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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 1948.PDF
3o8 FLIGHT SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1944 Defeat in DEFEATING ITS OWN OBJECT. A flying-bomb which landed in the Pas de Calais immediately after being, launched. Quite a number met their end in this manner. Some Side-lights on the "Battle of London " • Evolving the Best Fighter Technique : Smart Work by the R.O.C., A.A. and Balloon Commands' Transportation Triumph ALTHOUGH Mr. Duncan Sandys gave a very good /A account of the "Battle of London'' against the *- •*• German's much publicised secret weapon, the "V.J." when he held his Press conference on the subject at the Ministry of Information recently, it was inevitable that his account should cover only the main facts of the story. Much of that, too, was devoted to the disclosure—and extremely interesting it was—of how the existence of the V.i. was first 'discovered, of the amazing feat of recon-* naissance which exposed the research station at Peene- miinde in the Baltic, and the original 100 launching sites along the Pas de Calais. Now They Can be Told But from the moment when the first flying-bomb (to give it its officially adopted title, though we still think " air torpedo" is far more accurate) was launched against London early in June, many things began to happen— many a "good story" was enacted which could not be spoken of at the time, and which Mr. Sandys was obliged to skip over at the conference ; there just was not time to go into all the details and to give everybody full recog nition for the grand parts they had played in defeating this robot raider. To a great extent the official figures speak for them selves : that the fighter pilots, the A.A. gunners, and those who handled the great balloon barrage together destroyed some 5,700 of the 8,000 missiles sent against this country is an eloquent indication of the degree of combined effort that must have been put forth in this unique fight. But behind those figures are a number of stories showing just what that effort meant in terms of human experience—the resourcefulness, the tireless vigil, and the personal courage displayed by all branches of the defenders ot London. The first line of defence was, of course, the fighter air craft of A.G.D.B. There are probably those who imagine that tackling a robot which cannot shoot back or take evasive action is, to use a popular Service term, a '' piece of cake." Nothing could be farther from the truth. So little was known about its habits and construction in the early days of the battle that fightoc pilots had to experi- ~m 1 EARLY EXPERIMENT. German rocket-propelled flying bombs of *542. They were thought to be radio controlled.
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