Hitler's Revenge Weapons
Page 8
None of these pointers seemed to have had the immediate effect that might have been expected, with the RAF having accepted earlier predictions that a flying-bomb attack would not be likely for several weeks, and the Americans informed that there was no change in the threat to the Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB). Perhaps the move of V1s from their storage depots, the sight of trainloads of missiles heading for the front, the intensive activity around the modified sites and the flurry of ominous signals detected by Bletchley failed to ring any bells, or these clear warnings did not reach or concern those responsible for the ADGB? Suffice it to say that the German missile men could hardly believe their luck, this apparent lack of reaction certainly helping the overture to their imminent offensive.
It was HUMINT which provided another wake-up call on 10 June 1944 when an agent in Belgium, believed to have been ‘Junot’, sent a message to the SIS that a train load of ninety-nine V1s, on thirty-three wagons, had just passed through Ghent, heading for Tourcoing, and that further train loads were expected. A day later PR showed that the modified site at Vignacourt had been completed and appeared to be ready to launch V1s. All this, together with other snippets of intelligence, finally led London to the correct conclusion that a missile attack on England had to be expected on, or soon after, 12 June – and so it was. In the early hours of 13 June the first operational V1 was fired at London from the Saleux site in the Pas de Calais (Chapter Five). The campaign against the V1 may have been the responsibility of the operational staffs, the fighter and AA defences and passive defence forces, primarily, but intelligence inputs were still required, urgently, to help minimise the effects of this unique weapon, while the same staffs attempted to anticipate the impact of the now seemingly inevitable rocket offensive.
A V1 ‘ski site’ under construction in Northern France in 1944, and a second, fully operational, with a flying bomb on its launch ramp. (Medmenham Collection)
A typical V1 ‘modified site’, well concealed in local surroundings - but visible from the air! (Medmenham Collection)
Much remains to be seen at the standard ski site in the Bois des Huit Rues, Hazebrouck, Northern France, just enough being visible in 1944 for the PR and FR pilots to find and photograph. (Author)
Home-grown HUMINT of another kind followed a few days after the initial landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, when a specialist RAF officer went ashore tasked with finding a modified V1 launch site; this he did, ultimately to reveal all its secrets. In another piece of luck, an errant V2 rocket, fired from Peenemünde on 13 June, exploded over Bäckebo, scattering bits over the province of Småland, Sweden. The neutral Swedes investigated, collecting some useful data and hardware from the debris which, after satisfying lengthy protocols, found its way to England and into the hands of the technical intelligence experts at Farnborough. From their detailed examination, they were able to deduce that the rocket was powered by liquid oxygen, giving it a maximum warhead of two tonnes, and that liquefied gas provided essential cooling of the rocket’s turbo-pump. Importantly, earlier intelligence that the missile’s guidance system was controlled by radio, which could be jammed, was incorrect; the Bäckebo rocket was merely carrying radio equipment on trial for the Wasserfall missile (Chapter Nine).
Throughout the summer of 1944 Churchill assured the world that London was taking the V1 in its stride. Despite the destruction and number of casualties they had caused, the missiles had had little or no effect on production or the morale of the people, who continued to go about their daily routines as usual. Again to counter German propaganda, that ‘London was a sea of flames’, neutral observers were flown over the capital to show that this was far from the truth. In fact, there were few chances of hiding the truth, and behind the scenes there was disquiet and concern among the British politicians and military chiefs, that with the much vaunted Allied air superiority, Londoners were expecting to be better protected.
More useful information on the V2 came from the capture on D Day of Obergefreiter (lance corporal) Lauterjung, an intelligent, fervent anti-Nazi, who was interrogated by Denys Felkin at Trent Park on 20 June. Lauterjung had been involved in the selection and construction of launch installations for the rockets in northern France, and was able to identify locations already under construction or being surveyed for that purpose. He pointed to a standard arrangement at Château Bernesq, with its three firing bases set along a stretch of road, and gave details of the launch facilities, together with the command and control arrangements. He also provided good information on a supply site he had seen in a quarry at Hautmesnil, complete with rail links between the tunnels and caverns in which the rockets would be stored before being loaded on to the Meillerwagens to transport and erect at their firing bases. On security and camouflage, he warned that some non-operational sites were still occupied, with French labourers present and visible to act as decoys for the Allied bombers. Another informant, Obergefreiter Klotz, was similarly willing to contribute to British intelligence on the France missile sites; captured at Saint-Lô, he was able to brief Felkin on a secure supply dump at la Meauffe, near Bayeux, that was ready and waiting for the rockets to arrive. They never did – the Allies got there first.
By mid-July 1944, with selected American officers now being given full access to British intelligence on the missiles, including Ultra, joint Anglo-American intelligence agencies were doing their utmost to locate all the V1 storage and launch facilities in northern France. They soon identified fiftyfive launch sites, which appeared to be fully operational, and the records show that in one twenty-four-hour period in July, thirty-eight of these sites fired 316 V1s against London, twenty-five of which crashed after launch. The Allies were in no doubt now what they were up against, and in July a mixed force of RAF and USAAF bombers attacked 104 ‘Noball’ targets. They were also fully aware that they might soon have to face the additional problem of a rocket offensive, and suspected (correctly) that the Germans, learning from their experience with the vulnerable V1 ski sites, were very likely to abandon the highly visible V2 ‘bunker’ sites, in favour of tactical alternatives. In fact, on 18 July Adolf Hitler was reported to have ordered that the reinforced concrete V2 bunkers, and plans to launch the rockets from the ends of railway tunnels, be abandoned.
Also in June, signals picked up by Ultra indicated the movement of ‘significant’ but unidentified heavy equipment in East Germany and Poland, some mentioning a critical shortage of ‘elephants’. Could they be the Meillerwagens, and connect with other information that V2s manufactured at Mittelwerk were now arriving for test firings at Peenemünde and Blizna? R.V. Jones thought that they were, and passed this on in a composite report to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Intelligence) and the military chiefs on 9 July. By now, the V2 had been given the name ‘Big Ben’.
The interrogation of German PoWs revealed that some were happily aware that the war was coming to an end, and they were quite eager to share what they knew about the V1s and V2s. One, Leutnant Krumbach, captured on 1 July, was able to outline the organisation of LXV Corps, in temporary residence at St-Germain-en-Laye and a subordinate unit, Höhere Artillerie Kommandeur 191 (Harko 191), roughly equivalent to an artillery division HQ, at Maisons-Laffitte, the units to which he had been posted. This was followed by another human source, a French agent who managed to smuggle out the latest information on missile production in the underground factory at Mittelwerk, drawing on details provided by prisoners at the Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps.
There was no lack of lateral thinking within the Allied intelligence community. Typically, there was a plan to evaluate the German missile performance over the Baltic, from tests at Peenemünde, by ‘sowing’ listening or tracking nodes, either on Swedish soil or by using Allied ships or submarines. Another idea called for airborne listening posts over Poland, provided by a rotation of specially-equipped, high-flying American P-38 Lightnings, while a similar SIGINT initiative, promoted by ‘Bimbo’ Norman, at Bletchley Park, suggested the use of the new
American B-29 bomber, flying at heights generally above the effectiveness of the German air defences at the time. With the imminence of the Soviet army occupation of Blizna, neither of these plans were put into effect, but it was hoped that once the Russians had occupied the Heidelager range at Blizna, the Allies would be able to ‘walk the ground’, in search of those final elusive answers. To that end Churchill wrote personally to Stalin on 13 July 1944, alerting him to the new German missiles being tested there and seeking permission for an Anglo-American team of weapons experts to visit Blizna, as soon as it was occupied.
With Stalin’s permission, all seemed set fair for the Allied mission to Blizna, Duncan Sandys succeeding in having his man, Colonel Terence R.B. Sanders of the Ministry of Supply, take the helm, together with another of his protégés, Geoffrey Gollin, the air intelligence officer Wilkinson, who had been involved with the Swedish V2, and a radio specialist Eric Ackermann. Moscow now realised that their allies had kept them in the dark about the new German weapons, so they mustered their own team of experts from NII-1, the Scientific Research Institute in Moscow, to pre-empt the British-led visit. The Russian Army occupied Blizna in early August 1944, and immediately began scouring Heidelager range for anything of technical interest. In fact they found little there that they could understand, and began to wonder if this was a ruse to get the British on to their front line – they would soon find out how wrong they were.
Meanwhile, Colonel Sanders and his Anglo/American research team had been mysteriously delayed in Tehran waiting first for visas and then for an aeroplane, only reaching Blizna on 3 September, where it was clear that the Russian search party had preceded them and taken away everything they thought of value. Even so, to the surprise of their Russian escorts, the well-informed British and Americans, having searched craters and even scrutinized papers found in the latrines, had filled several crates with useful artefacts and secured permission from the Russians to have them shipped to London. The initial report on the visit, from Sanders to London, spoke of warm relationships with the Russians at Blizna, and their belief that the pieces they had collected would be of great value when they arrived in Britain – but they spoke too soon. Fortuitously, they had carried out initial evaluations of their findings, because when the crates arrived in England, via a lengthy delay in Moscow, they were found to contain nothing more than rusty tank, truck and aircraft parts! That said, the Allies (less Russia?) now knew most of what they needed to know about the missiles, and in his second newsletter on 6 August, R.V. Jones, now deducing that, with the fuel weight known, the warhead would be in the 1- to 2-ton category. Bletchley concurred that the warhead was smaller than had been predicted.
Within the Intelligence armoury, counter-intelligence and deception were important weapons – and they were not neglected. Set up in 1941, the ‘Twenty Committee’ and the ‘Double Cross’ (XX), system, headed by John Masterman as part of MI5, were highly successful in ‘turning’ German agents captured in the UK to the Allied purpose, primarily to pass ‘disinformation to their German controllers. Despite the public perception that the country abounded with these agents, it is believed that there were no more than twenty-five active in the UK at the end of 1940; with help from Bletchley Park’s Enigma most had been picked up soon after insertion. Most were found to be far from the ruthless, highly-trained, well-skilled and motivated band expected, and some were ready and willing to turn against their original masters and spy for the British. To that end, those selected were nurtured in their new role at Latchmere House, Richmond, during which the Double Cross team learned much about the Abwehr (the German intelligence organisation).
As the V1 bombardment of London increased in the summer of 1944, the war of leaks, propaganda, deceptions and disinformation continued to grow on both sides of the Channel. Typically, the Germans used the double agent ‘Garbo’, the Spanish Republican refugee Juan Pujol, to let the British public know, by diverse means, that the V1 was only the first of the ‘vengeance’ weapons they could expect. Double Cross officers were equally determined that Garbo, who lived with his family in Hendon, North London, should be put to work for them on the rocket story and persuaded him to ask the Abwehr, through his handler in Madrid, whether there was any truth in the rumour circulating in London that an attack by ‘an enormous explosive rocket’ was imminent. If so, he would be prepared to remain in London to report on the ‘fall of shot’, but would move his family back to Spain. On 18 November 1944 he was told that there was no need for immediate concern, but on 16 December it was suggested that he send his family out of London. This turned out to be a somewhat premature warning – or was it deliberate disinformation? Duncan Sandys also mentions another prominent Double Cross agent, the Danish citizen Wulf Dietrich Christian Schmidt, alias ‘Tate’, who contributed much to British intelligence, and retired in England as Harry Wilkinson.
Another double agent, the Serbian Dusko Popov, codename ‘Tricycle’ (for his predilection to ‘three-in-a-bed’ sex), was tasked by the Abwehr to discover the purpose of two huge RAF runways at Woodbridge and Bentwaters, on the east coast in Suffolk, which they noted were heading at Berlin, and which they suspected might be designed as launch sites for British missiles similar to their own. In fact, these very long and wide runways were simply early safe havens for returning damaged Allied bombers, but the Twenty Committee seized the opportunity to nurture the German suspicions by building dummy installations on the twin airfields, supported by carefully staged leaks to suggest that Berlin could expect imminent threats from new weapons similar to those facing London. This XX plan then became more ambitious, hinting that the runways were there to launch ‘super long-range rockets and radio-controlled aircraft carrying twenty tons of explosives all the way to the German capital’. Had these stories been believed, these airfields should have expected heavy air raids, but none were forthcoming, and both runways were used continually throughout the subsequent Cold War.
Given the abundance of raw information now available to the Allies, and the intelligence which flowed from it after detailed analysis and cross-checks, the threats were surely clear and countermeasures could be prescribed, yet there still remained tensions and fundamental disagreements between the parties involved, with consensus sometimes hard to come by as time was quickly running out. Typically, Lord Cherwell and the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, believed that they were still not being given full access to information available to Bletchley Park and R.V. Jones. Likewise, the Big Ben scientific sub-committee, which looked into the efficacy and likely ramifications of the V2, felt that they too were not getting the details they needed to prepare for and counter the new threat; was R.V. Jones being a little too zealous in protecting the sources? Once again an angry Churchill intervened, demanding that those involved, who had the right security clearances, be given all the information they needed to exercise their roles effectively.
In the early evening of 8 September 1944, two V2s, fired from Wassenaar, The Hague, in western Holland, landed in Greater London (Chapter Six), heralding another phase in Hitler’s ‘vengeance’ campaign. In the days and months which followed, V1s and V2s rained down on England, mainly on Greater London, with monotonous regularity. The primary action now passed to the battle managers directly responsible for ADGB, which included, perforce, essential offensive action against the sources of these threats on the continent of Europe. Again, there could be no let-up in the intelligence work, now providing vital support for CROSSBOW, and these efforts will be covered in Chapter Eight.
Chapter 5
Open Fire!
On 1 December 1943 Colonel Max Wechtel’s Flak Regiment 155(W) was absorbed into LXV Armee Korps für Besonderen Verwendung (65 Army Corps for Special Employment), commanded by Generalleutnant Heinemann, with Colonel Eugen Walter as his air force chief of staff. They were charged with the immediate preparation for the bombardment of England by the V1s and V2s, as soon as they became available. Although there was still much work to do on the V1 flying bomb, Wac
htel was ordered to move his unit to northern France forthwith, and his advance units left Zinnowitz (Peenemünde) by train on 9 December, arriving at Merlemont, 8 kilometres south of Beauvais, on 13 December. The move, which would precede the weapons by some months, may have been a deliberate attempt to please Hitler, who was determined to repay London in kind for the damage the Allies were inflicting on the German cities. However, it did allow Wachtel’s crews to become fully acquainted with their launch sites, technical, communications and re-supply systems, once they were up and running.
This was no easy task, given the almost continuous air attacks and no AA in place to ward them off, the regimental diary reporting that all their foreign labourers took flight whenever Allied aircraft approached. The devastation of the ski sites prompted the Luftwaffe to vacate them, other than those selected for deception and as decoys, which kept the Allies guessing, in favour of the easily camouflaged, randomly spaced, highly mobile modified sites, which ‘melted’ into the landscape, rendering them very much more difficult for the Allies to find and attack. This gave Watchtel’s men some respite from air attacks and allowed them to consolidate their preparations for the opening offensive with a growing sense of confidence. The main delay now was blamed on a decision by the German leadership to give the V2 rocket priority over the V1 programme.