1943 USAAF Ninth Air Force directive establishes Operation CROSSBOW (operations against German V-1 missile launching sites) for the IX Bomber Command and provides a list of targets to be attacked immediately. The V-1 was the first of the so-called “Vengeance weapons” series deployed for the terror bombing of London. It was developed in 1939 by the Nazi German Luftwaffe at the beginning of the Second World War. Because of its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched into England were fired from launch facilities along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts. The Wehrmacht first launched the V-1s against London on 13 June 1944. At peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fired at south-east England, 9,521 in total, decreasing in number as sites were overrun until October 1944, when the last V-1 site in range of Britain was overrun by Allied forces. rochestermilitary.com
