Hitler's Revenge Weapons
Page 17
Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire led 617 Squadron’s decisive raid on the HDP at Mimoyecques. (Courtesy Mimoyecques)
Given the problems being experienced during trials, the impending Allied occupation of the site, the air superiority over the Pas de Calais and reduced number of guns, the relatively small warheads and the possibility that the rounds might not even reach London, it was no surprise when the whole project was cancelled. Most of the labour force had departed by 26 July, leaving behind 120,000 cubic metres of redundant concrete. All things considered, the V3 was unlikely to have been more than another area ‘terror weapon’, probably less accurate than the V1 and V2 and certainly less destructive, while the cost, in men and material, was far too high when weighed against other imperatives at this crucial stage of the war. However, that was not the end of the story.
It seems that the Americans may not have heard, or been convinced, that the site had been evacuated, because a very special raid they had been planning on Mimoyecques went ahead anyway. Operation ANVIL was the US Navy (USN) equivalent of the USAAF’s Operation APHRODITE, both top secret missions mounted from RAF Fersfield-Winfarthing airfield near Diss, Norfolk. These units were involved in what might be seen as a forerunner of today’s precision guided munitions (PGMs), by exploring the concept of an unmanned ‘drone’, guided onto its target by radio control from a ‘mother’ aircraft, following behind. In these trial operations the drones would be redundant bombers, filled with high explosives, flown against high value, reinforced-concrete targets, such as submarine pens, command and control bunkers and weapons’ silos, which were all but invulnerable to contemporary bombing. A pilot and an engineer were required to take off the USAAF B-17 and USN PBY4-1 drones manually and, when all was in order, hand over control to the mother aircraft, arm the explosives and bale out over a specified point in the UK. ‘Mother’, would be a Ventura medium bomber, flying slightly higher and 7 to 20 miles line astern, equipped with state-of-the-art radio control for en route and terminal guidance. The USAAF had flown several APHRODITE sorties already, without success, but the Mimoyecques ANVIL mission would to be the first to be carried out by the USN’s Special Air Unit One, commanded by Commander James A. Smith.
Tasked to fly the heavily modified PB4Y-1 Liberator, No. 32271, on this special mission, were Lieutenants Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, the aircraft captain, and Wilford J. ‘Bud’ Willy, also a qualified Liberator pilot but on this day acting as co-pilot, radio control technician and weapons specialist. Joe Kennedy Jr, son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr, the controversial US Ambassador to the UK at the beginning of the war, was being groomed unashamedly by his father to be the first Roman Catholic President of the USA. In 1942 Joe Junior put his law studies at Harvard on hold to become a naval aviator and, after graduating from flight school and completing his first tour on Mariner flying boats in Puerto Rico, came to England to fly USN PB4Y Liberators on anti-submarine duties with Naval Squadron VB-110, operating from RAF Dunkeswell, in Devon. Despite having completed the required number of operational missions to render him eligible for a home posting early in 1944, he had applied to fly one sortie with Special Air Unit One, the ANVIL mission to Mimoyecques. He was then 29 years old. Bud Willy joined the USN in 1933, working his way up through the ranks to become a naval flier and Commander Smith’s executive officer; he had ‘pulled rank’ on Kennedy’s usual co-pilot, to fly this ANVIL trip. He was 35 years old.
The Liberator drone had been stripped of all non-essential equipment, with guns replaced by broom sticks in the hope of fooling any enemy intruder. It was loaded with 21,170lb of Torpex, in 374 boxes distributed securely throughout the aircraft, to be detonated by six Mk 9 demolition charges, each containing 100lb of TNT. After take-off from Fersfield, the drone and its entourage were to fly south-east to Framlingham, then north to Beccles, before turning south to Clacton, then to Dover and across the sea to the target. The two crewmen were to have baled out through a modified nose-wheel bay, near Manston, Kent, while the aircraft continued to be guided by ‘mother’ into the heavily-fortified tunnel entrances at Mimoyecques.
Kennedy took the heavy Liberator into the air at 17.59 on 12 August 1944 followed by two PV-1 Venturas (one as a reserve), two F-5 PR Lightning fighters, two B-17 Flying Fortresses for navigation assistance and to pick up the pilots, and a USAAF F-8 Mosquito photo aircraft, while P-51 Mustang fighters danced attendance around the group, ready to provide top cover. The formation then followed the planned route, turning left at Framlingham for Beccles, on which heading Kennedy began carrying out his final checks before handing over control to the Ventura, the codeword ’Spade Flush’ also clearing Willy to switch on the TV camera in the Liberator’s nose, to provide ‘mother’ with guidance to the target.
At 18.15 the tranquillity of the warm, cloudless evening over Suffolk gave way to an increasing rumble of aircraft approaching Darsham from the south, where 9-year-old Mick Muttitt was playing with his brother below the formation’s flightpath. Mick was already an expert on aircraft operating in East Anglia but this cocktail of noise caused him to take a particular interest in this mixed group of aircraft, flying at a height he estimated to be 1,500 feet. He noted that the Liberator in the lead was trailing an ominous wisp of smoke from its bomb-bay and as the brothers watched, a mighty explosion rent the air, the aircraft disappearing in a fireball and re-emerging in a thousand pieces, the propellers of its engines still turning as they plunged to earth. Spellbound, Mick saw one Ventura pull high, while a F-5 or P-38 spun away to port as they took violent avoiding action. The Mosquito, having suffered some damage from the Liberator’s debris, and with the photographer on board being slightly injured, made an emergency landing at nearby Halesworth. Mick recalls that the explosion left ‘an enormous pall of black smoke resembling a huge octopus, its tentacles showing the earthward paths of burning fragments’ and, in this inferno, both men aboard died. The time was 18.20.
There were no casualties on the ground, but up to 147 houses in the area were damaged, the wreckage being scattered across an area 3 miles long and 2 miles wide over Blythburgh Fen, starting many fires. At the scene on the following day Mick Muttitt found many fragments from the aircraft, a complete engine, part of a main undercarriage and tattered remnants of parachute – a poignant reminder of the two crewmen who had been aboard.
The Mimoyecques site was overrun by the Canadians on 5 September 1944 and a subsequent report recommended its ‘complete destruction’, allegedly to avoid the use of the residual facility by any future enemy and, on 9 May 1945, the Royal Engineers carried out Prime Minister Churchill’s orders to do so. Part of the caves has now been re-opened and serves as a museum, a memory of the possible threat from the little known V3, and the enormous effort expended by the Allies to ensure it did not become operational; 1,375 Allied aircraft had dropped 6,517 bombs, with a total weight of 4,102 tons on Fortress Mimoyecques and many airmen had paid the ultimate price for attempting to do so. There were many reasons why the imaginative Hochdruckpumpe failed to materialise, but the effort expended on it serves again to illustrate the innovative spirit of the German scientists and technophiles in the 1930s and early 1940s when so many took advantage of rampant military ambitions to further their dreams, breaking new ground with courage and determination. The V1, V2 and V3 are the best examples of this – but there were others.
Lieutenant Joe Kennedy USN was killed when the PB4Y Liberator drone he was piloting towards Mimoyecques exploded in mid-air. (Author’s Collection)
Lieutenant ‘Bud’ Willy, Kennedy’s co-pilot and weapons’ specialist, also died on the Liberator bound for Mimoyecques. (Author’s Collection)
A PB4Y-1 Liberator was used by the US Navy for the ANVIL trials. (Author’s Collection)
A USAAF Ventura bomber acted as ‘mother’ to guide the drone to its target. (Author’s Collection)
One of the engines which spun to earth after the PB4Y exploded over Blythburgh Fen. (Derek Muttitt)
The heroic action of Hanna Reitsch, i
n flying an Fi 103 flying bomb, modified with a cockpit and basic controls, to determine why so many had crashed immediately after take-off (Chapter Three), may have led to a desperate suggestion of suicidal flights by volunteer pilots in similarly modified V1s, to attack highly lucrative targets, primarily in London. Hitler agreed to the plan and there was no shortage of volunteers among the Luftwaffe’s elite pilots to fly these ‘one-way’ missions. However, the Luftwaffe hierarchy would have none of it and persuaded Hitler to abandon the plan. V1s with cockpits remain to be seen in a few museums, one at la Coupole in the Pas de Calais, some carrying the misnomer ‘V4’ – the name more normally given to the Rheinbote (Chapter Five).
Several successors to the A4 rocket were considered, some reaching an advanced stage of design. The A5, A6, A7 and A8 variants were designated test vehicles but, in 1939, a larger and more powerful version of the A4 was tabled – with wings. One such test vehicle was given the name A4b, solely to secure priority in manpower and materials; this version had wings added to transfer the rocket’s speed and altitude into aerodynamic lift, enabling the missile to glide as it descended into the denser air in the lower atmosphere, thereby significantly increasing its range, optimistically to 450 miles. When over the target the rocket would be sent into a near vertical dive, to give greater penetration and make airborne interception very difficult. Later, the wings were replaced by fuselage strakes, which increased the lift at supersonic speeds and eliminated the problem of transonic shift of the centre of lift. Such a rocket could be launched against the UK from deep inside Germany and it was this possibility which secured the blessing of Hitler in 1940. Following exhaustive tests in the Peenemünde wind tunnel, and a number of modifications, two A4bs were trialled at Blizna in December 1944; the first failed, but the second, a month later, was successful – until a wing fell off – after which, with time now running out for the rocketeers, the A4b trials were cancelled.
Aggregate 9 (A9) was intended to be used in conjunction with, and on top of a huge booster rocket, the A10, to target the United States, in Projekt Amerika. Work on the engine began in 1940 with Hermann Oberth and Walter Thiel (Chapter Two) coming together in 1941 with a plan to generate the required thrust of some 180 tons, employing a pack of six well-proven A4 engines. A special test rig was set up at Peenemünde, capable of measuring thrusts of up to 200 tons with expectations that this would propel the A9 at speeds of 2,700 mph up to altitudes of 245 miles. The A10 booster was redesigned in 1944, the six combustion chambers being replaced by a huge single chamber and expansion nozzle, burning diesel oil and nitric acid for 50 seconds to produce 1,670kN thrust. The target date for the first test flight was set for 1946 but, when it became clear that insufficient time remained to produce a suitable guidance system to take the rocket some 3,500 miles from Germany, this project too fell by the wayside. Nothing daunted, the team turned to an extraordinary alternative, in which a pilot would fly an A9 to the start of its terminal phase, assisted by radio beacons on U-boats and automatic weather stations strategically placed in the Atlantic. The author is unaware of any plans for the recovery of the pilot.
The A11 was even more ambitious, introducing a third, much larger, initial stage to boost a modified A10 and winged A9. The combination would be known as the Japan Rakete. Finally, the A12 was again based on experience with its immediate predecessors; it would provide the initial booster for heavily modified A11, A10 and A9 stages, for what would be a four-stage orbital rocket, expected to carry a payload of ten tonnes in a low earth orbit, but the war ended before either of these concepts could be pursued.
Although the two surface-to-air missiles (SAM), Wasserfall and Enzian, could not be classified as Vergeltungswaffen , they are worth a mention in being typical of several visionary projects which made use of developing technologies in the Aggregate rockets and their engines. Indeed, Wasserfall was a direct derivative of the V2 missile, albeit one quarter of the size, with an additional set of fins or ‘air rudders’ at the rocket’s mid-point, and a warhead of 670lb. Dr Thiel also designed a different engine, to use a complex hypergolic liquid fuel, which could endure long periods of readiness on its launch pads. Initially, radio control by manual command line-of-sight (MCLOS) restricted the missiles use to daytime only and then only when the operator on the ground could maintain visual contact with his target, but later control would be radar-assisted. Conceived in 1941, the design was validated in 1942 and the hardware proven in 1943, the first successful flights taking place in 1944. Thirty five missiles were launched from Peenemünde before the site was evacuated in February 1945, but none were fired operationally.
Enzian was derived from the rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me163, which had failed as a fighter largely because of its limited duration of flight; a pilot-less missile, it was controlled from the ground by radio to explode a 1,100lb warhead ahead of a bomber stream in the hope of downing more than one of the formation as it flew into the fragmentation zone. Four Schmidding solid-fuel boosters produced a total of 15,000lb of thrust for a rocket assisted take-off (RATO), after which flight was sustained by a Walther liquid-fuelled engine (later replaced by a Konrad engine).The initial trials, which got underway in 1943, showed some promise, but also revealed difficult problems with the engine, proximity fuse and radio control. Messerschmitt persisted, but the well-developed Enzian had not become operational by January 1945 when all such projects were cancelled in order to concentrate every available resource on the Me262 fighter-bomber and the Heinkel He162 Volksjäger fighter.
The Nazis became aware of the potential of fusion and fission weapons in 1938, prompting a brief excursion into the nuclear world in April 1939 with the covert project Uranprojekt (Uranium Society). This ended shortly thereafter when Germany’s invasion of Poland deprived the project of some of its key physicists when they were drafted into the Wehrmacht. Interest surfaced again in September 1939 when the HWA became involved in a three-pronged research programme concentrating on nuclear reactors, uranium isotope separation and heavy water production. This too had gained little momentum before it was decided, in January 1942, that atomic weapons could not become operational in Germany in time to have any impact on the war, and further exploration was handed over to the Reichsforschungsrat ( Reich Research Council). The governing political hierarchy had failed to grasp the huge potential of nuclear weapons and such research programmes as continued with the few physicists who had not been diverted to higher priority military tasks, limped on with no real progress made before the end of the war.
What Next? All these variants of the Aggregate rockets were being considered by the German visionaries of Peenemünde. (Author’s Collection)
The Aggregate A4b had wings, and later fuselage strakes, to convert speed and height into lift, allowing the missile to glide to greater ranges in the lower atmosphere. (Author, Courtesy HTM Peenemünde)
The visionary A9 long-range rocket, with fuselage strakes. (Author’s Collection)
Wasserfall was a diminutive version of the A4 (V2), converted into a radio/radar-controlled surface-to-air missile (SAM); 35 test flights were flown before the project was abandoned in February 1945. (Author’s Collection)
Enzian, an evolutionary SAM, used radio control and rocket technology based on the Me-163 fighter, but failed to reach operational status in the Second World War. (Author’s Collection)
Thus ended a remarkable period of German innovation, improvisation and industry; had it been allowed to mature, history might have had a different story to tell.
Chapter 10
Hitler’s Final Fling
On 16 December Operation UNTERNEHMEN WACHT AM RHEIN (WATCH ON THE RHINE), an unexpected German offensive involving 400,000 men, 1,200 tanks and 4,200 guns, caught a relatively weak force of American troops napping in the forests of the Ardennes. Making good use of landlines and with strict communications discipline, Allied intelligence had no specific information on the Germans’ intentions in that area, the small number of hints detected ‘on the wir
es’ seemingly ignored. Moreover, very poor weather had kept Allied reconnaissance aircraft on the ground, so surprise was on the Germans’ side. The Wehrmacht’s aim was to take back Antwerp, which had been occupied by the Allies since September, the port being crucial to them for reinforcement and re-supply, while at the same time encircling the Allied ground forces in the hope of then destroying them piecemeal.
As part of the plan V1s and V2s were fired at Antwerp from sites in Germany and Holland to ‘soften up’ the city. On 27 November 126 people were killed and 309 injured when a rocket hit close to the Central Station and, on the opening day of the offensive, another V2 demolished the Rex Cinema, causing the death of 567 Belgians and Allied troops, while injuring another 291 – the worst disaster to date in the history of the V-weapons. As a result, all the cinemas and theatres in the city were closed and large-scale gatherings prohibited.
Despite the difficult terrain favouring the defenders, and the pockets of fierce resistance, many German units made significant gains, benefitting from the surprise they had achieved and the poor weather which grounded Allied aircraft. However, any hopes of ultimate success were dashed on 23 December, when the weather cleared, allowing the might of the Allied air forces to be thrown against them, isolating many of their units, and denying them reinforcement and re-supply, with the result that the Germans were stopped short of the River Meuse.