Doodlebug Summer

The creation of the VI flying bombs in Peenemunde, and the RAF's battle to delay their launch until after D Day. Eyewitness accounts from the RAF pilots who bombed Peenemunde and from German scientists who felt the weight of the assault.

Hitler's V1 flying bombs killed nearly 6,000 people in London and the South of England. The anti-aircraft guns were initially ineffective against them. We hear from the men and women who fought the V1s from the ground, learn what they did off-duty - and see the impact of a V1 that killed 121 people in a chapel one Sunday morning.

A new fighter aircraft challenges the V1 doodlebug in the skies above the South of England - and Tempest ace Wing Commander 'Bee' Beamont remembers his first hair-raising encounters with the pilotless aircraft. On the ground, the Wilkinson family from Croydon re-live the events recorded in their day-to-day diary.

The V1 'doodlebugs' kill 452 people in a single week - and, as the defenses protecting London are strengthened, more and more flying bombs fall on the towns and villages of Southern England - as far west as Dorset. In Kent, thousands take to living in the caves near Chiselhurst.

There was no defense against the V2 rocket, Hitler's second Vengeance weapon. It killed 3,000 people in London and the South of England in six months. And the V1 'doodlebugs' were now being slung under bombers and launched in mid-air. Life in Doodlebug Alley is grimmer than ever.

After D-Day, the Allies race to capture the V1 and V2 launch sites - and in Northern France we talk to those Frenchmen forced to work for the Nazis, building ramps and constructing rockets, and discover the site of Hitler's V3 supergun that was aimed on London.