Hitler's Revenge Weapons
Page 1
Hitler’s Revenge Weapons
This book is dedicated to my Dutch wife, Margaretha, who endured the Nazi occupation in a part of Holland from which Hitler’s revenge weapons were launched, and whose help has been invaluable.
By the same author
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Dragon Rampant: The Story of No.234 Fighter Squadron, Merlin Massara Publications, Dunstable, 2007
Built to Endure: The RAF Airfield Construction Branch in the Cold War, Old Forge Publishing, Peterborough, 2009
From the Cockpit No.14: Swift, Ad Hoc Publications, Suffolk, 2011
Thinking the Unthinkable: The Lives of RAF and East German Fast-jet Pilots in the Cold War, Astonbridge Publishing, Gloucester, 2012
Hitler’s Revenge Weapons
The Final Blitz of London
Nigel Walpole
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
PEN AND SWORD AVIATION
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright © Nigel Walpole, 2018
ISBN 978 1 52672 288 1
eISBN 978 1 52672 289 8
Mobi ISBN 978 1 52672 290 4
The right of Nigel Walpole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.
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Contents
Glossary
Equivalent Ranks
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 The Lure of Space
Chapter 2 Deadly Innovation
Chapter 3 Testing Times
Chapter 4 No Hiding Place
Chapter 5 Open Fire!
Chapter 6 Homeland Defence
Chapter 7 Too Close for Comfort
Chapter 8 Codename ‘Crossbow’
Chapter 9 Hochdruckpumpe – And What Next?
Chapter 10 Hitler’s Final Fling
Chapter 11 The Spoils of War and Operation Backfire
Chapter 12 The Reckoning
Chapter 13 Requiem
Epilogue
Bibliography
Glossary
AA Anti-Aircraft
AAEF Allied Air Expeditionary Force
ADGB Air Defence of Great Britain
AFS Auxiliary Fire Service
AIS American Interplanetary Society
ARP Air Raid Precautions
AVKO Altenwalde Versuchskommando
CIU Central Interpretation Unit
FR Fighter (armed) Reconnaissance
GC & CS Government Code & Cypher Service
GDA Gun Defended Area
HTM Historisch Technisches Museum
HVA Heeresversuchsanstal
HWA Herres Waffenamt
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee
LAA Light Anti- Aircraft (artillery)
MI15 Military Intelligence Section 15
NII-1 Russian Research Institute
OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
OKH Oberkommando der Heeres
PDU Photo Development Unit
PGM Precision Guided Missile
PI Photographic Interpreter
PIU Photographic Interpretation Unit
PoW Prisoner of War
PR Photographic Reconnaissance
PRU Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
RAE Royal Aircraft Establishment
RATO Rocket Assisted Take-Off
RMB Rheinmetall Borsig
ROC Royal Observer Corps
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
SAM Surface-to-air Missile
SPOG Special Projectile Operations Group
SS Schutzstaffel
SSM Surface-to-surface Missile
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VfR Verein für Raketen Raumschiffahrt
WaA Herreswaffenamt
We Prüf Heereswaffenamt Prüfwesen
2TAF Second Tactical Air Force (RAF)
Equivalent Ranks
Preface
From our rowing boat on Connaught Waters, Epping Forest, my sister and I merely glanced up as another of Hitler’s first generation Vergeltungswaffen, his retaliation or ‘revenge’ weapons, the V1 flying bomb, ‘Doodlebug’ or ‘buzz-bomb’, passed overhead with that ominous, pulsating sound. It was August 1944, and in the previous two months this had become such a familiar sight and sound that it barely deserved comment, except that this one seemed to be heading directly across the Lea Valley to our home when the engine stopped and an eerie silence preceded the inevitable, shattering explosion. There being no telephones immediately available in those days, we hoped for the best, determined to use every minute of the one hour on the water, bought for a precious two shillings (10p). In fact, the tiny, pilotless aircraft did end its days, and those of its victims, in our hometown of Cheshunt, happily missing our house, as would many more in the six months to come. Many of us, particularly those who lived in ‘Doodlebug Alley’ did become a little blasé with the seemingly endless succession of V1s, unaffected by darkness or bad weather, only diving for the nearest cover, perhaps under a bed or kitchen table, if the engine stopped. For those who were on the receiving end, it was different matter, often a horrific, life changing experience – or worse.
There was no such escape from the second Vergeltungswaffe, the V2 stratospheric rocket. Once launched from its site on the continent, again more than 100 miles from London, it became all but invisible to the human eye and gave no warning before impact and penetration, the characteristic double boom following split seconds after ending its supersonic, vertical dive. Short of living fulltime in deep, concrete bunkers, survival from the V2s was a matter of luck, and stoic Londoners became quite fatalistic over their chances.
Luckily, I managed to dodge all the V1s and V2s which landed around me, and I was too young then to appreciate the massive leap forward in the science and engineering the Vergeltungwaffen represented. It was only later, when aeronautics became my profession, that I began to take a real interest in their evolution, gestation and employment, together with the politico-military intrigue which dogged their development, but also the Allies’ defences against them. Many erudite texts have dealt with this epic story, some limited to spec
ific aspects, perhaps leaving the reader without the benefit of the necessary background, while others have attempted to cover the whole history, from start to finish, with the danger that the reader might become mired in detail. I have attempted to tell the full story in a relatively short work, of necessity forfeiting some detail in favour of the salient points and particular areas which I hope will be of interest to a lay readership.
Acknowledgements
This account of Vergeltungswaffen, Hitler’s ‘vengeance’ weapons, could not have been written without help from those dedicated to these specific aspects of Second World War heritage. In particular, I would like to thank Herr Michael Gericke, and the staff of the Historisch-Technisches Museum (HTM), Peenemünde, the staff at Mittelbau-Dora, Valerie Noel at Mimoyecques, the staff at la Coupole and Blockhaus d’Éperlecques, for their assistance and for allowing me to use my camera in their respective museums. I am grateful to Michael Mugford and Chris Halsall for giving me access to the Medmenham Collection and permission to use some photographic reproductions; to Janet Grove of the Waltham Abbey Historical Society; and to local historian, the late Peter Rooke, who helped me recall the effects the flying bombs and rockets had on our young lives in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. Inevitably, with the number of sources researched, I have found variations in ‘fact’, detail and, of course, opinion; these have been subject to correlation, interpolation and reservation, and in this I seek the reader’s indulgence. To the best of my knowledge, I have not intruded on any intellectual property rights, or used material which is under copyright.
Chapter 1
The Lure of Space
Folklore, if not fact, invariably attributes the introduction of rocketry to the Chinese, based on the belief that, as early as 200 BC, they stumbled on the explosive effects of a ‘black powder’ – a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal – which would be called ‘gunpowder’. What is certain is that the Chinese were obsessed with firecrackers and then fireworks, as means of warding off evil spirits. It could also be that the use of this black powder as a propellant was discovered, almost incidentally, when a humble firecracker maker closed one end of a tube filled with the crude explosive, and ignited the other, to have it dart around him erratically until the mixture was exhausted. Be that as it may, it was this principle that would result in the ‘rocket’, although the term itself was probably not used officially until the fourteenth century. Deeper study reveals a convoluted history, steeped in mythology and legend, told in stories ranging from the outrageous to the believable, with associated dates also arguable.
For instance, it is said that, in about 400 BC, the Greek inventor Archytas heated water in a clay model of a pigeon to boiling point, whereupon it propelled itself along a wire by steam, using the principle of ‘action-reaction’. This was copied centuries later by another Greek, Heron Alexandrinus, known as ‘Hero of Alexandria’, who used steam-propulsion to rotate his aeolipile sphere, to what specific purpose remains unclear. Then there is the tale of man’s first known attempt to achieve a vertical take-off in a rocket-borne vehicle, when the Chinese inventor, Wan-Hoo, attached forty-seven rockets to his large wicker chair and had them all ignited simultaneously, he and his chair then vanishing in a puff of smoke – never to be seen again. While continuing to use explosive mixtures in firecrackers and fireworks for displays, the Chinese soon realised the potential of rockets as weapons of war, and in the thirteenth century they began supplementing their traditional bows and arrows with small rockets attached to ‘fire arrows’, for use against the Mongols in 1232 at the Battle of Kai-fung-fu. Their effectiveness may perhaps be judged by the fact that the Mongols themselves then began developing the rocket for military use.
For most of the next three centuries there was a proliferation of interest in explosive-propelled weapons, including an extraordinary, surface-hugging torpedo, which resembled a giant turtle, designed by the Italian Joanes de Fontana. Meanwhile, the Frenchman Jean Froissart was achieving greater accuracy with rockets fired from tubes, and an English monk, Roger Bacon, increased their range significantly with much improved gunpowder. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, just when enthusiasm for the science seemed to be waning, the German scientist Johann Schmidlap paved the way for space exploration when his modular, two-stage ‘step’ rocket achieved unprecedented heights.
A century later, in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton put rocket science on a firm footing with his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathamatica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which established the ‘Universal Laws of Motion’. Best known and well proven is his Third Law of Motion’: ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’; in effect: ‘reaction-thrust’, the basic principle of rocket propulsion.
By the end of the eighteenth century, rockets were again gaining some prominence in battle, typically with their use by the Mysore Indians against the British East India Company in southern India. This inspired the British inventor and artillery pioneer Sir William Congreve to develop rockets for use against Napoleon in 1812. Given their lack of accuracy vis à vis the gun they tended to be used more in large salvoes, as area weapons, inter alia severely affecting the morale of an enemy. While rocket accuracies did improve incrementally, typically with ‘spin stabilisation’, in which exhaust gasses played on suitably angled vanes, this was outweighed by the development of the breech-loaded cannon and rifled barrels, thus tending to render the gun the battlefield weapon of choice.
Schmidlap’s two-stage rocket probably got great minds to think more about the use of rockets in space exploration and they were further encouraged to do so in 1903 by Konstantin Tsiolkovski’s visionary reports on the possible use of liquid propellants to achieve the necessary ranges, this earning the Russian the title ‘father of modern astronautics’. A little later the American Robert Goddard, while experimenting with forms of propulsion, claimed that, notwithstanding the need for fuel tanks, combustion chambers and turbines, liquid fuels would be the preferred option for space rockets and set out to prove it. His first attempts to do so, using a mixture of petrol and liquid oxygen, sent his rocket a mere forty feet into the air, for a distance of sixty yards in a flight lasting two-and-a-half seconds, but his persistence paid off, as he ventured into gyroscopic control and guidance with ever larger rockets, while developing highly desirable parachute recovery systems.
Meanwhile, Europe was fielding more of its own rocket pioneers. Hermann Oberth, born in Transylvania in 1894, became renowned for his thesis on rocket travel into outer space, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket into Planetary Space), published in 1923. The timing was good; Germany was now rising from the ashes of the First World War, determined to resume what it considered to be its rightful place in the new world, and space was as yet a largely untapped field for exploration. In 1925 Dr Walter Hohmann published Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskörper (Reaching the Heavenly Bodies), which explored orbital dynamics in space and predicted a fuel-efficient path between two different orbits. Suitably impressed, another eminent space writer, Willi Ley, sought Hohmann’s help in preparing a selection of papers on the possibility of spaceflight, Die Möglichkeit der Weltraumfahrt (The Possibility of Space Travel), published in 1928. The successful Apollo landings on the moon and the innovative Voyager spacecraft owe much to Hohmann, who had been able to steer clear of the burgeoning Nazi party and its ambitions for rockets as weapons of war.
Another prominent engineer and science writer of the time, Max Valier, was inspired by Oberth to simplify his mentor’s writings for the informed layman in his Der Vorstoss in der Weltenraum (The Advance into Space), and followed this with several equally worthy articles on the subject – typically ‘Berlin to New York in One Hour’, and ‘A Daring Trip to Mars’. In March 1928 Valier was involved with Friedrich Sander in the successful introduction of the first manned rocket car, the RAK-1, produced by the car maker Fritz von Opel, which achieved a speed of 47 mph, while its successor RAK-2, powered by twenty-four solid-fuel rockets,
reached 143 mph. There followed a less successful venture involving a rocket-propelled sailplane named the Lippisch RRG Raketen-Ente (Rocket Duck). Fritz Stamer flew this for one mile on its maiden flight but crashed on the second, bringing the whole project to an end. Publicity stunts these may have been, but they all helped to keep the interest in rockets alive.
The Verein für Raketen Raumschiffahrt or ‘VfR’ (Society for Space Travel), established in 1927, may have been the first official forum on space and rocket research. The Society was founded by the rocket scientist Johannes Winkler, with other prominent pioneers including Oberth, Hohmann, Rudolf Nebel and Willy Ley, and other aspiring rocketeers being among its 500 members. While worthy followers from other nations were accepted, the Germans were very much in charge, interest in the science having spread rapidly throughout Germany. Winkler, and later Ley, edited the society’s magazine Die Rakete (The Rocket).
All this was ‘grist to the mill’ for the nation’s passionate filmgoers, who had become obsessed with science fiction, and this prompted the film producer Fritz Lang to make a film about space travel, Frau im Mond (The Woman on the Moon). Anticipating an opportunity to obtain funding for their cause, Oberth and Ley offered to build and launch a liquid-fuelled rocket to coincide with the film’s first screening and found an ideal setting for this potentially spectacular overture on the Baltic island of Greifswalder Oie, perhaps presaging the subsequent use of nearby Peenemünde for rocket development. Sadly, their rocket suffered many setbacks, with various degrees of damage and injury attributed to the explosive mixtures. In the end the film went ahead one autumn evening in 1929, without the rocket, at Berlin’s huge Universal Film AG (UFA) cinema, to ‘thunderous applause’ from a critical and generally well-informed film-going elite. One of Berlin’s famous Wertheim department stores joined in the film’s promotion with great enthusiasm, hiring a handsome, articulate 17-year-old engineering student, Wernher von Braun, as compere.