Why you think the Normandy landings were such a surprise, Germans were incapable to make recon flights over over Weymouth - Selsey area during spring early summer 44, say nothing on London. Only the arrival of Ar 234 changed the situation.
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...Wouldn't recon flights be a better measure of success, or even chase planes? Only jets would be able to actually keep up, but aside from that, you could still have prop based recon flights over the target area. (or launched ahead, with the missiles catching up on the target area around the same time as the recon craft)
You couldn't have recon flights following low, obviously, so weather/cloud conditions would determine ability to document the immediate effects on targets.
cheap enough to be expendable
Why you think the Normandy landings were such a surprise, Germans were incapable to make recon flights over over Weymouth - Selsey area during spring early summer 44, say nothing on London. Only the arrival of Ar 234 changed the situation.
That rather illustrates the problem with attacking a coastal city because the if the center of the ellipse is the docks in the center of the ellipse then roughly 1/2 of the fired missiles will fall into the sea to begin with. To get 42 missiles to fall on land how many were fired?
There were Luftwaffe recon flights over Britain before the Ar234.Why you think the Normandy landings were such a surprise, Germans were incapable to make recon flights over over Weymouth - Selsey area during spring early summer 44, say nothing on London. Only the arrival of Ar 234 changed the situation.
The Germans didnt need recon in 1944 they already knew exactly where the allies were and what they were going to do. Unfortunately most of the info was bogus. By the summer of 1944 Hitler was actually listening more to the British secret service than he was to his own staff, facts played only a small part in the situation.
No they don't, that's why Heer was demanding early June 44 daylight recon flight over Southern England ports others than Dover area, from the latter area they had some photos.
The point I was making was that you do recon to decide strategy and tactics. Hitler had been convinced that the main attack would be across the Pas de Calais and so any recon would be ignored. Hitler controlled the disposition of the tanks, even after D Day he was moving tanks away from Normandy, towards Calais. Given that, any recon would only "prove" Hitler was correct because proving a mad man to be wrong is dangerous.
IIRC it was other way around, von Rundstedt co thought that attack would be across the pas de Calais and Hitler got, at least initially, an intuition that the target will be Normandy. And AG B (Rommel) decided the placement of the 3 PzDivs under his command 21st, 116th and 2nd, all three rather near to the coast for rapid a counterattack but dispersed along the coast, because the actual place of the invasion was unknown to germans.
The V-1 as used was useful for targeting a very large city AND it's close suburbs. It wasn't much good for anything smaller.
It's also worth remembering that the V 1 and to a degree the V 2 were terror weapons, post raid recon wasn't going to reveal much; the damage done was intended to be partially psychological, so an assessment of fallen rubble isn't going to tell you how the population are coping with the impact of the campaign.
...German reconnaissance was carried out over the British mainland throughout the war, but the results were indifferent to the point of being useless, since most attempts to undertake flights into British airspace were curtailed by the aircraft being intercepted. In 1944 a lone Bf 109 was shot down over England and crashed; the Brits were surprised to find it had a camera in the aft fuse - this is well known about the '109 of course, but it does scupper the theory that the Germans weren't at least trying to take images over Britain during the war.
To answer the original question, given the technology of the day, it was a waste of time and resources to even consider a turbojet engine for a cruise missile like the V-1. It wasn't until long after the war when companies like Williams and Turbomeca produced small, relatively cheap and efficient turbojet engines that were way more practical for cruise missile application.
The designs Ohain was working with pre-war aren't all that far from the simpler/smaller range of designs that appeared post-war, even more similar to some of the smallest turbojet designs ever mass produced. (in part due to radial inflow turbines being more practical to use at those scales -they also ended up taking over most automotive turbocharger designs and I do wonder if Hirth considered applying them to their own turbocharger developments)The idea was there earlier, Like the Fairchild J44 and the Westinghouse J32 ( 9.5 or 9.5A, only 9.5 on on diameter) but getting engines that worked and were cheap enough to be expendable may have been a problem in the early years.
Might using recon flights able to follow/detect the V-1s with radio transponders be more useful? (corroborating the results of the data being sent back)I don't see how aerial reconnaissance to do a sort of bomb damage assessment for the V-1 strikes could possibly have worked. Just look at the distribution of the impact points. The 42 V-1s that fell around Southampton were in an area roughly 33 miles by 5 miles! An aircraft making a pass over Portsmouth or Southampton, or flying up the Thames estuary to make a few passes one side or another of the river would be lucky to distinguish any damage caused by the V-1 strikes.
Might using recon flights able to follow/detect the V-1s with radio transponders be more useful? (corroborating the results of the data being sent back)
It would be a high risk method of corroboration, if the Germans felt that to be necessary. I have no idea how many V-1s were equipped with transponders. Given the wild inaccuracy of the weapon it would have to be a large number to give any sort of statistically useful data.
Cheers
Steve