AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 55 / 112

Plate 55 of 112 · Second World War · Pulse-jet flying bomb

Fieseler Fi 103 (V-1)

Fi 103 A-1, painted as BAPC.403, a full-scale reproduction of the Fieseler Fi 103 A-1 (V-1) flying bomb, the pulse-jet cruise missile launched against London and south-east England from June 1944, acquired by the Ulster Aviation Society in 2010 and painted as it is shown at Maze/Long Kesh: glossy dark olive green upper surfaces over light blue undersides with an irregular wave-shaped demarcation low on the fuselage sides and halfway up the Argus As 014 pulse-jet, ‘Nicht auftreten’ stencilled in white on the lower nose and ‘Nicht anfassen’ on the fin, no national markings, the launch lug under the fuselage and the small distance-measuring propeller on the nose; the society displays it nose-down in a black steel wall frame, so it is shown level on a floor cradle using the frame’s two hoop straps, stencils are shown on the port side only and the fuselage diameter follows a published drawing.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as BAPC.403, a full-scale reproduction of the Fieseler Fi 103 A-1 (V-1) flying bomb, the pulse-jet cruise missile launched against London and south-east England from June 1944, acquired by the Ulster Aviation Society in 2010 and painted as it is shown at Maze/Long Kesh: glossy dark olive green upper surfaces over light blue undersides with an irregular wave-shaped demarcation low on the fuselage sides and halfway up the Argus As 014 pulse-jet, ‘Nicht auftreten’ stencilled in white on the lower nose and ‘Nicht anfassen’ on the fin, no national markings, the launch lug under the fuselage and the small distance-measuring propeller on the nose; the society displays it nose-down in a black steel wall frame, so it is shown level on a floor cradle using the frame’s two hoop straps, stencils are shown on the port side only and the fuselage diameter follows a published drawing. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (320 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (flying bomb); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Fi 103 A-1 modelled here.

History

The V-1

The Luftwaffe’s answer to the army’s A4 rocket was a pilotless aeroplane, cheaper and quicker to build. Robert Lusser of Fieseler designed it in 1942 around a pulse-jet engine developed by Paul Schmidt and the Argus company: a long steel tube with a grid of spring-steel flap valves at the front, which fired about fifty times a second and gave the weapon its harsh, rasping drone. Under the cover name Flakzielgerät 76, an anti-aircraft target drone, the Fi 103 was first launched at Peenemünde in December 1942. It had a cigar-shaped steel fuselage with an 850 kg warhead of Amatol in the nose, short straight wings and a simple tail, with no ailerons and no undercarriage.

The pulse-jet gave too little thrust at low speed to get the weapon off the ground, so it was fired from a ramp about 50 m long by a piston driven by steam from hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate, which hooked into a slot under the fuselage and threw the bomb off at about 250 mph. A gyroscopic autopilot held its course and height, and a small propeller on the nose counted off the distance flown. When the count ran out the elevators were locked down and the bomb dived; on early rounds the dive starved the engine of fuel, and people on the ground learned to dread the moment the drone stopped. Production at the Volkswagen works at Fallersleben and in underground factories built by forced labour came to about 30,000.

The first were fired at London on 13 June 1944, a week after D-Day, and the British called them doodlebugs or buzz bombs. About 10,000 were launched at England, from ramps in northern France and later from Heinkel He 111 bombers over the North Sea; some 2,400 reached London, killing more than 6,000 people. Against them the RAF flew Tempests, Spitfire XIVs, Mustangs and the first Meteor jets, whose pilots shot them down or tipped them over with a wing tip, and in July 1944 the anti-aircraft guns were moved to the coast, where proximity-fused shells and radar brought down most of those still getting through. As the Allies overran the launch sites, the V-1s were turned on Antwerp and Liège, and the last to reach England fell in March 1945.

This airframe

Fi 103 A-1 full-scale replica BAPC.403

BAPC.403The airframe modelled

The Ulster Aviation Society’s V-1 is a full-scale replica, not an original, registered as BAPC.403 and acquired by the society in 2010. It is kept with the society’s collection at Maze/Long Kesh, where it now hangs nose-down in a black steel frame with two hoops round the fuselage. The model shows it in its current paint: glossy dark olive green over light blue, with an irregular wavy line between the two low on the fuselage sides and halfway up the pulse-jet, ‘Nicht auftreten’ (do not step) in white on the lower nose and ‘Nicht anfassen’ (do not touch) on the fin, and no national markings. A dive down a wall is no way to show a model, so it stands level on a simple floor cradle built from the frame’s two hoops. The stencils are shown on the port side only, the side the photographs show, and the fuselage diameter follows a published drawing.

See it at Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the V-1 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 112 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.