By 1942 the Luftwaffe could no longer bomb England due to RAF air
superiority, yet the RAF was able to bomb German cities at will. This led the
Germans to develop their Vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapons. The first of
these was the Fieseler Fi-103, a small jet powered flying bomb developed in 1943
and ready for service in mid-1944. The V-1 was normally launched by a steam
catapult from a fixed firing ramp, but as the launch sites were overrun by
ground forces, some were air launched from Heinkel He111 bombers. The V-1
carried an 850kg warhead to a maximum range of 250 kilometers at a speed of 630
km/h. The first weapons were launched against London in June 1944, a few days
after the Allied D-Day landings in France. Over 10,500 V-1’s were launched
during the war, but of these only about 2,500 hit their targets, the rest were
intercepted or crashed due to mechanical failure. The Japanese were given plans
of the V-1 and they built a piloted version, the Kawanishi Baika, but this was
not ready for use by war’s end. Information by Philip Greenwood
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