Overview

The Fieseler Fi 103, better known as the V-1, was a war device developed by the German company Gerhard-Fieseler-Werke in the early 1940s and used by the Luftwaffe in the final phase of the Second World War. The V-1, the acronym stands for Vergeltungswaffen 1, translated from the German ""Retaliatory Weapon 1"" and so renamed by Joseph Goebbels for propaganda purposes, combined the characteristics of an airplane with those of an aeronautical bomb and can be considered the first example of a cruise missile. The aircraft was proposed in three variants capable of carrying a war load of 1,000 kg at an operational altitude of 5,000 meters. The first ones were to be equipped with a 12-cylinder inverted V Argus As 410 of 500 HP, at a cruising speed of 700 km/h, the last one with a new type of engine, then in the early stages of development, the pulsejet, a jet engine capable of providing 150 kg of thrust and that would have guaranteed a planned cruising speed of 750 km/h. During the war, over 30,000 examples were produced; each of these required 350 hours of work (including 120 for the autopilot), at a cost that was 4% of that of a V-2, with a comparable war load (830 kg charge of high-explosive Amatol, or TNT and ammonium nitrate, but sometimes a type of cheap explosive, Danarit, was used).

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