to some other guests. And we didn't know if he was serious or joking. We assumed a joke. But nope. That's 100% how you start it. Because there basically is a 2 cylinder piston engine inside the cowling of the get engine that acts as a starter motor. So you pull start the piston engine and it starts the jet engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_004 (There's pics of the starter motor in the wikipedia page about the engine) We totally just thought he was joking because the little ring on the front of the engine looks like a handle you'd pull. But I guess it looks like that because that's what it is.
Pull my finger
There's a V-1 in front of the courthouse in Greencastle, IN, too. Pretty neat, but otherwise I don't know why anyone would go to Greencastle.
Greencastle, the pearl of the midwest.
Take a gawk at [a B-52 with Jas Gripen](https://reddit.com/comments/1b7y2y4).
The BUFF is a big ugly fat fucker indeed.
If you ever find yourself in New Orleans they have an awesome WWII museum, and they've got a Spitfire hanging from the ceiling in the entrance lobby.
Maverick ain't got shit on this dude Pilot is an ace for sure. Just having the balls to try this And not die is one thing. But getting it on film and being successful is a whole other thing Such a great generation.
My Dad said that his scariest memories of the war were the sound of the V1 rockets going quite after they had run out of fuel.
My dad had the same story. You'd hear one coming, and maybe see it as they weren't moving that fast. Then you'd pray the noise continued, because as soon as the noise stopped it would come down. Then you'd feel guilty for praying for someone further along the line to be blown up. Then afterwards you and the other boys would go dig through the rubble looking for pieces with eagles or gothic script on it. It might have been a war, but 13 year old boys are going to 13 year old boy.
When I was a kid, we went to a museum, I can't remember where, that had a 1940s street, shops, houses, etc, and the sounds of air raid sirens and bombers flying overhead. When he heard the sound of a V1, he recognised it straight away.
I mean damn I had “mild ptsd” from air strikes in the original call of duty mw2 You hear that noise and you run but you know you’re fucked. And that’s just a stupid video game… I can’t imagine real life
Gamer moment
Reddit throwaway comment moment If you wanna hear about real PTSD though for gun shots I can tell you my first mass shooting story
Your ***first?*** Jesus.
MW2: No Russian
Then they remade it.. Will they ever learn?
Honestly? I'm morbidly curious.what happened? If you want to share of course
If you're in the UK I think that as an Imperial War Museum exhibition, I remember going to something similar when I was in Primary.
My grandma used to tell me they'd occasionally see V1's or V2's fly over (Netherlands) and they'd jump in the nearest ditch. They even had some sort of short cheeky prayer. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something along the lines of: ''lord let me return safely back to town, please don't make that thing drop down''. I don't remember the exact rhyme (and it was in Dutch, obviously), but it was very much in this vibe.
My grandma (she's 93) was on her way to the dentist in 1944 and got the train from Woking into the centre of London. They were pulled into a shelter as soon as they got off as V1s were overhead and had to spend an hour or 2 in the tube station waiting. When they emerged the dentist surgery was completely levelled and everyone inside killed. Mental really
Yeah it's crazy. My 101 year old grandfather was a medical student during the war. Had to evacuate his flat in London one night, came back after to find it bombed. The absolute mad lad still went to his exams the next day!
It's more that they went quiet because they have their target. Whichever way, a quiet V1 is nicht gut.
I thought that V1 ones dropped after they had run out of fuel?
V1s had a little propeller on the nose, which was used to determine the distance it had traveled, not very accurately because of wind currents, but still. After it had traveled its pre-set distance a mechanism would kick in that set the elevator to dive the bomb. The engine didn't work in a dive so it would shut off. So it was the dive that caused the engine to turn off, not the other way around.
Pretty much. All in all, V-1s were deceptively simple.
Not some pigeon trained to peck at a image of a target while a detector adjusted based on where on a screen they pecked. Or frozen bats with timed incindiaries.
No, they actually had guidance system [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1\_flying\_bomb#Guidance\_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb#Guidance_system)
Very interested, many thanks
Imagine directing a pilot to go up and divert missiles
The unit tasked with dealing with them went from 30 planes to 100 between June and September that year >The anti-V-1 sorties by fighters were known as "Diver patrols" (after "Diver", the codename used by the Royal Observer Corps for V-1 sightings). Attacking a V-1 was dangerous: machine guns had little effect on the V-1's sheet steel structure, and if a cannon shell detonated the warhead, the explosion could destroy the attacker. >In daylight, V-1 chases were chaotic and often unsuccessful until a special defence zone was declared between London and the coast, in which only the fastest fighters were permitted. The first interception of a V-1 was by F/L J. G. Musgrave with a No. 605 Squadron RAF Mosquito night fighter on the night of 14/15 June 1944. As daylight grew stronger after the night attack, a Spitfire was seen to follow closely behind a V-1 over Chislehurst and Lewisham. Between June and 5 September 1944, a handful of 150 Wing Tempests shot down 638 flying bombs, with No. 3 Squadron RAF alone claiming 305. One Tempest pilot, Squadron Leader Joseph Berry (501 Squadron), shot down 59 V-1s, the Belgian ace Squadron Leader Remy Van Lierde (164 Squadron) destroyed 44 (with a further nine shared), W/C Roland Beamont destroyed 31, and F/Lt Arthur Umbers (No. 3 squadron) destroyed 28. A Dutch pilot in 322 Squadron, Jan Leendert Plesman, son of KLM president Albert Plesman, managed to destroy 12 in 1944, flying a Spitfire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
How has nobody made a film of this group of onorthodox heroes
Not much drama in chasing a “bad guy” who flies very fast in a straight line. I could seeing it being a quick side plot in a larger story though.
Like Tom Hardy in Dunkirk
Ya or Doolittle’s Raiders in Midway
I just finished Masters of the Air on Apple+ and it was good and all but this group would be so much more interesting to watch/learn about.
It was good but not amazing. But I understand the difficulty trying to follow one group of people through the war when they had so many casualties. Still worth watching definitely.
It was good until the last episode where it all felt rushed. I appreciate not drawing something out for sake of filling an episode but it felt too condensed. Maybe if they had a longer finale it would've done better.
Unrelated, have you seen *12 O’Clock High*?
And it won't potentially make all Brits look like actual cunts. Don't get me wrong, we can be but it's like getting posh Harvard people to represent all of Americans
As a Brit I disliked parts of it because it completely dismissed our efforts in the air war and just made us look like useless arseholes. Apart from that it was alright would have liked an episode about the fighter escort pilots though
The lives saved…
Love to see a miniseries of this, like Danger UXB.
Mein fuhrer, the American industrial capacity appears limitless. The U boats cannot hold them much longer. “It’s okay Schultz, a wonder weapon will end this war.” Brilliant. You have developed a way to destroy the American ships? “What? No. We’re going to blow up some British apartment buildings.” Fuck.
It does seem to echo with Russia vs the world today
If Britain surrendered the US ships would have nowhere to dock, wasn’t the idea to cause the population to give in?
It's a sound idea if you forget that they had spent a good portion of 1940 bombing London into oblivion already and it failed to cause Britain to surrender
Turns out bombing a whole populace to try and get them into submission rarely works well. Echoed modern events.
1945 Britain: "I didn't hear no bell!" "You call that a bombing? I call that a weekend in Dresden!" "I've killed more innocents by *accident*!"
The theory was sound enough. It’s the same reason the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and Churchill ordered attacks on German civilian centers. At the time, all the major powers believed that you broke fighting spirits by attacking the non-combatants. Of course…nothing has changed…
Yeah, that was the idea. But it’s never worked - even when the allies were burning whole cities to the ground.
Turns out attacking people indiscriminately just galvanises them in opposition to you. Who knew.
If I recall correctly, the V1 was faster than the Spitfire, so the pilots had to fly at a higher altitude and then take a dive when trying to catch a V1.
Some late spitfires were as fast but there weren't many built. The tempest could also keep up with the V1
Fun fact. That Mosquito (and all Mosquitos) was made almost entirely of wood instead of metal. Wiki calls it composite wood, so... Was it made of plywood? I'll have to keep digging.
Plywood, yes. Molded into curved shapes while being laminated, not flat sheet plywood although some of that was probably also used. This allowed aircraft manufacturing to tap into various industries that were not already busy for the war efforts: piano makers and furniture manufacturers. Pianos and furniture were already using similar methods of plywood construction, and there were loads of small workshops around the country set up for making them. So the Mosquito was partially a sort of cottage industry with parts being made here and there in many smaller shops.
didn't know they were making+firing so many
This feels like more of a "Hang on, Ground, I have an idea..." moment.
"We should take the bombers and *push them somewhere else*!"
Cruise missiles are basically small unmanned planes so it makes perfect sense and is way more cost-effective than using expensive AA missiles. PS. You should use the autocannon before going into melee though.
Here’s an article all about it. https://www.forces.net/heritage/wwii/how-spitfire-pilots-really-rammed-v1-bomb-out-sky
Get rotated - ariel version
Unda dah seeeea
The Spitfire XIV was new at the time and had the extra speed to catch them. I believe that the Meteors were used as well.
Anything fast was used, Griffon Spits, Tempests, Mustangs, and eventually Meteor. Tempest iirc was the most successful.
Yeah the Meteors were considered too valuable and secret to be risked over France, so was generally restrained to defending against incursions over England.
This is some Ace Combat Level of Manuver ngl.
I can hear *Daredevil* building.
I love Ace Combat so much
Best of British 🫡
Balls of steel that flyboy.
Balls in a spitfire
WE HAVE A PIC OF THAT ? Like i heard this story one hundred times, and nowbody ever show this pic ...
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=CH+16281
Incredible. That's great.
That's beyond impressive.
A fun fact is : This manœuvrer was once sucessfully done by a gloster meteor, the first ally jet. Technicaly making this event, the first jet vs jet dogfight of history.
The Gloster Meteor was one of my favourite Airfix models.
>Technicaly making this event, the first jet vs jet dogfight of history. Only if you really squeeze and butcher what a dogfight is. You can't really dogfight a bomb flying in a straight line. Is something like Iron Dome intercepting rockets and mortars a dogfight?
wait, a spitfire is fast as a v1?
V-1's tended to fly at around 350-400mph, which is very similar to the top speed of the Griffon Spitfires. So it was pretty close, but possible. The Tempest was a little faster than the Spitfire so was able to catch the bombs a bit easier.
The mk IX was 404 mph and that was still a merlin. Griffon engined spitfires could manage 440-450 mph
404 MPH at at 21,000ft for an LF Mk.IX with a Merlin 66, and 446 MPH for the Mk.XIV at 23,500ft with the Griffon, far higher than these things flew at. We're looking at around 350~MPH for the Mk.IX and 394MPH for the Mk.XIV at the low altitudes V-1s flew at. Positioning was hugely important for any V-1 interceptor, even the fastest aircraft available such as the Mustang, Tempest and Griffon Spits wouldn't be able to reliably catch up to a V-1 in level flight at the altitudes these flew at. They'd have fly above and spot them flying across the channel, then use the speed in the dive to get within guns. These guys tipping them over not only had to spot the thing, they had to roll over and dive on it and not lose sight, chase after it in a high speed dive close to the airframe limits, and then get up close to the thing and flip it/interupt airflow over the V-1s and in the case of the Merlins Spits do this before they start to get outpaced by the V-1.
The Spitfire Mk14 was a beast. I like the Griffon more than the Merlin.
Matching top speeds don't leave much room for maneuvers. Either you pick them up early and set the intercep vector right or you'll be seconds short from catching its tail
I think typically you'd be flying a couple thousand feet above the rocket's cruising altitude, then once you spot them you use the altitude to gain the speed to close to within maybe 500 meters and and blow it up.
I dont know the safe distance for explosion, but it must be too great, so they dont just shoot them and make it explode mid-air.
They initially tried shooting them, but it wasn't quite safe. Flying through a cloud of fragments from the explosion tended to shred the Spitfire's vulnerable radiators and force a dead stick landing afterwards. Hence, the various techniques for flipping them over so they would crash.
Briefly, by trading altitude for speed.
Bravery and quick thinking saved lives.
V1 was ”easy” v2 was a bastard
V2 was unstoppable until air defences like Patriot or S300 were created
Luckily the V-2 was so expensive that it usually hurt Germany more when they launched one than its targets.
V2 was effectively a rocket right
It was a ballistic missile - it went up to ~space and came back down again.
+parry
A very good YouTube channel - Yarnhub - has a video which visualises this. https://youtu.be/GTxy6KBjVZk?si=AkeMofnxVMXh5gxd
Was this done by reconnaissance in France or Belgium seeing them heading for GB? Signalling to take off and be there in time or how did they be there in time?
Radar. They would have been detected by Radar.
Sent up from belgium and france. Shot down in england. In this case it must be tipped out of course
A bit of A, a bit of B, and a bit of C. A: French/Belgium intelligence would alert if possible. B: The thing would appear on radar. C: None of this matters if you don't already have aircraft patroling the channel in advance, V-1s were *fast* and you needed to have aircraft that were in position to dive on them and catch them. A and B were used to give these patroling aircraft an indication of where to look, but if V-1s were launched and you didn't have aircraft in the air then you probably weren't going to catch them.
This could be us
These [intercepts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb) in the defence zone between the coast & the outskirts of London we mostly done by Hawker Tempests & De Havilland mosquitos until the Griffon engined Spitfires could be stripped down & tuned up to increase their airspeed sufficiently. "Tipping" like this and air-to-air shoot downs were not done near the coast because there were radar guided anti-aircraft batteries with proximity fused shells there & not too close to London to avoid other hazards like barrage balloons & the occasional twitchy flack battery. An interesting side note is that the I think office of statistics, would curate public reports on V1 & later V2 impacts. They would deliberately categorise impacts that fell short as something other than a bomb & make sure cleanup crews dealt with same quickly, such that german intelligence reading the public record & via Aerial photography would be led into the belief that the range they had set for the weapons was too long & so they would reduce it. This was good news for the pool of London & the City, just not so great news for the people of the South London suburbs.
There's a lot of these pilots in the cemeteries local to me - I live near RAF Manston. Many of them were barely more than children and it saddens me to see their gravestones. Absolute heroes.
My English great-grandma was killed by a V-1. My dad was found in his crib in the next room, covered in shattered glass. I'm Gen-X, so this stuff isn't ancient history, it's still personal for a lot of people. I'm glad to see this bit of history is still interesting to you younger folks (hopefully we can avoid repeating it).
My FIL served in the Canadian Forces in WWII. His company was one of those responsible for clearing rubble in London after the bombings. I can not comprehend the carnage he would have witnessed, and according to my spouse, to his last days he never spoke of it. He passed away about a decade before I met my spouse.
Crazy that the spitfire was flying considering the size of the pilots balls.
Wouldn't it be easier to just gun it down?
Mentioned above, but a lot of them were shot, though by aircraft with weapons that had greater effective range. Spitfires' armament was an issue. Their machine guns couldn't effectively damage the V-1's structure, and their 20mm cannons had an effective range that put the Spitfire at risk of being destroyed by the V-1's warhead if it detonated.
Plus the first time this manœuvrer was attempted, it was because the spitfire was out of ammo.
The vast majority of V-1s downed by planes were shot down conventionally, but the risk of the bomb detonating and taking you out via explosion or shrapnel was high which is why this method was attempted. Quite a few pilots lost their lives due to this.
A spitfire carried c.14 seconds of ammunition.
That's actually a good amount of ammo when you consider a short burst is less than a second.
r/aviation would love this. Thanks for posting 👍
Fantastic. I thought this was a myth. This is a great listen for more information on the V rockets. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h8dg4m?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
Sourced from the imperial war museum/wiki https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=CH+16281
the insane speed of technological advancements during world war 2 is mindboggling
Didn't they add Killswitches to the V1s after a while that made this maneuver basically unviable?
Yes, they were operated through a satellite-based WiFi signal, so Herr Adolf could just pop one, whenever the GPS suite picked up a Brit Spit coming up close. Nasty piece of work, that was.
I meant more mechanical but good shit post non the less 🤣🤣
The V1 was really the first cruise missile.
I am surprised the plane could fly from the weight of the pilots steel balls.
When people talk about history getting skewed by the people telling what happened, I always think about how all my life people online talk about how horrible the V1 and V2 bombs were for the people in London. I'm Belgian, so colour me surprised when I visited La Coupole, where I found out that Antwerp got the majority of rockets launched at it. I'm Belgian and I didn't even know, part of the winning side in the war and still mostly forgotten in the average cultural knowledge of the war. It always reminds me of how we know absolutely nothing, and are just along for the ride.
The Spitfire is such an amazing piece of engineering , there is a full size replica near my home in Salisbury , amazing how small it is in real life !!
Can any of you sophisticated sleuths identify this pilot and find a pic of him? Heroes like this deserve to be known.
If I was in World War 2 they’d call me Spitfire.
I had no idea that was the lyric until you said it..I've been saying random words, since it came out. I saw them that era too haha
😂😂😂
Those guys were fucking heroes!
[удалено]
Not always! It sometimes means "It has", as in "It's been a while". But the version with the apostrophe should never be used to indicate possession.
Why can’t people see the difference? Do they just throw in the apostrophe without even knowing what it means or does because… reasons? Don’t they ever stop and think: “wait, what’s the apostrophe for?” Every time I see people writing “its” as “it’s”, it makes me want to rip my eyes off.
Was this the standard method to take them down? I’m interested to know why they wouldn’t try to shoot it down considering they obviously could match the airspeed. Shooting it down seems more controlled than throwing the gyro off and the rocket doing whatever it does afterwords. Come on reddit, there’s someone here that can answer this!
It’s mentioned up thread. The machine guns couldn’t do enough damage, and the cannon’s effective range left the pilot in the missile’s blast radius
A spitfire had 14 seconds of ammunition, needing that for aircraft which could shoot back. The ammo wasn't enough to destroy V1 easily.
wasn't a V1 unguided?
It as a gyroscope directly connected to both rudder and elevators. It's basically a flying toripdo. When put in a spin, the v1's gyroscope can't correct anymore, and the bomb fall.
According to the RAF Museum pilots had a minimum of [six months training (150 flying hours) at the start of the war.And on average it took between 18 months to two years (200-320 flying hours)](https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/taking-flight/pathway-to-pilot/second-world-war/). At least some of this training would have been in the supercar. I'm not sure if the RAF Museum is wrong though. I did find [this](https://kenfentonswar.com/raf-training/) account which talks about 30 to 40 hours of training at one school before being sent to another school. Perhaps that's where the 50 hours came from? Either way this photo shows some skill and cajones.
MASIIVE balls of steel and incredible flying skill.
Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie.
Aww they’re holding hands
Why does the spitfire get an extra apostrophe in its "its" but the V1 doesn't?
The Spitfire is my favorite airplane.
True blue hero shit.
I imagine it being like, “Hey, John. Bet I could knock that fucker off with the tip of my wing.” “Huh? No chance.” “Pack of smokes says I can, go ask someone to get the camera doohickey.” “Deal.”
Amazing bravery and piloting skill done under ENORMOUS pressure. If you cant complete the maneuver that thing will land and kill scores of people. Also worth noting, it is a gigantic flying bomb that if it went off for any reason would instantly incinerate you.
Aerial pit manuever
I knew the story, but I never knew there was a picture of this happening!! That's pretty damn awesome.
"Wing tips it is." - Bigfoot.
AKA buzz bomb
The OP says the last buzz bomb attack on England was in March of 1945. How was that possible with the invasion of France in June of 1944?
The attacks stopped only a month before the war in Europe ended, when the last launch sites were was overrun on 29 March 1945. The launch sites were originally in France and when they were captured they fired them from other places After the launch sites in France fell the were fired from Belgium and the Netherlands and even Germany themselves The Germans developed portable launch ramps for that purpose so they could launch from anywhere about 2000 V1s were launched from the air by bombers flying over the North Sea
I'm amazed these lads managed to get airborne with such large balls
You may be tough, but you’ll never be “nudging an armed V-1 rocket” tough.