The “Londoner’s Diary” section on Page 2 of the Jan. 7, 1944, Evening Standard included what to citizens of the bomb-ravaged British capital must have seemed a rather uninteresting news item. Under the heading Still Empty it read in part: “Down in Chelsea two rows of houses in Sloane Court were requisitioned over three months ago. Tenants had to pack up and find other accommodation. The flats are still empty.” Six months later those former residents had reason to give thanks they no longer lived at Sloane Court. The same could not be said for the military service personnel who had displaced the tenants, many of whom belonged to the U.S. Army’s 130th Chemical Processing Company.
Shortly before 8 a.m. on Monday, July 3—just shy of a month after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, France—a German V-1 flying bomb struck the residential Chelsea street, causing massive destruction and killing dozens of soldiers and several civilians. It marked the single worst incidence of loss of life for American servicemen due to a V-1 blast and the second worst V-1 incident in London during the war.
The word “bomb,” when referring to a device carried and dropped by an airplane during World War II, generally conjures an image of an explosives-packed cylindrical shell with stabilizing fins at its tail and no internal guidance system. Such a description is grossly inadequate when describing a V-1 and how it functioned.
Purportedly launched by Adolf Hitler in retribution for the devastating Allied bombing campaign against German cities and towns, and precipitated by the D-Day landings, the V-1 was the first in a proposed series of (“wonder weapons”). The “V” stood for (“retaliatory weapon”), a role for which the V-1 was well suited. It was an ingeniously designed pilotless aircraft, more than 27 feet long and weighing 4,740 pounds. Propelled by a gasoline-fueled pulse-jet engine with a top speed of 400 mph and an operational range of 160 miles, it carried a warhead packed with 1,870 pounds of Amatol, a high-explosive mix of TNT and ammonium nitrate. Catapulted from an inclined launch ramp pointed roughly toward its target, the V-1 relied on a guidance system comprising gyroscopes, a magnetic compass, barometer, vane anemometer and an odometer. The flying bomb maintained a cruising altitude of around 2,000 to 3,000 feet until it reached the vicinity of its target, when a cutoff device set the rudder in neutral, putting the V-1 into a steep terminal dive.
