In October 1939, Argus proposed Fernfeuer, a remote-controlled aircraft carrying a payload of one ton, that could return to base after releasing its bomb. While employed by the Argus Motoren company, Fritz Gosslau developed a remote-controlled target drone, the FZG 43 ( Flakzielgerat-43). It was an innovative design that used a pulse-jet engine, while previous work dating back to 1915 by Sperry Gyroscope relied on propellers. In 1935, Paul Schmidt and Professor Georg Hans Madelung submitted a design to the Luftwaffe for a flying bomb. These V-1s became known by Finnish soldiers as " flying torpedoes". The flight and impact of another prototype was seen by Finnish frontline soldiers they noted that its engine stopped suddenly, causing the V-1 to descend sharply, and explode on impact, leaving a crater 20–30 metres (66–98 ft) wide. On one occasion, several Finnish soldiers saw a German plane launch what they described as a bomb shaped like a small, winged aircraft. In 1944, a number of tests of this weapon were apparently conducted in Tornio, Finland. The attacks stopped only a month before the war in Europe ended, when the last launch site in the Low Countries was overrun on 29 March 1945.Īs part of operations against the V-1, the British operated an arrangement of air defences, including anti-aircraft guns, barrage balloons, and fighter aircraft, to intercept the bombs before they reached their targets, while the launch sites and underground storage depots became targets for Allied attacks including strategic bombing. After this, the Germans directed V-1s at the port of Antwerp and at other targets in Belgium, launching a further 2,448 V-1s. At peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fired at southeast England, 9,521 in total, decreasing in number as sites were overrun until October 1944, when the last V-1 site in range of Britain was overrun by Allied forces. The Wehrmacht first launched the V-1s against London on 13 June 1944, one week after (and prompted by) the successful Allied landings in France. Because of its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched into England were fired from launch facilities along the French ( Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts.
It was developed at Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1939 by the Luftwaffe at the beginning of the Second World War, and during initial development was known by the codename "Cherry Stone".
The V-1 was the first of the Vergeltungswaffen ( V-weapons) deployed for the terror bombing of London. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany as Kirschkern ( cherry stone) or Maikäfer ( maybug). Its official Reich Aviation Ministry ( RLM) designation was Fi 103. The V-1 flying bomb ( German: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1" ) was an early cruise missile.
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