Most Secret War
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U.S. Navy, 377, 401
Uxbridge, No. 11 Group, 242–4
V-1, flying bomb (FZG76), 3, 279, 309, 349, 355–75, Pl. 20, Fig. 19, 379, Pl. 25(b), 532; bombardment of London, Pl. 24, Pl. 25(a), Fig. 28a, Fig. 28b, 418–29; bombing of launching sites, 373, 378, 415, 424–5, 429; casualty figures, 423; launching sites, 360–4, Fig. 20, Fig. 21, 367, Pl. 21, 464; manned, 464; specifications and performance, 369–70; storage sites, 426; storage sites, bombing of, 426–7; trials at Peenemünde, 368, Fig. 22, 380, 388, 414, Fig. 27; see also Photographic reconnaissance–V-1
V-2, rocket (A-4), 3, 29, 88, 332, 340–6, Fig. 18, 348, 425–6, 430–61, P1. 26, Fig. 30, 502; bombardment of London, 459; launching sites, 432–3, Fig. 29, Pl. 26, Pl. 27(a), 436, Pl. 28, 464; recovery and examination of crashed parts, from Blizna, 441–2; from Poland, 443–5; from Sweden, 443, 449; specifications and performance, 446–50; storage sites, 432–3, 446, 453: trials, 432, 455, Fig. 31a, Fig. 31b; weight of, 445–6, 448, 449–50; see also Photographic reconnaissance–V-2; A-4
V-2 (Dornberger), 431, 445
V-3, 462–4
Valiant, 233
Vasse, Group Captain G. H. (‘Tiny’), 209
Vereker, Mrs Yvonne, 155
Vernon, Lieutenant D. (later Major), 239–41, 248
Vintras, Air Commodore, 511–12
Virus House, The (Irving), 473, 473n, 480
W.A.A.F., 196, 387
Wachtel, Colonel (Wachtel’s Regiment), 352, 354, 355, 360, 368, 373; name changed to Max wolf, 373–4, Fig. 23, 415, 417, 418, 422–3, 427
Walker, N. Cox, 94
Wallace, Lieutenant-Colonel B. E., 195, 196, 233–4
Wallis, Barnes, 130n, 426, 462
War Cabinet, 307, 425, 445
War Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations), 343
War Office, 32, 79, 82–3, 124–5, 333, 432, 449
Warheads, battle of the, 445
Warsaw, bombing of, 179–6, 448, 449–50
Warspite, 352
Wasserman 3, German radar equipment, 403
Watson-Watt, R. A. (later Sir Robert), 16, 17, 34–44, 45, 47, 96, 97, 101, 145, 155–6, 196, 206, 259, 290, 290n, 293, 294, 296–7, 299, 392, 427, 486
Watten launching site, 462
Watts, Squadron Leader P. H., 328
Wavelengths, 16, 69, 75, 86, 87, 89, 96; centimetric, 87, 88, 136, 137, 145, 166, 192, 193, 223, 230, 265, 272, 280, 281, 318, 319, 391–3; of X-Gerät, see X-Gerät
Wavell, Field-Marshal A. P. (later Earl), 182, 204
Wavell, Claude, xix, 134, 162, 181, 189, 194, 223, 225, 254, 337, 372, 400, 410
Weapon Systems Evaluation Group (Pentagon), 527
Weapons: development of new, 73, 75, 81, 322, 332, 464; flame, 65; future development, 459–60; retaliation, 3–4; secret, 58–9, 64–5, 67, 88, 322; see also individual types
Weizmann, Chaim, 84
Weizsäcker, von, physicist, 483
Wells, Wing Commander ‘Sunshine’, 243
Welsh, Eric, 205–6, 307–9, 472–4, 479, 480–1, Pl. 30(a)(b), 496
Werewolfs, 480
Weser beam station, 164
West Beckham radar station, 97
‘Westerham Incident’, 512–13
Wiener Neustadt rocket factory bombed, 454
‘Wilde Sau’ technique in nightfighting by fire glares, 301–2
Wilhelmshafen, raids on, 69, 78, 130, 468
Wilkins, A. F. (‘Skip’), 16
Wilkinson, Squadron Leader, 432, 434, 441, 442
Willis, Colonel C. J., 142
Wilson, Sir Horace, 248
Wilton Park, 499
Wimperis, H. E., 14, 15, 16, 19
Window (‘smoke screen’ on radar), 40, 41, 148, 288, 290–2, 304, 346, 382–3, 386–7, 390, 391, 397, 399, 400, 405, 465, 467, 501, 502, 532; controversy over use of, 292–9; results from, 300–5
Windram, Lieutenant-Colonel, 424
Winkel, Captain P. (later Major-General), 279
Winterbotham, Wing Commander F. W., 58, 67, 68, 90, 93, 108, 128, 130, 130n, 144, 168, 330
Wintle, Major Alfred, 79, 80, 90–1, 111–13, 184; court martial, 112–13; In memoriam, 113 Wirtz, Karl, 306
Wizard War, The (Churchill), xviii
Wizernes launching site, 462
Wolverhampton, preparations for anticipated air raid, 153
Wood, A. B., 18
Wood, Professor R. W., 234
Woodward-Nutt, A. E., 3, 52, 58, 86, 108
Woolwich, see Signals Experimental Establishment
Worth Matravers, near Swanage, 99
Wotan installations, 120, 125, Pl. 7, 165–6, 172–8; Wotan I, see X-Gerät; Wotan II, see Y radio beam system
Wright, Professor (later Sir) Edward, 298–9, 326, 340, 449, 496, 514–15, 519
Würzburg, radar equipment, 192–4, 223–32, P1. 10(a) (b), P1. 11 (a) (b), P1. 13 (a) (b) (c), 236, 238, 279, 342, 484, 491, 532; capture of, see Bruneval raid; control of searchlights, 264–9; description of, 103, 224, 226, 230, 240–1, 244–5; in Kammhuber Line, 269; Riese (giant), 227, Pl. 13 (a) (b) (c), 266, 287, 348
X-beam, see X-Gerät; ‘Taub’ system, 251–3 X-Gerät (X-Apparatus) (X system, Wotan I), 84–6, 96, 100, 135–46, 172, 173, 179, 190, Fig. 8, 204, 221, 532; beam directions, 172; examination of apparatus on grounded plane, 151; principles of, 140–2, Fig. 3, P1. 7, 161, 164–6; wavelengths, 136, 165
Xenophon, 376
Y radio beam system (Wotan 11), 172–8, Pl. 8(a), 179, 180, 190, Fig. 8, 204, 221, 383, 390, 393, Fig. 24
Y Service: British, 92, 99, 300, 336, 383; German, 467
Young, Lieutenant, 239, 240, 248
‘Zahme Sau’ (Tame Sow), nightfighting technique of scrambling fighters, 383
Zanssen, Colonel Leo, 347–8
Zempin, 351–2, 360; launching sites 367, P1. 21(b), 374; photographic reconnaissance, 367; raids on, 373, 378
Zeppelin Works, Friedrichshafen, 454
Zimmermann telegram, 63
Z-Stoff, sodium permanganate, 371
1 Ronald Clark, Tizard, p. 228.
1 Ronald Clark, Tizard, p. 229.
2 Ibid. p. 231.
1 see pages 181 and 248.
1 I am also grateful to him for my introduction to Broadway and Bletchley and to Barnes Wallis, whose ideas about big bombs were forwarded to the Air Staff through Winterbotham.
1 One problem still remaining in the Coventry postmortem was: where had areas A, B, C and D been? From what we obtained from a captured map of a later raid, they were probably each 3.5 kilometres long × 2 kilometres wide, situated quadrantally about the aiming point with their longer sides parallel to the director beam, making a total target area 7 kilometres long × 4 kilometres wide.
1 We ourselves had renamed Weser, as the main director station, after the Führer, to avoid using its correct name, which we knew only from Enigma. Spree, as the reserve director, was renamed Göring. The cross-beam stations Elbe, Oder and Rhein were renamed Himmler, Ribbentrop and Hess, and the entire system as ‘the Ruffians’ instead of ‘The Rivers’.
1 It had, incidentally, concluded with a provocative tribute to our sources: ‘They have enabled us to appreciate our enemy in a way that can rarely before have been given to a country in time of war. It is our duty to them and to the country to ensure that more worthy use is made of the results of their efforts.’
1 In the same letter Rowe wrote ‘Are you being modest in not claiming to be the originator of Window?’ It was such an obvious invention as to be hardly worth claiming, and in any event I had the earliest and strongest incentive for thinking of it because of the argument with Watson-Watt.
1 In trials that led to its later use against Paris in 1918.
1 Lindemann may have been almost uncannily right, to an extent: there were white wooden dummy rockets used for training purposes, and some may easily have appeared on our photographs.
1 Rhodesia, where he had gone as a tobacco planter.
1 Prisoners of War, both from Peenemün
de
1 The German statements in the first six rows came from firing tables produced by Wa Prüf 10 in August 1944. The statements of stocks and production came from the Director of the rocket factory at Niedersachswerfen (the ‘M Works’) and his factory records, while the final two came from one of supply advisers to the German rocket organization.
1 100 Group had been formed in November 1943 to operate radiocounter-measures. Its Commander was Air Commodore E. B. Addison.
1 If so, then it was one based on the fission of the rare uranium isotope, for Heisenberg told a conference of the Reich Research Council on 26th and 27th February 1942: ‘If one could assemble a lump of uranium-235 large enough for the escape of neutrons from its surface to be small compared with the internal neutron multiplication, then the number of neutrons would multiply enormously in a very short space of time, and the whole uranium fission energy, of 15 million-million calories per ton, would be liberated in a fraction of a second. Pure uranium-235 is thus seen to be an explosive of quite unimaginable force.’ (David Irving, The Virus House, Kimber, London 1966, p. 99.)
There is, incidentally, a loose detail of thinking here: the vital physical condition is not necessarily that ‘the escape of neutrons from its surface to be small compared with the internal neutron multiplication’. What is necessary is that of the number of free neutrons released in each nuclear fission (say, between 2 and 3) slightly more than one neutron on average should be captured by another uranium-235 nucleus and cause it in turn to split. Suppose, for example, that the internal neutron multiplication were 3; then for 100 neutrons causing a first phase of fission, 300 neutrons will be released. If 160 of these escape, 140 will be left to start the next phase, and so there will be 40% more fissions in this phase than the first, and 40% yet again in the third phase, and so on. Since each phase occupies a minutely small time, the inflation will be catastrophic and lead to an explosion, even though for every 140 neutrons remaining in the lump, 160 will have escaped, in contradiction to Heisenberg’s 1942 statement. This means that a much smaller amount of uranium would be needed to make a bomb than his statement suggested.
1 Co-operation was not always good. James McGovern, later of C.I.A., has described (in Crossbow and Overcast, Hutchinson, London 1965, p. 161) how the 100 V-2 rockets that were to have been shared equally between Britain and America were all sent to the United States by an American officer despite British protests. No doubt there were examples the other way.
1 What is still obscure is Heisenberg’s own position. Bohr, it will be recalled, certainly thought that he had been interested in making a bomb. I can remember the relevant portion of the transcripts in which Hcisenberg expressed astonishment at the news, because he could not see how the Americans could possibly have separated out the amount of uranium-235 that on his calculations would be necessary to make a bomb. His argument, according to my memory, ran thus: it would be necessary to produce fission in an amount of uranium that would contain of the order of io21 atoms (i.e. I followed by 24 noughts). This is a number which is about the same as 2 raised to the power of So. Assuming that two neutrons were produced by the fission of any one nucleus, this meant that chains of 80 fissions each starting from one original nucleus would explode of the order of 280 (or io24) further nuclei. Each of the last nuclei to explode would be on the average a distance away equal to a ‘drunkard’s walk’ of 80 steps each equal to the mean distance that a neutron would travel in the uranium before striking another nucleus. Since this vital distance was thought to be a few centimetres, say 8 to 9, the final nuclei would be 8 or 9 times the square root of 80, or about 80 centimetres away. This should be the radius of the bomb, giving a mass of about 40 tons.
The error in the argument is obvious, as pointed out earlier in this chapter, and it is hard to imagine Heisenberg making it. But he seemed to imply it also in his 1942 statement, and my own memory is firm. Moreover, Charles Frank wrote some years ago to me to say that his memory was exactly the same as mine, except that he thought that Heisenberg may have taken a shorter distance between fission events, say 4 or 5 centimetres instead of my 8 or 9. If our memories are correct, then one explanation of why the Germans did not go for a bomb is that they thought that far too much uranium would be required. But it is conceivable that we both misunderstood what Heisenberg said; and in fairness to a great physicist it is regrettable that the transcript has never been published. (Frank, who read the transcripts in more detail that I did, says that at a colloquium that Heisenberg gave at Farm Hall somewhat later he revised his original calculation of the size of bomb required by applying correct diffusion theory, and brought his estimate down from tons to kilograms).
As regards the feelings and motives of the German physicists they clearly ranged from those of Hahn to others who would have gone unashamedly for the bomb even under the Nazis. And, as for what the Nazis would have done with it Albert Speer has said in Inside the Third Reich that he has no doubt that Hitler would have used it against Britain. Perhaps the wisest comment is one made more generally on the subject of Germany by Churchill: ‘Everyone is not a Pastor Niemoller or a martyr… I thank God that in this island home of ours, we have never been put to the test which many of the peoples of Europe have had to undergo.’ We scientists in Britain may be thankful that we were not put to the fearful test that faced our German counterparts. Even the prospect of the personal power to be gained from association with the nuclear project was too much for some of us.
1 ‘But now one Mr. Jones comes forth and deposes how fifteen years since, he had heard certain groans on his way to Stonehenge (to examine stones described in a work of the late Sir John Soane’s) that he followed the moans, and led by their tones, found a raven a-picking a drummer-boy’s bones.’