Secret Weapons (3 page)

The one exception I could cite would be the vision of a man on the moon, which President John F. Kennedy put to the American nation on 12 September 1962. He promised America that their great nation would have a man walking on the lunar surface within a decade – and the speech fired up the nation in a frenzy of support. He found, uniquely in peacetime, a common cause to bring energies together, and the rate of progress until the moon was reached paralleled the efforts made during World War II. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon on 21 July 1969; the whole project had been successfully telescoped into less than seven years. So – it can be done. Before, however, we reach the conclusion that it’s easy to fire up innovation and the speed of progress in peacetime, we should reflect on one crucial matter: the race to the moon was performed by teams led by the German rocket engineers who invented the world’s first space rocket, the V-2. The impetus we saw in the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) was a continuation of the culture of wartime Germany, harnessed this time for the purposes of peace. Even here, it was secret weapons that pointed the way ahead.

The essential lesson of history is that people never learn from the lessons of history. The secret science of World War II, and its legacy in the wars we wage today, arose from that unchangeable fact.

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   These were based on using a spinning rotor to select letters in writing a secret code. Although we think of the Enigma machine as being of German origin, their story was more complex and indeed the first design for a rotor encryption machine was invented by two Dutch naval engineers, Theo van Hengel and R. P. C. Spengler, in 1915.

Aircraft of every conceivable size and shape appeared during World War II. Throughout the war, and in the years immediately preceding it, both Allied and Axis forces produced novel aircraft of increasingly sophisticated design and increasingly impressive specifications, as well as incredible new missiles that paved the way to the future, as we shall see in the next chapter. Mustangs, Messerschmitts, the Zero and the legendary Spitfire are all remarkable aircraft and between them they altered the course of the war. Many planes that had been developed in peacetime were converted from civilian to military use. Thus, for example, the Douglas DC-3 airliner was modified to become the legendary Douglas C-47 Dakota, the military transport Skytrain. Over 10,000 of them were produced in California at Long Beach and Santa Monica, and also at Oklahoma City. Similarly, in Seattle, Boeing had launched their B-247, the world’s first all-metal airliner, in 1933. They moved on to commence design of the larger B-322 in 1934, and in 1940 were given a contract to convert the aircraft for military use. It became the B-29 Superfortress bomber.

Although all these aircraft played a crucial role in World War II, not one of them was a secret. Only the Germany military establishment produced an astonishing range of top-secret flying devices, some of which defy the imagination, and many of which led to future technology.

But in the years leading up to the war, it wasn’t aircraft that dominated the airways, but huge dirigible airships. Some were still in use throughout World War II – but where did they begin? A dirigible is a lighter-than-air balloon which can be driven forward and steered. Those that don’t have an internal skeleton to support the shape of the balloon are known as blimps; a true airship has a framework that provides its shape with fins and motors to drive it forward and steer it. They began with a French enthusiast, Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier, who flew across the English Channel in 1785, in a balloon fitted with moveable wings (for propulsion) and a fan-tail (with which to steer). A design for a steam-powered dirigible featured in the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, and in the following year Henri Giffard flew 12 miles (20km) from Paris to Trappes in a steam-driven airship. By 1884, the French were flying an airship 170ft (52m) long and lifted with 66,000ft
³
(1,900m
³
) of hydrogen. It was powered by an electric motor running from a battery weighing 960lb (413kg). In 1896 an engineer from Croatia, David Schwarz, designed a metal-covered airship which was first flown at Tempelhof airfield, Berlin, shortly after he had died that year. His widow, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 Marks (almost $100,000 today) for the details of Schwarz’s research by a retired military enthusiast who was fascinated by the idea of building a huge airship of his own.

The person who bought the plans was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Although several versions were at work at the dawn of the twentieth century, including those of the French and Italians, it was the Zeppelin airships that came to dominate. Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ-1 was first flown in 1900, with the LZ-2 following in 1906. The Zeppelin airships had a frame made of light alloy girders that contained separate gas cells and were covered with fabric. They captured the public imagination, and in 1908 H. G. Wells published
The War in the Air
which described how airships could attack and obliterate entire cities. In 1912, an Italian airship was sent on reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines and this was the first military use of an airship. The German airships continued to be a success; by the start of World War I they had already carried 37,250 passengers on 1,600 flights lasting 3,200 flying hours and covering 90,000 miles (144,840km) without an accident. Airships would play a crucial role during this first global conflict but the technology behind them would also influence technological developments in World War II and beyond.

Airships were used by the Germans before World War I for reconnaissance patrols across the North Sea. This escalated on 19 January 1914 when the Germans dropped bombs on Britain from a Zeppelin, killing two civilians and injuring 16 more. Every few weeks a further raid was launched, and May 1915 saw the first bombing raid over London in which seven people died. In June 1915 Lieutenant Rex Warneford was sent on a bombing mission from Britain against the airship hangers at Evere in Belgium. The Zeppelin LZ-37 suddenly appeared, returning from a bombing raid over London, and Warneford decided to attack. He tried shooting at it with his rifle – the only gun he carried – but was driven off by the Zeppelin’s machine guns. Warneford doubled back and climbed above the enemy, dropping his bombs on top of the airship. The detonations set fire to the hydrogen gas and the Zeppelin crashed in a pillar of flame. It was the first time a Zeppelin had been downed in the war.

The sight of the airships over English soil was terrifying to the population, though they did little real damage. Most of their bombs fell wide of the target, and they were vulnerable to searchlights, night fighters and cloud. When the British began to use incendiary shells the destruction of hydrogen-filled airships was easier. In 1916 four Zeppelins were brought down in the battle of Verdun, and from then on they were prey to British fighters. At the end of the war, all German airships were to be handed over to the victorious powers, but most were damaged or destroyed by the Germans. Many of the airships constructed across Europe in the following years were built from the German designs.

After the war, these machines of terror re-emerged in a more peaceful guise. The British inaugurated a round-trip airship service to New York in July 1919 with the R-34, and ten years later construction began on the R-100 and R-101. In these airships, then the largest ever built, the structure of the ship was based on a geodesic lattice, a revolutionary concept that had been introduced by the young Barnes Wallis. Wallis (who was later to design the ‘bouncing bomb’) was an engineering apprentice who went on to become one of the greatest innovators in aircraft construction. His design for a lattice of light alloy girders allowed the construction of a remarkably lightweight framework. However, the haste to develop these huge aircraft led inexorably to tragedy. The R-101 was still undergoing tests and modifications when she was ordered to fly to India to carry officials to a conference; but she was not properly prepared and on 5 October 1930 she crashed in France, killing 48 of the 54 people on board. The British Air Ministry cancelled all further flights, and sold R-100 for scrap in 1931. The United States Navy ordered the British R-38 for military use but it was inadequately designed and was destroyed prior to delivery. Several semi-rigid airships were constructed in the Soviet Union and their SSSR-V6 set the world record for endurance with a flight of 130 hours. It eventually crashed into a mountain in 1938 with the loss of 13 of the 19 people aboard. In 1923 the Americans launched their own design of airship, the USS
Shenandoah
, which was the first to be filled with non-inflammable helium.

Germany had continued to design airships secretly in spite of the original ban imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. To help finance their development, the German designers undertook contract work for the United States, building the LZ-126, which was later named the USS
Los Angeles
, in 1924. Negotiations to end the treaty continued throughout; Germany argued that the conditions had been unilaterally imposed upon her, and so the treaty was really nothing more than a
Diktat
, or dictated peace. Hitler also argued that Part V of the treaty had called for all sides to reduce their military capability, and he showed that the Allies had ignored the ruling. In 1932 the German government announced that it would no longer observe any of the military limitations imposed by the treaty. By then, the treaty restrictions had already begun to be eased, and in fact the
Graf Zeppelin
(LZ-127) was launched in 1928. It went on to fly 990,000 miles (1,600,000km) without a single injury to any passenger, and made the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. The United States Navy built two further airships, but all were eventually lost: the USS
Shenandoah
went down in a thunderstorm in 1925, the USS
Akron
crashed off New Jersey in April 1933 and the USS
Macon
crashed off Point Sur Lightstation State Historic Park in 1935. The German airships continued to dominate until the
Hindenburg
(LZ-129) burst into flames and crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, while approaching the landing mast on 6 May 1937. It was made into one of the most famous disaster films of all time, and led to the end of the civilian air transport by these airships.

World War II had already begun before the Germans scrapped the final two Zeppelins, yet the Soviet Union did use an airship during the war. The Russian W-12 had been constructed in 1939 and was used for transporting equipment and for parachute training from 1942 to 1945. A second Soviet airship was built in 1945 and used for mine-clearance and removing wreckage from the Black Sea until it crashed in 1947. A third airship, also built in 1945, was later used for training and as an eye-catching feature at parades and major celebrations. The Russian company Augur-Ros Aerosystems Group now manufactures multi-functional airships that can carry ten passengers, and patrol airships including the Au-12 and Au-30.

Apart from the Russians, no nation used airships during World War II, though the United States had squadrons of blimps that were used for detecting submarines, mine-sweeping and transportation of equipment. These blimps were able to control the Straits of Gibraltar and patrolled the coastal waters of North America and Brazil. One was based in the hangar originally built for the
Graf Zeppelin
at Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, which had closed down after the
Hindenburg
catastrophe. From 1942 until the end of World War II, the blimps of the United States protected the Atlantic fleet, making 37,554 flights with a total flying time of 378,237 hours. It is proudly claimed that over 70,000 ships in convoys were protected by blimp escorts, and only one of those dirigibles was ever brought down by the Germans.

After several decades of lack of interest since the end of World War II, development work on airships has resumed. Per Lindstrand designed the GA-42 blimp for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which was the first to use fly-by-wire flight control. He also conceived the largest hot-air ship, the AS-300m, which was constructed in 1993 and is used for transporting botanists to the tropical rain forest canopy. The Chinese have built the CA-80 airship, launched in 2001 by the Shanghai Vantage Airship Manufacture Co., and now the Zeppelin Company has resumed construction of airships. Most are used for pleasure flights, but a Zeppelin in South Africa is being utilized in the search for potential diamond mines. Hot-air ships are being built by companies including Cameron Balloons of Bristol, England, while the European Space Agency has been investigating a high-altitude long-endurance airship and there are even plans for a high-altitude airship sponsored by the United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command. An ‘orbital airship’ could lift cargo into low Earth orbit; and other secret developments are now believed to be under development in the United States.