Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

Although Dornberger had asked Peenemünde to study the anti-aircraft missile, Wernher von Braun quickly moved toward the manned rocket interceptor instead. On May 13 he drafted a letter to Ordnance chief Leeb requesting permission to bring Professor Willi Messerschmitt, head of the aircraft firm of the same name, to Peenemünde to discuss such an aircraft. Von Braun’s fascination with rocket planes was intense and longstanding. At the beginning of July 1939, in the wake of the first He 176 flights, he had written a proposal for a rocket fighter would take off vertically. The Luftwaffe ignored the document, being more interested in its own program at Messerschmitt, the hydrogen-peroxide-fueled Me 163 Komet. In late May 1941 the young technical director produced a new version of his proposal. It discussed both missile and rocket-fighter solutions to the specific problem of nighttime air raids, which were becoming an RAF specialty. In the new proposal von Braun came down firmly on the side of the manned aircraft, because the missile’s burden on war production would be justified, he felt, only if the probability of hitting an enemy bomber was 100 percent. He noted the demand on the overloaded radar and aircraft-instruments sector that would be imposed by a throwaway device with very expensive components. As a way around that difficulty, he proposed what was in effect a manned missile: an interceptor launched vertically and guided automatically to the target. The pilot’s responsibility would be only to carry out the actual attack and to land safely. The propulsion system for either the rocket plane or the missile would be based on nitric acid and diesel oil, a combination that BMW’s Berlin aircraft engine plant had first developed at the instigation of the Luftwaffe. 36

Those ideas excited immediate interest in the Air Ministry. By the time officers from anti-aircraft artillery development arrived for a tour in mid-June, the Ministry had already decided that Peenemünde-East would be paired with Messerschmitt to build an “Interceptor” (the English term was used) and that anti-aircraft missiles would be studied through tests carried out on modified A-5s. Three weeks later an even higher-level delegation came through, led by the chief engineer in the Technical Office, Roluf Lucht. Although Lucht saw a successful A-5 launch from the Oie, he did not share the enthusiasm of the Flak people for the anti-aircraft missile, nor did he accept their argument that its production demands could be satisfied from the existing Flak radar and instruments industry. He agreed with von Braun and the Peenemünders that the Interceptor was a more feasible concept but announced that Messerschmitt was too burdened to take on another rocket fighter. Fieseler, the same company that would later receive the V-1 airframe contract, was picked in its place. Guide beam tests with A-5s would serve to test the early versions of the Interceptor’s automatic approach system. 37

Through the fall of 1941, Fieseler concentrated on a design study of the Interceptor, while the Army rocket center looked into the guidance problem. In spite of Lucht’s pronouncements, the Luftwaffe considered the idea of an anti-aircraft missile as well, perhaps because Lucht in the meantime had been fired for incompetence. At the end of November Fieseler produced its study of the Interceptor or Fi 166, as it was dubbed. The company outlined six possible configurations, some using rocket propulsion only, others with an enlarged A-5-type rocket booster and a turbojet engine for cruising at high altitudes. Notwithstanding the excessive complexity and doubtful safety of the proposed designs, an early December meeting between Army Ordnance and the Air Ministry again reached the conclusion that efforts should concentrate on the Interceptor, since the resources needed to develop and produce an anti-aircraft missile were too great. Dornberger had become reluctant to make any commitment to Luftwaffe projects, but he and von Braun agreed with that decision. By January 1942, however, the air force came to its senses and shelved the Interceptor proposal. 38

There the matter rested for some months. But inside the Luftwaffe, the advocates of the anti-aircraft missile were plotting another comeback. The two individuals who appear to be most involved were the new Inspector-General of Flak as of January 1942, General Walther von Axthelm, and a junior officer in the Luftwaffe General Staff, Major Friedrich Halder. Probably at von Axthelm’s request, Halder wrote a blistering memorandum in May 1942 attacking the Flak development division, which had been transferred from Army Ordnance to Air Ministry control in 1940. Halder called the division a collection of out-of-touch Army traditionalists who failed to see the potential of radical new technologies like the rocket—hardly a fair charge in view of the events of the preceding summer. Looking ahead to the future, Halder foresaw the day when aircraft speeds and altitudes would be such that anti-aircraft artillery would no longer be able to keep up. As it was, in firing against Allied bombers, gunners already had to allow for lead times of twenty-five seconds or more for the shell to reach altitude. Only missiles or unusual gun designs promised a solution to the problem in the long run. 39

After Halder’s superiors vetted his document to make it more politic, it became the basis for General von Axthelm’s new program for anti-aircraft artillery in June 1942. Along with accelerated rocket development, this program proposed various improvements to conventional guns and radar, plus cooperation with the Navy on a new superheavy 24-centimeter Flak gun. After an unexplained delay, von Axthelm was able to get Göring to agree reluctantly to this document, and it was issued as an order from the Reich Marshal on September 1. Hitler dismissed the document as “utopian” but did nothing to stop its implementation. Neither did the inheritor of most of Udet’s powers, Milch, although the Field Marshal was equally unconvinced that defensive missiles were a sound idea. Only later would his opinion change. 40

In view of all that skepticism and the Luftwaffe’s own 1941 decision, why did the air force reverse its position in 1942? Göring, like Hitler, had always overestimated the importance of Flak over fighters for defense. But what was new was the rise of an effective RAF bomber threat, symbolized by the first thousand-plane raid on Cologne in May 1942. Attacks of this type provoked harangues from Hitler against Göring and damaged the Luftwaffe’s prestige even further. Adding to such worries, the Germans knew of the American B-29 Superfortress then under development, although it was ultimately used only against Japan, and they saw their own jet programs producing aircraft of potentially revolutionary performance. In those circumstances, the anti-aircraft experts were right to say that the effectiveness of conventional artillery against high-altitude, high-speed aircraft would be nil in the not too distant future. 41

Yet there is little doubt that the anti-aircraft missile decision was another major blunder in German weapons development. In his memoirs, Speer asserts that if Hitler had not delayed the Me 262 jet fighter, and if the Army had concentrated on Wasserfall instead of the A-4, the Allied bomber fleets could have been defeated in 1944. Leaving aside the persistent mythology about the jets, even if the Germans had not lost a year changing their minds about the missile, it would not have made any difference. The 1941 warnings about the burden on the war economy were correct—and those estimates were made without any clear idea of the overwhelming technical problems that would be faced in the guidance sector. The fact that the air force had slowed down radar development in the first two years of the war only made matters worse. Germany now found itself in a dilemma that only an earlier and more energetic program of conventional fighter defense could have prevented. Instead, Göring and the Luftwaffe leadership waited too long and then gave in to the missile enthusiasts, who promised a magic answer to their problems. 42