December 24, 1944: PFC Burton Holloway and the men of the 786th Tank Battalion had been ensconced in an army camp near Macclesfield, UK for about two weeks. Dad had been preparing for war since shortly after his induction on July 6, 1943, but today was the first in which he came under fire from the enemy. The camp was awakened around 0520 in the morning when sirens went off alerting everyone of an air raid. Macclesfield is near Manchester, which was an important production center for war munitions in WW2. The Manchester area had been heavily bombed by the German Luftwaffe during the Christmas Blitz of 1940, but by December of 1944 it had been over two years since any German planes had made it as far north as Macclesfield. Figuring it was a false alarm, most of the guys went back to bed. A short time later, at about 0535, something came over the camp that sounded to the men like a bomber, until the engine cut out and a few seconds later there came the sounds of a loud explosion. In fact, what they heard overhead was the engine of a German V-1 Flying Bomb. Over the next 20 minutes the guys heard several additional V-1s fly over, cut out, and explode. The V-1 was a rather primitive missile. It was launched in the direction of the target and an internal gyroscope kept the flight relatively stable until the pre-determined amount of time necessary to take the bomb to the target area counted down and the missile went into a steep dive. The dive cut the fuel supply, which accounts for the moments of silence before the bomb hit the ground and exploded. The accuracy rate wasnt all that great, but the V-1 still caused considerable damage in Britain over the course of the war. The December 24th attack on Manchester consisted of 45 V-1s launched from the bellies of Heinkel He111 bombers flying over the North Sea. Of the 45 launched, 14 fell short into the sea. Of the remainder, only one actually hit in Manchester. Four fell quite close to Macclesfield, and most of the others fell within the general area surrounding Manchester. Although the intended target was relatively unscathed, a total of 42 people were killed in the attack and 109 were injured.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 22:35:46 +0000