Hitler's Terror Weapons (14 page)

Our gripe with Houtermans is not for all his manouevring (since, for all we know, he may actually have become, if not a National Socialist then at least a convinced anti-Communist, and that is entirely his affair) but that ultimately, in common with people like Groves, he became part of the Allied-German conspiracy against true history. He was the only scientist of any consequence attached to the Reichspost project to be interviewed by the American Intelligence Mission
Alsos.
When seen by them at Göttingen on 17 April 1945, he gave them the impression that he had only been on the fringe of German nuclear research and satisfied them that he was unable to contribute any intelligence of particular importance. His Government had sent him to the Soviet Union to learn what nuclear research was being undertaken there, but he had discovered nothing much of note, although he thought that the Russians were very interested in the subject and he had heard a rumour that Professor Kapitza was working on it, obtaining uranium ore from the Ferghana district of Turkestan.

It was all pretty vague and
Alsos
let him go. They reasoned that he was obviously not the kind of man from whom anything useful might be obtained: he had merely worked on the independent Reichspost project under the ridiculous figure of Postmaster Ohnesorge, and, as Professor Goudsmit, head of the
Alsos
scientific intelligence mission stated in his book
⁸³
, the Reichspost nuclear programme was something of a joke for the Americans. Whether they actually thought that, or whether Goudsmit said so to disguise its importance, is another matter entirely but certainly London had been under no illusions. On 28 November 1944 the British Nuclear Physics Directorate known under the cover name as Tube Alloys (TA) sent an intelligence report to General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, advising him:

“The activities of the Reichspost research department may of course imply that this Government department has a connection with the official nuclear physics work. In the first instance, detailed investigations of the TA project in Germany [should] be concentrated in two areas, Berlin and Bisingen and the surrounding country. In Berlin it should be possible to examine the various laboratories of the Reichspost and the private laboratory of von Ardenne. These two preliminary investigations are likely, if conditions are favourable, to provide an accurate picture of TA work in Germany.”

At the end of hostilities in Europe, the Lichterfeld-Ost villa, together with all its valuable equipment, including the ruins of the 1-million volt Van de Graaf generator, the unused cyclotron and the prototype electromagnetic isotope separator all went to the Russians, as did von Ardenne himself, as he had planned. For the next six years he worked on the USSR atomic weapons project on the Black Sea. Ohnesorge, too, preferred the Soviet zone. In March 1962, in the West the death passed unnoticed of the man who “led the way for the great advance of atomic development in the Third Reich”.

CHAPTER 7

The Doomsday Bomb

In captivity at Farm Hall, Cambridgeshire after the capitulation, the atom scientists Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn were secretly tape-recorded in conversation immediately following the announcement of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Heisenberg: “Did they use the word “uranium” in connection with this atomic bomb?”

Hahn: “No.”

Heisenberg: “Then it's got nothing to do with atoms, but the equivalent of 20,000 tons of HE. I am willing to believe that it is a high pressure bomb and I don't believe that it has anything to do with uranium, but that it is a chemical thing where they have enormously increased the whole explosion.”

(PRO, Kew WO 208/5019)

B
RITISH INTELLIGENCE KNEW about the dual project of atom bomb and heavy-air bomb. In
BIOS Final Report No 142(g)
it was said that:

“as the research on the atomic bomb under Graf von Ardenne and others was not proceeding as rapidly as had been hoped in 1944, it was decided to proceed with the development of a liquid air bomb.”

This was very probably the pressure bomb spoken of by Heisenberg in captivity at Farm Hall. The Fuel-Air Explosive (FAE) belongs today in the arsenal of all the major powers. It is made up of liquid ethyl oxide and certain secret aluminium compounds. The substance is released as a cloud of gas and ignited, resulting in a fearful explosion with an enormously strong pressure wave. The weapon was developed by Dr (Ing) Mario Zippermayer, an Austrian born in Milan in 1899 who had been an Assistant Professor at the Karlsruhe Technical University.

Taking up his work, the Ballistics Institute of the TAL
(Technische Akademie der Luftwaffe)
began to research the physics of rarified media explosions. When in mid-1944 a series of devastating explosions caused by the accidental escape of ethylene gas flattened the synthetic gasoline refineries at Ludwigshafen, a small special TAL team sat on the commission of enquiry. TAL's huge factory in the Bavarian Alps cooperated with the nearby
Heereswaffenamt
experimental centre at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and developed small cylinders charged with both gaseous and liquid ethylene. This was the forerunner of the modern FAE bomb.

Dr Zippermayer's original intention had been for an anti-aircraft explosive having coal-dust as its principal ingredient. When ignited it exploded, creating, as was hoped, a huge shock wave which could destroy a group of enemy bombers. Zippermayer's laboratory was at Lofer in the Austrian Tyrol. His preliminary experiments there confirmed that an aircraft in flight could be brought down by having a violent, fiery gust fracture its wings or rudder, but difficulties in determining the correct charge, and problems timing the ignition phase, led his technical staff to consider changing the combustible from solid to gas.

The Tornado Bomb

A special catalyst had been developed by the SS in 1943 and the following year Zippermayer turned his energies to a heavy air
(Schwere Luft)
bomb. Encouraging results were obtained from a mixture consisting of 60% finely powdered dry brown coal and 40% liquid air. The first trials were carried out on the Döberitz grounds near Berlin using a charge of about 8 kg powder in a tin of thin plate. The liquid air was poured on to the powder and the two were mixed together with a long wooden stirrer. The team then retired and after ignition everything living and trees within a radius of 500 to 600 metres were destroyed. Beyond that radius the explosion started to rise and only the tops of trees were affected, although the explosion was intense over a radius of 2 kilometres.

Zippermayer then conceived the idea that the effect might be improved if the powder was spread out in the form of a cloud before ignition, and trials were run using an impregated paper container. This involved the use of a waxy substance. A metal cylinder was attached to the lower end of the paper container and hit the ground first, dispersing the powder. After 0.25 seconds a small charge in the metal cylinder exploded, igniting the funnel-shaped cloud of coal dust and liquid air.

The ordnance had to be filled immediately prior to the delivery aircraft taking off. Bombs of 25 kgs and 50 kgs were dropped on the Starbergersee and photographs taken. SS-Standartenführer Klumm showed these to Brandt, Himmler's personal adviser. The intensive explosion covered a radius of 4 kilometres and the explosion was felt at a radius of 12.5 kilometres. When the bomb was dropped on an airfield, destruction was caused as far as 12 kilometres away, although only the tops of trees were destroyed at that distance, but the blast flattened trees on a hillside 5 kilometres away.

These findings appear in the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee Final Report No 142
Information Obtained From Targets of Opportunity in the Sonthofen Area.
Although one suspects initially that the radius of the area allegedly affected as described in this report had been worked upon by the Propaganda Ministry, the fact is that this bomb is never heard of today. Furthermore British Intelligence published the report without comment and what tends to give the description weight is the fact that the Luftwaffe wanted aircrews flying operationally with the bomb to have knowingly volunteered for suicide missions. The idea that the bomb had unusual effects was hinted at not only by the head of the SS-weapons test establishment but also possibly by Goering
⁸⁴
and Renato Vesco
⁸⁵
. On 7 May 1945 in American custody, Goering told his captors, “I declined to use a weapon which might have destroyed all civilization”. Since nobody knew what he meant, it was reported quite openly at the time. The atom bomb was not under his control, although the Zippermayer bomb was. Vesco reported that the supreme explosive was “a blue cloud based on firedamp” which had initially been thought of “in the anti-aircraft role”. On the Allied side, Sir William Stephenson, the head of the British Security Coordination intelligence mission stated:

“One of our agents brought out for BSC a report, sealed and stamped
This is of Particular Secrecy
telling of liquid air bombs being developed in Germany of terrific destructive power.”
⁸⁶

A 50 kg bomb was said to create a massive pressure wave and tornado effect over a radius of 4 kms from the impact point, a 250 kg bomb for up to ten kms. A sequential disturbance in climate for a period after the explosion was reported. Radioactive material added to the explosive mixture was possibly to give it even better penetration and distribution. Zippermayer's device fits the idea of a high pressure bomb which Professor Heisenberg seemed to know about and to which he alluded in his eavesdropped conversation at Farm Hall. The bomb would have been the equivalent of a tornado but covering a far wider diameter, sucking up in its path everything but the most solid structures and scattering radioactive particles over the wide area devastated by the initial explosion. The survivors of the explosion would be suffocated by the lightning effect at ground level burning up the surrounding air.

The head of the SS-Weapons Testing Establishment attached to the Skoda Works was involved in the destruction of the catalyst at the war's end.
⁸⁷
He had personally witnessed it being tested at Kiesgrube near Stechowitz on the Czech-Austrian border. These must have been the first tests, since he describes the astonishment of the observers at the force of the blast and tornado effect. Various other smaller tests were carried out at Fellhorn, Eggenalm and Ausslandsalm in the Alps. After these a larger experiment was made at Grafenwöhr in Bavaria described by the SS-General in the following terms: “We were in well-constructed shelters two kilometres from the test material. Not a large amount, but what power -equal to 560 tonnes of dynamite. Within a radius of 1200 metres dogs, cats and goats had been put in the open or below the ground in dug-outs. I have seen many explosions, the biggest in 1917 when we blew up a French trench complex with 300,000 tonnes of dynamite, but what I experienced from this small quantity was fearsome. It was a roaring, thundering, screaming monster with lightning flashes in waves. Borne on something like a hurricane there came heat so fierce that it threatened to suffocate us. All the animals both above and below ground were dead. The ground trembled, a tremendous wind swept through our shelter, there was a great rumbling, everywhere a screeching chaos. The ground was black and charred. Once the explosive effects were gone I felt the heat within my body and a strange numbness overcame me. My throat seemed sealed off and I thought I was going to suffocate. My eyes were flickering, there was a thundering and a roaring in my ears, I tried to open my eyes but the lids were too heavy. I wanted to get up but languor prevented me.” An area of 2 kilometres was utterly devastated. Several observers on the perimeter were seriously affected by the shock wave and appeared to suffer from a kind of intoxication effect which lasted for about four weeks. That the weapon failed to make its debut on the battlefield in 1943 arouses the suspicion that very real fears existed regarding its knock-on effect on the climate. Within sight of Gernany's defeat, it was tested again at Ohrdruf in the Harz in early March 1945 (see
Chap 10
).

CHAPTER 8

The Decision not to Drop the German Bomb

H
ITLER HAD SET himself, or been set, specific guidelines for the introduction and use of new weapons. In 1940 he had given Ohnesorge the impression that he was not interested in having an atom bomb. Two years later, within a few weeks of taking office, Armaments Minister Speer accepted that Hitler “did not want the bomb for doctrinal reasons”.

During a conversation with Field Marshall Keitel, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and the Rumanian Head of State Marshal Antonescu on 5 August 1944
⁸⁸
only a fortnight after the 20 July attempt on his life, Hitler spoke of the latest German work on new explosives “whose development to the experimental stage has been completed”. He added that, to his own way of thinking, “the leap from the explosives in common use to these new types of explosive material is greater than that from gunpowder to the explosives in use at the outbreak of war”. When Marshal Antonescu replied that he hoped personally not to be alive when this new substance came into use, which might perhaps bring about the end of the world, Hitler recalled reading a German writer who had predicted just that: ultimately it would lead to a point where matter as such would disintegrate, bringing about the final catastrophe. Hitler expressed the hope that the scientists and weapons designers working on this new explosive would not attempt to use it until they were quite sure that they understood what they were dealing with.

There can be little doubt that the subject under discussion was fissionable weapons material and, if that is so, then Hitler confirmed that the Germans had the weapon and that it was ready for testing in August 1944. The actual test took place two months later.