Captured Eagles Secrets of the Luftwaffe

285 Pages·2014·11.329 MB·English

by  Frederick A. Johnsen

CAPTURED EAGLES
SECRETS OF THE
LUFTWAFFE
FREDERICK A. JOHNSEN
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1: Early observations
Chapter 2: Mid-war understanding
Chapter 3: Attrition versus technology
Chapter 4: Postwar spoils
Chapter 5: Evaluating the technologies
Chapter 6: Jet age and space age refinements
Chapter 7: Dusty jewels rediscovered
Epilogue: German technology in retrospect
List of Illustrations
Appendices
The 1945 von Braun negotiations with the United States
He 162 German pilot commentary, August 16, 1945
Interrogation of Hermann Göring, May 10, 1945
“German Aviation” – July 20, 1945
Interrogation of Gen Karl Koller, 1945
Interrogation of Lippisch and von Latscher, 1945
List of German and Austrian scientists in the United States,
January 2, 1947
Interrogation of von Doepp and Frengl, June 11, 1945
Description of Wasserfall
German single-jet fighter projects
Messerschmitt Me 328B Light High-Speed Bomber
Museum aircraft identified for preservation, May 9, 1946
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Select bibliography
Endnotes
FOREWORD
It is rare when a book not only covers a fascinating part of the past, but offers
some critical insight for the future. A close reading of this volume will provide
the reader with some useful information on why and how America gained
ascendancy in the Cold War and in the space race. It also provides a basis for
assessing the current state of world affairs and provokes thought on what
America needs to do to maintain its place in these turbulent times.
Few subjects have enthralled the American aerospace public more than the
analysis and exploitation of German technology before, during and after World
War II. The amazing advances implicit in the introduction of jet fighters, guided
missiles and ballistic missiles caught the imagination of US military leaders. The
nation was fortunate to have General of the Air Force Henry A. “Hap” Arnold in
a position to see and foster the need for scientific research for the future. Arnold
was far from a scientist himself, and he was not well. But he knew how to select
people and inspire them, and he created a framework that permitted the United
States to avoid a “scientific demobilization” of the sort that had decimated the
armed forces in the 18 months following Japan’s surrender. Arnold’s
establishment of the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group (AAFSAG),
chaired by Theodore von Kármán, led the way to America’s future dominance in
air and space.
Arnold’s initial efforts were aided by the famous Operation Paperclip. Its
aim was to seek out valuable hardware and engineering data. However, at a time
when the Nazi leaders of Germany were awaiting trial for their war crimes, a
controversial decision was made that the personnel available in the German
engineering community were too valuable to waste. Against considerable
internal political opposition, the United States elected to import leading German
engineers and scientists into the American research and development
community. The results were far-reaching in every industry. The most evident
example, seen today at every large airport, comprises the swept-wing transports
crowding the tarmac. Yet for engineers still engaged in almost every field, the
results are evident in the citations of the research they do on current subjects.
It is important to note, as author Frederick Johnsen does so well, that this
shotgun marriage of German and American minds succeeded in large part
because of the capability of the American partner. American scientists and
engineers had done their homework and were gaining on the Germans. It is fair
to say that had the war gone on another few years, American technology would
have caught up with and then exceeded German achievements. But the pairing of
the two scientific communities came at a critical time in what became known as
the Cold War, and gave invaluable impetus to American efforts to counter the
increasingly belligerent attitude of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that
while the Soviet Union also acquired significant amounts of the same elements
of German technology, it ultimately depended more upon its own intrinsic
capabilities. It is not too far a reach to believe that this was a factor in the USSR
losing the exhilarating race to the moon.
American interest in German aerial technology was far from new. The great
champion of air power, Brig Gen Billy Mitchell, had surveyed the German
aircraft industry after the “Great War” and directed the application of many of
his findings into the tiny postwar American aviation efforts. After Adolf Hitler
reestablished the Luftwaffe officially in 1935, there was intense interest in the
rapid progress in which new, higher performance machines were being
introduced. The United States was suffering from the Great Depression, military
budgets were cut to the bone, and aviation research was grossly underfunded.
The inevitable result was that the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC)
lacked planes, pilots and equipment. It was grudgingly accepted even by the
press and public that both Germany and Great Britain were fielding aircraft that
had a higher performance than their American equivalents. Fortunately, there
were hard-working scientists in American industry and at the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). They remained aware of foreign
developments, and in some instances paralleled them, as with Robert T. Jones’
investigations into the advantages of a swept wing.
Despite the funding difficulties, and despite personal obstacles such as the
lack of promotion opportunity, there existed within the USAAC officers blessed
with an important insight, a grasp of the scale on which the next war would be
conducted. A handful of these officers created the Air War Plan Division
(AWPD), which sought to establish bombing doctrine, prioritize targets and
estimate the number of aircraft required. Its estimate was stunning, for it stated
that more than 61,000 aircraft would be required at a time when the USAAC had
about 3,000 planes.
The estimate was uncannily accurate. It led the United States to a scale of
effort that was far more than anything done by Germany or Great Britain, and
was matched only by the Soviet Union. Fortunately, American industry
responded to the demands of the AWPD, and reached a rate of production of
about 100,000 aircraft per year by 1944. In contrast, Germany, with a truly
Herculean effort despite being bombed, was able to manufacture only about
40,000 aircraft in 1944. There were enormous differences, however, in the
comparative support efforts – training, maintenance, pilot proficiency and so on
– where the United States had a great advantage.
When the vast disparity in size and strength became evident in late 1943, the
two opponents took different paths. The United States and its allies were
determined to overwhelm German air power with great numbers of
contemporary aircraft. The Luftwaffe was to be destroyed not only in aerial
combat, but also by the removal of its manufacturing and training basis.
Germany, in desperation, turned to a fervid attempt to win by advanced
technology, hoping that weapons such as the Me 262 and the V1 and V2 would
turn the tide. It was a losing strategy, but the fruits of its efforts were of vast
interest to the Allies. In simplest terms, a huge quantity of good technology
overwhelmed a much smaller quantity of very advanced technology.
In the ongoing 21st-century contest between established nations and
shadowy terror organizations, the United States is the winner at bringing
advanced technologies to bear. But there is a lesson to be learned from the
historical over-reliance on high technology, and on delaying the development of
such technology. One must hope the defense planners of the United States are
learning from the past by planning robust capabilities against everything from
terrorists, to peer states, to the threat of a cyber war that would cripple modern
infrastructure. These are different threats that demand different defenses. Such
diversity of defense is something Germany may not have fully appreciated on
the eve of World War II.
The reader can take Frederick Johnsen’s look into the United States Army
Air Forces’ (USAAF’s) relationship with German technologies as a colorful and
dramatic historical snapshot in time, or as a text with lessons applicable today.
Walter J. Boyne
PREFACE
There is a compelling mystique and intrigue about the World War II Luftwaffe
that continues to interest readers, researchers, modelers, and, increasingly,
restorers and even replicators of full-size German warplanes. This volume
represents a largely American view of the Luftwaffe, ranging from captured
German aircraft under evaluation in the United States to casual G.I. snapshots of
abandoned Luftwaffe aircraft in Europe.
The course of World War II and its technological developments is curious.
Before the United States entered combat in December 1941, British advances in
radar were the marvel of the day. In the last half of the war, German ascendancy
with jets and rockets was startling. And yet, only America perfected an atomic
bomb. Some would argue the capacity of America to produce thousands of great,
if not perfect, aircraft and other armaments, manned by well-trained crews
known globally for their innovativeness under fire, gave the Allies the final
victory. This volume will not presume to call one Allied power’s contributions to
victory more important than any other nation’s efforts and sacrifices, but it will
juxtapose the advanced technologies of wartime Germany against the efforts of
the United States in particular.
The absorption of German technologies and the amalgamation of German
scientists and engineers into America’s Cold War developments deserve
reflection too. Certainly, advanced German technologies boosted and accelerated
American aerospace efforts after the war. But it would be a disservice to the
American brain trust extant in 1945 to presume those breakthroughs would not
have come indigenously, if over a longer period of time, had there been no
German technologies to study.
The wealth of documentation on German wartime technologies preserved in
American archives has far greater depth and breadth than can be exhausted by
one work such as this. A few examples must suffice in representing whole fields
of endeavor. Pre-war assessment of nascent German aerial strength came from
the visits of Charles Lindbergh to Germany in the 1930s. Elsewhere the reader
will find anecdotes about American analysis of German summer-weight flying
helmets. The wreckage of a Ju 88 and its hapless crew’s personal effects come in
for scrutiny. The remarks of an imprisoned Hermann Göring are revealing, and
the evaluation of German rockets reveals both how much we knew, and did not
yet comprehend, about the impending space age. By late 1944, the air war over
Europe was fast becoming a race to see if American strategic bombers and
piston-engined fighters in abundance could overwhelm growing numbers of
faster German jet fighters. The outcome of the war – or at least its prolongation
or termination – hung in the balance. It is telling that experimental, futuristic
German jet fighter prototypes were found with wings using wooden ribs and
skins surmounting steel spars, so acute was Germany’s paucity of aluminum late
in the war. The trouble-plagued He 177 bomber is said to ultimately have been
the victim of this metals shortage, its cancelation in 1944 at least in part a way to
free up precious aluminum for the fighters Germany urgently needed to take on
the relentless Allied bomber formations. The anecdotes are legion; let this
volume serve as a glimpse into the arcane world of wartime intelligence
gathering and postwar technology transfer on so many levels.
The archives remain rich for future research as well – demonstrating how
pervasive the quest to comprehend German technologies was. There is a
photograph extant of Howard Carter, discoverer of the tomb of King
Tutankhamun, gazing at the sarcophagus with the unmistakable gleam of
discovery in his eyes. Sometimes, the vast cache of documents revealing aspects
of German technology and Allied intelligence can invoke that same sense of
discovery. This volume preserves some of those documents intact as appendices,
so that the reader may more fully appreciate the sense of revelation and
discovery present in those papers.
My exploration in American archives and writings about German
technologies led to another interesting observation: the Americans and the
British had an ever-evolving relationship when it came to sharing technical
intelligence information with each other. Sometimes collaborative and
sometimes contentious, nonetheless the sum total was beneficial for the Allied
cause.
A few technical points must be highlighted at the outset. If some of the
images in this volume are scratched or blurry, they are included as examples of a
bygone fighting force; photos that may fill in some missing puzzle pieces for
discerning readers. The USAAF’s understanding of Luftwaffe aircraft was
continually honed throughout the war and into the postwar period as ever more
encounters with German warplanes were assimilated into the body of
knowledge. The photographs in this work, both official and unofficial, pace that
process. From a repainted Bf 109E in the States in 1942 to a freshly bellied-in
Me 262 surrounded by Americans during the death throes of the Third Reich in
1945, the images in this book bear witness to a brief time of furious combat and
remarkable invention, ultimately surmounted by the indomitable spirit of the
wartime American generation and their Allied peers. Wartime documents were
not uniform in their use of German aircraft nomenclature, and the reader will
note references to both Bf 109s and Me 109s, plus occasional capitalizations as
ME; variations in nomenclature and even the spellings of German cities are
artifacts of their era.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to many people and organizations who helped increase my
understanding of the Luftwaffe, including the following: Air Force Academy
Special Collections (USAFA), Air Force Test Center history office, Air Force
Test Center Technical Library (and Darrell Shiplett), Air Force Historical
Research Agency (AFHRA), American Aviation Historical Society, Peter M.
Bowers, Walter J. Boyne, Harry Fisher, Bob Fleitz, Freeman Army Airfield
Museum (and Larry Bothe), Gene Furnish collection, Richard P. Hallion, Carl
Hildebrandt, Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Keith Laird, Fred
LePage, Richard Lutz, Museum of Flight archives (and museum curator Dan
Hagedorn, archivist Katherine Williams, photo archivist Amy Heidrick, and
assistant curator John Little), National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Ralph
Nortell, Stan Piet, Doug Remington, Will Riepl, San Diego Aerospace Museum
(SDAM), Barrett Tillman, and the University of Washington Aeronautical
Laboratory (and its business manager, engineer Jack Ross).
It is not sufficient to simply list the Air Force Academy Special Collections,
the Air Force Test Center History Office, and the AFHRA without elaboration;
the enthusiastic help provided by Dr. Mary Elizabeth Ruwell and John Beardsley
at the USAFA, Jeannine Geiger and others at the Test Center, and Archie Difante
and the team at AFHRA make it a joy to conduct research. Their suggestions and
the opportunities they provided opened major new avenues of exploration for
this book. The collection of papers pertaining to “Hap” Arnold and his era in the
USAFA is a treasure that can only be truly appreciated through serendipitous
browsing.
Likewise, further words about Walt Boyne and Dick Hallion are required.
Walt’s study of all things aeronautical continues to grow a major body of
published work, including articles and books that delve into German technology
and its acquisition by the United States. His tenure as director of the National
Air and Space Museum (NASM) put him in a close working relationship with
some of the crown jewels of the American war booty from Germany. Much more
than that, Walt has been a mentor and friend since I began my writing career, and