Bugging Hitler's Soldiers

[Childress]

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In one of Britain's more audacious espionage ventures captured German officers were interned at Trent Park as M19 surreptitiously recorded their hair-raising exchanges. A slick PBS production exceptionally well filmed, acted and produced.

 

The story of how those conversations were recorded and how they can now reveal, in more shocking detail than ever before, the hearts and minds of the German fighter. In total, more than 100,000 hours of these secret recordings were made. Only now have they all been declassified, researched and cross referenced.

 

Edited June 13, 2015 by Childress

[agusto]

Thanks, sound interesting. I am definately gonna watch it soon.

[umlaut]

Aha! "Bugging" in that sense! Must admit I was about to pass when I read the topic title.

[sburke]

it is interesting, not earth shattering in any sense.  What is sadder is how little they made use of the info.  I get that you hate to give up intelligence collecting methods, but this material is graphic enough to really have an impact.  For one thing the myth of only the SS being culpable would have been wiped out.

[umlaut]

Aha! "Bugging" in that sense! Must admit I was about to pass when I read the topic title.

 

Pardon my english. I was thinking of a very similar word - only it has an "er" in the middle. I´ll bug off now

[Childress]

it is interesting, not earth shattering in any sense. 

 

I felt that the German generals' revelations about the V2 rocket program, the imminent deployment, was rather significant. Their gossip proved it was not a myth. Thanks to MI19 the British raised the priority of locating and destroying much of the installation delaying the timetable by several months. An fully intact V2 capability at the time of the Normandy landings doesn't inspire optimism.

[sburke]

not sure what the implication is.  The V2 wasn't accurate enough to do anything about Normandy.

 

As to the claim in the video.  It makes the argument that hearing from the high ranking Germans confirmed what was only rumor...that makes for good story telling, but it is a questionable conclusion.

 

http://users.rcn.com/salski/No05-06Folder/Jedd-Poland-Contribution.htm

 

Polish intelligence reported in 1941 that the Nazis were building new and mysterious weapons in Peenemunde on the Uznam island, on the Baltic Sea. Polish reports and maps delivered to British intelligence in 1942 and 1943 were more specific, and indicated that they were building rockets capable of mass destruction.

 

Whether the British actually believed those reports or whether it was the additional info that pushed them over the edge is hard to determine.  It is a conclusion the film commentator makes however that isn't substantiated.

 

From wiki

Two Polish janitors^[18]:52 of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943^[18]:52 provided maps,^[19] sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence, and in June 1943 British intelligence had received two such reports which identified the "rocket assembly hall', 'experimental pit', and 'launching tower'.^[2]:139

 

An additional interesting article on some of the intelligence info used to confirm Penemunde.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/ops/peenemunde.htm

Hard to tell if this info was actually as important by that point as they imply, but possible.

Edited June 13, 2015 by sburke

[Childress]

I think the Allied landing zones would have made a rather fat target, even given the imprecision of the rockets. The significant problem in lobbing V2 payloads onto to the beaches was once the battle was engaged how to separate the combatants?

[BLSTK]

They say that timing is everything. These words certainly rang true for my father-in-law, now 94 years of age, who recalled the following scenario. 

 

He arrived at Peenemunde on August 19, 1943, the day after the famous raid on the V1 test site. He served as battery commander of six "Acht Acht" or Eighty-Eights. Because of a certain aptitude level he had been selected to attend Radar Schule which ultimately saved his life in two ways.

 

First, if he had not been one of "The Chosen" he would have been posted to the Halle Peninsula during that fateful raid. 

 

Second, his training allowed him to detect a follow-up bomber incursion soon after this first attack. By alerting his superiors to the oncoming formation, the anti-aircraft defenses were successful in repelling the aerial onslaught.

 

He was subsequently awarded the Iron Cross for his actions.

Edited June 15, 2015 by BLSTK

[Childress]

Re: V2s, von Thoma and Trent Park

 

Wikipedia:

General Crüwell remained a prisoner and on March 22, 1943, was intentionally placed with another POW, General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma (captured in November 1942 while in temporary command of the Afrika Korps), who during the meeting disclosed intelligence regarding the V-2 rocket, i.e. surprise that London was not yet in ruins from German rockets being tested at a "special ground near Kummersdorf" he had visited. This led to the British investigating Peenemünde and following confirmation, carried out a bombing raid on the Peenemünde facilities^[2]

 

Von Thoma taken prisoner:

 

On 4 November 1942, Thoma was captured by the British at the hill of Tel el Mampsra, west of El Alamein,Egypt. With his tank hit several times and on fire, Thoma dismounted and stood quietly amongst a sea of burning tanks and the German dead scattered around the small hill where he was taken prisoner by Captain Allen Grant Singer of the 10th Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales's Own). Rommel later opined that Thoma was probably seeking his own death in battle, while other staff officers quietly speculated that he had gone to the front deliberately to surrender. That evening, Thoma dined with General Montgomery at his headquarters to discuss the battle. B. H. Liddell Hart later recorded Thoma's reaction to Montgomery's revelations over dinner: "I was staggered at the exactness of his knowledge... He seemed to know as much about our position as I did myself." Thoma was then taken to the Pyramids of Giza by his captors, when he expressed regret that he would leave Egypt without seeing them.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Childress

[sburke]

Note that most of the information in the above quote is actually from that same show.  (Check the footnotes on the page) The source to confirm a statement can't be the same source... at least if you aren't Putin. 

 

Also Kummersdorf is nowhere even near Peenemunde.  It is south of Berlin.  Granted his statement of the program would probably be used as confirmation, but the information about Peenemunde seems to have come from Polish Home Army intelligence.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kummersdorf

 

Generally I do trust stuff to a higher degree that shows up on PBS, but this felt more like History channel stuff which I take with a grain of salt.

[John Kettler]

Childress,

 

I've known since high school about the bugging, but knew nothing of the film. Thanks for passing the word!

 

sburke,

 

Judging by what you said, you apparently have no understanding at all of what any real level of V-2 attack on the embarkation ports could've done. By the time embarkation began, the Allies had long since broken the back of the V-1 problem. The buzz bomb sites were pummeled, and the V-1s themselves were clobbered by VT flak and fighters. That crisis was now more of an annoyance. The V-2, though, had no hard kill defense, nor even early warning. BOOM!--followed by the sonic boom!  A CEP of 4.5 km was more than adequate for targeting the embarkation ports, to which seemingly endless men and supplies streamed.

 

Everything to do with the invasion was meticulously planned and scheduled, and that end of the country could fairly be called one vast target. The harbors were full of ships, the quays groaning under the load, the roads jammed with one way traffic, vehicular and marching. There were explosives and POL all over the place, not just in dumps on the docks and being loaded on vessels large and small, but under overpasses, camouflaged in road cuts, in open fields or under the trees, The airfields were dense with thousands of planes, fuel and ordnance, too, and trains were coming in by the dozens crammed with everything imaginable, much of it combustibles and explosives, and being unloaded as fast as possible. Now, start randomly dropping 1-ton warheads into this Swiss watch of an operation and what happens? Things start falling apart in a hurry, with cascading effects foreseeable and not. Remember, even a slight delay in loading results in missing the tidal window, which, coupled with the wholesale disruption of the loading operation and lots of randomly inflicted mass casualties and equipment losses,

 

A scientific reconstruction carried out in 2010 demonstrated that the V-2 creates a crater 20 m wide and 8 m deep, ejecting approximately 3,000 tons of material into the air.^[42]

Missile strikes that found targets could cause large numbers of deaths — 160 were killed and 108 seriously injured in one explosion at 12:26 pm on 25 November 1944, at a Woolworth's department store in New Cross, south-east London.^[41

^]

likely postpones the entire invasion for months! In practice, had Hitler been able to drop, say, a 1000 V-2s onto the embarkation ports it would've likely delayed the invasion by a year, IMO. As it was, the V-2s which did hit England caused severe societal strain on a populace that had been through first the Blitz, then the buzz bombs, and had been on short commons for years, to boot. Worse, in order to make good the losses I envisage, scarce seagoing transport capacity would've had to be diverted, further squeezing the British populace on the food and fuel fronts. I firmly believe a V-2 rain on the embarkation ports would've been a strategic level disaster for the Allies.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler 

Edited June 26, 2015 by John Kettler

[sburke]

blah blah blah blah.  Really, you think the V2 2 months sooner was gonna stop D Day?   Okay they missed the invasion, but certainly  2 months later they could target the primary port on the continent supplying allied troops, Cherbourg... hmm no, didn't demolish it you say?  Well then it certainly must have made a huge dent in Market Garden hitting the allied airfields which were once again loaded with aircraft,,, umm oh wait.  Okay not that?   Oh I know, Antwerp was absolutely essential to the allied offensive.  Certainly they pummeled that town rendering it useless.  Hmm no?  Damn.

 

Regarding D Day, the earliest the Germans would have launched the V2s is AFTER they knew about the landing.  Considering they thought for the longest time Normandy was a diversion that would have extended that window out even further.

 

Nah The Germans first of all would have to assume it was the invasion.  No matter how you cut it, they at BEST were several hours late.  In reality they were weeks late.   Disrupt the timing...hmm there was a massive storm that totally screwed the landing logistics far more than a couple bombs, Normandy must therefore have failed right?  right?  Wrong?

 

 

Anything else you need to write a dissertation on or provide a link to we pretty much all already have? 

[Sublime]

ya i gotta agree with burke. look at anzio. under arty, a live luftwaffe, and even panzers in the wire at one point the Allies couldnt be ejected.

[JonS]

... you apparently have no understanding at all of what any real level of V-2 attack on the embarkation ports could've done. By the time embarkation began, the Allies had long since broken the back of the V-1 problem. The buzz bomb sites were pummeled, and the V-1s themselves were clobbered by VT flak and fighters. That crisis was now more of an annoyance.

Well, someone evidently has no understanding, thereby showing once again that rule of thumb applies.

 

Hint: check when the first V1 landed on England.

Edited July 2, 2015 by JonS

[Childress]

 

Childress,

 

I've known since high school about the bugging, but knew nothing of the film. Thanks for passing the word!

 

Glad to serve, John. However the Trent Park transcripts remained classified until 1999. Are we talking remedial high school?

[BLSTK]

Ouch!

[Bulletpoint]

Thanks for posting this video. Never knew of Trent Park.

 

The human ability for evil really seems infinite.

 

I feel like alcohol now.

[Childress]

More Third Reich arcana: The Forty-Two Plots.

 

At least three of them should have worked given the laws of probability. Did the Fuhrer have a guardian angel?

 

Edited July 5, 2015 by Childress

[John Kettler]

sburke,

 

My reply is very long, but much of it is supporting quotes!

 

There is a world of difference between attacking a port doing almost exclusively logistics, as opposed to one in which 5000 ships are involved, carrying ~133,000 men in the landing force, never mind the following administrative landings. Had V-2s been raining down while the primary stores and personnel preparation and loading were going on, inflicting random mass casualties on formations which had trained for months or even years, there is no way that wouldn't have been immensely disruptive and likely considerably destructive. Here is an excellent piece showing the disposition of the staging areas for the units participating in D-Day. Mind, this presumes targeting for the V-2 other than/in addition to London. Considering the Germans had been attacking Channel ports since early in the war, and that U-Boat attrition was very high by the time D-Day was in the offing, hitting the ports which were so vital to England's survival as reception points for food and fuel, not to mention personnel and every sort of military stores, made considerable sense.  Nor, I think, do you really comprehend the scale of fatalities the V-2s directed against Antwerp inflicted. 

Antwerp as an Indicator of What Could've Happened in the Embarkation and Assembly Areas

 

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/antwerp.html

 

(Fair Use)

 

Many people tend to associate the V-weapon campaign as one directed only against England; however, Antwerp was the recipient of even more V-2s than London, resulting in more than 30,000 killed or injured.

 

So I'm not accused of cherry picking the data, I deliberately included the last few sentences in the next quote.

 

 In the port of Antwerp itself, despite the bombardment, a constant flow of ships was still delivering supplies for the Allied war effort. Thousands of dock workers unloaded the ships in the midst of the raining V-weapon attacks. One ship was sunk (by a direct V-2 hit) and 16 others were damaged at some point, the Kruisschans lock was damaged, several marshaling yards were hit and the Hoboken petroleum installations were hit twice. Even so, the bombardment never seriously affected the functionality of the harbor. There were some casualties but, it never took very long for repairs to be made to these installations.

 

Or you get things happening like this. Bolding is mine.

Teniers Square

   On November 27, a terrible incident occurred at a major road junction near the Central Station. Teniers Plaats (Square) was the busiest intersection in town (as it still is today). Military policemen were always regulating the heavy traffic for an Allied convoy passing through the square.

 

   It was on the main north-south axis for the supply columns. From the docks, American troops were heading south to the US supply bases near Liege and British columns were heading north to the front lines in Holland. There were four tram lines crossing the square in both directions, plus there were many autos and pedestrians moving throughout the busy intersection.

   "I often went there after lunch to watch the military activity..." said Charles Ostyn. "and the British MP, right there in the middle, regulating and directing both military and civilian traffic. On very busy days there were two MP's."

 

   A V-2 came down at ten minutes past noon and exploded in the middle of all this activity. A British convoy was moving through the intersection and was caught in the blast. This particular rocket was believed to have exploded just above ground possibly having struck the overhead tram lines just where the traffic policemen stood. A city water main burst, water bubbling up from the ground. Soon, the whole square was filled with water.

 

   "I heard and saw this explosion from a short distance away while riding in the back of an open truck and approached the scene about 2 hours later," Ostyn remembered. "There was water running everywhere and the whole place was cordoned off and guarded by U.S. soldiers. There was a massive crowd of onlookers and many people with bandages on their heads walking around. It must have hit something above ground first because no crater was ever found."

 

   The result was total devastation. The water began to pool on the street. Floating on the water were dismembered corpses, various body parts, clothing and large amounts of debris. Several of the vehicles in the convoy exploded or caught on fire, their occupants lay burning. The glass windows of the passing trams near the intersection were all shattered causing injuries to those riding on the trams.

 

   One of the MP's was completely disintegrated and the charred body of another was found sometime later on the roof of a nearby hotel, about 60 meters away. Soon, the story of the unfortunate MP who was blown to bits was infamous among the locals. In all, the dead were 126 (26 were American & British soldiers) and another 309 injured.

 

There was also the matter of the catastrophe when a large cinema was hit while nearly full. Bolding is mine.

The Rex Cinema

 

   On the first day of the German Ardennes offensive, December 16, 1944, the worst disaster occurred. The "Rex" Cinema on avenue De Keyserlei was packed full of people in middle of the afternoon, nearly 1200 seats were occupied, all watching the featured movie. At 15.20 hrs the audience suddenly glimpsed a split-second flash of light cutting through the dark theater, followed by the balcony and ceiling crashing down during a deafening boom. A V-2 rocket had impacted directly on top of the cinema.

 

   Charles Ostyn happened to be near the cinema that day and would later learn of a personal tragedy in his life caused by this particular rocket attack.

 

   "December 16, 1944, is a day I can never forget. It all really sank in on us after the massacre at the Rex Cinema..." said Ostyn. He told about his feelings at that time: "I still remember that Saturday as if it were yesterday. I had walked past the theater about 20 minutes before the impact - to think, at that very moment a V-2 was being tanked-up by members of the SS Werfer Battery 500 in Holland, it being destined to kill all those people in one blinding instant."

 

   The destruction was total. Afterwards, many people were found still sitting in their seats, stone dead. For more than a week the Allied authorities worked to clear the rubble. Later, many of the bodies were laid out at the city zoo for identification. The death toll was 567 casualties to soldiers and civilians, 291 injured and 11 buildings were destroyed. 296 of the dead & 194 of the injured were U.S., British, & Canadian soldiers. This was the single highest death total from one rocket attack during the war in Europe.

 

You can read the summary for yourself, but the V-2 campaign never amounted to more than 155 rockets a month, but averaged, by eyeball estimate, around 100 or so, taking into account one month with 42, one with 58 and another with 59. According to the info at the site, the Germans had many more rockets, but were jammed up in being able to launch them by fuel bottlenecks with alcohol and LOX.

 

Building on What Antwerp V-2 Attacks Show: What a Real Spanner in the Works Looks Like!

 

In light of what I've provided, both directly and indirectly, are you still sticking to your argument that had Hitler gotten the V-2s online and in quantity (not, say, the 5 missiles/day of Antwerp) in time to hit the D-Day buildup, embarkation and subsequent activities as a side effect, if you will, of attacking England's vital ports that it wouldn't have thoroughly disrupted possibly the most intricate military operation ever seen to that date, together with inflicting enormous casualties to men and materiel? Offhand, I see no way such a campaign wouldn't have been devastating. That neck of the woods was the very definition of target rich environment, and the immense randomness of the V-2 impacts would've exerted enormous leverage because of the cascading effects from so many suddenly appearing points of disruption, destruction and casualties (fires, flooding, road and rail blockage/destruction, hits on docks, warehouses and shipping, power, water and gas outages--dead and wounded by the tens or hundreds from a given impact in a high density target zone). And I'm talking primary effects only, not factoring in the raft of secondary explosions from all that sort of material in its vast array. Invasion planning (and troop morale) never envisioned such things, let alone a variety of air attack against which there was no defense whatsoever.

 

How do you keep a practically bottomlessly intricate operation viable when whole formations are there one moment, but damaged or even gone the next? A DIV HQ here, a radio signals unit there, AA gunners someplace else, an ordnance company (scarce armorers and such) standing by, an FA battalion on the march, the motor pool for a transportation company, a water supply unit, a field hospital (more scarce personnel) an overflowing waterproofing station, field kitchens and mess units. What about photo interpreters, cartographers and weather forecasters? Vast mounds of ordnance, POL in bulk or in jerry cans, rations, parts for, well, everything damaged or destroyed; medical supplies, uniforms, boots, radio parts (fragile vacuum tubes and crystals), commo wire, welding sets, delicate, aircraft instruments and instrument test stations, printing presses--damaged, destroyed or rendered useless, maybe invisibly, by a hit. And the vital paperwork without which no organization large or small can function? Turned to confetti, burned, water soaked or blown all over the place, together with the typewriters. What if the central invasion map distribution point gets hit?

 

Every single man, every crate has a designated place in the coming battle and timing for getting aboard ship, else he or it wouldn't be there in the planning docs to begin with, in a buildup so transportation intensive it cut directly into British civilian food supplies. Put one scarce LST out of business and that alone can have divisional level impact, if not higher. Hit an ammo ship and you could significantly damage a port crammed with ships and men, causing untold havoc and destruction. Knock out a crane or two and screw up an AD's whole loading plan. Try running cranes if a V-2 hit knocks out the power. Naturally, we don't wish to contemplate a hit on a loaded troop transport! A destroyer nest hit could open up the invasion armada to E-boat attack (Slapton Sands for what even a few torpedo hits could do), or one on a battleship or cruiser make it useless for the invasion fire support.

 

Consequences of That Spanner

 

I can iterate this endlessly, but I'm talking Clausewitzian friction on crystal meth; the death of a thousand cuts (more like stabs and slashes), the holing and tearing of unit, logistical and administrative and logistical cohesion in an organization strained to the breaking point and that desperately needs every drop of blood, every organ, bone, sinew and fiber in order to succeed. Remember, even the spares were planned for in advance, and no one ever contemplated the embarkation areas would be attacked like that, generating losses never anticipated by the planners who had been at it for years. As it was, Ike almost called off the invasion without having to deal, before and during with the kinds of chaos and destruction I'm, I believe, reasonably positing. 

 

Childress,

 

I make no objection to your statement, but items from the bugging came out decades prior to those transcripts.

 

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol11no1/html/v11i1a11p_0001.htm

 

 

      The Mare's Nest by David Irving. Book review by Edwin R. Walker

 

CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
RELEASE IN FULL
18 SEPT 95

OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Modern intelligence has to do with the painstaking collection and analysis of fact, the exercise of judgment, and clear and quick presentation. It is not simply what serious journalists would always produce if they had time: it is something more rigorous, continuous, and above all operational-that is to say, related to something that somebody wants to do or may be forced to do.

-The Economist of London, commenting on the retirement of Sir Kenneth Strong (1 Oct. '66, p. 20).

 

INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE

The V-Weapons

THE MARE'S NEST. By David Irving. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. 320 pp. $6.95.)

THE BATTLE OF THE V-WEAPONS, 1944-1945. By Basil Collier. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964. New York: William Morrow. 1965. 192 pp. $5. )

 

We'll skip the second book in this discussion for the following reasons:

 

Confronted by a really good book and an outstandingly bad one, a reviewer has the clear duty to warn against the latter. Let me begin, therefore, by advising you that The Battle of the V-Weapons is to be avoided as the plague. It is a shoddy, ill-conceived, inadequately researched, badly written piece of journalistic rubbish which is as near to being a non-book as anything to be found in a cloth binding.

 

After blisteringly disposed of the first book, Edwin Walker launches into his most astute review of the now disgraced for later Holocaust denail David Irving's assessment of how matters V waffen were learned of, reacted to (or not) and played out and how screwed up British S&T intelligence was, starting with the minor fact there wasn't any organized effort at all!  But let's look at what got picked up and reported in Irving's 1964 book, which I read circa 1970, shall we? Bolding is mine.

 

Hard on the heels of Dr. Jones' assessment came the "Oslo Report," an anonymous letter to the British naval attaché in Norway which told of several new weapons under development at Peenemünde, among them long-range rockets. Subsequent developments proved the Oslo Report to be pure gold, but British intelligence did not take the rocket (the ultimate V-2) seriously until March 1943 when one captured German general mentioned it to another in a well-bugged room.

 

That would be Ritter Von Thoma, whose name I've seen a bunch of times as being one whose discussions were bugged and quite revelatory. David Irving's reporting on such matters need to be taken in deadly earnest, because he discovered ULTRA while researching the book under discussion. That shocking story is at the Mare's Nest Wiki. 

 

Additionally, though I don't recall the book titles, there have been similar reports of bugging derived information regarding what captured U-boat skippers had to say. "Silent Otto" Kretschmer, one of Germany's top U-boat aces, was quite indiscreet in talking with other captured German officers.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2015 by John Kettler

[JonS]

As it was, the V-2s which did hit England caused severe societal strain on a populace that had been through first the Blitz, then the buzz bombs, and had been on short commons for years, to boot.

Someone evidently still has no understanding, thereby showing that that rule of thumb still applies.
 
Hint: Some food in Britain was rationed, but that was NOT because there was a shortage of food.

[sburke]

holy crap, I gotta learn that asking if there is anything more you have to say John is tied up very closely with Murphy's law.

 

The one flaw amongst many in your arguments is the simple fact that having the V2's mattered not a wit if they didn't launch them.  Germany was completely deluded about the Normandy invasion so having 2,000 or 10,000 is irrelevant.  So all the words you strung together got you to exactly nowhere.  The rest is not worth my time, I need to exfoliate my heels after walking back and forth to the keg at our block party all day.

Edited July 5, 2015 by sburke

[John Kettler]

JonS,

 

I find your math, or maths as your usage has it, I believe, quite remarkable. No shortage when only a month after the war started food imports dropped from 55 million tons of food to 12 million? And look at what was rationed. The information here is  self-contradictory when it comes to fish (in any event, only 30% as much fish was harvested vs pre War), but the general pattern is quite clear. Note, too  the ration sample presented is for an adult for a week. For orientation purposes, here in the States a healthy (in the medical sense) meat portion in a single meal is 3 oz, which is 3/4 of the British ration of ham and bacon for a week. How about I make it official? Below is a wartime Ministry of Information film Rationing in Britain. 

 

 

Obviously, these rations are nothing like (thank goodness) what the citizens of Leningrad went through, but they directly and materially influenced the very development of the British populace. This academic paper (unsure of what level it corresponds to) offers a good look at many aspects of rationing.

 

sburke,

 

The premise was that the Germans managed to get the V-2 operational in time to hit the embarkation ports and surrounds in the context of vengeance and interdiction--without knowing about D-Day. The Germans planned on 36 launches a day (surge mode) from one V-2 assembly, fueling and launch complex alone, with a sustainable rate, based on on-site and brought in LOX production of the order of 8/day per bunker = 24, as opposed to an average of 100/month in the Antwerp case. That should serve to give you some idea of what I'm talking about. The Allies detected and smashed the bunkers, but Dornberger had wanted mobile launchers from the beginning. One of the eight main missile storage sites was operational in February of '44, and half by July '44. Had all that effort and time not gone into the giant V-2 bunker complexes, the infrastructure for mobile launchers could've been in place long before then. The unraveling of the V-2 effort started with the raids on Peenemünde and went downhill thereafter, but if you read the accounts, it took a great deal of effort to  so much as properly ID the V-2 as a missile, gather various oddments of data, retrieve samples from wayward birds and do much else. There were epic rows because an eminent scientist didn't see the blob on the aerials as a threat, dug in his heels and stonewalled efforts to address the threat for months. The smashing of "P" after they finally got past him completely unhinged German missile production, forcing the move to Nordhausen and causing who knows how many months of delays. The Germans had the estimated capability to launch 350 V-2s/week, with surge rate of 100/day, but that's hard to do without the missiles. In 175 days, Antwerp took 107 V-2 hits "in the heart of the city" (whatever that means, but most landed in the greater area, which suffices for my thought model of strikes hitting randomly in the huge target arrays on the South Coast of England) of 1700+ launched. That's only 17 days of launches at the scale of use I'm referring to against the ports. I'd further point out that German fuel and missile shortages were far less in May of '44 than they were in September '44, owing to the far better shape of both German manufacturing and supply lines from not having been so heavily bombed. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey report on Crossbow makes sobering reading:

 

f. Potential rate of fire. It thus appears that except for unforeseen defects in the weapon itself, the launching of rockets against England from France could have been begun in June 1944 at a sustained rate of fire of 200 to 350 rockets per week, or a possible maximum of 100 per day, and was planned to begin at about that time had no bombing of Peenemunde, Watten, Wizerns or of the supply system occurred.

 

c. Lt. Gen. Dornberger, in charge of V-2 development at Peeneraunde, (Reference 16) states that "to start the operation" there were to be three firing units (abteilungen), one fixed and two motorized.

Each motorized unit would fire 27 rockets daily and the fixed unit "twice that many" - a total of 108 daily. Speer (Reference 12A) gives launching plans as 80 to 100 daily. These are fairly early plans and conform reasonably well to Hitler's figure of 3,000 per month. A report
(Reference 11) on the supply organization for the French launching sites states that the "target" was to launch 30 rockets per day, and provides an estimate of the sustained effort envisaged in January 1944. This program, however, was for dispersed launching sites and did not include
the "large site" at Wizernes, which alone would have been capable of assembling and launching 50 to 90 rockets in 24 hours had it been completed. (Reference 1).

 

Elsewhere, it notes Dornberger said the "P" attacks cost two months on the missile development. No word on what it did to missile production.

 

Under Costs, we learn what the Crossbow effort amounted to in men and planes:

 

In addition, 7,810 Allied lives were lost, of which 1,950 were aircrew. The equivalent[*] of 498 aircraft was lost, including 399 four-engined bombers. 

 

Had the Germans been able to get the V-2 program up and running in time, I submit it would've/could've been very ugly in the staging and embarkation areas. Before, during and after D-Day.

 

Glad you had a great birthday!

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

P.S.

Almost forgot to mention that in researching his book Vengeance! chronicling his own field work and archival discoveries about German V-weapon sites in France, British missile engineer Philip Henshall unearthed a real stunner: the plans for a kind of V-2 stretch with a payload of radioactive sand and the on-site facilities to produce it close to the launch facilities. I leave it to you to think about what even one of those German dirty bombs could've done.

Edited July 5, 2015 by John Kettler

[JonS]

Kettler, you really are a clueless, witless, mong. It is no wonder that US military purchasing ended up with wonder junk like the Sgt York and the A12 with clowns ... sorry; "analysts" like you working for them.

 

THINK about the numbers you just provided, if that isn't beyond you: The British dropped imports from 55M tons to 12M tons after the first month. Why do you think that might have been - a sudden, desperate shortage of shipping? (Hint: the answer is 'no')

 

The British had adequate food for their population. No one was on 'short commons'. Rationing was introduced so that the food was spread equitably, and to stop rampant inflation and purchasing of luxuries bought on by a suddenly fully employed and well paid population. They dropped the tonnage being imported by swapping out bulky, low calorie density foods for much higher density products, and by massively ramping up home production of previously imported foods.

 

Stop doing google dumps and pretending that's you knowing WTF you're talking about. You don't, and this thread is example #5286 of that.

Edited July 5, 2015 by JonS

[Wicky]

Philip Henshall unearthed a real stunner....

 

Goodness Kettler - you are a sucker for punishment - Is your memory so poor that you've forgotten your infamous V2 atomic missile silo debacle after you gullibly believed Henshall last time:

 

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/c/castel_vendon/index.shtml

 

Also Germans should have been and were probably aware they were being bugged (though not the extent) as it was practiced on high level POWs going back as far WW1, along with stool pigeons etc.

 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5z3o4ZovHBwC&pg=RA1-PA40&lpg=RA1-PA40&dq=German-speakers+stool+pigeons&source=bl&ots=EheW160fTJ&sig=LT0uKQaVEmPa8Hsv-16p4L1Wyw4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMIuoHO46HExgIV9CvbCh3viQ81#v=onepage&q=German-speakers%20stool%20pigeons&f=false

Edited July 5, 2015 by Wicky