Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Missiles: V-1 and V-2
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.052426.4068@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 11 Feb 91 05:24:26 GMT
References: <1991Feb4.071827.23373@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 57
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
I checked my copy of R. V. Jones's "Most Secret War" (aka "The
Wizard War"; 1978, reprinted 1990, Coronet, ISBN 0-340-24169-1)
and found that the item I submitted earlier was not quite right.

During World War II the British did use the tactic of pairing the
impact location of one missile with the impact time of another,
to fool the Germans into changing the aiming point.  However, they
did not have this information published in the press; rather, they
gave it to the German spies (all of whom had been captured and were
working for the British).  Also, the tactic was invented for use
against the V-1's, not the V-2's.  The deception was helped by
the fact that the British completely prevented German reconnaissance
flights over London from mid-1941 to mid-1944; and then when the
Germans did get photos, part of the city was under cloud.  So they
couldn't tell which damage was recent, or how the hits were really
distributed over the city.

Jones also gives some figures about these weapons which differ
somewhat from those I have seen posted here.  He says that the
V-1 had a 2000-pound warhead of which 1800 pounds was explosive,
while the V-2 carried 1 ton, i.e., 2240 pounds -- I forgot to
The maximum range of the V-1 was 155 miles; the V-2, 207 miles.

During the V-1 campaign, from June 15 to about September of 1944,
the Germans launched 8,617 V-1's against London from sites in France,
and 8,696 against Antwerp (these cities were not the only targets
but they were the primary ones).  A further 400 were air-launched.
This implies an average launch rate of something over 200 a day.
Only 2,340, or about 1/4, reached the London Civil Defense region.

The V-2 campaign started on September 7, 1944, and by 7 months later,
there had been 1,190 launches and 169 launch failures against
London, and 1,610 launches against Antwerp.  The average launch
rate was therefore only about 13 per day.  501 V-2's, or about 3/8
of the attempts, reached the London Civil Defense Region.

Jones's intelligence people were able to deduce most of the crucial
facts about the V-2 before the campaign started, despite having to
contend with ridiculous claims from so-called experts.  He estimated
shortly before the campaign that the Germans had about 1,000 of the
rockets stockpiled.  He says that many of the brass whom he had to deal
with seemed terrified of this; they fixated on "rockets!" and didn't
notice that the total explosive payload of all these missiles would
be comparable to a single day's bomb drops on Germany.

Incidentally, Jones refers to the V-1 as the FZG76, but never as Fi103.

-- 
Mark Brader		  "We may take pride in observing that there is not a
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto	   single film showing in London today which deals with
utzoo!sq!msb		   one of the burning issues of the day."
msb@sq.com		      -- Lord Tyrell, British film censors' chief, 1937

This article is in the public domain.