Fieseler Fi 103 V-1
The Fieseler Fi 103, better known by its propaganda name V-1, was a German pulsejet-powered flying bomb of the Second World War, and the world's first operational cruise missile. Designed by the Fieseler company with an Argus pulsejet engine, it flew a preset course under autopilot and dived on its target when a range counter ran out. More than 20,000 were launched against British and continental targets between June 1944 and March 1945; almost 6,200 people were killed in Britain. Simple and cheap in concept, it forced the Allies into a major defensive effort, and the United States copied it as the JB-2, carrying its influence into postwar cruise-missile development.
Why It Mattered
The Smithsonian calls the V-1 the world's first operational cruise missile: a small unmanned aircraft that carried a one-ton high-explosive warhead about 240 km (150 miles) to a preset target. Its familiar name was a propaganda label, Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or Vengeance Weapon One, while its service designation, Fi 103, came from the Fieseler company that designed its airframe. More than 20,000 were launched at British and continental targets, mostly London and Antwerp, between June 1944 and March 1945, and almost 6,200 people were killed in Britain alone. The Smithsonian notes that the missile was very inaccurate, yet it still forced a major defensive effort: effective countermeasures were developed by August 1944, built on anti-aircraft guns aided by radar, barrage balloons and intercepting fighters. Its influence outlasted the war: the United States copied it as the JB-2, and the Smithsonian's curator records that the American services afterwards bet heavily on V-1 descendants.
Design Notes
The airframe was a mid-wing monoplane built mainly of mild steel, although later long-range, lighter models had plywood wings on a tubular metal spar. On top of the rear fuselage sat the pulsejet tube, an Argus 109-014 whose noisy, rapid combustion earned the weapon its "buzz bomb" nickname; it burned low-grade aviation gasoline and drove the missile at speeds of up to 400 mph at a few thousand feet. The V-1 was not radio-controlled: a preset guidance system built around a magnetic compass and an autopilot steered it, with two compressed-air spheres supplying the pneumatic servos that worked the rudder and elevators, and roll controlled through the rudder alone, since there were no ailerons. A small propeller in the nose counted off the distance flown; when it had made its set number of revolutions, a counter locked the controls and deployed tail spoilers, and the missile dived onto its target. The warhead weighed approximately 850 kg, by the Imperial War Museum's figure. Because the pulsejet functioned efficiently only once boosted into the air, most were launched by a piston catapult on an inclined ramp 150 feet long, while others were air-launched from modified Heinkel He 111 bombers.
Operational History
Development was given the highest priority on 19 June 1942, after Hitler ordered retaliatory "terror attacks" on British cities, and the Air Ministry assigned the designation Fieseler Fi 103. Testing took place at Peenemünde, on the Baltic coast, where the first Fi 103 flight test, an air launch from a Focke-Wulf Fw 200, was made on 10 December 1942. Mass production of the missile began at the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben in the autumn of 1943, and 96 launch sites were begun in occupied northern France. The fixed "ski sites", named for the shape of their ramps, had to be abandoned after repeated Allied attacks, and a movable, more easily concealed ramp replaced them. The first missiles fell on Swanscombe, Kent, on 13 June 1944, and by 1 September about 9,000 had been fired against England, more than 2,000 of them abortive or misses. Air launch supplemented the ramps from 9 July 1944, and in all 8,892 V-1s were ground-launched and about 1,600 air-launched against Britain. The Smithsonian's figures give 6,184 people killed in the London area and 17,981 seriously injured; on the continent, where about 8,696 were fired at Antwerp alone, 4,683 military personnel and civilians were killed and 10,075 wounded. The defences also drew off Allied striking power: more than 25 per cent of the Combined Bomber Offensive's bombs in July and August 1944 were used against V-weapon sites. The missiles were also a product of the camp system: the Smithsonian's curator records the slave laborers the Nazis exploited and murdered to produce these weapons. Germany also built a piloted, suicide version under Project Reichenberg, tested by pilots including Hanna Reitsch, but it was never placed into action. The final V-1 sent toward England was downed by anti-aircraft guns at Iwade, near Sittingbourne, on 29 March 1945.
Afterlife
The United States copied the weapon before the war had even ended: engineers at Wright Field had reverse-engineered the simple pulsejet engine from crashed examples within three weeks of the first attacks, and the Americans built more than 1,000 of their own versions, called the JB-2 by the U.S. Army Air Forces and dubbed the Loon by the U.S. Navy. None of these missiles went into combat, although they did provide missile experience to both the Army Air Forces and the Navy. On 12 February 1947 the Loon became the first submarine-launched missile, fired off the deck of the USS Cusk near California. The line of descent continued into the first nuclear-armed cruise missiles, the Air Force's Matador and the Navy's Regulus I. Original V-1s survive in museums in many countries, 27 known examples by the Smithsonian's count; they include the Smithsonian's own missile, acquired from the U.S. Air Force on 1 May 1949 and now on display in Washington, and the Imperial War Museum's example, acquired in 1946, which retains its original wartime paintwork.