Hitler's Revenge Weapons
Page 4
Nineteen-forty was a year of mixed fortunes for the A4 team. First, it lost a firm supporter in Karl Becker, head of the Army Ordnance Office, who committed suicide in May. Then, paradoxically, it suffered when Germany defeated France so quickly that the Nazi leaders no longer thought it necessary to expedite the rocket programme, and the resources available to it, the problem exacerbated by the withdrawal of the foreign workers at the HVP, to enhance security at the site. Then came the good news that Becker was to be replaced by General Emil Leeb, another rocket devotee, that von Brauchitsch had convinced the Armament Ministry that the HVP needed more resources, and that the formidable Albert Speer, another invaluable ally, would take charge of construction at the HVP, inter alia resurrecting work on its production unit. Moreover, the German defeat in the Battle of Britain counteracted the effects of its rapid victory over France and gave more impetus to the rocket programme. However, in June 1941, the German invasion of Russia placed further demands on manpower and materials, and the Minister of Armaments, Dr Fritz Todt, reduced the HVP’s funding once more.
Given these fluctuations in fortune, Dornberger felt compelled to remind the German hierarchy that the rocket and the flying bomb were both adjuncts and alternatives to long-range artillery and to the manned bomber aircraft, and reiterated their attractions. Again, in August 1941, he updated Hitler, Keitel and General Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, on progress at Peenemünde and persuaded the Führer to allocate more resources to the HVP. Despite this, Fritz Todt continued to keep a tight rein on the funds needed by the HVP, allegedly using this as a bargaining chip in his attempts to take control of the Herresweffenamt (Army Weapons Office), a move strongly opposed in the Wehrmacht. All this in-fighting and turbulence had a detrimental effect on the morale of the rocketeers, some of whom turned their thoughts once more to rockets for space exploration, their first love, rather than their use in warfare. Sensing this drift from the official mandate, Dornberger pressed his staff for completion of working drawings necessary to determine what was needed to produce an initial batch of 600 military A4s.
On 8 February 1942 Fritz Todt was killed in an air crash and was replaced as the Armaments Minister by the more popular Albert Speer. However, this was quickly followed by another major cut in funding and a reduction in the allocation of the all-important hydrogen peroxide. The project was then put at further risk when the first complete A4 exploded during a static test. Fearing another loss of momentum, Dornberger urged the OKW to accept that, with a projected output of 5,000 rockets per year, Germany could keep up a bombardment of lucrative targets in England without warning, night and day, in every weather, immune from air defences, adversely affecting British morale while reducing pressure on the Luftwaffe. These were persuasive and timely arguments, particularly in the wake of the RAF’s devastating attacks on Lübeck (March 1942) and Cologne (May 1942). Hitler now saw the rocket as the only viable means of exacting revenge in kind, but he demanded that Dornberger’s offer be multiplied by a factor of ten – a production rate of 50,000 rockets per year. This wholly unrealistic figure was quickly and dramatically reduced, but all the necessary prerequisites to operate the rocket in the field (procedures, training, equipment et al) were initiated at once, in the hands of Versuchskommando Nord (Experimental Unit North), perhaps in the hope of giving the impression of more rapid progress.
Generalmajor Dr Walter Dornberger at Peenemünde. (Author, Courtesy Peenemünde)
On 3 October 1942, after three failures, the fourth A4 launched successfully from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde; it followed the pre-set trajectory, albeit a little steeply, to a height of 50 miles, achieving a speed of 3,300 mph and landing, as planned, 120 miles down the range. This was the first of the A4s to reach outer space and the team was ecstatic. Moreover, the fact that things were now going badly for the Germans on the Russian front and in North Africa worked in their favour, Speer arguing that it was now even more important that the A4 be rushed into service as soon as possible, and Hitler acquiesced. In December 1942 he ordered the rocket into mass production and six months later gave the project the highest priority in materials and manpower, while finally agreeing to the construction of a production facility at the HVP and calling for the immediate construction of impregnable concrete launch sites in the Pas de Calais – within range of London.
This prompted renewed competition for control of the new weapons, with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and SS, paying an early visit to Peenemünde to make a case for the whole project to be placed under the control of the SS. The Führer demurred, and did so again when Himmler tried a second time in January 1943 – but that would not be the end of the matter. Seeing the writing on the wall, Speer immediately consolidated his position by setting up ‘development commissions’ manned by all the best weapons designers and military minds available to review the best way ahead for the A4, while appointing the ruthless and dedicated Nazi General Gerd Degenkolb to oversee a special A4 committee as his ‘hatchet man’. Degenkolb was ill-equipped for the role, having no knowledge or understanding of rocket technology, and his relationship with Dornberger suffered accordingly. Then, in early 1943, came another intrusion when Hitler ordered a Entwicklungs-commission für Fernschiessen (Development Commission for Long-Range Bombardment), under the elderly industrialist Dr Waldemar Petersen, to organise and control every aspect of the rocket and flying bomb organisations, and ultimately recommend which of the two missile projects, the rocket or the flying bomb – or both – should proceed. To those who had toiled away on the two missiles for years this was an unnecessary ‘clumsy, unwieldy conglomerate’, which did nothing to help either camp. To make matters worse, there were now allegations, true or false, of ‘mismanagement and impropriety’ in the HVP, with the incumbents accused of not operating ‘in accordance with best business practices’, where specialists and technicians were not employed efficiently. Dornberger, Heinz Mackels, Degenkolb’s assistant, and Karl Hettlage, the Munitions Minister’s ‘troubleshooter’, were then ordered to consider the privatisation of the HVP, and Dornberger again needed all his skills to minimise these effects, and ward off another attempt by Himmler’s SS, to take control of the missile installations.
The powerful V2 rocket engine. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
By February 1943 arrangements were in hand to bring the A4s 20,000 components together for production at four locations: Peenemünde, the old airship works at Friedrichshafen, the Volkswagen factory at Fallerslaben (Kassel) and the locomotive factory in Wiener-Neustadt (Austria). With insufficient, skilled labour now available in Germany, Fritz Sauckel, head of labour allocation, was authorised to recruit specially selected workers from other nations.
Behind the scenes, Armaments Minister Albert Speer, recognizing the potential value of both rocket and flying bomb, was bent on removing or at least reducing the increasingly unhelpful rivalry between the two project teams. On 26 May he hosted the Führer and a dazzling array of interested parties to a practical demonstration of both missiles, at Peenemünde – hoping that both would be at their best. It was not to be; while the two A4 performed well, the second flying 165 statute miles down the range for a pre-planned splash-down, neither of the two flying bombs impressed, the first crashing soon after launch and the second refusing to leave the ground. If this had been a decisive ‘fly-off ’, the A4 would have won the day and the flying bomb would have been cancelled. However, Speer persisted, reiterating the arguments for and against each weapon, his conviction and persuasive power finally paying off when the bombardment committee recommended that the two missiles should continue to be developed in parallel, albeit with priority accorded to the rocket, and he issued an order to that effect on 2 June 1943.
On 7 July 1943 Hitler visited Peenemünde again where Dornberger and von Braun briefed the Führer on their success with the ‘war winning’ A4, and tempting him further with their predictions for a 100-ton, A10 giant, a rocket which could take a worthwhile warhead acros
s the Atlantic to America – then already in the planning stage. With renewed enthusiasm, Hitler is said to have apologized for his early vacillation on the rocket; he promptly elevated Dornberger to the rank of Generalmajor, and on Speer’s recommendation, von Braun to ‘Professor’ – just reward indeed for their extraordinary persistence. He then demanded that work on the huge, reinforced concrete launch sites for the A4, in the Pas de Calais, should continue, despite Dornberger’s strong preference for multiple, highly mobile sites.
While there was still much work to do, and trials to be carried out on the A4 before it could be used in the war, training and deployment plans were already well advanced. Lehr und Versuchs Batterie 444 (Training and Experimental Battery 444) was activated at Peenemünde in July 1943 to evaluate the weapon before deployment, develop firing procedures in the field and begin the training of launch and support crews. Three more batteries would follow, one destined for the huge concrete bunkers being prepared in France and two which would operate from tactical sites.
Back at Peenemünde all was not well. Dr Walter Thiel, and many of his V2 engine team, were exhausted by excessive workloads, with the impending transition from research to production and the relentless pressure on them to succeed. Thiel took himself off to a health farm and from there wrote of his concerns to von Braun, claiming that the V2 was still more of a complicated research vehicle than an operational missile and, on 17 August, offered his resignation – which von Braun promptly rejected. That night Thiel and all his family were killed during the massive raid on Peenemünde by the RAF.
Four A4 (V2) test vehicles awaiting trials. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
In the early summer of 1943, following careful scrutiny of air reconnaissance photographs, evaluation of all other sources of intelligence, such as coded messages from courageous agents working on the site, and much debate at the highest levels it was decided that Peenemünde must be targeted by RAF Bomber Command with a maximum effort at the earliest opportunity (Chapter Eight). The raid, given the name Operation HYDRA was carried out on 17/18 August 1944 but was far from the success that was claimed. True, twenty-five buildings were destroyed within the experimental works, including the drawing office and the V2 assembly shop, together with many documents and records, and of course Dr Theil was among the 600 who died, most of them foreign workers, but including many good informants. However, most of the German rocket specialists had survived and their heroic actions had saved volumes of vital documents. Interestingly, neither the massive, very visible coal-fired power station, nor the Luftwaffe airfield, the flying bomb nor Me163 rocket-fighter development facilities at Peenemünde West, were on the target list – and they remain unscathed to this day.
Dornberger believed that HYDRA set the rocket schedule back two months, but these were crucial months, and it was clear that, if further interruptions to the programme were to be avoided, another V2 test facility would have to be found beyond the range of Allied bombers. The site chosen was at Blizna, deep into Poland. Also, it had already been accepted that the decentralized production and assembly sites for the two missiles at Peenemünde, Friedrichshafen, Fallerslaben and Wiener-Neustadt were no longer tenable, although they would continue to produce missiles until production was centralized, deep underground in an old gypsum mine in the Kohnstein (Harz) mountains, at Niedersachswerfen, north-west of Nordhausen.
To Dornberger’s dismay, Speer charged Gerd Degenkolb, a man with no knowledge of rocket science, with overseeing the conversion of the twelve miles of caves, recently used to store fuel and oil reserves, into a massive industrial complex, not only for the production of both missiles, but also for that of the Luftwaffe’s revolutionary Me262 jet fighter and Ar234 jet bomber. Himmler offered to provide the huge slave labour force needed to transform the caves, and to carry out mundane tasks thereafter, from the concentration camps, that at Buchenwald being a mere few miles to the east. Brigadeführer SS Hans Kammler, the engineer who had been involved in designing the notorious Nazi death camps, was given the job of mustering the force, and the first 100 inmates from Buchenwald arrived at Nordhausen on 27 August. The production company, Mittelwerk GmbH (Central Works Ltd), was formalised on 21 September, while a large village of administration, accommodation and support buildings, including a separate concentration camp, Mittelbau-Dora, sprang up locally and proliferated rapidly in the otherwise largely deserted landscape. Pending sufficient accommodation for the many thousands of slave labourers, some 6,000 were forced to ‘live’ fulltime, crushed together in the tunnel works, rarely if ever seeing daylight. In addition, the workforce included 5,000 ‘paid’ foreign workers and 500 German weapons specialists, all of whom lived in more tolerable conditions.
Originally Mittelwerk was set the wholly unrealistic target of producing 1,800 V2s per month, and while this was soon halved, it was still a very tall order to assemble the 20,000 components necessary for each, extremely complex V2. After a very poor start in December 1943, when only three V2s left the production line, all of which failed to launch successfully, things improved only very slowly, with many of the fifty produced in January, eighty-six in February and one hundred and seventy in March, also failing to achieve their design performance at launch or in flight.
The story of achievement and horror at Mittelwerk is told in full elsewhere. Achievement there certainly was, ultimately with a massive output of missiles, jet engines and aircraft, although the rate varied constantly, with the state of the war, the resources available and the whims of Herr Hitler – and the cost was very high. The horror was also indisputable, with the conditions for the countless slave labourers indescribable, and with brutal punishments meted out when any sign of poor work or sabotage was suspected. It is right the victims be remembered again in Chapter Thirteen: Requiem.
Back at Peenemünde, rocket trials resumed on 6 October 1943, with a successful launch from Test Stand VII, followed by two failures and another success on 25 October, and continued there at a relatively slow rate, with the first V2 to be built at Mittelwerk detonating three seconds after ignition and failing to lift off on 27 January 1944, setting the trend for many more failures from V2s built there, again leading to suspicions of poor quality control and/or sabotage at the new plant with the inevitable ‘witch hunt’ and ruthless retribution. Test firings continued at Peenemünde until 20 February 1945, those from new launch pads at Karlshagen and Greifswalder Oie having ceased in November 1944 as the Russians advanced towards them. Additionally, there were five launches from railcars, between 25 November and 4 December, the locations and success rates unknown.
A V2 being raised from its Meillerwagen transport/erector, for a test launch. (Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
An A4 (V2) rocket being raised from its Miellerwagen transporter/erector. (Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
Final Checks on an A4 (V2) before launch. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
Test Stand VII at Peenemünde. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
Meanwhile, A4 test firings had got underway at Blizna with the first launch attempted there on 5 November 1943 and two more following by the end of the year, none of which were successful, while only two of the next six firings in January went as planned. In addition to the launch failures, many of the rockets were bursting in the air as they re-entered the earth’s atmosphere. By May the launch rate increased markedly with up to four per day, but of the seventy-two that month only ten were successful. The main fault was found to be overheating in critical areas of the rocket and it was hoped that this would be largely rectified by packing all available spaces with glass wool to absorb and disperse the heat. With the Russians now closing in on Blizna, V2 trials ceased there in June 1944 after 204 launches having been attempted, but they continued at a new site in the Tuchola Forest, west of Grudziadz, in northern Poland from 10 September 1944 until 11 January 1945.
Continuing his efforts to get more influence over the two new weapons, Himmler seized his chance in the wake of Operation HYDRA, claiming that
only his men were capable of preventing highly classified information on the missiles falling prey to the Allies’ agents, as it was believed to have done at Peenemünde. He also believed he could rescue the programme from the constraints of army bureaucracy and, while this appealed to the SS faithful, it seemed to fall on deaf ears among those who mattered. Becoming more extreme, Himmler then launched his ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against key figures opposing him with trumped up charges against von Braun, his brother, Magnus, Klaus Riedel and An others, alleging treason. Specifically, he alleged that Riedel did not want to be associated with a ‘murder instrument’ and that von Braun was building a spaceship, in which to fly to England with the rocket plans! As a result, several of the rocketeers were incarcerated, until Speer and Dornberger interceded on their behalf and they were set free.
An A4 (V2) test launch, location unknown. (Courtesy Medmenham Collection)
By May 1944 Mittelwerk was producing thirty rockets a day; one frontline army V2 launch battalion had been declared ‘operational’ and another was not far behind, while the huge bunkers and several tactical sites were nearing completion in the Pas de Calais. At last von Braun felt able to suggest that the rocket campaign against London: Operation PENGUIN could begin in September 1944. To that end, army Generalleutnant Eric Heinemann was ordered to prepare LXV Armee Korps (LXV Army Corps) to co-ordinate and support the operations of both missiles, with air force Oberst Eugen Walter as his deputy, underlining the joint nature of the headquarters. To Heinemann, this was somewhat of a ‘poisoned chalice’, with both military services deeply antagonistic to the joint command, with internecine rivalry, fierce competition for increasingly scarce resources rampant and neither weapon ready to deploy.