American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffeâ??s Secrets

1. The Way Things Were—1945

[ 3 ] THE WAY THINGS WERE—1945 A West Pointer who first saw aerial combat in World War I, Lieutenant General Carl A.“Tooey”Spaatz commanded the largest fleet of combat airplanes ever assembled to wage war. The United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe, USSTAF, with its eleven thousand first-line combat aircraft, had, by 1945, for all practical purposes destroyed the Luftwaffe and with that Germany’s ability to wage war effectively. In late April, with the strategic bombing campaign terminated and within days of Germany’s unconditional surrender, General Spaatz kicked off the final military operation against the Third Reich—Operation Lusty. To ensure Lusty’s success, Spaatz gave it a priority equivalent to a combat operation. Although American arms were clearly poised to win the greatest military victory ever, this moment of triumph paradoxically revealed America’s technological backwardness when measured against the technology of a conquered Germany. Many senior military officers, including the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces, General of the Army Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, knew that the Germans were far ahead of the United States in numerous fields of military technology. The imminent, and to all appearances overwhelming, victory over Hitler’s Germany was 1 The Way Things Were—1945 [ 4 ] therefore less impressive than it appeared—there was just too much luck involved. Luck is not something senior military officers like to rely on. Colonel Harold E. Watson, a Wright Field engineer and test pilot and an up-and-coming young officer handpicked by General Spaatz as a key Operation Lusty participant, pointedly put it this way: “If Germany flew the first jet-propelled plane before the German army marched against Poland . . . why hadn’t we learned those secrets before?”1 A good question. Yet this was not the time for recrimination, but rather an opportunity to set things right. The obvious thing to do was to face facts and take the enemy’s superior technology and run— one purpose of Operation Lusty. “The Germans were ahead of us, in some instances from two to fifteen years . . . in the fields of rockets and guided missiles, jet engines, jet-propelled aircraft, synthetic fuels and supersonics,” said Colonel Donald L. Putt, another Wright Field aeronautical engineer and test pilot.“If we are not too proud to make use of this German-born information, much benefit can be derived from it and we can advance from where Germany left off.”2 This was Yankee pragmatism at its best, but unfortunately it was not a point of view shared by many. The decision by General Spaatz not only to disarm the Luftwaffe but also to exploit its technological treasures to the fullest was farsighted and timely. Few comprehended at the time the urgency behind Operation Lusty and that others were about to engage in a similar technology exploitation process, most notably an ally and possible future adversary, the Russians. As American and British armies advanced ever farther into Germany and Air Technical Intelligence teams and disarmament squadrons gained access to German facilities, the true scope of German scientific progress became increasingly visible and in many respects awe inspiring . There were, of course, the German jet and rocket planes already encountered in combat, of which only anemic counterparts were found in the United States and England. Wind tunnels of incredibly large dimensions were discovered with simulation characteristics American The Way Things Were—1945 [ 5 ] scientists could only dream of. When American aeronautical experts gained insight into German wind-tunnel test results it suddenly became clear that the much-heralded sound barrier had already been conquered by futuristic-looking, swept-wing aircraft models tested in the German tunnels. They discovered precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, such as the Fritz X and the Henschel 293, using radio, wire, and even TV guidance, the latter pooh-poohed as“Buck Rogers”technology by one of America’s leading and most respected scientists, Dr.Vannevar Bush of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chairman of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. A plethora of surfaceto -air, surface-to-surface, and air-to-air missile designs was discovered in varied stages of development, including the V-2 ballistic missile—a truly unique, one-of-a-kind development. Fortunately, German scientists , who in time would populate American laboratories and test centers, would continue to evolve the V-2 into a two-stage...