Fieseler Fi 103. V1

Les V-1, source Wikipedia.en Merci

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The [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Fi 103, better known as the V-1 ([Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]: [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] 1, "retaliation weapon 1") and Buzz Bomb, also colloquially known in Britain as the Doodlebug, was an early [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]-powered predecessor of the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

The V-1 was developed at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] by the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] during the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

During initial development it was known by the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] "Cherry Stone".

The first of the so-called [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] series designed for [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] of London, the V-1 was fired from "ski" launch sites along the French ([Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]) and Dutch coasts.

The first V-1 was launched at London on 13 June 1944, one week after (and prompted by) the successful [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

At its 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 [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] forces.

This caused the remaining V-1s to be directed at the port of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and other targets in Belgium, with 2,448 V-1s being launched.

The attacks stopped when the last site was overrun on 29 March 1945.

In total, the V-1 attacks caused 22,892 casualties (almost entirely civilians).

The British operated an arrangement of defences (including guns and fighter aircraft) to intercept the bombs before they reached their targets and as part of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], the launch sites and underground [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] were targets of strategic bombing.

Design and development

In the autumn of 1936, while employed by the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] company, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] began work on the further development of remote controlled aircraft; Argus had already developed a remote-controlled surveillance aircraft,
the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] (military designation FZG 43).

On 9 November 1939, a proposal for a remote-controlled aircraft carrying a payload of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) over a distance of 500 km (310 mi) was forwarded to the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] (German Air Ministry).

Argus joined with Lorentz AG and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] to develop the project as a private venture, and in April 1940, Gosslau presented an improved study of Project "Fernfeuer" to the RLM, as Project P 35 "Erfurt".

On 31 May, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] of the RLM commented that he saw no chance that the projectile could be deployed in combat conditions, as the proposed remote control system was seen as a design weakness. Heinrich Koppenbrug, the director of
Argus, met with [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on 6 January 1941 to try to convince him that the development should be continued, but Udet opted to cancel it.

Despite this, Gosslau was convinced that the basic idea was sound and proceeded to simplify the design.

As an engine manufacturer, Argus lacked the capability to produce a fuselage for the project and Koppenburg sought the assistance of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], chief designer and technical director at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

On 22 January 1942, Lusser took up a position with the Fieseler aircraft company. He met with Koppenburg on 27 February and was informed of Gosslau's project. Gosslau's design used two pulse jet engines; Lusser improved the design to use a single engine.

A final proposal for the project was submitted to the Technical Office of the RLM on 5 June and the project was renamed Fi 103, as [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] was to be the chief contractor.

On 19 June, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] gave Fi 103 production high priority, and development was undertaken at the Luftwaffe test centre at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

By 30th. August, Fieseler had completed the first fuselage, and the first flight of the Fi 103 V7 took place on 10 December, when it was airdropped by a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

Description

The V-1 was designed under the codename Kirschkern (cherry stone)^{[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]} by Lusser and Gosslau, with a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] constructed mainly of welded sheet steel and wings built of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]. The simple [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] pulsed 50 times per second,^{[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]} and the characteristic buzzing sound gave rise to the colloquial names "buzz bomb" or "[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]" (a common name for a wide variety of insects). It was known briefly in Germany (on Hitler's orders) as Maikäfer ([Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]) and Krähe (crow).[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]

Power plant

Ignition of the Argus pulse jet was accomplished using an automotive type [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] located about 2.5 ft (0.76 m) behind the intake shutters, with current supplied from a portable starting unit.

Three air nozzles in the front of the pulse jet were at the same time connected to an external high pressure air source which was used to start the engine.

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] gas was typically used for starting, and very often a panel of wood or similar was held across the end of the tailpipe to prevent the fuel from diffusing and escaping before ignition.

Once the engine had been started and the temperature had risen to the minimum operating level, the external air hose and connectors were removed and the engine's resonant design kept it firing without any further need for the electrical ignition system, which was used only to ignite the engine when starting.

It is a common myth that the V-1's Argus As 014 pulse jet engine needed a minimum [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] of 150 mph (240 km/h) to operate.

The Argus As 014 (also known as a resonant jet) could in fact operate at zero airspeed due to the nature of its intake shutters and its acoustically tuned resonant combustion chamber.

Contemporary film footage of the V-1 always shows the distinctive pulsating exhaust of a fully running engine before the
catapult system is triggered and the missile launched.

The origin of the myth may lie in the fact that due to the low static thrust of the pulse jet engine and the very high stall speed of the small wings, the V-1 could not take off under its own power in a practically short distance, and thus required to either be launched by [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] or be airlaunched from a modified [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] aircraft such as the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

Ground-launched V-1s were typically propelled up an inclined launch ramp by an apparatus known as a Dampferzeuger ("steam generator") which used stabilized [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] ([Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]).

Takeoff speed was 360 mph (580 km/h).

Beginning in January 1941, the V-1's pulse jet engine was also tested on a variety of craft, including automobiles and an experimental attack boat known as the "Tornado".

The unsuccessful prototype was a version of a Sprengboot, in which a boat loaded with explosives was steered towards a target ship and the pilot would leap out of the back at the last moment.

The Tornado was assembled from surplus [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] hulls connected in [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] fashion with a small pilot cabin on the cross beams.

The Tornado prototype was a noisy underperformer and was abandoned in favour of more conventional [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] craft.

The engine made its first flight aboard a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on 30 April 1941.

Guidance system


The V-1 [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] used a simple [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] to regulate height and speed, developed by [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in Berlin.

A weighted pendulum system provided fore-and-aft attitude measurement to control [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], (damped by a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien],
which it also stabilized).

Operating power for the gyroscope platform and also the flight control actuators was provided by two large spherical compressed air tanks which also pressurized the fuel tank.

These air tanks were charged to 150 atm (15,000 kPa) before launch.

There was a more sophisticated interaction between [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], and other sensors: a gyrocompass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control each of pitch and roll, but it was angled away from the horizontal so that controlling these [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] interacted: the gyroscope remained true on the basis of feedback received from a magnetic compass, and from the fore and aft pendulum.

This interaction meant that [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] control was sufficient for steering and no banking mechanism was needed.

In a V-1 which landed in March 1945 without detonating between Tilburg and Goirle, The Netherlands, about 6 rolled issues of the German wartime propaganda magazine 'Signal' were found inserted into the left wing's [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] steel spar, used for weight to preset the missile's static equilibrium before launching.

It is also known that several of the first buzz bombs to be launched were provided with a small radio transmitter (using a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] marked 'S3' but being equivalent to a then-current power valve, type RL 2,4T1), to check the general direction of flight related to the launching place's and the target's grid coordinates by radio bearing.

An odometer driven by a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on the nose determined when target area had been reached, accurately
enough for area bombing.

Before launch, the counter was set to a value that would reach zero upon arrival at the target in the prevailing wind conditions.

As the missile flew, the airflow turned the propeller, and every 30 rotations of the propeller counted down one number on the counter.

This counter triggered the arming of the warhead after about 60 km (37 mi).
^{[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]}
When the count reached zero, two [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] were fired.

Two [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] were released, the linkage between the elevator and servo was jammed and a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]
device cut off the control hoses to the rudder servo, setting the rudder in neutral.

These actions put the V-1 into a steep dive.
^{[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien][Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]}
While this was originally intended to be a power dive, in practice the dive caused the fuel flow to cease, which stopped the engine.

The sudden silence after the buzzing alerted listeners of the impending impact.

The fuel problem was quickly fixed, and when the last V-1s fell, the majority hit under power.

With the counter determining how far the missile would fly, it was only necessary to launch the V-1 with the ramp pointing in the approximate direction, and the autopilot controlled the flight.