Doodlebugs

Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Mon, 19 May 1997 09:49:58 +0100 

Bernard Bergonzi to Jenny Jo Lane and Daniel Clark, via Phillip
Kirkpatrick.  Answers to questions about doodlebug.


>1. Did anyone you get killed or injured by the "little blitz?"

   1. No.  An uncle of mine was killed in an air-raid during one of
   the `big blitzes' in 1941


>2. How many "little blitz" would you see on an average during a week?

   2.  My memory is of the `little blitzes' going on for a few
   nights in about February 1944.  I had thought that that was all
   there were, but looking at a history of the period I see they
   went on intermittently into the spring, but I don't remember
   this.  They made very little impact, compared to the `big
   blitzes' of 1940-41 (when I was not in London), nor to the
   flying bomb or doodlebug attacks which began in June 1944.


>3. Was London the only target Germany fired these at?

   3.  I don't think the `little blitzes', which were made by
   bombers, were directed elsewhere than London (unlike the big
   blitzes, when many British cities were attacked). Nor were the
   flying bomb attacks; they were sent from launching sites in
   Northern France, Belgium and Holland, and London was about the
   limit of their range (many of them fell short, onto the the
   countryside in Kent) .


>4.Was there any reason that you know of that they called them doodlebugs?

   4. It's a puzzle to know where the name came from.  According to
   the Oxford English Dictionary, `doodlebug' is an American name
   for the larva of a certain insect.  Someone may have thought that
   these weapons in flight were rather like a flying insect.  They
   were otherwise known as flying bombs, buzz bombs, or V-1's, from
   the German Vergeltungswaffe = reprisal weapon.


>5.At the time, how did you handle what was going on around you?

   5.  Life just went on.  I was 15 at the time, when one takes
   things for granted as they are and lives in the present; the war
   had been going for nearly five years and in a way one had got
   used to it, whilst still longing for the end (which came the
   following year).


>6.What effect did the expeience have on the rest of your life?

   6. Can't say.  Compared with the terrible things many people
   underwent in the war, these dangers and disturbances were pretty
   small-scale.  I think they affected me less than other, more
   personal events in my early life, like illness.  Still, I'm
   grateful to have survived.