V - weapons hunt : defeating German secret weapons

366 Pages·2010·18.52 MB·English

by  Roy

Other Books By The Author

World War II Photo Intelligence
Prelude To Pearl Harbor
To Fool A Glass Eye
Asia From Above

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Colonel Roy M. Stanley II
9781783033362
The right of Colonel Roy M. Stanley II to be identified as Author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England
By CPI UK

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation,
Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military,
Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics,
Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing
For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
DEDICATION
With deepest respect and admiration, this book is dedicated to Second World
War reconnaissance collectors and photo interpreters who had to win these
battles and, at the same time, invent all the skills and techniques that to this day
make a Photo Interpretation Report something a wise commander relies upon.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
One of the best things about being a PI is that you develop a good memory for
details, and you are part of an exclusive “inner circle” of other PIs who are
willing to share thoughts and materials. I was honored to be allowed to join the
Medmenham Club, and I have fellow members Wing Commander M D (Mike)
Mockford, OBE, RAF (Ret’d), and Major ACL (Chris) Halsall, Intelligence
Corps (Ret’d) to thank for some of the most significant photos in this book—and
particularly for access to Douglas Kendall’s unpublished memoirs. I also had
fine cooperation from the National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Defence
Audio Visual Agency (DAVA), Imperial War Museum, US National Archives,
Bundesarchiv and several private collectors of Second World War imagery.
Some of my sense of what was going on and how people felt at the time comes
from years of taking every chance I had to talk with former bomber and fighter
pilots during unit Reunions, Squadron parties and coffee breaks during various
military assignments. I have also talked with people who heard the buzz-bombs
overhead as children. They were there and lived through the critical months this
book documents.
The opinions that follow are mine alone, and if I got any of the story wrong, I
hope the friends who helped me, and those who served at Medmenham, will
forgive.
Lastly, I want to thank the publishers (noted in the Bibliography) who so
graciously granted permission to quote from their copyright material, and the
folk at Pen & Sword for making this such a comfortable experience--particularly
Brigadier Henry Wilson and David Hemingway.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Chapter I - BACKGROUND
Chapter II - TOOLS OF THE HUNT
Chapter III - THE HOME OF WONDER WEAPONS
Chapter IV - THE WILDS OF POLAND
Chapter V - CONCRETE MONSTERS
Chapter VI - SKIS WITHOUT SNOW
Chapter VII - OUT OF NOWHERE
Chapter VIII - WARHEADS
Chapter IX - LOOKING BACK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
When my son (a USAFR Lt. Col serving in Intelligence) learned what I was
writing he asked how it would add to an oft told story. I replied that conventional
wisdom on the topic wasn’t always correct and I didn’t believe most people
knew the important nuances. I would write the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, setting the record straight in this saga of photo interpretation (PI)1 that was
the core of an intelligence triumph that played an important role in the outcome
of the Second World War.
It is one thing to go back through archives to analyze the capability of a given
weapon, but how and when the weapon is used, and how it is answered, is
determined by people who act within a situation as they understand it. People
living in critical times act based upon what they believe to be true, not upon
what some researcher later learns. Hindsight is always correct but people under
stress aren’t. It is one thing five decades later to opine for various reasons that
“the V-weapons were too few and too inaccurate to be decisive”, but those about
to be on the receiving end of the weapons didn’t know that. After sixty years of
living and reading military history I believe military history is best written by
people who lived it, or understand what the major players were doing and
thinking. “Been there, done that” trumps “read about it”. I prefer to assess the
impact of the V-weapons on the progress and outcome of the Second World War
by relying upon the words of those who lived through the assault: Churchill,
Eisenhower, Montgomery, and various intelligence personnel quoted in this text.
They certainly feared the V-weapons and worried that they could decisively
influence the conduct of the war. No one can ever be certain how decisive the V-
weapons might have been without timely Allied discovery and intervention.
A number of books have touched on the Allied search for the V-weapons, and
many included a few of the most notable aerial photographs involved in the hunt.
For all but three of those authors,2 the aerial photos were not a primary source of
information. As a trained photo interpreter, aerial photos were invaluable to my
understanding the full story of the victories and mistakes in the race to find and
stop new German long-range weapons.
I never met the people who lived this tale—I wish I had—but I feel as though
I know them. Their words are familiar. I’ve lived them! I learned to PI on black
and white prints from the Second World War and the Korean War. An RAF
Officer taught the “Weapons Bloc” in USAF PI School where I learned to
recognize a Giant Wurzburg radar and the difference between a panzer, a
sturmgeschutz and a half-track from their tracks and different aspect ratios—
though none of those had been in the field for fifteen years. I learned to use
stereo, marks on the ground and shadows to find and identify objects and
activities. My first assignment was to PI on prints, so I know what those Second
World War PIs did, how they did it, what they felt. I know what you can and
can’t do with prints. I know the pressure they were under to finish a stack of
prints as the missions kept rolling in. The only thing I didn’t experience was the
added pressure of imminent threat of attack. I don’t envy them that experience,
but having heard B-40 rockets and mortars overhead in South Vietnam, I think I
can understand that too.
When I began looking at aerial imagery in the late 1950s, we had better
cameras, faster collection aircraft and photo lab equipment, finer grain aerial
film and better enlargers, but we used a stereoscope Second World War PIs
would have recognized, and we still lived by the Three Phase photo
interpretation cycle pioneered at the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) at RAF
Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, later the Allied Central Interpretation Unit
(ACIU) after the Americans joined the effort.
We used comparative (earlier) coverage to detect change; another important
legacy of the CIU. Intelligence is a process of building one piece upon another
until the whole is understood and Third Phase PI techniques developed at
Medmenham resulted in forensic dissection of a target. Most of this story takes
place in that realm. My own PI experience was in First and Second Phase but I
have the background to understand the imagery and unravel details of what
really happened in the complex tale and crucial epic of how the German V-
weapons were found and delayed enough to prevent them from having more of
an impact on the war.
Success in the hunt for German V-weapons was a great achievement for Allied
Intelligence, a great story—a story worth retelling and understanding.
1
PI can be used in many ways: “He is a PI.” “We must PI the film.” “He is PI-
ing the film.” “The mission has been PI-ed.”