The War Illustrated, Volume 8, No. 191, Page 334, October 13, 1944.

"Except possibly for a few shots, the Battle of London is over," declared Mr. Duncan Sandys, M.P., Chairman of the War Cabinet Committee on operational counter-measures against the flying bomb, on September 7, 1944. How Germany’s attempt to destroy London with her vaunted V1 weapon was foiled makes one of the most memorable war stories.

"Diver, diver, diver!" The words drummed into the ears of a telephone operator at Air Headquarters, Air Defence of Great Britain, a few minutes after 4 o’clock in the morning of June 13, 1944. The code message came from the Royal Observer Corps station at Dymchurch, Kent; it marked the moment for which the authorities had long been prepared.

Two members of the Corps had seen the first flying bomb, approaching over the sea, and in less than 40 seconds their warning in code had been received at headquarters: the whole intricate machinery of defence was at once set in motion, to what effect has been recorded by Capt. Norman Macmillan, M.C. A.F.C. The "human side" of this great story contains material for many an epic narrative.

Difficulties of our airmen in getting to grips with this devastating weapon, especially in the early stages of the battle, can be summed up in the following statements:

"We found by getting in to 200 yards’ range we could hit the target. If we were farther away we missed. If we were nearer our aircraft were liable to be damaged by flying debris. In fact, quite a number were brought down. After the first fortnight or month we had so improved our tactics that we were knocking down at least 80 per cent of our sightings. The three squadrons in my wing destroyed 600" This by a Wing Commander who led the first Tempest wing into action against the flying bomb and himself shot down 23.

Squadron-Leader J. Berry, of Carlton, Nottingham said: "Our chief difficulty was that, though we could see the bombs much farther away at night, we could not easily judge how far away they were. All we could do at first was to fly alongside the fairly slow bombs and remember what they looked like at lethal range. In this way a very good interception system was worked out before the new shilling range-finder was issued."

That shilling rangefinder which provided "the complete answer" to pilots’ difficulties, was the invention of Sir Thomas Merton, unpaid scientific advisor to the Ministry of Production. He told a Daily Mail reporter that 24hrs after he was first struck by the idea he had manufactured a prototype. In less than a week the manufacture of hundreds was in full swing. "The rangefinder must remain secret," he said, "as its possibilities in this war may not yet be exhausted. But I can say that it is very small and no heavier than a box of matches. It was one of those ideas that look so obvious afterwards."

New and resourceful tactics were evolved by our fighter pilots. One, who ran out of ammunition after destroying two doodle-bugs and wanted to tackle a third, brought his fighter alongside of it and slid his starboard wing-tip beneath the port wing of the bomb. A flick of the control column and the "diver," its delicate gyro mechanism thrown out of balance, spun to earth. The pilot reported this novel method of attack when he arrived back at base, the news spread, and soon other pilots were repeating the trick. It was not always easy: they were compelled sometimes to make two, three and even four attempts before the flame-erupting target crashed.

Another pilot discovered that the best position for an attack was slightly behind and to one side of the flying bomb, when it became possible to shoot off the jet or a wing. At times fighters would co-operate with ground defences to bring the missiles to destruction: several flying bombs were destroyed by heavy and even light A.A. fire after having been "flipped down" to a convenient height by an obliging fighter.

Heavy A.A. guns, moved to suitable sites, were supported not on the usual 15ft of concrete but on improvised "mattresses" of railway lines and sleepers. For this purpose 35 miles of lines and 22,500 sleepers were collected from 20 different railway depots.

There were instances of pilots who deliberately "steered" flying bombs into balloon barrage concentrations. The greatest balloon barrage in the history of the R.A.F. was massed to support the defences; at the height of the menace nearly 2,000 balloons were brought from every part of Britain and concentrated into an area to the south-east of London. Altogether they destroyed 278 flying bombs out of those which escaped the outer defence rings of A.A. guns and fighters.

To step-up the production of balloons the Ministry of Aircraft Production demanded of one factory an all-out effort. "We were offered," said the managing director of the firm concerned, "the use of another factory and urged to discontinue making our dinghies and lifebelts, but we knew these things were also of vital importance, so decided to appeal to our workers. They put in such a spurt that we increased the production of balloons by a very considerable proportion without affecting our output of dinghies and other things. Young girls and women toiled to the limit of their endurance, inspired by the fact that they were helping to defeat the flying bomb." The youngest of those girls and women was 14 and the oldest 68!

Balloon sites were completed swiftly, and to link these with headquarters thousands of miles of telephone cable-much of it borrowed from Army formations on the spot to save time-was laid by G.P.O. engineers, assisted by men of the R.A.F. Signals Units and Royal Signals and manned by W.A.A.F. telephonists. The vigil of the crews who manned the sites was continuous.

Thousands of W.A.A.F personnel played their part in the flying bomb battle, as photographers, photographic interpretation officers, plotters, balloon fabric workers, cooks, and so on. A.T.S. girls also were well to the fore. And non-service girls at London’s telephone switchboards did a magnificent job in helping to keep the phones going during the attacks. Gas and water services were frequently interrupted-and as frequently put into operation again. The work of the various transport staffs was of the highest order: 78 bus workers of the London Passenger Transport Board were killed and 1,410 injured.

Worst hit district of London was Croydon, with 75 per cent of its house damaged. In a single day 8 bombs dropped there, and 15 in one week-end: 211 of its citizens were killed. Engaged in repairing London’s damage, in August, were 1,500 naval ratings, each vigorously upholding the Royal Navy’s tradition of "Jack of All Trades." These Servicemen were called in to ease the heavy burden suddenly thrust upon the heroic and ever-willing Civil Defence organization, every branch of which toiled unceasingly to save life and mitigate the hardships suffered by the "man in the street."