Most Secret War

by R. V. Jones

  Colonel Wachtel and the officers that he has collected were to form the cadres of an anti-aircraft regiment (16 batteries of 220 men, the 155 W, that is going to be stationed in France, at the end of October or beginning of November, with HQ near Amiens, and batteries between Amiens, Abbeville, Dunkirk).

  The regiment will dispose 108 (one hundred and eight) catapults able to fire a bomb every twenty minutes. The army artillery will have more that 400 catapults sited from Brittany to Holland.

  The artillery regiments will be supplied with these devices as and when there is a sufficient production of ammunition.

  Major Sommerfeld, Colonel Wachtel’s technical adviser, estimates that 50–100 of these bombs would suffice to destroy London. The batteries will be so sited that they can methodically destroy most of Britain’s large cities during the winter.

  Reinforced concrete platforms are reported to be already under construction. They are expected to be fully operational in November.

  The Germans experts are aware that British experts are working on the same problem. They think they are sure of a three to four months’ lead.

  There is, incidentally, one important difference between Marie-Madeleine’s version and mine. Hers was unreadable as regards the third word after ‘Peenemünde’ whereas ours read ‘Zemfin’, which we amended to read ‘Zempin’, a village not far from Peenemünde.

  The information about KG100 having used guided bombs which had been developed at Peenemünde (reminiscent of the ‘Oslo Report’) against our warships in the Mediterranean was correct: Warspite, the most wayward of battleships, had been among those hit. Bacterial warfare was an aspect which we were also on the watch for, but what interested us most, of course, was the ‘stratospheric shell.’ This, and much of the internal evidence, with its 80 kilometres into the stratosphere, pointed to the rocket; and somehow the source even knew the colours of the various passes necessary to get into Peenemünde, and had supplied a wealth of detail about the launching organization in France. We learnt for the first time of the existence of Colonel Wachtel and his Lehr-und-Erprobungskommando that was now to be formed into Flak Regiment 155W, and his technical adviser Sommerfeld. Some of the figures in the report were frightening: 108 catapults rising to more than 400, with 50 to 100 bombs sufficient to destroy London, and with a range up to 500 kilometres. What were we to make of it all?

  All three reports I had to absorb in the three hours before Churchill’s meeting, and although I could not have asked for a better briefing than that which Charles Frank gave me, I was not completely happy. Lindemann was again defiant. He argued that these new reports were typical of what might be expected once we had unwisely briefed our agents about what to look for, and he again threw doubt on the reality of the rocket. Despite this, the Ministry of Production was required to investigate the problem of providing another 100,000 Morrison shelters for London: Lindemann told me afterwards that the building of two battleships had to be postponed to provide the steel for these shelters. Because I was not sufficiently confident of the state of my information, I said almost nothing at the meeting, and afterwards walked across to his office with Lindemann. He obviously felt that he had done much better than the last time, and commented to me, ‘You didn’t have it all your way this time!’

  The experience brought home to me what my real strength had been at the earlier meetings. It was that, in contrast to everyone else sitting round the Cabinet table, I had done all my own work for myself, and had forged out every link in the chain of evidence, so that I knew exactly what its strength was. Everyone else, in their more elevated positions, had had to depend on work done for them by their staffs, frequently only to be briefed at the last moment, as I myself had had to be on this occasion. And even with Charles Frank’s understanding and skill, and even though I had been away from the work for only a week, I felt that there was too much sloppiness in my knowledge for me to pronounce positively on the various possibilities. On a previous occasion I had quoted Palmerston’s statement of 1838 to Queen Victoria, and now I even more appreciated its force:

  In England, the Ministers who are at the heads of the several departments of the State are liable any day and every day to defend themselves in Parliament; in order to do this they must be minutely acquainted with all the details of the business of their offices, and the only way of being constantly armed with such information is to conduct and direct those details themselves.

  The following day I went back with Hugh Smith to Gloucestershire for a further few days; but I shot no more hares: while I was in London the vital strip of stubble had been ploughed up, and I could no longer predict the paths of the hares.

  In the meantime I enquired about the source of the extraordinary Wachtel report, but all that I could learn at that time was that it came from ‘Une jeune fille la plus remarquable de sa generation’ who spoke five languages, and it has stayed in my memory throughout the intervening years. Some twenty years after I received the report I happened to meet Kenneth Cohen who told me that he was giving a reception that evening for Marie-Madeleine, and he invited me to meet her. I of course asked her if she could remember the report and its author; she at once replied positively and added that ‘la jeune fille’ was now la Vicomtesse de Clarens. When in 1973 Marie-Madeleine published her Noah’s Ark, I searched it for details. Our source’s maiden name was Jeannie Rousseau: strictly she was not one of the Alliance network where all the members were known by animal names (hence ‘Noah’s Ark’) but of a smaller network known as the ‘Druides’, and her code name was Amniarix. At the time she sent in the Wachtel report she was 23 years old.

  Shortly before D-Day it was planned to evacuate her and two other agents, Yves le Bitoux and Raymond Pezet, to England by sea, taking with them a large number of reports. They were to go to the small town of Treguier in Britanny but when, shortly after D-Day, they arrived there they found that the man who was to have guided them through the minefields had been arrested the day before. His house was full of troops, the town was encircled, and Amniarix and her companions were trapped. She was the first to be caught, and the Gestapo made her walk back with them to the car where two of the others were waiting, but even in her dire situation she succeeded in warning them by talking so loudly in German to her captors that the others had a chance to escape. Pezet got away: le Bitoux, since Treguier was his own town and might therefore be savaged by the Gestapo if he were to escape, allowed himself to be captured. He and Amniarix and two further companions were taken away to face imprisonment and perhaps worse in concentration camps, where le Bitoux and one of the others died.

  Well, I now knew from Marie-Madeleine that Amniarix had survived the war but I hesitated to find her, because the revival of wartime experiences might have been distressing. But in 1976 the opportunity arose for us to meet for a Yorkshire Television programme, and so I learned more of her story. In June 1940 she was in Dinard, the Headquarters of von Reichenau’s Army Group for the invasion of England. With her extraordinary gift for languages she was asked by the Mayor of Dinard to act as interpreter in transactions with the Germans, and she began to report what she saw and heard. This led to her being arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, but there was insufficient proof for them to do more than to prohibit her from staying in the coastal area. Back in Paris she looked for a suitable ‘cover’ activity and joined an organization entrusted by French industrialists with working out their problems with the occupying forces. She was approached by Georges Lamarque, a former university friend, who had set up an espionage unit known as the ‘Druides’, he himself being the agent ‘Petrel’ in Marie-Madeleine’s ‘Noah’s Ark’. He was a mathematician and statistician, and a man of the Left who was in the end summarily shot by the Germans after he had given himself up in order to save the village from which they had detected his radio transmissions. ‘No flourish of trumpets’, writes Amniarix ‘—the way he would have wanted it’. He had been a brilliant intelligence organizer, and it was he who had forwarded her secret weapon re
port.

  Her work for the French industrialists had brought her in 1943 into contact with a new German organization that was requiring work to be done for a secret programme, and Amniarix recognized one of the officers that she had encountered in 1940, now with a much higher status. She succeeded in teasing him to boast about the new ‘wonder weapon’ and in being engaged as an interpreter for the purchasing commissions for contracts connected with the new organization, which proved to be Wachtel’s Regiment. Her report was the result.

  As we shall see, Amniarix was to provide further information about Wachtel, but we had first to clear our own minds concerning the nature of the weapon he was to operate. Here our best clue came from an Enigma message sent on 7th September, of which the most significant part read:

  (1) Luftflotte 3 again requests the immediate bringing up of Flak forces to protect ground organization Flak Zielgerät 76. The urgency of this is emphasized by the following facts:

  (a) According to report of C. in C. West, Abwehr Station France reports the capture of an enemy agent who had the task of establishing at all costs the position of new German rocket weapon. The English, it is stated, have information that the weapon is to be employed in the near future and they intend to attack the positions before this occurs.

  I did not at first know quite how to interpret it, but its full significance struck me when Portal himself telephoned me personally and asked me what I made of it. Something he said made me realize that it was referring to the pilotless aircraft; and as I came off the telephone I said to Charles Frank ‘C.A.S. is damned good—he was quicker than I was at seeing what that message was about!’ Convinced now that we had unshakeable evidence about the pilotless aircraft, my first step was to see Cherwell because this would clearly ‘let him off the hook’ for any blunders he might have made about the rocket. His prediction that there would be a pilotless aircraft was completely fulfilled.

  Much of my interpretation was based on the fact that ‘Flak Zielgerät’ would mean an anti-aircraft target apparatus, and we had in fact evolved our own ‘Queen Bee’ remote controlled aeroplane for use as an antiaircraft target in the years before the war. To my astonishment Cherwell, instead of being grateful, at once disagreed with my interpretation, saying that he was well experienced in the use of German (which was undeniable) and that what was meant was an ‘anti-aircraft aiming apparatus’, in other words a predictor. He said that clearly the Germans were bringing in an important new predictor. I was in no position to argue with his German, and I could only point out that it was a very strange predictor that would require so many guns to protect it. I thought at the time, and I still believe it, that he was by now so concerned with the offensive that he subconsciously rejected any interpretation that might throw us back on the defensive, even at the expense of denying his own vindication by the appearance of the pilotless aircraft. On 14th September I issued a special note, concluding that

  The Germans are installing, under the cover name of FZG 76, a large and important ground organization in Belgium-N. France which is probably concerned with directing an attack on England by rocket-driven pilotless aircraft.

  I also warned that in view of Lindemann’s continued opposition to the rockets:

  There have been good reports from agents both of the development of the long range rocket, and of the rocket-driven pilotless aircraft; sometimes both have been mentioned in the same report. The messages under discussion appear to confirm the fairly imminent use of the pilotless aircraft, but do not reflect on the question of the long range rocket except that they add credibility to it in those reports, manifestly competent, which state the existence of both weapons.

  After my note, Portal congratulated me on the amount that I had been able to deduce from the message: when I told him that he himself had done it, he was surprised—it turned out that I had misunderstood him on the telephone and that he had not seen the interpretation of Flak Zielgerät as a pilotless aircraft.

  We immediately increased the keenness of our search for the FZG 76 sites, and during the next few weeks reports began to come in from agents in North France about various emplacements that were being constructed ten to twenty miles inland, and which were said to be for long-range guns or rockets.

  In London the situation was now somewhat eased by Duncan Sandys’ proposal to the Chiefs of Staff that pilotless aircraft should be handled not by him but by normal Air Staff channels; but the arguments concerning the rocket still went on. Lindemann did so well with his scepticism that special meetings had to be held between him and the other scientists on whether it was possible to make a rocket with a range of 130 miles. When we heard of the argument, Charles Frank and I adopted the commonsense approach of asking how great a velocity was required in the rocket, to see whether any known fuels contained this amount of energy and sufficiently more to propel the carcase of the rocket to the required range. This was simply a matter of consulting the available physical and chemical tables, and it was clear that there were many combinations of fuel which would be suitable using liquid oxygen or nitric acid as one constituent and an organic fuel such as petrol or alcohol as the other. Therefore, in principle, the rocket could be made. We then stayed on the sidelines while Lindemann and the others argued. The episode is well described by David Irving in The Mare’s Nest. The argument seemed to us so trivial that we thought ourselves well out of it. Actually, Lindemann almost won it so long as our experts could only think of cordite. But one British engineer, Mr. Isaac Lubbock, had just made successful experiments on a small scale with a rocket that would use petrol and oxygen derived from a liquid oxygen supply, and Goddard in America had been using liquid oxygen for some years. When Lubbock was at last brought in to the argument, our other experts realized that progress with liquid-fuel rockets might make the long-range rocket feasible. I can remember at one meeting Sir Robert Robinson saying, ‘Ah, Yes, liquid fuel!’ and several others taking up the chorus as though the realization that the fuel could be liquid instead of solid completely exonerated them from their previous failure to refute Lindemann.

  On 25th October, Churchill held another of his evening meetings. Again the arguments came up, Lindemann still expressing strong opposition, even to the extent of saying that the rocket was a mare’s nest. Again Churchill asked me for my opinion in view of the latest evidence from our experts regarding liquid fuels. I could not help telling him that what really mattered was not the experts’ opinions, but what the Germans were really doing. And that just because our experts had now thought of liquid fuels, there was no cause to assume that the rocket was either more or less imminent than it was before the argument had started: and the fact that they had ‘learnt about two rare chemicals, to wit nitric acid and aniline, was no cause for panic.’

  ‘Panic!’ exploded Churchill, ‘who’s panicking?’

  ‘It seems to me, Sir’, I replied, ‘that some of us around this table are getting pretty near it.’

  Lindemann chuckled.

  In any event, the Committee had before it a recent statement of my views, made on 25th September and circulated as a Chiefs of Staff paper, regarding the reality of both the rocket and the pilotless aircraft threats. After reviewing all the evidence, old and new, I had concluded:

  Much information has been collected. Allowing for the inaccuracies which often occur in individual accounts, they form a coherent picture which, despite the bewildering effect of propaganda, has but one explanation: the Germans have been conducting an extensive research into long range rockets at Peenemünde. Their experiments have naturally encountered difficulties which may still be holding up production, although Hitler would press the rockets into service at the earliest possible moment; that moment is probably still some months ahead. It would be unfortunate if, because our sources had given us a longer warning than was at first appreciated, we should at this stage discredit their account.

  There are obvious technical objections which, based on our own experience, can be raised against the prospect of
successful rockets, but it is not without precedent for the Germans to have succeeded while we doubted: the beams are a sufficient example.

  It is probable that the German Air Force has been developing a pilotless aircraft for long range bombardment in competition with the rocket, and it is very possible that the aircraft will arrive first.

  Finally, Churchill turned to Field Marshal Smuts, who was attending as a member of the War Cabinet. ‘Now, Field Marshal’, said Churchill, ‘you have heard the arguments. Tell us what you think!’ Discussions round Churchill’s table were usually conducted in a respectful tone, with everyone quiet except for the speaker at the time, but the silence seemed intensified in the second or two before Smuts spoke, as though the whole War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff were sitting at his feet. Smuts’ comment was, ‘Well, the evidence may not be conclusive, but I think a jury would convict!’

  There were still further arguments after the meeting between Lindemann and the experts, and he even got them to go so far as to say that even if a rocket was possible the difficulties were so formidable that the Germans might not have attempted to overcome them. Finally Stafford Cripps was charged by Churchill to conduct an enquiry to establish the reality of the rocket threat. Cripps called me to his flat in Whitehall Court, and I was empowered to show him the full nature of my evidence, which now included a direct light on the progress of the pilot-less aircraft itself.

  I had set a watch six months before on two companies of the Air Signals Experimental Regiment, the 14th and 15th. If they were called in to plot the trajectory of a long-range missile by radar, we should hear of it irrespective of the nature of the missile—it would be equally valid against the rocket or the pilotless aircraft. During the autumn we found 14th Company on the Baltic coast, where it had strung out detachments, including one on the Greifswalder Oie, a small island just north of Peenemünde. To our delight, the detachments began to transmit ranges and bearings on a moving object, using exactly the same type of letter-for-figure code that we had encountered in 1941 with the German radar stations in north France. It did not take us long to sort everything out. Starting with the station on Greifswalder Oie, the ranges and bearings made sense of something that was taking off from Peenemünde, and was proceeding with a speed around 400 m.p.h. in an east-north-easterly direction. As it ran out of range of the Greifswalder Oie station it was picked up by one further along the coast and it was not difficult for us to locate this from the ranges and bearings it gave on the track that we had already established. We could locate the successive radar stations as each plotted a part of the track in turn. The stations were usually alerted before a firing took place, and there were security slips such as a reference to ‘FZG 76’ and so there was no doubt about what they were plotting. It was a great moment, for my very long shot had landed us in a ringside seat at all the trials of the flying bomb.