Operation Crossbow - V-1 Defence

V-1 Defence

On January 2, 1944, Roderic Hill submitted his plan to deploy 1,332 guns for the air defence of London, Bristol and the Solent against the V-1 "Robot Blitz" (the "Diver Operations Room" was at RAF Biggin Hill). V-1s that hadn't run out of fuel or veered off course were attacked by select units of Fighter Command (No. 150 Wing RAF) operating high speed fighters, the anti-aircraft guns of Anti-Aircraft Command, and approximately 1,750 barrage balloons of Balloon Command around London." Flabby was the code name for medium weather conditions when fighters were allowed to chase flying bombs over the gun-belt to the balloon line, and during Operation Totter, the Royal Observer Corps fired ‘Snowflake’ illuminating rocket flares from the ground to identify V-1 flying bombs to RAF fighters. After the Robot Blitz began on the night of June 12/13, an RAF fighter first intercepted a V-1 on June 14/15. Moreover, anti-aircraft guns increased the rate of downed V-1s to 1 per 77 rounds fired after "the first few weeks of proximity fuse operation" (Reginald Victor Jones). By June 27, "over 100,000 houses had been damaged or destroyed by the V-1... and shattered sewage systems threatened serious epidemics unless fixed by winter."

Of the 638 air-launched V-1s that had been observed (e.g., by the Royal Observer Corps), guns and fighters downed 403 and the remainder fell in the London Civil Defence Region (66), at Manchester (1), or elsewhere (168, including Southhampton on July 7). Additionally, the gunners on W/Cdr. S.G. Birch's Lancaster claimed they downed a V-1 over the target area on a March 3, 1945, raid on the Ladbergen aqueduct.