V2 bomb sites in Walthamstow
View V2 sites in Walthamstow in a larger map
A quick post to highlight this fascinating google map of V2 bomb attacks on Walthamstow in the final years of the 2nd World War.
The maps creator, TimStroud got the information from “The Story of Civil Defense, by Ross Wyld. & The War over Walthamstow. Issued by Walthamstow Borough Council, Oct 1945″
“The full story cannot yet be told for security reasons, but it can be stated that Walthamstow had more than its fair share of V2′s”
The V-2 rocket was a German long range ballistic missile developed towards the end of the 2nd World War. It was the world’s first long-range combat-ballistic missile and the first man-made object to make a sub-orbital spaceflight.
More details of bombing raids on Walthamstow can be found on the Culture24 site.
By 1944 Luftwaffe raids were becoming less frequent, but the map below, dating from April 1944, shows bombs dropped during a single raid in the early hours of April 18/19 1944 over Leyton and Walthamstow.
There are also tales of the War in Walthamstow on the BBC’s Peoples War website.
Walthamstow Bomb Census Map dating from 18 – 19 April 1944.
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There was a policy of announcing ‘gas main’ explosions – ‘flying gas mains’, as the public rapidly came to call them – but with misleading locations. So if an explosion was announced in Harrow, when it actually was in Deptford, the Nazis might reduce the fuel, and land the bomb in rural Kent.Using also misleading leaks to ‘turned’ double agents, this ruse was quite successful. The Lea Valley would have been a pretty juicy target in its own right, though with more open space than many areas.
6,000 people died under the V bombs; take a look at the remembrance book that sits in a stand in Walthamstow Library. Then look up V3 on You Tube.
mdj,
The practice of giving false locations regarding V-Weapon incidents did have some effect with V1 attacks. The flight distance of these weapons was controlled by a counter connected to a small propeller in the nose. When the counter had reached a set number the flight would be terminated and the bomb would fall. The Germans believed the false reports that the V1′s were mostly overshooting London, and reduced the range accordingly. This is why areas south of the Thames (particularly Croydon, which lost approximately 25% of its housing) suffered more than the rest.
It is questionable whether such false locations would have had any effect on the V2 due to its less-than-pinpoint accuracy. It had a fairly large Circular Error Probable (CEP). This is an area around the target within which at least half of the weapons should fall. For example, a CEP of 0 would signify that at least half of the weapons should hit the target exactly (the nominal target was around Tower Bridge). A CEP of 1 would signify that at least half of the weapons should fall within a radius of 1 mile of the target, and so on. The V2 had a CEP of 11.
Add to this that the rockets were still hitting central London during the final few weeks of the campaign, and you will see why false reports were pretty much useless.
It is often said that such reports did work because so many of the rockets fell short, in Essex. However, the V2 was launched from Den Haag, Netherlands. London was therefore at the limit of operational range (although a few rockets did succeed in overshooting) and the flight path was directly over Essex. Any shortfalls – due to faulty accelerometers, for example – were therefore bound to fall in this county.
Sorry for droning on so long, but V-Weapons are a hobby of mine
PS: The map shows 15 V2 incidents in Walthamstow. In fact, there were 18.