Photo: A Silenced Buzz Bomb

Among the artifacts held by the Imperial War Museum in London - at least back in 2004, when this picture was taken - was one of the few surviving examples of the German V-1, a primitive predecessor of the cruise missile. Nearly ten thousand of these were fired at England and thousands more at Antwerp and Belgium in 1944 and 1945, killing more than twenty thousand people over the course of nine months of terror bombing. The name "buzz bomb" came from the distinctive sound of its pulse-jet engine, likened to a motorcycle running underwater.

Why's it important? Today, May 7th, is V-E Day; it marks the sixty-seventh anniversary of Germany's unconditional surrender, and the end of the Second World War in Europe.


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