A small quibble
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Updated: November 13, 2009 10:54 AM
Re: Courage Remembered (NewsLeader, Nov. 7)
Thank you for once again honouring the fallen servicemen and servicewomen and veterans of our past wars. I hope you won’t mind if I suggest one small correction in your account. You have Canadian gunners trying to shoot down a V2 rocket launched from France. During the Second World War no one ever tried to shoot down a V2 rocket. That was because it was impossible to see or hear one coming.
They came straight down with about the speed of a lightning bolt and made the same rumbling sound of a lightning bolt, but you didn’t hear that until after the explosion.
What the Canadian gunners were firing at would have been a V1 flying bomb, or as they were usually called, a “buzz bomb.” I had a lot of experience with both types as I was in Antwerp during the 175 days in which Antwerp was struck with 4,248 V1s and 1,712 V2s causing over 4,500 deaths and 7,500 serious injuries. Most, if not all of the V2s were launched from Germany or Holland.
Dale Lawrence
Burnaby
