Hitler's Revenge Weapons

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

  On 8 August 1944, with complete disregard for the crucial parts paid by Dornberger, Heinemann and Walter in overcoming all its problems and bringing the V1 to the front line, Oberführer-SS Hans Kammler replaced Walter Dornberger as Director of the V2 programme, taking full responsibility for its forthcoming operations. Ignominiously the three key players were relegated to the dissemination of the intelligence, storage and delivery of the rockets, final launch preparations and guard duties, but all now under Kammler’s eagle eye and, by association, that of Heinrich Himmler himself. Kammler made his inexpert presence known at once, setting up Gruppe Nord (Group North) and Gruppe Süd (Group South), under a single Division zur Vergeltung ( Revenge Division), with Oberst Thom as chief of staff. Headquarters for the division was at Nijmegen, on the German/Dutch border, and it was from there that Kammler ordered his 6,000 rocketmen, with their 1,500 vehicles, to prepare at once for an attack on London. LXV Army Corps had little to say in the matter.

  London was not to be the first target for Hitler’s final vengeance with the V2; that dubious honour went to Paris, well within the range of the Lehr und Versuchsbatterie 444 (Demonstration and Experimental Battery 444), deployed near the Belgian town of St Vith, in the Ardennes. The offensive was scheduled to begin on 6 September 1944 – but all was not well. After being fuelled with eight tons of liquid oxygen and alcohol, the first rocket ignited successfully, only for its engine to cut out as it began to rise from its stand, leaving it to sink back harmlessly on its haunches. A second behaved in exactly the same way, the fault then found to be in defective accelerometers. Kammler was not amused. Following remedial action, the battery launched two rockets from the village of Petites Tailles, Ardennes, on 8 September. The first exploded in mid-air, but the second made military history that day, with the first successful flight by a ballistic missile in anger, to land in the south-east suburb of Paris, killing sixty Frenchmen and injuring thirty-six others.

  Then it was London’s turn, with two rockets fired on 8 September 1944, from a road intersection at Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, in Holland, by Artillerie Abteilung 485 (Artillery Regiment 485). Despite heavy security, some Dutchmen witnessed the launch, after the support vehicles had moved away from the mobile launch pads, leaving only the armoured control vehicle on site. The two rockets lifted off cleanly in a cloud of smoke and flames at 1837 hours, and set heading for London, presaging another stage in Hitler’s brutal revenge. The bombardment of England, primarily London, then continued apace, despite every effort by Allied air power to find and destroy the fleeting, highly mobile V1 and V2 targets, often at great risk to the friendly, supportive people within heavily populated areas in west Holland.

  In mid-September, anticipating that the Allies might be successful in taking the crucial bridges over the river Rhine at Arnhem, in Operation MARKET GARDEN, thereby cutting off the two batteries of Abteilung 485 in the area around The Hague, Kammler ordered them back to Germany, to be co-located with his HQ in Münster. At the same time, Abteilung 444, now similarly under threat at Walcheren, moved to a small wooded area at Rijsterbos, near Zwolle, in central Holland, and it was from there that the Germans sent their first V2 to East Anglia, at 20.00 on 25 September, to land harmlessly in the village of Hoxne, Suffolk.

  Sensing that the timing might now be right, Hans Kammler made another bid to bring the Luftwaffe flying bombs under his command; he failed again, but took some comfort in the success with his rockets. In the last week of September, twenty-six V2s landed in Greater London, and eight elsewhere in the east of England, causing 235 casualties, with an unprecedented success rate of 76 per cent.

  Blast-off. A V2 powering off from its Meillerwagen launch rig. (Medmenham Collection)

  From October several major towns in Belgium came under attack from the V-weapons, but the primary targets on the Continent were Antwerp and Liege. The first V2 struck Antwerp on 7 October; by the end of the month 145 civilians and military personnel had been killed, with 223 injured. The city of Antwerp, full of military men and the paraphernalia of war, suffered grievously, soldiers and civilians working side-by-side in courageous rescue and recovery activities. Meanwhile, the essential unloading of supply ships in Antwerp harbour, which began in late November, went on continuously, albeit with periodic interruptions, the Americans being in charge on one side of the port, the British on the other. Within the first week of the port opening, the initial target of discharging 10,000 tons of mixed cargo per day had been exceeded, and in the first week of December this rate had climbed to 19,000 tons per day.

  Liège, which had become a huge Allied supply centre, provided another lucrative target for Wachtel’s flying bombs when the hard pressed Germans on the front line sought help to redress a dearth of heavy artillery. The city, with its several key rail nodes came under siege in mid-November, taking everyone there by surprise, and within the next ten days the residents, permanent and transient, suffered the alarming effects of 331 V1s. This was to be the beginning of a sustained offensive, which came in two phases. The first phase lasted until 30 November, after which there was a pause before the second phase began on 15 December, when Luftwaffe bombers and fighter-bombers joined the flying bombs in a continuous bombardment of the Liege railyards.

  At the end of September 1944 the mood in London was again sombre; MARKET GARDEN had failed, leaving the way clear for the rocketeers to return to the west and north of Holland – within V2 range of England. The elusive Batterie 444, which had begun roaming around Friesland in the north, fired its first rocket into East Anglia on 1 October; it landed fifteen miles south-east of Norwich, close to the USAAF base of Hardwick, wounding four people and reminding the Americans that their air bases in that area were now on the front line. Group Nord fired its first rocket at London on 3 October, Wanstead, East London, being on the receiving end. On 12 October Hitler ordered Batterie 444 to concentrate on London and the port of Antwerp, while the rocket units of Group Nord moved freely around The Hague, from one hideout to another, firing V2s at random from multiple sites. Heeres-Lehr-und Versuchsbatterie 444 and Herres Artillerie-Abteilung 485, fired eighty-two V2s into London in November; 133 were scattered over south-east England in December and many more would follow in 1945.

  The V1s and V2s were not the only new weapons of their sort to make their debut operationally in the latter stages of the war. By 12 December 1944 some 115 Rheinbote long-range rocket guns had rolled off the RMB production lines in Berlin Marienfelde; 222 more were promised in January 1945. By the first half of December, Oberstleutnant Alfred Troller’s Versuchskommando Artillerie Abteilung 709 was well trained on the weapon, had most of the necessary support equipment and had occupied a launch site at Nunspeet in central Holland. The battery was to have consisted of two weapon platoons, each having four fire units, but initially only one was deployed, together with its HQ staff, survey party, communications, security, maintenance, defence and transport sections; it was scheduled to begin firing its projectiles on 24 December.

  Before then, however, the Allies were in for another rude shock and a major setback when, on 16 December, the Germans launched Unternehmen WACHT AM RHEIN (Operation WATCH ON THE RHINE) – which became known as the Battle of the Bulge (Chapter Ten).

  Chapter 6

  Homeland Defence

  The defence of the United Kingdom in the final year of war depended on three distinct but interlinked components: offensive action, active defences and passive measures. Offensive action is often seen as the best means of defence, and in theory it could all but negate the need for the other options, but it had its limitations. In this scenario it would require the complete destruction of all aspects of the flying-bomb and stratospheric rocket research and development, trials and production. Unfortunately, this would be a wholly impractical proposition, given that a fully successful offensive against all these interdependent targets presupposes that they could all be located, that they would be vulnerable to contemporary weapons, and that the attacking force had a complet
e, day and night, all-weather capability to maintain a continuous campaign against them all. This being nigh impossible, offensive forces must be complemented by active and passive defences.

  In the context of this work, the active defences required a radar, visual and audio warning network, fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft artillery and barrage balloons, all co-ordinated by a command and control structure, run by well-trained and rehearsed specialists, with back-up facilities, comprehensive communications and in-built redundancy. Sensible foresight in the 1930s had laid the foundations for these elements of an effective air defence of the UK, albeit with inadequate resources, especially in fighter aircraft and trained pilots, which necessitated a rushed programme to make up numbers. It is frequently claimed that the system which emerged, just in time, saved Britain from the might of the Luftwaffe in 1940 and, by extension, from a seaborne invasion by German forces, and there is no doubt that Britain’s much enhanced active defences again did much to reduce the impact of the flying-bomb onslaught in 1944/45. Sadly, the same air defence system could provide no such protection against the supersonic, stratospheric V2 rockets; they had to be stopped at source by offensive action against the associated research and development centres, primarily Peenemünde, the logistic support facilities and launch sites, where they could be found (Chapter Eight). The ultimate solution could only be achieved by the invasion forces occupying all launch sites within the missile’s range of the UK; no other action would be wholly successful, leaving the final component of defence, ‘passive defence’, to limit the casualties and expedite a return to some normality. In the background, contributing to all aspects of air defence, were the scientific and technical, civilian and military intelligence staffs, scrutinising air reconnaissance photographic evidence, together with objective and subjective inputs from myriad HUMINT sources, such as spies, agents in the field and PoWs, melded with SIGINT interpreted at Bletchley Park (Chapter Four). Homeland defence was a team effort.

  Despite scepticism in some high-level quarters (vide Lord Cherwell) that neither the German army nor the Luftwaffe would be able to mount effective V1 or V2 campaigns against Britain before the time ran out for them, wiser heads prevailed, and plans for the defence of the UK were updated accordingly. On 2 January 1944, Air Marshal Sir Roderick Hill, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) Fighter Command and the Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB) issued the first rudimentary plans for the defence of England against the flying bombs. These plans would be extensively modified in the light of events as they unfolded, but the fundamentals were as follows:

  Early warning of incoming V1s would be provided by the ever-ready long-range radar systems lining the south-east coast, visual sightings from ships in the Channel and the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) over land, once the missiles crossed the coast. The codename for the V1 would be ‘Diver’. Thus alerted, the comprehensive command and control network would pass relevant information to all the units in the sectors likely to be involved, and commit the defence forces as required. Radar-controlled fighters would operate well forward over the Channel, astride the V1s’ expected approach lanes, seeking to destroy the flying bombs harmlessly over the water. Given the expected speed of the flying bombs (350-400 mph), the fastest fighters available had to be withdrawn from elsewhere in the UK and from assets designated to support the Allied forces as they advanced across Europe. Day and night, the interceptors would be guided to their targets by the fast developing UK radar system in the south-east, again assisted by visual reports on the tiny aircraft from the ROC.

  With this help, target acquisition and identification by the fighter pilots should not have been difficult, given the V1’s very visible jet plume within an inbound height band of 2,000 to 6,000 feet, unless the missile was in cloud. Catching and destroying them was another matter, as they accelerated to 400 mph in UK airspace, unless the older Spitfires, Mustangs and Thunderbolts, with which most of the fighter squadrons were still equipped, were in an optimum position, above and close behind a V1, when the pilot made visual contact, enabling them to convert any height advantage into speed; otherwise, they were just too slow. The latest Mustangs, the Griffon-engine Spitfire XIV and the new RAF Tempest V propeller-driven fighters, and certainly the Meteor jet just coming into service had the necessary speed to overtake, and they would be heavily committed against the flying bombs, but again at the expense of other roles. Initially, bringing down the doodlebugs would be a matter of trial and error.

  The initial air defence matrix had the fighters on the front line, patrolling over the sea, free from any interference from the guns. On the coast there was a belt of 576 light anti-aircraft (LAA) guns (40mm weapons), with another 560 LAA equipments of the RAF Regiment. Forty miles north-west on the North Downs lay the main zone of medium and heavy AA, from East Grinstead to Gravesend, with the barrage balloons behind them as the last line of defence. With complicated rules of engagement, some reliance on visual identification between the V1s and the fighters and the risk of AA and fighters operating in the same airspace, conflict between the two seemed inevitable. General Pile, in overall command of British and American AA, and that of the RAF Regiment, knew that the heavy 3.7-inch British guns, currently operated from their well-prepared static bases, were not capable of the rapid re-deployment which might be necessary. Accordingly, he ordered hundreds of ‘Pile Platforms’, to be made out of ‘a lattice-work of steel rails and sleepers and rails which, when filled with ballast, was as static as anybody could desire’ , thereby giving the units much greater mobility. A compact gun belt from Beachy Head to Dover was created, 5,000 yards deep and firing 10,000 yards out to sea. The move of the heavy guns began on 14 July and was complete three days later; the light guns were in place by the 19th. To assist the gunners, an array of searchlights illuminated the sky at night.

  The numerous silver barrage balloons, ranged across Greater London, its environs and on the North Downs to the south, had sites hurriedly prepared for them by the Airfield Construction Branch. Balloon Command had its headquarters at Towerfields, two miles north of RAF Biggin Hill, and it was from there that all Diver operations were conducted. By mid-July 1,750 balloons were in place, in a ‘half moon’ stretching from Redhill to Chatham, thirty-one miles long and eleven miles deep, making a beautiful sight but bringing small comfort to the residents below, who might be on the receiving end of any missiles brought down upon them. Likewise, those on the ground manning the balloons also had to be ready to run for their lives if a V1 snagged their balloon cables and spun to earth among them. The balloons also presented a hazard to any unwary Allied pilot, especially in poor weather and at night, and more than one would come to grief as a result. For much of the V1 campaign the balloon units were manned by airmen, servicewomen being confined largely to the myriad support duties. This whole air defence matrix did not have long to wait before it was put to the test.

  At about 04.00 on 13 June 1944 the ROC Centre at Maidstone, Kent, warned its forward observation posts that ‘something was brewing in the Boulogne area’ – and so it was. Next came a report from a Royal Navy motor torpedo boat in the Channel that an unknown object, a small aeroplane spewing flame, could be seen just to the north of Boulogne, heading for England at about 1,500 feet. Through his binoculars, Observer Edwin Woods, manning Observer Post (OP) Mike 3, in Kent, reported what he thought was a ‘small fighter on fire’, heading for London – but just outside his area of responsibility. Accordingly, he passed this information on to his colleagues, Observers Woodland and Wraight, at OP Mike 2, in a Martello tower at Dymchurch, who picked up the flying object at 04.08, noting red flames spurting from its rear end, and making a noise like ‘a Ford Model T going up a hill’. The ROC had been warned what to expect, and Woodland reported his sighting according to the pre-briefed format. This alerted the ROC Control Room at Maidstone, and thus the whole of the air defence system in the south was brought to immediate readiness. Within minutes the Air Ministry in Whitehall also knew that the new campaign had begu
n and, at 04.13, the first of thousands of V1s to hit England began its death dive overhead Swanscombe, Kent, landing harmlessly in a field beside the Rochester-Dartford Road, leaving a three-feet-deep crater surrounded by the metal remains . Three others landed that morning (Chapter Seven), and while there was no official acknowledgement that new air weapons had arrived, Lord Cherwell was heard to proclaim, ‘The mountain hath groaned, and brought forth a mouse’. But much worse was to come.

  A second wave of V1s took to the air on the night of 15/16 June, 244 bombs being launched and 187 reaching Greater London. Hill’s fighters were quick to get in on the act at dawn, the tell-tale ‘flaming tail’ helping Flight Lieutenant Musgrave and his observer, Flight Sergeant Somwell, in their Mosquito night-fighter of No.605 Squadron, down the first Doodlebug of the war. Given the need for speed, No.150 Wing, with its three squadrons of Tempest Vs, commanded by Wing Commander Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont, were deployed to RAF Newchurch on Romney Marsh, and it was Bee, with his wingman Sergeant Bob Cole who, an hour after Musgrave’s success, shared the second victory of the day against a V1, Cole finally sending it to its grave in a field south of Maidstone. By the end of that first day of real action against the flying bombs, 150 Wing was credited with eight victories.

  Residents of Greater London spent many noisy nights inside corrugated iron ‘Anderson’ shelters – with some creature comforts. (Courtesy Lowewood Museum)