Ep287: Hitler's V1 Flying Bomb

About this episode

This episode explores the story of Hitler's V-1 flying bomb and its impact on London during World War II.

At a quarter past four in the morning on the 13th of June 1944, the world's first cruise missile fell out of the sky onto a railway bridge in the East End of London. It killed six people. One of them was 19-year-old Ellen Woodcraft. Another was her eight-month-old son. Their husband and father was a soldier in Normandy. He would not learn of their deaths for days. In this episode, Mat McLachlan tells the story of Hitler's V-1 — the buzz bomb, the doodlebug, the first robot weapon ever used in war. From the secret laboratories at Peenemünde to the photo-interpretation tables at Medmenham, from the Guards Chapel disaster on Waterloo Sunday to the Tempest pilots tipping flying bombs out of the sky with their wingtips, this is the eighty-eight-day campaign that brought a new kind of terror to a city that thought the Blitz was over. Through authentic voices from the summer of 1944, we hear George Orwell guiltily hoping the next bomb falls on someone else, the diarist Vere Hodgson writing that the brain of man has gone so far beyond his morals that the only thing to do is scrap him and begin again, and Field Marshal Alan Brooke recording his disgust as the Home Secretary panics in…

People in this episode

Host: Mat McLachlan

Topics covered

• V-1 Flying Bomb
• World War II
• Military History
• Cruise Missiles
• Civilian Impact of War
• Historical Narratives

Keywords

• V-1
• buzz bomb
• doodlebug
• cruise missile
• World War II
• London
• military technology
• historical accounts
• civilian casualties

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Double Cross Committee

Places: East End of London, Peenemünde, Medmenham