by Helen Fry
M238: And they fire over to –
M304: Over to England – they can fire it 500km. They fire up the whole length of the Norwegian coast … It is a pretty fine apparatus, it weighs eighty tons – eighty tons – the remaining sixty-five tons are just for propellant, for the rocket force … and fifteen tons of explosive is quite a nice lot!53
In spite of the Allied bombing of Peenemünde, prisoners still believed that the new weapon would change the course of the war. They did not want to be in a camp in Britain when Hitler started using it because they might not survive the attacks.
SECRET WEAPONS: 1944
Peenemünde and the secret weapon programme was still being discussed by prisoners at all the bugging sites during 1944.54 On 1 February 1944, sub-Lieutenant Schramm of T-25 described what the rockets looked like to two imprisoned pilots: ‘As soon as it was released you could recognise this rocket bomb above the clouds owing to the fiery glow; once they were through the clouds you could see they had the typical rocket characteristics, on the tail piece the yellowish red.’55 On 5 March 1944, the secret listeners recorded an unguarded conversation between two bomber gunners, codenamed A1441 and A1500. The lengthy conversation revealed that that they were both eye-witnesses to the new technology. An extract reads:
A1441: At Peenemünde I saw a new fighter – a turbine-fighter; is that the ‘Motte’ (moth)?
A1500: ‘Kuckucksei’ (cuckoo’s egg) with a pressure cabin.
A1441: Does it jettison its undercarriage after taking off?
A1500: It has a skid.
A1441: Yes, it lands on skids.
A1500: It hasn’t an undercarriage.
A1441: The one at Peenemünde had an undercarriage. It jettisoned it immediately after take-off. It did nearly a thousand k.p.h. It flew for half an hour. First there were all sorts of rumours afloat about it. The men who fly them don’t talk about them. He said it takes off once he has put out [‘rausgemacht’] propellers (?).
A1500: Then I must have seen it at our place. We were at the experimental station. It can reach a speed of sixteen hundred k.p.h.56
Two days later, on 7 March 1944, two German air force personnel (one a gunner, the other a fighter pilot) made a veiled reference to the V-2. The Messerschmitt fighter pilot (codenamed A1499 and captured in Italy in February 1944) explained to fellow airman (A1497): ‘We were told that if one of those things came over here a few square … would be destroyed, and so it will be. The new weapon will decide the war.’57
At Trent Park on 10 June 1944, four days after the D-Day landings, a lengthy conversation took place between Generals Bassenge and Kreipe (captured in Crete on 26 April 1944),58 part of which is reproduced here:
KREIPE: I am very disappointed that they haven’t started using the retaliation weapon yet.
BASSENGE: I am interested in the rocket business. I know all about this great problem of the rockets with liquid propellant. I knew about them years ago in peace time. I was constantly at the experimental establishment at Kumersdorf. (?)
KREIPE: I know nothing about the liquid propellant.
BASSENGE: Rockets with a liquid propellant.
KREIPE: This isn’t one of them. That’s a very different thing. A rocket with a very long range and very high explosive material.
BASSENGE: Have you seen inside?
KREIPE: No, no. I heard that it had a very high explosive charge, but nothing about a liquid propellant.
BASSENGE: They are called rockets with a liquid propellant because this high explosive stuff is a mixture of liquids in the fuse container. This basis is alcohol and a high degree oxygen carrier with the addition of barium (?) – ammonia – perchlorate and such things. The difficulty is to obtain in that short time the required amount of oxygen for those high combustion temperatures … There is a Dr Braun – the son of Dr von Braun. His son, a very nice fellow and above all a very talented engineer, has been responsible for the development of this whole affair.59
British intelligence had a clear result: not only information about the rocket programme, but mention of its key chief rocket scientist and development engineer, Wernher von Braun and his son.
In reaction to a V-1 coming over Trent Park in the early hours of the morning of 10 July 1944, that woke the generals, Admiral Hennecke commented: ‘Greetings from Germany! Here of all places! If only these things could be intercepted.’60
Most of the generals in captivity did not really know what the V-2 was, or when it would come. The Allies were making progress in Europe after the landings. Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944. That same day, Lieutenant Generals Ludwig and Menny discussed the progress of the secret weapons. Ludwig commented: ‘They [the Americans] are afraid we’ve got something which will fire 500km, from the Rhine to Cherbourg, or something. I believe we’ve got it too. That’s the new thing. Long range and a terrific size. They are afraid of it because we shall then command the whole of France with it.’61
Within three days, Germany surrendered at Toulon and Marseilles in the south. The generals were still talking about the V-2.62 With the Allied destruction of Peenemünde the previous year, it was a race to discover the mobile launch sites. Lieutenant General Menny told Badinsky: ‘I know several sites south of Dieppe from which the V-1 and V-2 are launched, but of course I can’t say whether there are more than that. It goes down as far as Rouen. There are also sites in the district of Rouen from where they are launched.’63
On 30 August 1944, the day that the Allied Canadian forces entered Rouen (in north-western France), the captive Generals Hans von Sponeck and Dietrich von Choltitz discussed air weapons.
‘Surely V-2 is the flying torpedo?’ asked von Sponeck.
Choltitz replied, ‘V-2 is a gun … goes 10,000 metres into the air…’
To which Sponeck responded, ‘Yes, the rocket bomb – and when is it supposed to be coming?’
‘In September, but of course that is much too late. We can’t fire them any longer because we haven’t got the territory,’ Cholitz told him.64
A brief conversation about the V-2 was recorded at the end of August 1944 between Generals Schlieben, Choltitz, Spang and Elfeldt:
SCHLIEBEN: When is the V-2 coming?
CHOLTITZ: Never!
SPANG: What are those enormous constructions then, which the English are always photographing? They are those enormous great concrete constructions which appear to be future launching ramps for the V-2.
CHOLTITZ: They are just the same as at Cherbourg.
ELFELDT: They maintain that they found some nearly ready by the Seine.
CHOLTITZ: I am absolutely certain of it.65
In a separate conversation between Elfeldt, von Choltitz and Broich, Elfeldt said,‘The V-2 hasn’t arrived because the Allies have bombed and destroyed the launching sites.’
Von Choltitz asked, ‘Did you ever see the things launched or fired?’
Broich replied, ‘There was a picture of some huge installation at Cherbourg with a very wide launching ramp, which, one presumed, was for the very heavy things; they were gigantic concrete constructions which they had been building for six months and which still hadn’t been completed yet.’
Elfeldt commented, ‘No, because every time they had got to the point when the concrete was to be …. the enemy dropped a six-ton bomb and bang!’66
By the autumn of 1944, as the Allies were advancing towards Belgium and Holland, Major General Bock von Wuelfingen (surrendered at Liege on 8/9 September) was overheard talking to Generals Heyking and Seyffardt about the building of launch sites for the V-2 at Liege.
Heyking asked, ‘But was that for the V-2?’
Wuelfingen replied, ‘Yes. They have been working on it for four years.’
Seyffardt added, ‘But then it can only reach as far as France – if it comes at all – and by that time the war will long have been over.’67
This snippet of information enabled British intelligence to keep ahead of the constantly moving launch sites. It also enabled Air Intel
ligence to coordinate their RAF bombing missions to take out the new sites before they became operational.
Meanwhile the V-1 pilot-less flying bombs continued to rain down on towns and cities, wreaking havoc across England. The German generals experienced the frightening effect of their country’s weapons when a V-1 passed over Trent Park the following summer. However, Colonel von Aulock told Lieutenant General Spang that he had looked in vain in London on his way through for any signs of the effects of the V-1.68 This kind of comment demonstrated to MI19 that the generals and senior officers were disconcerted by the lack of overt consequence of Hitler’s war machine. It was a very strong tool of persuasion for the British.
Secret listener Peter Hart recalled that their reports about Peenemünde were ‘given top-priority, as obviously there was something afoot which looked like a last desperate measure’.69 The discovery of Peenemünde alone proved the value of the whole MI19 operation and more than justified the three sites.
DEVELOPMENT OF V-3
The range and importance of intelligence coming through the secret listeners’ headphones could vary dramatically. At Trent Park, in the autumn of 1944, the generals began to make the first reference to V-3, otherwise known as the super gun or ‘London gun’, and information about which was not known at any other intelligence site. It transpired that Hitler was planning the construction of twenty-five gun installations at Mimoyecques, near Calais in northern France, to fire up to 300 shells an hour on London. Ultimately, this did not happen because the Allies bombed the site on 6 July 1944 when 617 Squadron of Bomber Command, the famous Dambusters, attacked with the ‘Tallboy’ deep penetration bombs. Between December 1944 and February 1945, the Germans only managed to fire two slightly smaller V-3 guns on the city of Luxembourg.
After hearing V-1 and V-2 explosions near Trent Park, Colonels Wilck and Wildermuth leaked references to the new V-3:
WILCK: The V-3 is also expected this month. Whether there’s anything in it or not, at least they still keep on achieving more and more in that line, even in our case.
WILDERMUTH: At any rate there must still be huge stores which we shall now fire off.
WILCK: Desperation measures!70
General Eberbach spoke about the V-3 to fellow officer, Major General Gutknecht (captured at Soissons-Rheims on 29 August 1944). Their conversation was recorded on 1 September 1944:
EBERBACH: Above all they are counting on the V-3.
GUTKNECHT: The V-2.
EBERBACH: No, the V-3.
GUTKNECHT: V-3, what’s that supposed to be?
EBERBACH: The V-2 is only a small affair. It is a V-1 remotely controlled from an aircraft; and V-3 is that large rocket which flies through the stratosphere, and which is said to have several times the effect of the V-1, but apparently we need special launching ramps for it which are no longer there. They have been lost to the enemy.71
Three days later, Eberbach spoke again about the V-3. Within a couple of hours of the recording, Eberbach found himself in discussion with a British army officer (below, BAO) who asked him about reprisal weapons. The officer gave no hint of how he knew about the V-3 and Eberbach appeared not to be suspicious about the source:
BAO: Have you ever heard of the V-3?
EBERBACH: Yes, there was talk about the V-2 and the V-3. V-2 is supposed to be the remote controlled aircraft filled with explosives which is controlled from another aircraft. And then V-3 was supposed to be that rocket business which is supposed to climb very high, right into the stratosphere, and then also to be controlled some way. I don’t know any more about it.
BAO: How is it supposed to be controlled, by a pilot?
EBERBACH: No, by wireless or something.72
Eberbach went on to tell the British officer that he had as much know-ledge of the reprisal weapons as any average soldier. He said he thought the V-3 was a long-range radio-controlled rocket which had a longer range than the V-1 and could be fired at England from western Germany. The only difficulty in his opinion was that it needed the necessary firing ramps, which was a challenge for Germany. With uninterrupted and undetected work day and night, he said that it would be possible to complete such a ramp in eight days – by which time he felt it would be too late.73
If the conversations at Trent Park had not uncovered the V-3, and Eberbach’s latter piece of information proved in fact to be true, then Hitler could have fired this new deadly weapon from as far away as Germany, with little hope of the Allies finding the launch sites. The launch sites were mainly underground and difficult to detect on aerial reconnaissance without clues from the bugged conversations as to their location. Even surface installations may not have been discovered in time and could only have been overpowered once the Allies had invaded Germany.
ATOMIC BOMB
Throughout the war, the Allies sought to assess how much progress Hitler was making towards realising an atomic weapon. The stakes were high. The atomic programme had to be disrupted wherever possible and any intelligence on it was like gold dust.74 The Allies mounted a number of special operations against facilities in Norway that were aiding that programme, one of which was Operation Freshman. Using a small airborne force composed of sappers from the Royal Engineers, an assault mission was mounted on 19 November 1942 to destroy the Vemork heavy water plant outside Rjukan in Nazi-occupied Norway.75 The plant was producing heavy water necessary for the development of Germany’s nuclear weapons.76 Operation Freshman was known to be extremely risky, with a high probability that the sappers would be captured. Two Horsa gliders headed for the site at Vemork with thirty-one men on board.77 The weather was against them and high winds had separated the gliders.78 The first glider crashed on cliffs above Lysefjord, near Stavanger after the tow rope snapped. Five survivors, all Royal Engineers, were captured by the Germans and taken to Grini concentration camp in Baerum near Oslo.79 On 18 January 1943, the men were marched into nearby woods and executed on the orders of a Colonel Probst (Chief of Staff to Lieutenant-General Karl von Behrens of 280th Infantry Division).80 The second glider crashed near Egersund. Fourteen survivors were picked up by German patrols also under the command of Colonel Probst. However, their execution in cold blood after capture was quite unexpected. The men were shot by members of the German 355 Infantry Regiment – a war crime that was eventually investigated at the London Cage.81
Allied intelligence needed to keep abreast of developments in the enemy’s atomic bomb programme. This is where the unguarded conversations of Hitler’s top commanders at Trent Park proved most valuable.82 General Kittel declared that he already knew about the development of the secret weapon from as early as 1931.83 He named Generals Dornberger, Sturm and Zansen as playing a large part in its development, but he too affirmed that the chief character involved was Professor Wernher von Braun, along with his son.84 In conversation with von Thoma, Kittel referred to the weapon:
KITTEL: It’s an –
THOMA: Atom business (sarcastically).
KITTEL: Yes, yes – but it really does exist.
THOMA: Yes, so does the V-2, but it doesn’t trouble anyone.85
Von Thoma doubted the idea that the Germans had already split the atom. Kittel insisted that they had and were testing the ‘atom bomb’ at Bornholm.86 In the same conversation, he told Kittel that the regime had been experimenting with spraying chemicals in the air.
Other senior officers appeared scathing of the idea of an atom bomb. In conversation with a British army officer, General Eberbach said: ‘Senior German officers visited the frontline and told the troops about the wonders of the secret weapons, if only they could hold out and fight a little longer. The V-1 and V-2 had both proved useless and there was nothing more behind talk of the atom bomb.’87
General Dornberger, mentioned by Kittel in relation to the weapon, ended up in captivity at Trent Park in August 1945, where he talked about Germany’s attempts to split the atom.88 He told Lieutenant General Heim and SS Obergruppenführer Herff:
Our people tried to spli
t the atom by means of higher tension current. About 50 million volts are needed to get the pitchblende, mixed with heavy water, to disintegrate. But the amount of energy released was only as much as that put in. We haven’t yet got it to the stage where the process will continue independently … I wanted Professor Braun to give us a lecture on the atom bomb, as the results of the research work could have materially influenced the development of V weapons.89
Dornberger also confirmed that Hitler intended to send 300 rockets a month to destroy London – a terrifying prospect if it had succeeded.90
General Röhricht discussed the atomic bomb with von Thoma and revealed: ‘We carried out our big experiments in splitting the atom on the Monte Generoso in Switzerland. The energy from lightning was harnessed to carry out the first atom-splitting experiments. A whole lot of people were involved in the business of splitting the atom.’91 Von Thoma replied philosophically: ‘But I don’t know, all these discoveries seem to me to be no blessing for mankind.’
Information about the nature and progress of the Germans’ work on the atomic bomb continued to be passed to British intelligence. Hitler’s secret weapon programme had far-reaching consequences that went beyond the Second World War: whoever gained this technological knowledge would have an advantage in the new tensions of the Cold War. Thus, in 1945, Britain and America raced to hunt down Hitler’s atomic scientists in Germany, to avoid them coming into the hands of the Russians, and the Russians thereby developing the first atomic bomb.92 Key German scientists were ‘snatched’ from their places of work or found in hiding and taken eventually to America to work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs.93 German scientists, such as Wernher von Braun who worked for the American aerospace programme, went on to help the United States develop advanced rocket technology that enabled it to land the first man on the moon in 1969.
CHAPTER 10
‘Our Guests’