Hitler's Revenge Weapons

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

  On the night of 13/14 June the first V1 fell on England (Chapter Seven) but the government said nothing publically until forced to do so and three days later the centre of London came under heavy attack, the tragic destruction of the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks bringing a flurry of activity, including a hastily convened meeting of the Crossbow Committee. It was a measure of the importance Winston Churchill attached to the work of the committee, that he himself took the chair in the immediate wake of the Guards Chapel disaster (Chapter Seven) until his involvement with OVERLORD became overwhelming and, to the dismay of many, he handed the role back to Sandys. Bletchley Park reacted by instituting new procedures for the circulation of sensitive intelligence; Professor Norman and Dr R.V. Jones remained primary recipients, as did the Air Ministry, but other ministries and interested parties were omitted. Although a wider distribution followed numerous complaints, it was subject to conditions and reservations in attempts to keep a close rein on who knew what, and to withhold from Sandys some details on the A4 (V2). The committee met again on 22 June to dwell primarily on the likely functions of the huge hardened sites at Wizernes, Watten, Siracourt and Mymoyecques, and again whether the expensive 12,000lb Tallboy (seismic) bombs should be used against them. The committee heard little new on the rocket, although many were aware that a great deal of convincing evidence on the V2 had come from Helmut Müller, a rocket specialist captured in Italy and interrogated very successfully at Trent Park.

  Results of an Allied raid on Engine Test Stand XI, Peenemünde West. (Medmenham Collection)

  Peenemünde after Bomber Command raid on 18 August 1944. (Medmenham Collection)

  The Crossbow Committee then came under fire for not predicting the start of the flying-bomb offensive, for failing to provide clarity on the command and control, associated intelligence and communications organisation of the German missile deployments, and there were those who were wondering whether Air Commodore Colin Grierson, Director of Special Operations, the man directly responsible for CROSSBOW operations, was now the right man for the job, and in early July, he was relieved of his responsibilities for collating intelligence, that job then going to R.V. Jones, who would also assist in the preparation of the target list, from an office in the Air Ministry. Jones and his new deputy, Wing Commander John Mapplebeck from Bletchley Park, would also work closely with a new army/air cell, responsible for monitoring all aspects of the rocket story. There were also questions on the commitment of nearly half of the total bombing capacity to CROSSBOW, given that there was so little to show for it, the Americans again becoming very unhappy with the CROSSBOW targeting and now making it clear that they would much prefer to ‘go it alone’. Rather than the many futile attempts to find and destroy the obscure, highly mobile modified launch sites, their preference was to attack the German factories making the V1s’ gyro guidance systems back in Germany and the large storage depots which had been positively identified at Saint-Lô, St-Leu d’Esserent, Nucourt and Rilly la Montagne, together with the means of transport from these depots to the front line and, by July, the USAAF heavy bombers were targeting the hydrogen peroxide (V1 fuel) production centres. Acting on the advice from the Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU), General Spaatz, commanding the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe took the case to the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, but lost. On the day the 2,000th V1 was launched from the Pas de Calais, Eisenhower found in favour of a recommendation by his RAF deputy, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, that raids on the V1 launch and logistic sites should continue to be the priority and the RAF continued to bomb storage depots found in the Oise Valley, sadly with heavy losses.

  Towards the end of June 1944 tensions had also increased within the ministries in London and operational staffs, with Sandys attempting to get rid of Air Marshal Sir Roderick Hill, Air Officer Commanding, ADGB, allegedly for showing too much loyalty to his fighter pilots against the interests of General Pile’s AA gunners, at a time when neither fighters nor guns were achieving what was needed of them. To add to the defenders’ woes, the flying bombs were now appearing from over the Thames estuary, running into London from east to west, being launched from the Luftwaffe’s bombers, demanding a rearrangement of the available defences. Moreover, the British public sensed that the much vaunted bombing campaign against the V-weapon sites in France and associated targets was doing too little to protect them, and were outraged at the indiscriminate use of such missiles against them, tempting the Prime Minister to ‘flatten’, a selected list of German cities in retaliation. He also called on his ministers and military chiefs to consider again the selective use of poison gas, chemical and or germ agents, such as anthrax – with maximum ferocity and without moral qualms. However, on both counts he was persuaded to hold fire, lest the Germans themselves had something more evil up their sleeves as reprisals – gas attacks and rockets being the fears. He did now decide that the basic facts about the V-weapons should be brought into the public domain and, in a carefully worded address to Parliament on 6 July, he stressed the achievements of the Allied intelligence and combat forces. He claimed that only one person was being killed for every one flying bomb, but that another weapon, probably a rocket with greater destructive potential could be in the offing. There was no doubting his frustration that the military and the intelligence services could not find more of the highly elusive modified sites, or discover definitive information on the stratospheric rockets, now known to be undergoing trials. As for Lord Cherwell, he had been proved wrong over the Doodlebugs and, despite R.V. Jones’s protestations, he was still pouring scorn on the likelihood of successful rocket attacks.

  RAF and USAAF heavy bombers were used extensively against V1 and V2 sites in the Pas de Calais region. (Mimoyecques Museum and Medmenham Collection)

  On 6 July Air Vice Marshal Frank Inglis, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff Intelligence, and those cleared to access Ultra information, welcomed Lieutenant Colonel Stewart McClintic, the deputy intelligence chief of the US Strategic Air Forces, to the Air Ministry. McClintic would be the American spokesman on any retaliatory measures against the missiles, and at this meeting he was promised full and timely access to all CROSSBOW intelligence. This small gesture did little to satisfy the increasingly frustrated Americans, who sought an equal share of the decision-making in a joint committee, comprising three British and three American intelligence and operational specialists, to be responsible for collecting, analysing and disseminating all CROSSBOW intelligence, for the most expeditious employment of the weapons available. They would eventually get their way, with a newly formed Anglo-American Joint Crossbow Target Priorities Committee holding its inaugural meeting in London on 21 July. It did not go well, Mr Churchill clearly identifying the RAF as the lead player and leaving the Americans feeling like second-class citizens, with advisory powers only. General Spaatz’s spokesman, Colonel Hughes, called again for the committee to have a more comprehensive remit, a lack of the necessary information to do so again being a major complaint, and again the Americans got their way. At the next meeting a consensus agreed that all raids on the ski sites should cease, modified sites should be subjected to harassment only and there should be no more ‘dumb bombing’ of the bunker sites. On getting to hear of the Committee’s deliberations, Sandys attempted to get a seat at that table, but a consensus among his superiors decided that he had enough to do dispensing intelligence, and that he should not become involved in ‘operations’.

  Among the many types of offensive aircraft employed against the missile sites in France were the B-26 Marauders of the USAAF’s 9th Air Force, based in Britain. They were used predominantly in daylight raids, to good effect and with some success against the Luftwaffe fighters, working in close formation flights of four aircraft to make best use of their collective heavy gun armament. However, in the summer of 1944 two B-26 Groups, the 322nd at Andrewsfield, and the 323rd at Earls Colne, were tasked to evaluate the use of their aircraft against CROSSBOW targets at night, thus forfeiting their ideal defensive forma
tions. At night, they were ordered to operate in a stream of single aircraft behind a pathfinder which would mark the intended target with flares, on which the following crews should release their bombs. Initially they were successful, but the Germans soon caught on to their tactics and, on their third mission, against Château de Ribeaucourt, northern France, on the night of 7/8 July, they suffered heavily from the moment they crossed the coast into the Pas de Calais, from well-co-ordinated searchlights, AA and night-fighter defences. The two groups continued to practise night operations for the remainder of 1944, with varying results, until it was concluded that night operations achieved little more than could be accomplished by day.

  On 11 July the rocket threat was the main subject for discussion at a meeting of the scientific, intelligence and military heads in London, who called for every effort to be made to obtain the fragments of the V2 which had landed in Sweden, and five days later, small but significant pieces of the rocket arrived aboard the Mosquito. These revealed some very important features, particularly on the means of lubricating the moving parts, that two sets of diametrically-opposed pairs of guide vanes operated in the jet flow, to provide guidance in azimuth and elevation, with gyroscopes to provide stability, the very complex wiring, clues on the missile’s fuel and evidence that it was designed for mass production. This information was gratefully received by the scientists and released to the War Cabinet meeting on 18 July. It was at this meeting that R.V. Jones made his debut as the new authority for the dissemination of all intelligence on the long-range missile threat, and he reported that photographic reconnaissance had confirmed the presence of V2 rockets at Blizna.

  Blizna had become another potential, if short-lived, source of the final pieces of the V2 jigsaw and Churchill wrote to Moscow, perhaps in hope more than expectation, that Marshal Stalin would order an immediate search of the Blizna range area as soon as it was occupied to look for more tell-tale fragments of the German missiles, and allow a British team to join the search (Chapter Four). Towards the end of July Ultra intelligence on Blizna was drying up in the face of the Russian advance and the last V2 was fired there on 24 July, before the units moved to a new testing site at Tucheler Heide, in West Prussia, with its impact area 150 miles south. Meanwhile, more details on the rocket were coming in from agents in France who found what they believed were launching platforms built into existing roads, and from Polish partisans who had captured, examined and hidden an errant V2 in Poland (vide Operation WILDHORN- Chapter Four).

  Sandys lamented his loss of authority and believed that he was also being denied information he needed to fulfil his new responsibilities. He felt sure that the Air Ministry was denying him critical information from prisoners captured in Normandy, photographs from Blizna and from Normandy of the concrete plinths believed to be the launch pads for the rockets, and details on the way LXV Corps would be co-ordinating V1 and V2 operations. Gradually, however, perhaps with a little help from his father-in-law, the prime minister, Sandys began getting more of the information he sought, even from that most sacred Most Secret Source (MSS). On 25 July he presented his latest report to the War Cabinet Crossbow Committee, reiterating that the V2’s warhead was likely to contain between 5 to 10 tons of high explosive (R.V. Jones now thought it might be as low as one ton), that the rocket needed no special launch facilities, was likely to be radio controlled in the initial stages of flight and that it was most probably fuelled by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. He thought that at least 1,000 units might be available already but that there was no evidence of the rockets being moved forward to their launch sites.

  That afternoon, at a War Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Morrison were given to believe that the V2s were all but ready to deploy, that the deployment and launching would be relatively simple and that the rocket sites were well within range of Britain’s capital, but they again expressed their disappointment over some lack of clarity on the weapons themselves. It was then that Duncan Sandys began to flex his muscles again, suggesting, inter alia, that immediate consideration be given to bombing the production centres for liquid oxygen (the rocket’s fuel), to which end he presented the Air Ministry with a list of these centres. This action would, of course, have no immediate effect on the offensive which now seemed imminent.

  At the end of a very busy July Frank Inglis removed Dr R.V. Jones from his post as Assistant Director Intelligence (Science), replacing him with Air Commodore Jack Easton, Director of Intelligence (Research), as his man on the Crossbow Committee, tasking him with an urgent review of the distribution of such intelligence as was essential for external agencies to fulfil their respective responsibilities. While Jones returned to his duties with the SIS, he remained a member of the War Cabinet Crossbow Committee, and still had access to highly secret material at Bletchley and Medmenham. While no doubt aggrieved, he made it known that he would continue to watch developments with the rocket, and report accordingly. Sandys’ reaction to all this was mixed; his bête noire, Jones, would no longer be in the Air Ministry to irritate him but he was still no nearer to the ‘inner circle’ of intelligence recipients; Lord Cherwell and Jones had helped to see to that.

  Despite the acrimony of who should know what, the full story on the V2 was now emerging, the War Cabinet Crossbow Committee Meeting on 10 August accepting R.V. Jones’s latest assessment that the V2 had a warhead of a ton, although it wondered again how Hitler could justify the enormous expenditure on such a relatively low-yield weapon – had they missed something? Although equally puzzled, R.V. Jones suggested that it might simply be an illustration of German pride in such a masterly innovation while harbouring an outlandish hope that the V2, coupled with the V1, might persuade the Allies to come to terms

  The debate on CROSSBOW target priorities also continued to be controversial, with old and new, objective and subjective inputs competing, and specific agreements in short supply; but a target list drafted on 10 August concentrated on liquid oxygen plants and the transport system, predominantly in Belgium. The committee then considered again how to arrest or at least restrict the massive output of both missiles from the main production centre, Mittelwerk, deep underground in the Harz Mountains, mostly out of sight from the air, with little more than rail lines protruding from the mountain. The USAAF is believed to have given some thought to repetitive blocking of the tunnel entrances and causing destructive fires locally, but this would have required very accurate bombing and would have placed many PoWs and other foreign workers at risk, and no reports can be found that such missions went ahead.

  Wizernes V2 Bunker under construction and after a raid, 6 July 1944. (Medmenham Collection)

  Oblique photo of Siracourt V1 Site, 7 July 1944, the town now totally rebuilt following carpet bombing. (Medmenham Collection and Author)

  A vertical photo of Watten V2 site, taken in 1943, and now, showing critical damage from Allied bombing. (Medmenham Collection and Author)

  Two more Crossbow Committee meetings followed on 25 August, at one of which a recently-captured senior German officer revealed the intention to begin the rocket campaign in mid-September, and Lieutenant Colonel Pryor, of MI14, warned that there might be no other tell-tale warnings before then. The following day a stubborn and resilient R.V. Jones circulated a paper containing every important aspect of rocket intelligence, together with a long list of suggested targets. This magnum opus did him little good; his successor, Wing Commander John Mapplebeck, had already taken his place, and on 27 August, Air Vice Marshal Inglis told him that the Chief of the Air Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Charles Portal had ordered that all the copies of his paper be withdrawn forthwith.

  As the talking went on, so did the Allied bombing, albeit without full agreement on priorities. The US 8th Air Force had attacked Peenemünde on 18 July, and did so again on 4 August and 25 August, while striking targets around Nordhausen and five liquid oxygen plants in Belgium and northern France. Among its strategic targets Bomber Command struck the Adam Opel AG,
the automobile works suspected of being involved with the missiles. Attacks were also carried on V1 Feldmunitionslager (munitions depots) and launch sites by medium bombers and fighter-bombers, until it was accepted that they were achieving little, while causing considerable collateral damage.

  In early September, when it became known that the last V1 had been launched from northern France, just ahead of the Allied advance, and Flak Regiment 155 (W) had retreated into the Netherlands, there was euphoria in London. Indeed, the Ministry of Information (MoI) authorised a press briefing, at which Duncan Sandys said, ‘Except possibly for a few last shots, the Battle of London is over’. He then complimented the intelligence services, the active and passive defence forces, thanked the Americans for their wholehearted participation and the use of their equipment – and finally he praised the Londoners for bearing the price with great stoicism – but all this was a little premature. When one erudite reporter asked the crucial question, ‘was there a rocket threat to come?’ Sandys skilfully avoided a direct answer – and the champagne flowed in many a hierarchal circle that night. There was also talk of the Crossbow Committee standing down, despite wiser heads warning that, with a range of 200 miles, the V2 could reach London easily from elusive launch sites in the Netherlands, and that, if a longer-range version of the V1 was being developed, they too could rejoin the party. As evidence that the government knew this, Bomber Command was warned to prepare for a retaliatory, all-out gas attack against Germany, should a devastating V2 materialise.