How a V1 Flying Bomb works

[willedoo]

Quite a few years ago I had a diesel powered shower when I first moved a caravan onto my block before I built. It was 3" truck exhaust as the flue with a 4" truck exhaust jacket over it giving a half inch water jacket. The inlet cold water plumbed into the bottom of the jacket and hot water piped from the top of the jacket to the shower rose. The 3" flue extended below the water jacket section and had a swing in/swing out separate section at the bottom with a bottom in it like a cup to hold the combustible material and the diesel. The best combustible material was cotton waste of the type that workshops used to use as rags and to mop up oil spills; it's like a lot of tangled cotton threads. When I didn't have that I used to cut cotton rags into thin strips. It took a bit of experience to get a good hot shower. It was a fine line with the diesel and cotton as it had to have the right proportion. I had to have a shower using a bricklaying trowel to continually adjust the swing in/swing out position of the bowl to get it to draw right. I don't think I'd use the design again. A coiled copper pipe in water heated by a BBQ burner plate as a heat exchanger works better.

[old man emu]

4 minutes ago, willedoo said:

I had to have a shower using a bricklaying trowel

Gee-zuz! What sort of filthy work were you doing?

[willedoo]

Before I built the truck exhaust shower I just used a basic donkey heater to heat water for a bath. It was a 60 litre oil drum on it's side with a fire under it. I had it set up so I could pour a 9 litre bucket of cold water into it at the top which was plumbed down to the bottom of the drum. The 9lt. of cold would displace and push upward 9lt. of hot water which would flow out an outlet at the top. You could easily set one up with permanent sealed plumbing and use it by just turning on a tap as long as you had a pressure relief valve in the drum.

[willedoo]

2 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Gee-zuz! What sort of filthy work were you doing?

A good barnacle scraper.

[old man emu]

Barnacles only grow on things that don't move. Were you a supervisor?

[facthunter]

They grow on ship's bottoms too. I ate some in Barcelona.  Nev

[old man emu]

I've heard of a completely useless bloke who was described as a 'barnacle on the arsehole of Progress'.

[onetrack]

I'm a little surprised that the Ukrainians haven't gone for production of something like buzz bombs. With current technology, they could produce many terrifying, large size, high-explosive, rocket-speed attacks against Russian troops, military bases, and Russian infrastructure, at relatively low cost - with their speed making them very hard to shoot down. The buzz bombs lack of speed was their undoing, modern propellants would soon fix that.

[facthunter]

They were able to be followed and tip a wing toppling the gyros but it took a while.. You'd still have to worry where it ended up... .. Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

They were able to be followed and tip a wing toppling the gyros but it took a while..

Early attempts to intercept and destroy V-1s often failed, but improved techniques soon emerged. These included using the airflow over an interceptor's wing to raise one wing of the V-1, by sliding the wingtip to within 6 in (15 cm) of the lower surface of the V-1's wing. If properly executed, this manoeuvre would tip the V-1's wing up, over-riding the gyro and sending the V-1 into an out-of-control dive. At least sixteen V-1s were destroyed this way (the first by a P-51 piloted by Major R. E. Turner of 356th Fighter Squadron on 18 June) 

 

Got to give those pilot's their due. There wasn't much of an airframe to shoot at and I suppose most V1s were destroyed when the explosive component was hit. Imagine tailing one, shooting at it from behind then flying through the explosion and debris.

[onetrack]

I couldn't imagine any WW2 fighter being capable of surviving flight through the debris of an exploding V1.

[onetrack]

Here's a link to an amazing photo of a V1 buzz bomb, taken just seconds before impact. I have no idea who took the photo.

 

 

[facthunter]

If you shot a bomber with it's load of bombs you'd have a similar problem..  Nev