V1 crash sites

One of my junior school teachers shot one down with AA, dunno if she got a medal for it, but she used to mention it a lot.

To test the theory.. How good was her aim with either:

Chalk
Chalk Board Duster
Anything else to hand..

When you were naughty? Did she include an element of deflection in her aiming?

One of my junior school teachers shot one down with AA, dunno if she got a medal for it, but she used to mention it a lot.

I know its not the area your looking for but still of intrest.

This map depicts the V1’s that came down in and arround the Southend Aera, not often on public view but it is at present for a limited time along with another depicting all the known locations of where bombs fell in Southend, also on show for a limited time is a small piece of a HE111 bought down over Southend and a numbe rof other artifacts photos and documents.

No help at all to poor old Steve, but at least one fell in the Sampfords or Hempstead (NW Essex) – my grandfather went belting off after it on his bike apparently!
I’m presuming that by the time he arrived the V1 had hit the deck and gone “pop”, ‘cos I don’t think he could cycle that fast!

Adrian

The imperial war museum in London may be able to help. They had a database that the public could play with (via a simplified screen and keyboard) the last time I went a few years ago, and you could look up every pretty well every known enemy bomb that had dropped and caused damage during the war. I think it used ARP records that someone had computerised, but I may be wrong. I used it to search down an off target V1 that partially destroyed my fathers house in the North Essex countryside, but it took some time as I don’t think you could search geographically or there was some other querk that I now forget. It even named the individuals killed or injured or made homeless in each case iirc. It looked ripe to go ‘on-line’ on the net even back then

Living in North Essex myself, I would be interested to know where this happened.
Coggeshall church was badly damaged by a V1, you can clearly see the repaired bits, another was found sitting in a hedge south of Chelmsford not that many years ago, there was also supposed to be one lying in a wood near Hunsdon airfield.
My late mother in law remembered them flying over Huddersfield having been air launched by Heinkels over the North Sea and aimed for Manchester.

Thanks again, several leads to follow.

I know I have seen map in some book somewhere which shows all the end points for the V1 but for the life of me I can’t remember which book it was.. It may have been Bob Ogley’s book on the V1: Doodlebugs and Rockets: Battle of the Flying Bombs

Paul, IIRC there is a map of the sites in Typhoon & Tempest at war, it only shows a small section of south London, still they had many bombs in a small area.

The imperial war museum in London may be able to help. They had a database that the public could play with (via a simplified screen and keyboard) the last time I went a few years ago, and you could look up every pretty well every known enemy bomb that had dropped and caused damage during the war. I think it used ARP records that someone had computerised, but I may be wrong. I used it to search down an off target V1 that partially destroyed my fathers house in the North Essex countryside, but it took some time as I don’t think you could search geographically or there was some other querk that I now forget. It even named the individuals killed or injured or made homeless in each case iirc. It looked ripe to go ‘on-line’ on the net even back then

There was a VI which took out a house in Chestnut Lane, Amersham.
At least two more are alleged to have fallen in Cholesbury, between Tring and Chesham.

I believe there was an article in “AP Monthly” which had a map of VI landing sites.

I know I have seen map in some book somewhere which shows all the end points for the V1 but for the life of me I can’t remember which book it was.. It may have been Bob Ogley’s book on the V1: Doodlebugs and Rockets: Battle of the Flying Bombs

Many thanks for the suggestions everybody.

I think the Kent map was produced by the Kent Messenger local newspaper, therefore it might be worth looking for centemporary Buckinghamshire local papers to see if there is anything comparable.

I saw the KM map a little while ago and was shocked at how many of the things there were.

Not strictly what your looking for I know but…

A map has been produced for the Borough of Southend shoing where every known bomb fell during WW2 including V1’s and V2’s.

Hope to get a look at it in the next few days, will try and get a picture of it.

A long shot I know, but I am trying to find information on V1s which overshot London and came down in Buckinghamshire (especially the north of the county), of which I understand there were 29. I know there is a crash location map for these in Kent, but does anyone know if something similar exists for my part of the world please?

I’d try the local library service, or the local town hall. The bomb plots were kept by the ARP during the war years and may be in the local archives, somewhere.