What if the V-1 was used like this?

Well the V-1s were fired "blind", and just the off chance of hitting a "non-armored" ship would hardly be worth the expense. They were cheap to build, about 6,000 Reichmarks (without explosive) if memory serves. But if they don't hit anything of worth, or cannot damage it if they do, it is a cost benefit loss. Flying low enough to hit any ship below the deck is not only problematic, it might not be a doable task at the time. If you hit them above the deck line, armored or un-armored, at best you are going to damage stuff that can be repaired/replaced in hours if not days.

High explosive like the Ametol they carried is effective against homes, brick and mortar buildings, and wood. Not so much so against steel plate.

Don't worry about being "new" to the forum, that is how we all learn. We all have to start somewhere, and as long as the discussion is civil and at least somewhat well thought out, the "what-ifs" are welcome.

 

Pleasantly surprised with the feedback, I was curious what might come from the question.
It would be interesting(if possible) to computer model the results of the attempts.
But i doubt there is data for low flying V-1's. So that probably wouldn't go far.
But dropping some V-1s over the Normandy bay area might be interesting.
The critical parameter would be the CEP for short distanced V-1's. But that data may too not exist.

 

Another thing that must be kept in mind, the V-1 was so unreliable as a delivery system the Germans themselves set the "bomb fuse activation" to only work after it had travelled something like 30 miles flight-time. They didn't want the dang things going off in their faces. So the target has to be more than 30 miles away, and the guidance system was poor (being generous). They could target towns like Antwerp, and London, but generally they couldn't hit much smaller targets.

You do know that when the V-1s started being launched post D-Day, the Luftwaffe had almost NO recon flights of any worth, they relied upon their "agents" in Britain to tell them how to adjust their flight trajectory for better "accuracy".

Unknown to them, not a single "agent" was real, or hadn't been turned by "Double Cross (Operation XX)", so the data they got back on flying bomb destruction directed the V-1s away, not toward the targets. Consequently many of the "doodle-bugs" ripped up a lot of pasture, and probably killed some livestock.

 

That is in the same line of my thoughts, though with a slightly different angle.
The observed accuracy of the V-1 was in the context of the fallacious feedback. Bad accuracy got worse.
Now change that parameter in an area where the observations improve. Better accuracy, though still poor.
Add to that a much shorter distance(say 30 miles), further improvement. But again, no illusions on accuracy. Just thinking about how much the Circular Area Probable(CEP) becomes.
I am on the retired side, so this is why such questions appeal to me.

On last thought on the effect of a V-1 blast on an armored target. I forgot there is a comparable situation.
The Germans had their Elephant Tiger tank, and the Russians had a problem. No way to pierce its over sized armor with their gun set.
But they did have the SU-152 self propelled howitzer. Not elegant, but plenty of kick.
Drop a 152mm shell near the Tiger. Tiger took it pretty well. The crew not so much.
Steel transmits shock very nicely.
Unlikely to happen, but a V-1 concussion will do some damage, even on a battleship. Not so much to the ship, but to the crew unlucky enough to be in its vicinity.
Probably not enough shock to detonate the shell charges in their protection? But I'm not sure of that one way or the other.

 

One thing to think about when you consider a weapon.......sometimes it is not how successful it actually is that counts. Before the V-1, it took a plane to deliver a bomb--and artillery shells probably could do more damage. However this was a new delivery system that could deliver without pilot so weather was not as great a factor. If you lived in Britain, it could not be very good news to know that there was another way the enemy could hold a threat over you. For the Germans this made this rocket a success even if it did not have the great tactical success they may have wished for. Even for Americans, the feeling of the enemy having a new threat weighed heavily on their minds, hence a great post war interest in "rockets". Soon the unique noise of this bomb approaching brought on a new terror besides the noise of enemy aircraft. It did not matter that much how inaccurate it was ....it still brought new terror.

 

That doesn't seem truly comparable to me, the shock/concussive effect in a small volume (tank) cannot be compared to the air concussive effect in a ship. Troop transport or warship, there is just too much difference in internal air volume and internal bulkheads of ships to tanks to my mind.

It takes real "fire" to detonate the fresh bags of cordite (for the larger weapon feeds), and the brass contained rounds of the smaller warship weapons are not going off with shock pressure either. I think that is a non-starter too. Good thoughts though, the less than a ton of Ametol might not actually be much of a threat to anything but the antennas and masts of non-warships, and I just don't see how they could be delivered at "wave top" height, with any thought of more than random chance.

 

As far the concussive effect being lethal all over the ship, probably not. Was thinking more near the blast epicenter. I think parts of the ship would have deadly shocks. How extensive, that might require some more thought. Also, think electronics. Those would likely be effected. Possibly fire control?

On the random chance, here is what is often quoted about the V-1. A 11 mile CEP over a distance of 200 miles. Likely based on the London impacts, though not absolutely sure.
So, let us take a 1/10 scale example of 20 miles. I know the V-1 was safety locked for something more, but a good starting point.
A simple way(very simple) of error estimation is being linear. We'll say the error is a combination of intrinsic inaccuracy of the autopilot and wind speeds. Those are the 2 factors most often mentioned.
It probably was not linear, likely much worse. But if we say linear, you get(perhaps) a CEP of 1.1 miles.
Factor in much improved observation feedback, the CEP likely improves.

 

Since all "electronics" were pretty much reserved to the superstructure, and were vacuum tubes (fast replace) based, probably not much repair time. It would sort of be like a Piper Cub hitting the twin towers instead of a set of 767 Boeing jet liners. The Empire State took the impact of an unloaded (B-25?) bomber on one of the upper floors, and with the exception of the employees who happened to be on that floor, in those offices (11 souls), no deaths.

I suspect that the relatively small explosive warhead of a V-1 on a "hull" (which is problematic to say the least), made of steel plate would be less than deadly other than those unfortunate souls who happened to be within feet of the impact point. Others might be "dazed" or "stunned", but it seems unlikely that more than limited damage to either ship, personnel, or morale is possible. And given the tech of the time a real random chance throw of the dice.

 

Well, given that the majority of ships in and around Normandy were unarmored or very lightly armored, a V-1, given a "hull" hit, would likely have a very telling, and possibly fatal result to any ship up to and including a light cruiser.

However, until, you can get the V-1 to consistently hit a target 30 feet above sea level, arguing about the blast effects of 1,900 lbs of Amatol is academic.

In that regard, the only possible way for the Germans to do this would be to use the Fieseler Fi-103R, "manned V-1" in suicidal attacks similar to the Japanese Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka.

 

Interestingly, that parallels some of my thoughts. I was thinking up to a light cruiser would be hard hit.
Accuracy is everything here. Now I don't believe that the V-1 was going to wipe out the naval presence.
But a small number of hits could trigger a disproportionate response. Screams from the Navies, 'get those V-1 ramps shutdown at all costs'.
And you consume some more air resources which were much needed elsewhere.
It wasn't like it was cake walk through the Bocage. Every bit of allied air superiority was needed in ground fight.

 

Just a couple of thoughts
1) the Germans had a perfectly good anti battleship warhead developed for the Fritz-X that could probably be adapted for the V-1
2) Would it be possible to adapt the very crude but effective "optical altimeter" used by the dambusters to a pilotless vehicle? IIRC they put two different angled beamlights under the plane and when the two hit the same spot the plane was at right height for bomb launch, it obviously only worked at night and probably 1940 technology had no way to "feedbak" the data to the controls without a human in the loop.

IMO what you are thinking about is a 1940 technology anti Shipping Missile, the Fi 103 was an area weapon and making an ASM out of it would require major changes and probably remove it's main advantage (very low cost), to have a decent chance to hit moving ships you need either some sort of terminal guidance or a small CEP and flight time of a few seconds like a gun shell.

A possibly workable approach would be a scaled up V-1 with an acoustic torpedo or a something like the Italian "motobomba" circling torpedo as payload, the latter was only effective against moored targets but was used with good result in the December 2 1943 attack against the densely packed Bari harbour and was more in line with the "do it cheap" design philosophy of the V1 than the G7es T5.

 

Those are reasonable thoughts. Sadly(from the German perspective) reason had gone out the window quite a while ago.
The Germans did have some good anti-ship tech, and it could have been better. And it made a lot more sense militarily.
The post idea was about a very small 'what if'. It was possible for V-1's to have been aimed towards the Normandy landings/navies.
That was perfectly simple. Reality was Hitler may have had you shot if you suggested such a thing.
But he was unpredictable, his moods changed quickly.
Plainly, the weapon was not well suited for this role. But the large numbers have a quality all their own.
Let us say it was done, and mass firings were launched at the Normandy beaches and naval areas.
There was some chance of hitting valuable targets. And a better chance of creating disarray in the allied ranks.

 

This area was pretty well saturated with TACAIR during the day. So even launching will be problematic. I don't know if the USN vessels were cleared to use proximity fuses for AA fire at this point. If they were I suspect there would be little chance of a V-1 getting past them. There might be more damage inflicted by the AA fire than the missiles.

 

I also am not sure what the rules were on the new proximity fuse for use by the USN in the ETO, I do know they were banned from use on land for fear one might not detonate and be recovered by the Nazis and reverse engineered to create their own. They were cleared for use later, and were very effective in "air burst" use against entrenched troops.

They would probably have been cleared for use against the V-1 by the USN if they weren't already after the first one showed up in the "ship basin".

 

The other problem is that even if you managed to somehow work out the guidance bugs to a point where it posed a danger to ships to some degree it would only still be effective against merchant ships or ones at anchor at most. Against a fast moving, maneuvering smaller warship it is just too easy to evade it as it comes in. The V-1 is fairly slow as missiles go and it would show up on radar at 20+ miles or visually to about the same distance giving several minutes to evade it.
The other problem is that warships as armed are more than capable of shooting it down. So, in ones or twos it would be a minimal threat at most.

 

They were cleared for use in Britain and the 90mm version proved very effective there. The clearance for use ashore I believe came during the Battle of the Bulge.

 

Thanks for all the feedback, interesting thoughts and I had thought of some these myself.
Here's a list in no particular order on some of these.

1. The shoot down by fighters. The number of fighters that could catch the V-1 was actually limited. The Tempest was one of them. In practice, the V-1 was hard to take down by fighter. But it was done over England to a certain extent. But you now have a much shorter time of V-1 flight. About 10 minutes from my estimates to target. Less opportunity for shoot down, all other things being equal. Another is the effective time for fighters to be in the activity area goes down. Before they were very close to their bases. Over the Normandy bay, the loiter time goes down. Again, this is all other things being equal.

2. And the proximity fuses. Not sure if they were present on board the ships. I suspect they were not because there would have been the chance of having duds drop in enemy areas. And the allies were very keen to keep this secret. And there was a quirk with the V-1's and the AA. Sometimes, the AA made the V-1's more deadly. The reason being it was easier to bring down the V-1 than to detonate it. If you look to the records over England you'll see accounts of this.

3. This is just part of 2, but it got a bit long as one thought. If you start dropping V-1's by AA in the area, you may improve things for the V-1. You may improve V-1 accuracy, at least in an 'area saturation' sense. There is a lot of much more vulnerable shipping near by. Some of these V-1's may well have over shot the area if you just let them go.

4. Lastly, the flight of the V-1 is now mostly over open water. You're going to get more rockets on the aim point than you did shooting at London. Couple that with increased accuracy of the shorter distances.

 

As far a guidance, I was thinking you got what you got. Germany's resources were pretty much tapped out at this point. So ones or twos wouldn't be much, I agree on that.
But slow? By no means, V-1 was fast for the time at low altitude, about 400 MPH i believe.
You're probably not going to be able to dodge it. Now I don't think it's likely for that situation to happen. The V-1 at very low altitude(say 100 feet) is probably a slim chance.
The more likely use is to launch a many V-1's as you can, and have them fall from height. Again, the odds are long. But for Germany, you're facing long odds at this time.

edit - I do see your point about the early waning capabilities, but I'd think that isn't going to be useful with the accuracies of the day. Tell you the truth, getting the ships to maneuver is a minor success. This may interfere with the role in providing artillery support.

 

One of the main reasons that was a problem over Britain was that the debris fell on the areas were people were. If they were intercepted over water and exploded by the proximity fused AA, who/what would suffer? If (and I believe the fuses were available to the USN), the V-1s launched against a "ship basin" were shot down, that would lessen rather than increase the German attempts to make this work.

They were cheap to build, but to make them fly as would be needed here the price would go up. Losses of more expensive "one off" weapons for little to no gain isn't going to be pursued by a cash strapped Third Reich.

 

My understanding is it was more likely to bring down a V-1, and then it would detonate on the ground. They setup the AA in the countryside on the likely paths. You're bringing down the V-1's well away from the aim point(London).
Now in the naval situation, you're shooting down V-1's in the aim point. That's a big difference.
In which case you're having a live round drop within the target area.
I don't have hard numbers of 'shot down V-1's versus 'detonated' V-1's. That just the impression I get when I read about the experiences of the AA crews.

edit - A quick search does show the proximity fuses were on the ships. They were restricted to firing over the sea. I'm a little surprised by that since mistakes are easy, and I'd have thought the risk would have been considered high. But you learn something every day.