Amazing sound on startup and shutdown!


https://youtu.be/U-xlttsfWn4

Damn!!!...thank you for posting ...

That must be why they called 'em "buzz bombs".

My grandmother was in London during the bombing and used to talk about the way the buzz bombs sounded. She'd describe them as only being a worry when they stopped making that sound, which was when they began their descent. They weren't afraid of the buzz, but the silence.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
That must be why they called 'em "buzz bombs".

Yup!

Their design was utterly inspired in so many respects that it almost beggars belief. The tiny 'propeller' on the nose rotated a rod with a VERY fine thread at the rear end that activated a fuel cut-off valve. After a calculated number of rotations, the valve closed off, causing the fuel to stop flowing, and the control surfaces to re-align, causing the whole missile to pitch downwards and crash. My mother, living in South London at the time, suffered two homes destroyed in less than a month in late 1944.

The whole fuselage of recovered V1s showed strange indentations, as though it had been beaten out of a flat piece of very thin steel, like a Turkish coffee table top, using a hammer of some kind, rather like a custom automobile body buider makes a fender or other curved surface. The rationale behind this was difficult to imagine at first, until a clever imagery analyst noticed that the preparation sites all contained what was called the 'rectangular building' which had clearly-defined tyre tracks apparently passing through it. She also noted that no matter where the rest of the site was distributed in layout, these buildings were all aligned with the North side facing directly to magnetic north, and concluded that something was taking place inside the building that had to do with magnetism. In fact, the fuselage of the completely-assembled missile was being driven into the building on a handling trolly/trailer, and beaten, by hand and using a hammer, to induce a magnetic field into the material from which it was made - IOW, it was being made into a giant flying magnet. The navigation system was simply another set of magnets on gimbals, connected by multiplying leverns and linkages, to the control surfaces, and any diversion from the pre-set course was detected by the magnets and used to input the control surfaces - no valves, no electronics, in fact, very few moving parts at all, just applying the small forces between a huge magnet - the body of the missile - and the detector magnets of the control system.

Tac, thanks for sharing thst information, quite interesting.

My late father said they sounded like Maytag motors as they flew overhead. He was in Belgium at the time, closer to the launching sites than the end destination.

Thank you for the video, that sound, WOW! Thank you for the info Tac, This place is awesome

I hope they plan on powering that pickup with that engine.

Even in that setting it sounds kind of horrifying.

quote:

Originally posted by bossman:
Tac, thanks for sharing thst information, quite interesting.

My late father said they sounded like Maytag motors as they flew overhead. He was in Belgium at the time, closer to the launching sites than the end destination.

The docks at Antwerp in Belgium, a major staging post of the allies supply route, were targetted by litterally hundreds of V1s, and later, by the far more mobile V2.s.

A late friend of mine was in the Lewisham Woolworths store with his Uncle Sid, and they'd just left when it was hit by a V2. I can't recall exactly how many died, but it was around 200. And another one hit the Guards Chapel in London, killing another couple of hundred. In total, the V2 attacks resulted in the deaths of around 7,250 British military personnel and civilians. Meanwhile more than 9,000 civilians and soldiers were killed in total in V2 attacks on the Allies. ... But despite the hype, and just like the V1, the V2 did not quite live up to its propaganda.

tacfoley:

Thank you for the details you've posted. Sometime in 1943 my Grandfather was on a Victory ship moored on the Thames in London where he told me he saw a number of V1's fly overhead. He said they made a distinctive sound. The stories you told of the lives lost give a sobering perspective of the times. My Grandfather volunteered (he was 30) and ended up as the USN officer in charge of the Naval armed guard on a Liberty ship.

Your story about the Woolworth's reminds me of a story he mentioned where his ship for some reason was pulled out of a convoy. The ship which replaced his was sunk on the way across the Atlantic. IIRC, the convoys did not stop when that happened. It is interesting to read his logs as he worked his way back and forth across the Atlantic in '43, and in supply convoys across the Pacific in '44 and '45.

It was not until the 60’s/70’s that the effectiveness of v1/v2 attacks on England were declassified.

Do not remember exact date. There is a book out listing details and locations of hits in England. It been a few years since I read the book.

The Imperial War Museum at Duxford has a replica V-1 on a composite - and shortened - launch rail built from several rails brought to the UK after the war for testing. A complete ramp was about 140 ft.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford

Very shortly Bald1 will be nice enough to post a couple photos I took this past October.

That's quite interesting, Tac, enjoyed your informative post, next time I get to the UK Duxfords going on the list...

I toured the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp a few years ago, where they built some V-1s and V-2s. There are still lots of parts of both laying around in those caves.