Closing the Ring (33 page)

  When all these facts and reports were brought before the Defence Committee, many differences of opinion arose concerning them. Among the scientists and technical officers opinions varied deeply and sharply on the question whether the new form of attack on the island would be by rocket bombs or by pilotless aircraft. At first the rocket was favourite, but its backers weakened their case by what turned out to be vastly exaggerated estimates of the size and destructive power of the missile. Confronted with these, those responsible for home security faced the possibility not only of evacuating children, expectant mothers, and other selected persons from London, but even a wholesale evacuation of the capital itself.

The Minister for Home Security was profoundly disquieted by the reports he studied, and always presented the danger in its most serious aspect. It was certainly his special duty to make sure that the danger was not underrated. Lord Cherwell,
on the other hand, did not believe that even if giant rockets could be made, it would pay the Germans to make them. As he had maintained from the very beginning, he insisted that they would get far better results at much smaller cost by using pilotless aircraft. Even if they used rockets with war-heads of ten or twenty tons, as had been forecast, but which he did not believe was possible, he did not think the destruction in Britain would approach the figures which were produced. Listening to the discussions, which were frequent over many months, between him and Mr. Herbert Morrison, it might have seemed at times that the two protagonists were divided as to whether the attack by self-propelled weapons would be annihilating or comparatively unimportant. Actually the issue, as is usual, was not in the realm of “Yes or No,” but in that of “More or Less.”

Lord Cherwell’s minutes show very clearly that his views on the possible scale of attack were on the whole right and that the most alarmist estimates were wrong.

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These discussions caused no delay or indecision in our actions. An attack on Peenemünde was difficult, but imperative, and on the night of August 17, Air Marshal Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, struck with 571 heavy bombers. The buildings were scattered along a narrow strip of coast and protected by a smoke-screen. They could neither be reached by radio-navigation beams from the United Kingdom nor sufficiently identified by the apparatus carried in our planes. It was therefore necessary to bomb by moonlight, although the German night-fighters were close at hand and it was too far to send our own. The crews were ordered to bomb from eight thousand feet, much below their usual height, and were told by Air Marshal Harris that if the operations failed on the first night, it would have to be repeated on the next night, and on all suitable nights thereafter, regardless of casualties and regardless of the fact that the enemy would obviously do everything possible to increase his defences after the first attack. At the
same time, everything was done to guide our airmen and deceive the foe. Pathfinders flew ahead to mark the route and the straggling installations, and a master bomber circled the target, assessing results and instructing our planes by radiotelephone. The route taken was almost the same as in previous raids on Berlin, and a small force of Mosquitoes was sent over the capital to mislead the enemy.

The weather was worse than expected and landmarks were difficult to find, but it cleared towards Rügen Island and many crews punctually started their time and distance runs. There was more cloud over the target and the smoke-screen was working, but, says Harris, “the very careful planning of the attack ensured a good concentration of bombs on all the aiming points.” The enemy was at first deceived by the feint on Berlin, but not for long enough. Most of our force got away, but the German fighters caught them during their return, and in the bright moonlight forty of our bombers were shot down.

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The results were of capital importance. Although the physical damage was much less than we supposed, the raid had a far-reaching influence on events. All the constructional drawings just completed for issue to the workshops were burned, and the start of large-scale manufacture was considerably delayed. The parent factory at Peenemünde was hit, and the fear of attacks on factories producing the rocket elsewhere led the Germans to concentrate manufacture in underground works in the Hartz Mountains. All these changes caused serious delays in perfecting and producing the weapon. It was also decided to shift their experimental activities to an establishment in Poland beyond the range of our bombers. There our Polish agents kept vigilant watch, and in the middle of January 1944 the new weapon was tried. They soon discovered its range and line of fire, but of course the rockets came down many miles apart from each other. German patrols always raced to where they fell and collected the fragments, but one day a rocket fell on the bank of the river Bug and did not
explode. The Poles got there first, rolled it into the river, waited till the Germans had given up the search, and then salvaged and dismantled it under cover of darkness. This dangerous task accomplished, a Polish engineer was picked up by a Royal Air Force Dakota on the night of July 25, 1944, and flown to England with many technical documents and more than one hundred pounds of essential parts of the new weapon. The gallant man, Mr. A. Kocjan, returned to Poland, and was later caught by the Gestapo and executed in Warsaw on August 13, 1944.

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The attack on Peenemünde, for which such sacrifices were made, therefore played an important and definite part in the general progress of the war. But for this raid and the subsequent attacks on the launching points in France, Hitler’s bombardment of London by rockets might well have started early in 1944. In fact it was delayed until September. By that time the prepared launching sites in Northern France had been overrun by General Montgomery’s forces. In consequence the projectiles had to be fired from improvised positions in Holland, nearly twice as far from the target of London, and with much less accuracy. By the autumn, German communications became so congested by battle needs that the transport of rockets to the firing-point could no longer secure high priority.

In his book,
Crusade in Europe
, General Eisenhower expressed his opinion that the development and employment of the “V” weapons were greatly delayed by the bombing of the experimental plants at Peenemünde and other places where they were being manufactured. He goes so far as to say (page 260):

It seemed likely that if the German had succeeded in perfecting and using these new weapons six months earlier than he did, our invasion of Europe would have proved exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible. I feel sure that if they had succeeded in using these weapons over a six-month period, and particularly if they had
made the Portsmouth-Southampton area one of their principal targets, “Overlord” might have been written off.

This is an overstatement. The average error of both these weapons was over ten miles. Even if the Germans had been able to maintain a rate of fire of a hundred and twenty a day and if none whatever had been shot down, the effect would have been the equivalent of only two or three one-ton bombs to a square mile per week. However, it shows that the military commanders considered it necessary to eliminate the menace of the “V” weapons, not only to protect civilian life and property, but equally to prevent interference with our offensive operations.

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In the early autumn, it became clear that the Germans were planning to attack us, not only with rockets, but also with pilotless aircraft. On September 13, 1943, Mr. Sandys reported:

  There is evidence that the enemy is considering using pilotless aircraft as a means of delivering bombs on London. Unless the aircraft used are abnormally small or are capable of flying at an exceptional height or speed, it should be possible to deal with them by means of the fighter and anti-aircraft defences of this country. If these pilotless aircraft should be capable of flying at such heights and speeds as to render their interception impossible by air-defence methods, they should for all practical purposes be regarded as projectiles.

The counter-measures should be the same as for the long-range rocket, namely, the destruction by bombing of the sources of manufacture and of the sites or airfields from which they are launched.

The state of our knowledge at that time was summed up in a report, dated September 25, by Dr. R. V. Jones, the head of the Air Ministry’s Scientific Intelligence Branch:

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 is probable that the German Air Force has also 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.

  Meanwhile, it was observed that in Northern France a large number of groups of curiously shaped structures were being erected. All were laid out after the same fashion, and most of them appeared to be directed on London. Each included one or more buildings shaped rather like a ski. We later discovered from air photographs that there were structures similar to these in the neighbourhood of Peenemünde, and one of the photographs revealed a minute aircraft close to an inclined ramp. From this it was deduced that the so-called “ski-sites” in Northern France were probably designed to store, fill, and launch small unmanned aircraft or flying bombs.

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It was not until late in the autumn that I burdened President Roosevelt with our grave and prolonged preoccupations. The United States Staffs were kept constantly informed on the technical level; but at the end of October, I cabled by our special personal contact:

Former Naval Person to President Roosevelt

25 Oct. 43

I ought to let you know that during the last six months evidence has continued to accumulate from many sources that the Germans are preparing an attack on England, particularly London, by means of very long-range rockets which may conceivably weigh sixty tons and carry an explosive charge of ten to twenty tons. For this reason we raided Peenemünde, which was their main experimental station. We also demolished Watten, near St. Omer, which was where a construction work was proceeding the purpose of which we could not define. There are at least seven such points in the Pas de Calais and the Cherbourg peninsula, and there may be a good many others which we have not detected.

2. Scientific opinion is divided as to the practicability of making rockets of this kind, but I am personally as yet unconvinced that they cannot be made. We are in close touch with your people, who are ahead of us in rocket impulsion, which they have studied to give airplanes a send-off, and all possible work is being done. The expert committee which is following this business thinks it possible that a heavy though premature and short-lived attack might be made in the middle of November, and that the main attack would be attempted in the New Year. It naturally pays the Germans to spread talk of new weapons to encourage their troops, their satellites, and neutrals, and it may well be that their bite will be found less bad than their bark.

3. Hitherto we have watched the unexplained constructions proceeding in the Pas de Calais area without (except Watten) attacking them in the hope of learning more about them. But now we have decided to demolish those we know of, which should be easy, as overwhelming fighter protection can be given to bombers. Your airmen are of course in every way ready to help. This may not however end the menace, as the country is full of woods and quarries, and slanting tunnels can easily be constructed in hillsides.

4. The case of Watten is interesting. We damaged it so severely that the Germans, after a meeting two days later, decided to abandon it altogether. There were six thousand French workers upon it as forced labour. When they panicked at the attack, a body of uniformed young Frenchmen who are used by the Germans to supervise them fired upon their countrymen with such brutality that a German officer actually shot one of these young swine. A week later, the Germans seem to have reversed their previous decision and resumed the work. Three thousand more workmen have been brought back. The rest have gone to some of those other suspected places, thus confirming our views. We have an excellent system of Intelligence in this part of Northern France, and it is from these sources as well as from photographs and examination of prisoners that this story has been built up.

5. I am sending you by air courier the latest report upon the subject, as I thought you would like to know about it.

He replied after an interval:

President Roosevelt to Prime Minister

9 Nov. 43

We too have received many reports of the German rocket activity. The only information recently coming to me which might be of value to you is a statement that factories manufacturing the rocket bomb are situated in Kaniafried, Richshafen, Mitzgennerth, Berlin, Kugellagerwerke Schweinfurt, Wiener Neustadt, and at an isolated factory on the left side of the road going from Vienna to Baden, just south of Vienna. Production is said to have been delayed, owing to the death, in the bombing of the experimental station at Peenemünde, of Lieutenant-General Shemiergembeinski, who was in charge. This came from an informer via Turkey.

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The evidence and conflicting views both among the scientists and my colleagues on the Defence Committee continued to be so evenly balanced and confusing that I asked Sir Stafford Cripps, the Minister of Aircraft Production, with his special knowledge and judicial mind, to review all the information about the German long-range weapons and present a conclusion. On November 17, he made his report.