Nightjar wrote:
On 18/05/2012 15:12, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 18 May 2012 13:39:06 +0100, wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Fri, 18 May 2012 04:27:38 -0700 (PDT), Adam Aglionby
wrote:

London air space simulated ;-)

http://www.tomscott.com/olympics/

Use of Olympics infringes copyright.

Many of the V1s shot down by anti aircraft guns fell on houses killing
the occupants.
--
I agree this is not often mentioned, as one who lived on the
outskirts of
Maidstone for the whole of the second world war. I speak from
experience.
Even with the films of aerial combat you never see a shot down plane
crash
into a house.

I found a book, in a binaries e-book group about V1s that is full of
photos of V1s that were shot down, that fell on houses.
They were shot down mainly by mainly by anti aircraft fire. Others
were brought down by barrage balloons.
I didn't know that the V1s were air launched from Heinkel bombers
over the North Sea, after all the launching ramps had been destroyed.

The book is Air Launched Doodlebus, the forgotten campaign, by Peter J
Smith published in 2006.

I was under the impression that the air launched versions were developed
to allow them to attack targets out of range of the land based launchers.

Manned V1s were also built, although never used.

At least one was flown IIRC by a female test pilot to help solve
stability issues.

Ah Hannah Reitsch:

"Seventy of the V-1s equipped with cockpits for piloted flight were
ordered, to be built by Fieseler and designated as the Fi-103
Reichenberg. This manned version of the V-1 proved easy to fly but
glided like a brick and was tricky to land on its skid because of its
very high landing speed and tendency to ground-loop.

One factor that caused problems with the V-1 as a cruise missile was
related to vibrations imparted to the airframe by its power plant. The
pulse-jet engine developed thrust through very closely placed machine
gun-like explosions, thus the nickname 'buzz bomb.' In the course of
test flights, Reitsch was able to identify this problem, and she may
also have contributed to improving the V-1's accuracy.

In the Fi-103 test plane, the cockpit was directly in front of the
engine intake. It was assumed that in the event of an emergency during
test flights, the pilot would be able to open the canopy and bail out.
In point of fact, it is more than likely that the exiting pilot could
not survive if the engine was running. Two of the seven Fi-103
instructors were killed, and four were injured. Reitsch was the only one
of the group to survive the test program without injury."


The pilot was provided
with an ejector seat, although it probably didn't improve the chances of
survival that much.



Indeed.



Colin Bignell


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.