
V2 rockets on London and surrounding counties - arethuza
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=52.042355%2C0.582275&spn=1.520457%2C3.488159&t=m&oe=UTF8&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=zrRJwnXeepqg.k97NVjPZOOy0
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bhaak
Such maps always remind me of this polandball joke:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blitz_map_of_London_...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blitz_map_of_London_\(Polandball\).png)

This episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast shows how civilized
societies could justify to themselves to do fire or nuclear bombing:
[http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-42-blitz-l...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/)

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AuLaVache
My Grandmother remembers the one that landed in Usk road. They lived a few
streets away in Ballentine street. In the previous years they had an
incendiary bomb land in their roof that was (thankfuly) only burning slowly.
My teenage father had to go up into the loft and remove it.

On another occasion one burned through the lid of their fairly new dustbin.
Dustbins were very very hard to get hold of then - like anything made of
metal. Previously my Grandmother referred to Hitler as "Herr Hitler", after
that it was "That bloody man". My Father knew at that moment that Hitler would
lose the war.

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leoedin
It's scary to look at an area of the city where friends and family live and
see just how many people died there. Frequently 10 or 20, the highest number
is 168 when a V2 dropped on a Woolworths in New Cross.

These things hit the ground at around 1800 mph. I guess when you get
absolutely no warning there's no time to seek shelter.

~~~
pjc50
This prompted me to look up UK total civilian casualties at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country)
, giving the surprisingly small figure of 67,200 (including commonwealth!). We
didn't do so badly when you look at some of the other horrifying figures in
that table.

That figure of total civilian deaths is also smaller than the death toll of
either of the two nuclear bomb attacks or the firebombing of Tokyo. The RAF
firebombing of Dresden has unclear casualty figures but seems to be about
20,000.

Edit: thinking about it, the difference between that low number and the others
is really the debt owed to the "few" of Fighter Command and the ability to
maintain air superiority over England and the Channel, preventing truly
extensive bombing and an invasion.

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nik61
For truly 'extensive bombing' the Germans would have required heavy bombers,
which they did not possess. The Luftwaffe had been largely conceived of as a
support to ground troops with no strategic role or capability. Also they
wasted their efforts on civilian centres such as London before they had
achieved air superiority by destroying the RAF, which they came very close to
doing in the late summer of 1940.

~~~
nickik
They never came close to getting air superiority, or pushing the RAF away from
the South England Airfields.

This is a persistent claim that has no support with experts of WW2, but
somehow the story is just to good not to be retold by every tv movie and
school book. Its a popularised myth with no truth.

Neither is it true that Churchill deliberately attacked German cities to stop
the Luftwaffe from attacking the RAF Airfields.

Churchill speeches and dramatisation is not the same as actual history, no
matter how often people repeat the same tale.

~~~
hga
Do you know of any detailed source on all that, ideally something like
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813338697](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813338697)
?

The only thing I can add to this debate with my current knowledge is that the
British foiled the start of a campaign against the Chain Home radars after the
Luftwaffe's first Maximum Effort against one station. Devastation was wreaked,
but one or more boffins who showed up to see what could be done observed that
there was one functioning transmitter, and jury rigged an antenna for it.

When the Luftwaffe did ECM reconnaissance they couldn't distinguish between it
and a functioning station, and concluded that approach wasn't going to work.

Can't remember my source for it, a quick check of the index indicates it
wasn't R.V. Jones' superb _Most Secret War_.

~~~
nickik
Usually I would not recommend a podcast, however this podcast goes threw the
Battle of Britan in extrem detail comparing gains and loses for every single
day (!).

[http://worldwariipodcast.net/](http://worldwariipodcast.net/)

If you want a book, this is a good start: [http://www.amazon.com/Battle-
Britain-Roy-Conyers-Nesbit/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Britain-Roy-
Conyers-Nesbit/dp/0752456520/)

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baldfat
WOW I had no idea how many landed in London. I always thought that they were
inaccurate and weren't effective. Sure would have terrorized me and came close
to Big Ben.

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vermontdevil
Good thing they didn't have any on-board guidance systems back then.

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KMag
The V2 used pendular integrating gyroscopic accelerometers (PIGAs) and
gyroscopes for guidance. As far as I know, the V2 was the first use of the
PIGA. Descendants of the V2 guidance systems were used by the Apollo moon
missions and several US intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The PIGA is actually a pretty cool piece of machinery. You have a free-
swinging balance arm that has a mass and a gyroscope on it. The gyroscope's
axis of rotation is aligned with the balance arm. An electric motor spins the
whole balance arm in a direction perpendicular to both the gyroscope's axis of
rotation and the axis about which the balance is free to rotate. So if you
remember from Freshman physics, you have a rotational momentum and an applied
torque, the resultant torque is the cross product of the two (in other words,
a torque in the direction the balance moves freely). An analog controller
keeps the electric motor spinning at a rate that keeps the balance beam level.
So, the rate the electric motor is turning is proportional to acceleration in
the direction of the electric motor's axis. Thus, the integral of the
acceleration is proportional to the integral of the rotational velocity of the
electric motor. In other words, the number of revolutions of the electric
motor is proportional to the velocity of the rocket (relative to free-fall). A
simple revolution counter is sufficient to cut off the engine's fuel flow once
the rocket has reached a given velocity.

(Source: I interned at Draper Lab, which made the Apollo guidance systems and
several ICBM guidance systems. I walked by an Apollo PIGA in a display case
every morning.)

~~~
vermontdevil
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

I meant in terms of GPS-based which would improve the accuracy. Sorry for
being a bit flippant with my original comment.

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paparush
Interesting as I've recently started re-reading Gravity's Rainbow, again, for
the third time.

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jrumbut
I guess Slothrop's prediction rate wasn't so unlikely given the density of
those impacts :)

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sjbase
It seems the guy really did get around... 0_0

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russtrotter
Just visited DC area, USA and went to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.
That have a V2 on display there. It gives one a palpable impression of their
power especially in WWII.

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davidbarker
There's also one on display in London at the Imperial War Museum near Lambeth
North. I'd read a lot about them, and seen pictures, but it was still far
bigger than I expected.

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ngcazz
And one just chilling out by the London Bridge train station.

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gjvc
see also [http://www.bombsight.org/](http://www.bombsight.org/)

