E E Woodland and A M Wraight were manning Mike 2, an Observer Post on top of a Martello Tower at Dymchurch in Kent, on the night of 12/13 June 1944, when at 04.08 hours they spotted the approach of an object spurting red flames from its rear end and making a noise like ‘a Model T Ford going up a hill.’
What they had spotted was the first of Hitler’s vengeance weapons: the Vergeltungswaffe 1, a Fieseler Fi-103 flying bomb.
As the V-bomb approached to within five miles of them, Woodland put an urgent telephone call through to the Royal Observer Corps centre at Maidstone, saying, ‘Mike 2, Diver, Diver, Diver – on four, north-west one-o-one’, thereby setting in motion the defensive measures planned for such an event.
