Spitfire tipping off a V1

[John Milmont]

I got this an en email with the following caption:

At first V1's were shot down by gunfire. Optimum range was inside 200yds, which was marginal for survival. Many planes were damaged and quite a few pilots killed. Basically at such high speed and low altitude a plane had to fly though the explosion and hope.
With the high risk of being blown up some of the best pilots started tipping the V1's wing, because of damage to wing tips they later developed a tactic of disrupting the airflow by placing their wing very close to the V1's wing, causing it to topple.

Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot to everything else, though some Mossie pilots flew past closely in front of the V1, again causing it to topple. The thought of doing this at 450mph, 4,000 feet above the ground, at night and being blinded gives me the willies.

 

[Dalton Veitch]

I have so much respect for what these young pilots tried and achieved. Thanks for the post; I hadn't heard of this method of stopping V1s.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Di's Dad flew both Hurricanes and Spitfires during WW2 and has several entry's in his log book about doing exactly that. Apparently once you tumbled their gyroscope they went out of control and crashed. Of course you could not know where they were going to go down, but better in the country side than London.

 

[glen]

sussex and kent is still littered with craters from this. i remember asking my dad when i was young why there were craters in the woods where we used to walk the dog. he told me about tipping the v1's!

 

[Jason]

It must have taken a lot of bravery and a lot of flying skill to get close enough to one of those in flight to upset the gyro control. A salute to The Few!

Incidently, I find the V1's pulse jet engine quite interesting - simple basic stuff and fairly easy to build yet reasonably effective.

 

[TimB]

And now with a practical application

olddeadcars
How about a Razor (actually the larger "Just-Go" type) scooter with a pulsejet? I swear this is scarier than the Jetcar. We build 'em for $100 labor (takes about 3 hours) on top of our costs (5# thrust pulsejet with accys $350, scooter $90, sparker $75, misc parts, heatshield and fittings $15). You supply the air (I use a portable tank and it works great) and a 12 volt battery. Not terribly fast but what an earful!!! (this thing is LOUD). We do NOT recommend this! No warranties expressed or implied! This is nuts! Don't do it! Run away!! (expect about a 6 week delivery time, we can't make enough of these things, go figure....)