Hitler's Terror Weapons by Brooks, Geoffrey (life books to read .txt) 📗

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 Goering84 and Renato Vesco85. 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