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From World War II, the unmanned V-1 flew in a straight line while its primitive guidance system counted up to a pre-determined number of small propeller turns at the nose tip, and then dropped from the skies.

How to defend against this? Fly an intercept plane to bump it wing-to-wing, so it flies in a straight line, but off-course. See below for an action shot.

The FZG 76 designation is for the “V-1 Cruise Missile” as found in the Smithsonian NASM: “The V-1 (Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or Vengeance Weapon One), was the world’s first operational cruise missile. Powered by a simple but noisy pulsejet that earned it the Allied nicknames of “buzz bomb” and “doodle bug,” more than 20,000 were launched at British and continental targets, mostly London and Antwerp, from June 1944 to March 1945. It carried a one-ton, high-explosive warhead and had a range of about 240 km (150 miles) but was very inaccurate.”

7 responses to “V-1 Cruise Missile Guidance System”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    British plane on left about to nudge the wing tip of the German flying bomb on the right (update from thread below; it is a modern render of what really happened):Backside:

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  2. Miocene Avatar
    Miocene

    Not sure what we’re looking at here. Looks more like one of the gyroscopes from the autopilot that controlled pitch and yaw. Heading was controlled by a magnetic compass. I’d always read that the purpose of tipping the wingtip was to send the V1 into a steep dive, from which it would not recover. Just changing the course should have no effect as the autopilot would just bring it back.

    Vergeltungswaffe usually gets translated as Vengeance Weapon but my understanding is that Vergeltung has more of a meaning of Judicial Retribution, not so much revenge as legal consequence.

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  3. eaglekepr Avatar
    eaglekepr

    And to be clear, the "action shot" is a CG screenshot, not an actual photograph. Although there are actual photos of a Spitfire in formation with a V-1 doing this (photo in Twitter thread: twitter.com/fakehistoryhunt/status/1264143963889586176 )

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  4. Miocene Avatar
    Miocene

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/eaglekepr] Thanks for the link. I should have realised that the photo of the spit and V1 was far too good to be true.

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  5. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/eaglekepr] yes, thanks! Reality is grainy, but good.

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  6. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Further info from Yann LeCun: “That’s a single axis gyroscope.
    A V1 had two of those, for roll and pitch.
    Yaw was controlled by a magnetic compass.
    Altitude was regulated by a barometric pressure sensor.
    The servomechanisms were powered by compressed air.
    All of this now can be done by a hobbyist using a $3 integrated IMU chip (found in every smartphone), a few cheap servomotors, and a $3 microcontroller with about 2 pages of code (even without cheating by using the GPS).”

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  7. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    More: “Steve Jurvetson a few V1 were toppled by Spitfires by destabilizing them. Apparently, they didn’t need to actually touch the wing tip, but merely approach it from under to 20cm. The aerodynamic effect was enough to make the V1 roll and overwhelm the gyro stabilizer.
    I think they even built Spitfires with clipped wings to increase the max speed (at the expense of maneuverability).
    But in the end, Tempests and Mosquitoes downed over 600 V1s each, while Spits downed 320 and P-51 230.
    Most of those were by firing cannons from a safe distance, if I understand correctly.”

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