World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ENGLAND: The Score for Robots

“I’m on a better wicket now and can say more than I could a week ago.” began tall, young Duncan Sandys (rhymes with ampersands), facing a packed press conference in London. Lieut. Colonel Sandys —also M.P. and husband of Churchill’s daughter Diana—who has been in charge of Britain’s defense against buzzbombs, then gave the facts of the robot blitz, now ended:

¶ In 80 days the robombs had damaged 870,000 English houses, killed 5,817 people, seriously wounded 17.036 others.

¶ Allied counterattacks during 18 months against the rocket coast expended 2,900 airmen, 450 planes, 100,000 tons of bombs.

¶ The Germans launched 8,000 one-ton robombs—an average of 100 a day, beginning June 16—of which 2,300 reached British targets.

¶ Only Typhoons, new Spitfires and P-51 Mustangs could fly the 350-400 m.p.h. necessary to catch the robombs, but these fighters accounted for 1,900.

¶ Ack-ack guns shot down 1,500 robombs. Of the 2,800 guns, one-eighth were in U.S. batteries, which Duncan Sandys praised handsomely.

¶ A year and a half ago a WAF photo-interpreter, Flying Officer Constance Babington-Smith, gave the first alarm: she spotted a plane model in a picture taken over the German experimental station at Peenemünde. A black smudge around the model looked like the burn of a rocket blast.

¶ One-third of all robombs launched got through to England the first week. By the final week, only 9% got through.

¶ Among London’s hard hit districts (Croydon, Woolwich, Greenwich, Orpington, Wandsworth, Lewisham, Beckenham, West Ham, Camberwell and Lambeth) Croydon got it worst. Only 211 of its citizens were killed but 75% of its houses were damaged or destroyed (Coventry’s percentage in the 1940 blitz: 66).

¶ One long-guarded secret: 92% of all casualties occurred in London.

Time for Rejoicing? Britons naturally felt relieved at the end of the robot blitz. A few of them regarded this feeling as premature, fearing that V-2s might soon be dropping on Britain from within Germany itself. But few if any appeared to realize the terror that the robot still might represent for Britain.

As soon as the robot is improved in distance and accuracy, Britain will live permanently in range of a barrage from Europe. If another war starts, Britain and Germany may make a shambles of each other’s cities any morning, at the push of a button.

For that matter, if the robot is improved as much as the tank and the plane were between wars, one end of the shambles might be in New York.