4 ms·
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 B
by baldfat 11y ago
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.
- vermontdevil 11y agoGood thing they didn't have any on-board guidance systems back then.
- bendykstra 11y agoThe V2 had a guidance computer. Early rockets were purely inertial while some later rockets also rode radio beams to their targets.
- arethuza 11y agoThe Germans had guided weapons in WW2 - notably the anti-ship Fritz X guided bomb (not powered): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X
- KMag 11y agoThe 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 11y agoFascinating. 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.
- omegant 11y agoThank you! Is there any book that talks about this system in detail?
- dTal 11y agoThat was a very clear description and highly interesting. Thanks for sharing.
- gsnedders 11y agoNote the note: > This map is not comprehensive. Many strikes in open countryside are omitted. And many strikes in the East End of London are missing due to lack of concrete information. Please leave a comment if you have evidence. There were 1358 fired at London, FWIW.
- jonas21 11y agoInterestingly, the British used double agents to trick the Germans into targeting V-1 and V-2 rockets away from Central London by selectively reporting impacts and adjusting impact timestamps to make them believe that the rockets were overshooting their targets when they were, in fact, falling short. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System#V-weapons_deception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System#V-weapons_...
- nik61 11y agoAh yes, 'falling short' on places such as the New Cross Woolworths, leading to deaths of 168 persons, and laying waste areas such as Peckham where the fall of ten or more V1s and V2s were packed into a few streets - the area is still partly undeveloped. These unassuming residential and commercial areas took the shots intended for the centre, a few miles North.
- duaneb 11y agoI guess they should have politely directed the missiles at the ocean? It's not like there's a lot of leeway for options when you're being bombed.