Hitler's Revenge Weapons

by Hitler's Revenge Weapons- The Final Blitz of London (retail) (epub)

  By now the whole German missile community had become obsessed with security, believing that many of their past misfortunes stemmed from intelligence passed to the Allies by PoWs, slave labourers and agents working on and around the weapons and their designated sites. Already, many foreign workers had been excluded from employment in sensitive areas and others were being heavily screened, all having to endure the harshest of penalties if there was any suspicion of transgression. This was grist to the mill for Heinrich Himmler, still bent on taking control of the new weapons. He had failed to do in 1943 and now argued that only his SS organisation could prevent damaging leaks reaching the Allies – but Hitler still vacillated. For added security, Flak Regiment 155(W) adopted the code name Flakgruppe Creil, while the four battalions were given the German names for ‘Top Hat’, ‘Werewolf ’, ‘Biscuit’ and ‘Sequin’, the signals battalion becoming ‘Vandal’. Max Wachtel, fearing that his arrival in France would give the game away, took security to a new level by removing himself temporarily to Paris, disguised with a beard and one arm, under the name ‘Oberst Martin Wolf ’, while his staff shed their uniforms and dressed as personnel of the German Construction Organisation Todt. These measures may not have deceived Allied intelligence but were said to have caused considerable confusion within the Wehrmacht itself.

  Wachtel’s preparations culminated in full-scale rehearsals for the opening offensive, with the launch crews, staffs, procedures and communications undergoing rigorous evaluation until their commanders were satisfied. The ultimate test came on the night of 1/2 March 1944 with the simulated launch of 960 V1s from sixty-four sites, some still incomplete, achieving excellent results and drawing many plaudits. The trials were also going well in Poland and along the Baltic coast where, by mid-May, twenty-nine launches from Zempin had resulted in twenty-two successful flights, albeit with one of the errant seven flying beyond its target area on 11 May to land in neutral Sweden (Chapter Four). Moreover, V1 and V2 production at Mittelwerk was now in full swing, deep underground and well protected from the prying eyes of Allied air reconnaissance and their bombers.

  In the late spring of 1944 HQ LXV Army Corps moved to Paris, Hitler now decreeing that the bombardment of London should begin in mid-June. Reacting to the codeword ‘Rumpelkammer’ (Junk Room), General Heinemann ordered the activation of all the operational V1 launch sites, the movement of the mobile launch ramps from Germany to the Channel coast and the missiles to their forward ammunition depots, these tasks being expected to take ten days. On 20 May Wachtel and his staff moved to their underground HQ at Saleux, near Amiens, and the launch crews to their sites, to await the codeword Eis bär (Polar Bear), thereupon to carry out final actions and open fire.

  Having finally discarded the concept of launching their flying bombs from concrete bunkers and ski-sites, the Germans were able, subject to Allied air attacks, to move at will with their mobile equipment, and when the time came to remain ahead of the Allied invasion, which now seemed imminent; the great unknown was the timing. In fact, Operation OVERLORD, the landing of Allied forces in the Bay of the Seine, began on 6 June, a week before Wachtel’s men were ready to launch their first flying bombs, but it did bring his force to the highest readiness state, with the movement of the regimental HQ farther east from the Château d’Auteuil to Château Merlemont, south-east of Beauvais, in the Oise region.

  Despite full communications having yet to be established with all the sites, severe equipment shortages on the front line and woefully inadequate safety procedures, the V1 offensive began at 0400 hours on 13 June 1944, preceded by a long-range artillery bombardment against Folkestone and Maidstone, followed by the launch of a mere ten missiles. By the time Oberst Walter, at LXV Army Corps HQ, called the ceasefire at 0440 hours, only four of the missiles had reached England, five having crashed soon after launch and one simply disappearing. This was very far from the thunderous overture which had been demanded by the German leadership, and Wachtel was held responsible. He in turn blamed the ‘dislocation of supply due to enemy action’, but this was only one of the problems – and Flak Regiment 155(W) would have to do better.

  Three days later, on the night of 15/16 June, it did better. Oberst Walter issued the fire order at 18.45, calling on all sites to open fire on London at 23.18 and continue firing salvos until 04.50. The first V1 left its ramp at 23.16 and by the time a ceasefire was ordered at 05.50, 243 flying bombs had been launched from fifty-five sites, one battery managing to fire successive bombs every thirty minutes. Of that total, nine exploded on ignition, destroying their launch ramps, forty-six crashed soon after launch and one simply ran wild over France, but 187 did reach England, with flight times to Greater London averaging twenty minutes. The weather was perfect for the raiders, with low cloud, rain and poor visibility making their acquisition and destruction very difficult. The German High Command and launch crews were jubilant and when General Heinemann and Oberst Walter were summoned to the Führer’s presence at his forward HQ, underground at Margival, northeast of Soissons, Heinemann took the opportunity to request that some of his weapons be redirected to the English invasion ports of Southampton and Portsmouth. Hitler’s response was predictable; he screamed, ‘No! Hit London! Hit London!’

  A V1 launch team carries out final training before operational commitment. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)

  The intended routes of V1 flying bombs were plotted from their respective launch sites, to intersect over central London. (Author’s Collection)

  Spirits at LXV Army Corps HQ were high and the German public was elated by the comforting propaganda that the first of their Vergeltungswaffen had taken London by surprise, allegedly causing shock, confusion and panic, numerous deaths, injuries and damage to property, all purported to have been verified by German agents resident in London. This was a great exaggeration, designed to feed the growing German appetite for better news ‘from the front’. The truth was that most, if not all, of these agents had been ‘turned’ and were now imparting information to their previous masters prepared by Britain’s ‘disinformation’ specialists – operating under the name FORTITUDE. Their success was exemplified in Operation MINCEMEAT (and in the film of that name) which had laid a false trail on the Allies’ invasion plans. Now, FORTITUDE came up with a plan which might minimise V1 damage to Central London. A highly-classified plot of the first impact points showed that most of the flying bombs were falling to the south-east of London, so double agent Garbo was ordered to pass a spurious plot to the Abwehr in Arras, showing that the majority were overshooting and suggested that the V1s’ range be shortened, to bring them back to the centre, whereas in reality this would take the mean point of impact farther back to the south-east, into even less populated areas. In the event, the plan was put on hold, on the argument that the Germans probably had sufficient information from the British press, and perhaps from the tracking equipment aboard the V1s, to guess that this was an attempt to deceive, but it would be modified later and implemented later.

  Intercepting radio communications and ‘bugging’ conversations in PoW camps, were not the sole prerogatives of the British (Chapter Four). On the other side of the Channel, Oberst Wachtel was delighted by the information he was hearing from airborne chatter between enthusiastic or frustrated RAF pilots tasked against the V1s en route to London. He heard, for instance, that his bombs were coasting into the UK at heights between 3,000 to 4,000 feet, at speeds of 340 mph as they accelerated to some 400 mph nearer the capital. Invaluably, he also learned that early acquisition by the fighter pilots was most likely at dusk, when the jet ‘plume’ was very visible and the interceptor could still judge his range to the target in the half light, that single V1s were relatively ‘easy meat’, whereas several arriving at once were bound to get through the defences, and he amended his tactics accordingly.

  Wachtel’s main concerns now were that the air attacks on V1 storage depots and transit routes, particularly those in the Oise valley, were severely effecting the resupply of mis
siles to the front, and that fewer of his V1s were reaching England owing to the increasingly effectiveness of the air defences. However, the overall success of the offensive, as seen by the Germans, resulted in authority for Wachtel to raise four more firing batteries and search for sixty-four new launch sites. This fact did not escape Bletchley Park which, on 17 July, picked up signals showing that a second regiment, Flak Regiment 255(W), was to be formed at once, and that a third was mooted. There was no shortage of potential sites, the construction of which had become so refined that it could take as little as ten days to complete, in relative obscurity and invulnerability, while increased security discipline within Luftwaffe signals procedures was also making them hard to find.

  Outline maps charting the predictions of V1 landfalls and the actual impact points in the first 24 hours of the campaign.

  The Germans may not have known exactly how many of their bombs were falling on critical areas of London, but by the end of July 1944 they were convinced that the capital was being devastated and the mood within Flak Regiment 155(W) HQ at Saleux was still upbeat, with its sub-units continuing to maintain the maximum possible continuous bombardment of London. Moreover, the number of V1s launched over the North Sea from modified Heinkel 111 bombers of Luftwaffe’s III/KG3 (No.3 Squadron of No.3 Wing), was increasing, giving the Allies the additional problem of defending a much wider range of additional flight paths to London. Also raising new concerns, Bletchley Park reported that trials on ground and air-launched V1s seemed to be going well in Poland and over the Baltic, possibly with a new, long-range variant of the missile. August also began well for Flak Regiment 155(W), with thirty-eight operational sites firing 316 missiles on the night of 2/3 August, these approaching the UK in waves, between heavy cloud layers, again making life very difficult for the defenders – but only 107 of the bombs reached Greater London.

  By mid-August the Allied forces were fast approaching the V1 launch sites in northern France, and some of Wachtel’s units were already on the move north-east, the gunners preparing to re-role as infantry, while destroying anything of military value as they went. The Flak Group HQ was also on the move and, on 18 August, Colonel Walter and the main HQ of LXV Army Corps departed north into Belgium, while the launch sites continued to fire their missiles until the enemy was very close, before redeploying under cover of darkness in the hope of avoiding the attention of Allied air power sweeping ahead of the ground troops. On 1 September the last V1 was fired from French soil, but the flying bombs were not finished; Flak Regiment 155(W) had fled France successfully with much of its equipment and a number of bombs, and more were known to be in the pipeline; where would they go now, and what would be their targets? And of course the air-launched threat remained. With London temporarily out of reach, Generalfeldmarschall Model (C-in-C West), ordered Wachtel to find thirty-two suitable launch sites, some in the Eifel, on the Belgian/German border, others south of the Ruhr and east of the river Rhine, to be ready to bombard the Allied forces approaching the Mons-Brussels-Antwerp region.

  Meanwhile, in the second half of September, the highly ambitious and hugely risky Allied airborne Operation MARKET, secured the river crossings at Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but crucially failed to take that over the Rhine at Arnhem. All of these crossings were vital to a rapid Allied ground advance into northern Holland and encirclement of the Ruhr (Operation GARDEN), while cutting off the German missile forces now mustering in strength at sites in western Holland – and perhaps finishing the war by Christmas. Had MARKET GARDEN succeeded, it is most likely that the German missile men would have been pushed north and east out of Holland, putting London out of range of their V1s and V2s – but this was not to be. The failure of MARKET GARDEN gave the Germans new hope, and Max Wachtel himself remained optimistic, believing propaganda claims that England would capitulate if the missile bombardment extended into middle and northern England. True, it would be some time before his units would be able to do so with their new, longer-range V1s, now known to be undergoing trials at Peenemünde, from ground sites in north Holland, but rockets were now falling, albeit sporadically throughout England, as were V1s delivered from Heinkel 111 bombers flying off the coast of Yorkshire against Manchester. In fact, only one V1 fell in the Manchester area, causing a number of deaths and badly injured, but this did presage another headache for the defenders.

  Meanwhile, Wachtel was back in Germany, developing the thirty-two sites from which his V1s might help to delay the invading forces, two batteries deploying to the Eifel, primarily to contribute to an offensive against the all-important port city of Antwerp. Both sides were well aware that the port of Antwerp was going to be crucial to the Allied advance to the north and the east, so General von Zangen’s Fifteenth Army was called on to defend the Scheldt Estuary, to the last man. While Antwerp fell to the Allies on 4 September, the Germans held out on South Beveland and Walcheren Island until 26 October and 9 November respectively, denying access to the port, and it was not until the end of November that the Royal Navy was able to clear the Scheldt Estuary of mines, and allow Allied shipping to bring in the much-needed supplies. The Germans had warned the residents of Antwerp that, if their town fell to the Allies, they would feel the full wrath of 3,000 Luftwaffe bombers, but severe shortages of fuel and aircraft, let alone Allied air superiority, rendered such ‘retribution’ a hollow threat. Instead, the Germans carried out a massive attack by V1s and V2s, fired from the north, the east and the south-east. With this flexibility, and the shorter range from launch sites to target, the Allies were, arguably, given more problems than they had had with the defence of London.

  Overall, the air defence of Belgian cities was the responsibility of a British general, Major General A.M. Cameron, a reputable AA officer but with little experience against the V1, so the defence of Antwerp became a joint Anglo-American command, with the US Brigadier General Clare H. Armstrong effectively in charge. Armstrong’s staff estimated that the Germans had the capacity to launch 105 V-1s and forty V-2s daily, against targets within the most important 12 square-mile area of Antwerp and, at that rate, given the inaccuracies of these weapons and the air defence forces at their disposal, they believed the war would be over before operations in the port could be seriously affected. They were wrong.

  The Allied air defence assets were impressive, initially 11,500 men served within three AA brigades, two under American command, the third under the British, but as the campaign grew in intensity, the total number of men would increase to 22,000. The hardware consisted of 208 American 90mm guns and an initial British contribution of 128 × 3.7-inch guns, 188 × 37mm and 40mm guns, all of which were replaced by American weapons in November. The British also provided seventy-two searchlights. The guns were deployed in an arc spanning the south-east sector, well outside the city, in the hope that damaged V1s would not glide into the critical target area. Special measures were established, using time and space to co-ordinate fighter and AA operations, and to protect the many other Allied aircraft operating from local bases in the area from friendly AA. This was a particular problem for aircraft using the very busy major airfield at Hoogerheide (B79) north of Antwerp, which lay beneath one of the main missile streams, a problem only partially resolved by restricting flying there for specified periods. Another problem concerned the radars in use in this surrounding flat, wet terrain of the region, dotted with hundreds of small villages and windmills, which produced a great deal of ground clutter on the screens; optimum sites were, therefore, of paramount importance. While the SCR 584 radars in use were ‘state of the art’ and should have been able to distinguish between the V1s, with their small radar blip, steady course and height, and the larger Allied aircraft flying pre-planned, procedural flight profiles, mistakes were made. As for the guns, continuous use of the American 90mm M1 anti-aircraft gun for twenty-two of every twenty-four hours, with only two hours of maintenance, was taking its toll, and many of the guns needed barrel changes after firing 1,500 to 2,000 rounds, or the replacement of other cru
cial pieces of equipment. Failure to do so could seriously endanger the gun detachments. These and other factors led to many changes in air defence force deployments and tactics as the battle against the flying bombs progressed.

  In these circumstances, given the V1s’ speed and short flight time, there was little warning of the V1s approaching Antwerp, and this, coupled with the difficulties of co-ordinating AA and fighters in the crowded airspace, meant that interception rates were relatively low. So it was that much emphasis was placed on offensive action against the launch sites, but here again there were major difficulties. Despite the collective efforts of a wing of 2TAF fighters based at nearby Ursel, and twelve squadrons of Fighter Command Spitfires deployed daily from England, all carrying out continuous seek and strike missions, often dropping 500lb or 250lb bombs on areas thought to be harbouring or launching the missiles, success rates were again low. Attacks against the supply system and rail network often proved more profitable, but with German working parties carrying out rapid repairs at night, when darkness hampered fighter-bomber operations, they had only limited success. The night-fighter squadrons, amongst them the USAAF’s 422 and 425 Squadrons, flying the radar-equipped P-61 Black Widow, had little difficulty identifying the flying bombs at night, but they found the small targets, flying at near their maximum speed, hard to destroy, and night interdiction against the railway network was again their preferred role. All that said, the various defenders of Antwerp deserve much credit. In the 175 days of the campaign, 4,248 V1s may have fallen in the vicinity of the city, with 211 getting through to the ‘critical zone’ and 150 reaching the crucial docks, but, working around the clock without adequate manning, they destroyed 2,183 V-1s, at a cost of thirty-two men killed and 289 wounded. They had done well. But then came the V-2s.