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A SCHOOLBOY'S BRUSH WITH A V1 AND V2.

It was the Summer of 1944 and at the age of 15 I had just finished the Matric exams. My school was the Southend-on-sea High School for Boys which had been evacuated to Mansfield in 1940 (just as well because the school received a direct hit from a bomb shortly afterwards) but had returned to Southend in 1943 when the threat of invasion had receded.
During the Summer holidays a number of us had gone to work on a farm at Paglesham, a few miles from Southend and were given jobs such as potato picking, hoeing, etc.
One humid overcast morning about half a dozen of us were hoeing a field of cabbages when we heard the unmistakable, and to us rather frightening, sound of a Doodlebug (V1) approaching. We looked up and although the flying bomb must have been very low because the noise was quite deafening, we could see nothing because of the low cloud. Just when it seemed to be immediately above us, the engine cut out and we knew that it would then crash and explode. With absolutely no hesitation we all ran to the side of the field and dived into the ditch. After what seemed an eternity, but was probably only about 10 seconds, the ground shook and there was a tremendous explosion. After some delay we decided it was safe to move and we crawled out of the ditch, I still clutching my hoe! There was a great dust cloud three fields away where the Doodlebug had crashed into a potato field, fortunately injuring no one and causing little damage.
Towards the end of the holidays we were leaving the farm late one afternoon when there was a loud explosion about half a mile away at Paglesham East End. Debris had been thrown high into the air and there were white objects floating down which we took to be dead birds. We thought it must have been another Doodlebug but we had heard no engine noise.
The next morning when we arrived at the farm there were military personnel everywhere and some very high ranking Air Force and Ministry officials. We weren't allowed to approach the area of the explosion until some days later but when we did we found that whatever had caused the explosion had left a very deep crater but had done relatively little damage to surrounding trees. The objects which we thought were birds falling to the ground were, in fact, small pieces of aluminium sheeting. I picked up one piece as a souvenir, which I still have, and it caused great interest because it had been joined by welding – a technique which we had apparently not mastered with aluminium in this country. We still did not know what had caused the explosion.
It was some days, or perhaps weeks, later that it was announced on the radio that Germany had developed a rocket weapon (V2), and were using it against us. Clearly the Paglesham explosion must have been one of these weapons – was it the first to fall in this country?

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