The gutteral burbling of an approaching V1 Flying Bomb – or “Doodlebug” as they were colloquially known – was a sound like
nothing else. Once heard in that summer of 1944, it was never forgotten. It was, quite literally unearthly. Randomly, the V1's motor would suddenly cut, and in an eerie silence the missile went plummeting into a dive.
If anything, the 11 seconds of silence that followed, preceding the impact and detonation, were as unnerving as the raucous approach. If not more so.
My late mother Eileen Saunders recalled them as “the longest 11 seconds”. And she had good reason to know how it felt.
Life during that summer in the East Sussex market town of Hailsham where she lived was nerve-wracking; the moments before impact, excruciating. If you were lucky you managed to count to 12 seconds. It meant you'd survived.
The distant blast triggered relief. But it was a feeling tinged with guilt. You were still alive, others possibly not.
Four years earlier, my mother cheered while German aircraft were downed during the Battle of Britain. Despite everything, she felt impervious to fear and personal danger.
Instead, it was a time of excitement. Victory seemed assured. After all, hadn't Churchill stirringly assured the nation of a glorious outcome?
By the early summer of 1944, D-Day had seen Allied forces in France pressing inland, the Germans slowly but surely pushed back. A corner had been turned. The war must soon be over, surely?
At last, an end to it all was in sight. And then came June 13. Peering into the darkness at 4am, two Royal Observer Corps men, Observers AM Wraight and EE Woodland, were atop their post on a Martello Tower at Dymchurch on the Kent coast. Covering the night shift, they heard an unfamiliar rasping roar approaching from the Channel. As the sound drew near, an unfamiliar shape came into view, trailing a jet of flame. The pair initially thought it must be an aircraft on fire. Then, realization dawned: this was the “flying bomb” they had been warned to expect. Grabbing the phone, they sent the pre-arranged code: “Diver! Diver! Diver!”
Hitler's deadly revenge weapon – in many ways the analogue precursor of the high-tech cruise missiles used in modern warfare – had arrived.
Minutes later, the first four flying bombs impacted: three in Kent and Sussex, and another striking a railway bridge at Bethnal Green, East London, claiming the first six victims.
Launched from fixed sites in northern France under the command of Oberst Max Wachtel of the 155th Flak Regiment, the first salvo was something of a damp squib.
Of the ten V1s sent off that night, four crashed soon after launch and two went into the English Channel. Only four made it to Britain's shores. Although casualties had resulted from the explosion at Bethnal Green, the other three missiles fell short in the open countryside. It was an inauspicious start for the Germans. The night before, of the nine V1s launched, none reached Britain.
The campaign, the Germans boasted, would deliver 500 V1s on London every day.
Although that figure was never reached, the program stepped up a gear by June 15 when no less than 151 flying bombs crossed the coast, 73 of them reaching London.
As the Allied forces advanced into France, defenses against the weapon were rushed into play on the other side of the Channel.
Primarily, the objective was to prevent missiles reaching London, where the potential for death and destruction was considerable.
Some of the early impacts had demonstrated the grim reality of what were now nicknamed Doodlebugs.
The defensive measures, though, were cold comfort to people living between the south coast and London.
The inhabitants of Kent and Sussex had already borne the brunt of the bombs that had fallen short. Now they could expect missiles to be brought down in their midst; Balloon barrage “curtains”, anti-aircraft guns and patrolling fighters combined to create an effective, if not impenetrable, barrier to London.
On the coast, Royal Observer Corps personnel launched red rockets if they spotted a V1 to attract the attention of patrolling fighters. My mother, though, had her own early warning system: the family dog.
Nell set up a distinctive howling wail once she detected a distant V1 – long before the sound was audible to human ears.
For the most part, RAF fighters could shoot the robot bombs down but it was a risky business; mid-air explosions saw fighters downed when the one-ton warheads exploded. Many pilots were killed and, on the ground, civilians would die after RAF fighter pilots learned a new trick: flying alongside the bomb and tipping it with one wing, toppling its gyroscopic control unit to send the V1 spinning down.
The trouble was, once a bomb was crippled, it could go anywhere. At Hailsham, Eileen was uncomfortably aware of this worrying fact. In early July, she watched an approaching V1 with a fighter close behind. Gradually, the pilot pulled alongside the missile, skilfully maneuvered into position and tipped the V1 with his wing to send the weapon plummeting into farmland.
Sadly, a farm laborer and Land Army girl were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of them died.
The next day, while walking my eldest sister in her pram, Eileen was understandably anxious when another V1 hove into view.
Again, an RAF fighter closed rapidly on the V1 – and my mother was directly in the line of flight. Grabbing her eight-month-old daughter, she jumped into a ditch as the duo of fighter and missile approached at alarming speed. Momentarily, she considered dragging the pram on top of them for added protection.
Before she had time to think properly, the danger was past. Peering from the ditch, she could see the V1 pulling away from the fighter, heading, inexorably, towards London.
And many still got through. On June 22, for instance, London experienced one of its worst V1 incidents.
On that day, a flying bomb's motor cut out over Aldwych in the City of Westminster, sending the missile plummeting earthwards. In an ear-rending explosion that reverberated across London, the blast was contained in the roadway – bounded on one side by the solidly imposing stone building of Adastral House, home of the Air Ministry, and Bush House opposite.
It was 2pm, just as office workers were returning to work. The street was crowded. In an instant, carnage of unimaginable proportions was visited on one of the capital's most famous and busiest streets.
In the blast, several London buses were simply torn apart. Literally nothing was left of them. Meanwhile, a brewer's dray, or cart, was thrown bodily into the air, landing on top of its unfortunate dray horse.
All around, a ghastly scene saw bodies, body parts, clothing and debris strewn far and wide. Six WAAFs, sunbathing on the roof of Adastral House, were sucked from the building when the blast's vacuum was filled by rushing air, dragging them into the street far below. Rescuers arriving on the scene were confronted by the screams and groans of the dead, dying, trapped and injured.
Mercifully, those nearby who survived uninjured were spared hearing the anguished cries; all had been rendered temporarily deaf by the blast, the explosion massively amplified within the cavernous stone walls of Aldwych.
The Aldwych bomb, sadly, was one of more than 2,000 that ultimately reached London. Many caused a grievous toll, some worse than Aldwych. All told, that blast left a death toll of 48, with another 200 injured, many seriously.
This was exactly why it was imperative that the V1s needed to be kept from London. But those in the Home Counties paid the price for the capital's protection.
Not many miles from Hailsham, the village of Westfield and its few hundred inhabitants saw an astonishing 13 V1s downed in its tiny parish. Remarkably, this rain of Doodlebugs caused only one fatality; mostly, the bombs fell on open countryside.
Tragically, however, one dropped directly onto a small cottage after being caught by an RAF fighter. Fourteen-year-old Ken Munday saw it happen. Until now, the war had been a time of adventure and excitement for him. On Monday July 3, 1944, that all changed. As he watched a British fighter send another V1 earthwards over the village, a thunderclap explosion activated a smoke pillar skywards, staining an azure sky dirty brown.
Excitedly, Ken raced helter-skelter towards the scene. Keen to pick up souvenirs of the latest Doodlebug, he stopped dead in his tracks at the end of the village.
Ahead of him lay the smoking ruins of Spring Cottage; it was where Doris Lynch lived with her husband Alfred.
In such a small village, it was inevitable that he knew them both. Now, he could hear the heavily pregnant Doris's anguished screams as she lay trapped in the rubble of her home. At that moment, the awful reality of war hit home. It was no longer
an adventure.
Dug from the wreckage, 23-year-old Doris succumbed to her dreadful injuries and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave at the
village church.
Nevertheless, Ken – now in his 90s – has continued to carefully tend the grave, although now it has a simple marker inscribed with Doris's name and date of death. She and her unborn child were just two of the many hundreds of “collateral damage” victims of London's defense across Britain's southern counties.
Doris Lynch was one of many in southern England who paid the ultimate price of protecting London from the Doodlebugs. Had the bomb that killed her got through, it would likely have caused widespread death and destruction. Just as one did at Aldwych.
If V1s could be stopped over the countryside, then lives would be saved. It was a difficult call but one that had to be made for the greater good. However none of this was of any consolation to those living there.
But for fate, my mother could so easily have been another Doris.
Nevertheless, the V1 campaign wound down in August 1944 when the launch sites were captured by the Allies, many having already been pulverized by RAF and US bombers. Nevertheless, some 9,251 V1s were launched against Britain, with 2,515 reaching London.
They claimed at least 6,148 lives and seriously injured some 17,900 others. The Doodlebug summer had been one to remember. Although many would prefer to forget it.