V2 Missile Strike At Braughing During Ww2

A Memory of Braughing.

My great friend Mr Vernon Blyth passed away in 2017 (Vernon Frederick Raymond Blyth 15/02/28- 31/01/17). In the year prior to Vernon’s death, I made a short video with him. In this he relates being evacuated from London to Braughing to stay with his ‘Aunt Madge (who I believe was married to Henry Clarke) during the Second World War. As an evacuee Vernon worked on a farm (Cox’s Orange Pippin Apple – COPA). One day, aged 16, he was working on the farm (rate of pay 6d per hour) with another boy when a V2 rocket impacted in a coppice some 200 yards away. Vernon said that they heard a great whoosh followed by an almighty explosion. The horses the boys were using to plough bolted. Thinking an aircraft had crashed they went to investigate. They found a huge crater left by the missile with all the trees knocked over by the blast and red hot debris around. There were plenty of dazed rabbits running about, so quick thinking Vernon dispatched six of them for the larder (he never went to work without his ferret, to supplement wartime rations with fresh rabbit). Fortunately the only casualties of this V2 were the rabbits Vernon harvested. The Germans were fastidious record keepers and subsequent research showed that Vernon's V2 was launched at 10.48 hours on November 24th 1944 from Battery 444, Loosduinen (Site 18) on The Hague Coast near Rotterdam. In order to travel the 196 miles to Braughing it made a 65 second burn which took it to altitude of 50 miles then it free fell to target at three times speed of sound – in total about a five minute flight. A V2 crater is typically 20m wide and 8m deep, ejecting approximately 3,000 tons of material into the air. The V-2 rocket programme consumed a third of Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical technologies. To distill the fuel alcohol for one V-2 launch required 30 tonnes of potatoes at a time when food was becoming scarce – for Germany an expensive waste of scarce resources that achieved the sole result of adding half a dozen of Braughing’s finest bunnies to Aunt Madge’s wartime larder! Vernon also described the perils of being out in local fields during target practice by RAF and USA fighters. A bomber would tow a target which was then fired at using live ammunition (probably .303 or .50 calibre bullets). These bullets would eventually free fall to earth if they missed the target. On one occasion Vernon said that a bullet hit the water butt at Aunt Madge’s cottage in the centre of Braughing village – and on another occasion a young lad he was out with in the fields with was hit in the foot by a bullet. The injured boy was called Jimmy Cox and had to be carried back to the village for help. Vernon had been evacuated to Braughing from the West End of London. His time at Braughing spurred a life-long love of the countryside, a passion nurtured whilst poaching on The Hamels Park Estate, during his evacuee years (Despite Vernon’s occasional poaching the Estate keeper became a great friend and helped cultivate Vernon’s life-long love of rural pursuits).
Ian Mason

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