V-1 V-2; Hitler's Vengeance on London

Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991. First Scarborough House Trade Paperback Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing thus. Trade paperback. Very good. 203, [5] pages. Sticker on front cover. List of Contributors. A Note on Sources. Illustrations (including line illustrations). Maps. Index. David Alan Johnson has been a working non-fiction writer for more than 40 years. He received his B.A. in English during the early 1970s and began looking for work in the publishing field. After working at several unrewarding jobs, he decided that the only way to enter publishing would be as a writer. In 1977, he began his first book. The Second World War had always been of great interest, especially stories about wartime London, so he decided to write about the London Blitz of 1940 and 1941. Two years of writing and research later, The City Ablaze was signed by William Kimber & Co., a small London publisher. It is an eyewitness account of the German fire blitz of 29 December 1940, which was one of the most devastating nights of the war for London. Reviewers loved The City Ablaze. It was called ‘a riveting account, told with precision and commendable accuracy,' and ‘an eminently readable and palatable work.' When it was published in the United States as The London Blitz, Publisher's Weekly said that the book was ‘a gripping panoramic recreation of the disaster.' Johnson's second book was also well-received on both sides of the Atlantic. V for Vengeance is the story of Hitler's V-1 flying Bomb and V-2 rocket attacks against London from June 1944 until March 1945. ‘The book is at once compelling and chilling reading,' was one reviewer's opinion. The US edition is called V-1/V-2, and was just as well received as it had been in Britain. The full story of the year Hitler's guided missiles fell on London. Only five minutes from launch to impact--not even enough time to sound an air raid alert. They could not be tracked and they traveled too high and too fast to be shot down. This is not a scenario of World War III, but the story of the development of the Nazis' secret weapons and the devastation they wrought that, given a little more time, might have turned the tide on World War II. Seen through the eyes of the Germans who devised and launched these weapons, as well as the people on the receiving end, here is an unprecedented "you are there" reconstruction of those times when the death throes of the Nazi empire claimed tens of thousand of Allied civilian casualties. V-weapons, known in original German as Vergeltungswaffen [German: "retaliatory weapons", "reprisal weapons"], were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly strategic bombing and/or aerial bombing of cities. They were the V-1, a pulsejet-powered cruise missile; the V-2, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile (often referred to as V1 and V2); and the V-3 cannon. Germany intended to use all of these weapons in a military campaign against Britain, though only the V-1 and V-2 were so used in a campaign conducted 1944-45. After the invasion of western Europe by the Allies, these weapons were also employed against targets on the mainland of Europe, mainly in France and Belgium. Strategic bombing with V-weapons killed approximately 18,000 people, mostly civilians. The cities of London, Antwerp and Liège were the main targets. V-weapons formed part of the range of the so-called Wunderwaffen (superweapons, or "wonderweapons") of Nazi Germany. The buzzing sound of the V-1's pulse jet engine was likened by some to "a motor cycle in bad running order". As it reached its target and dived, there would be a distinct sound of the propulsion unit spluttering and cutting out; the eerie hush before impact which followed was quite terrifying, according to observers. The brief interval of silence before detonation was also a warning to seek shelter (later V-1s were corrected to have the originally intended power dive). 1,115 V-2s were fired at the United Kingdom. The vast majority of them were aimed at London, though about 40 targeted (and missed) Norwich. They killed an estimated 2,754 people in London, with another 6,523 injured. A further 2,917 service personnel were killed as a result of the V-weapon campaign. Since the V-2 was supersonic and could not be heard (and was rarely seen) as it approached the target, its psychological effect "suffered in comparison to the V-1"