Given our military’s reliance on having higher-tech weapons than the rest of the world, check out these two transcripts of interviews conducted 10 years after D-Day:
Our faith in high-tech isn’t new. Here’s a German infantry lieutenant:
contrary to what some people may believe today, the mood in early to mid-1944 among the German forces was not disheartened. Far from it. It is true that we had lost the North African oil supplies, but, equally, the American arrival in Tunisia had been unimpressive. Italy was holding firm, and the Allies were expending huge resources on the war there for no great purpose at all. The Allies showed no signs whatever of doing the logical, rational thing and invading the South of France. … we in the officer class were well-informed enough to know that the underlying trends in the war situation were far from discouraging. Industrial production was not only holding firm under the air bombing, but actually rising in early 1944. … Most importantly, however, was the matter of the German weapons and machines. The regime had shown us photographs and films of the platoons of the enormous Tiger B panzers, and the Messerschmit 262 jet aircraft, and we knew about the new, super-sized U Boats entering service. The regime had also deliberately spread rumours about the presence of futuristic rocket weapons which could cross entire continents or oceans; we found out later in June that these existed and were actually stationed close to us in France, and were called V1. These weapons were more advanced than anything the Allies possessed, we were sure of that, and there were constant themes of ‘Wunderwaffen’ (super weapons) in the state propaganda, hinting that these machines which we already knew about were simply the forerunners of what Germany would soon produce.
A section titled “Wonder Weapon” is an interview with “K.L. Bergmann was a specialist weapons officer who served with the Wehrmacht from 1941-45. He passed away in the early 1980’s.” He was responsible for a fuel-air bomb:
the intention was to replicate the conditions which existed in a coal mine leading to an underground explosion. In coal mines, the air is full of coal dust, which is highly flammable, and if the circumstances are right a spark can set off a catastrophic explosion in which all of the available air, being full of this flammable dust and oxygen, simply explodes. There were several such terrible explosions in German coal mines in the nineteenth century and again in the 1920’s, and it was realised that in effect the air itself in the coal mine was being turned into an explosive element. It was as if the entire mine was pumped full of explosive gas – that is how devastating simple coal dust and air can be if they are mixed and ignited.
The system was essentially an explosive vapour which was released into the open air. The vapour consisted of a kerosene base, similar to aviation fuel, blended with particles of charcoal dust and aluminium powder. The charcoal and aluminium particles, which are in themselves explosive, served to accelerate the force of the explosion, and also to make the vapour heavier and less likely to be dispersed by the wind. The vapour was launched by low-velocity rocket, using a rocket-firing vehicle of the ‘Stuka Zu Fuss’ (‘Stuka on Foot’ half-track) type, which was widely available. The rockets fired canisters which were designed to release their vapour as they descended onto the target. This was extremely difficult to achieve, because of the probability of the liquid base detonating inside the canister. A vacuum system was used to prevent this. When a number of these canisters had been launched, they filled a large volume of air with their explosive gas; this volume could be up to one hundred cubic metres. Essentially, the target had this complete volume of explosive vapour suspended over it. The volume then had to be ignited, and this was done by immediately firing a secondary bombardment of incendiary rockets. These incendiaries would simply detonate the complete mass of explosive vapour hanging in the air. The nature of the explosion was astonishing, because it created a blast wave which expanded across the ground for an enormous distance. We tested a small prototype version of this weapon on the Eastern front, in controlled conditions. I observed the detonation and the effects on the landscape, which were enormous. As you can imagine, the shock wave was able to pulverise any structure immediately below it, and any Russians who were either in the target area or in a radius of many hundred metres were killed outright. The effect of blast wave is to remove the air from a man’s lungs and arrest his heart muscles, and death is almost immediate, although there are often no outward signs of injury.
This leads to an exchange with the interviewer:
I am amazed that I did not know about this system. How often was this used on the Eastern Front?
It was never actually used against Russian forces in the field, in combat.
Then how were Russians killed by it?
This was a controlled test.
Do you mean that prisoners were there, under the blast?
Let’s move on. I was talking about the Typhoon B technical side . . .
We assembled enough of the canisters to be able to launch three separate Typhoon B explosions of the maximum power, which would be greater than the controlled test explosions we had caused on the Eastern front. We planned to launch the canisters from a range of about five kilometres, which would mean that we would have to be in shelters to avoid being injured by the blast wave ourselves. The half-tracks would fire six of the vapour-delivery rockets, which had the canisters fitted as a warhead. The last rocket to fire was fitted with the self-detonating canister, which would ignite the vapour produced by the complete salvo. As a failsafe, in case the detonator failed, we would launch a salvo of incendiaries from a Nebelwerfer mortar into the vapour zone directly after the final canister was launched. In this way, we could be sure of igniting the volume of gas and producing the explosive effect.
What about all of the civilians who might be killed in repelling the Allied invaders?
Even the German garrison soldiers themselves were unaware of the presence of the Typhoon system in France. There was no point in briefing them on our presence. If the port was captured, we then had to destroy the port; that meant that the garrison had failed in their task anyway, to be quite frank. That was the official view that we were given, but I have another perspective to add. We have to remember that the German garrison at Calais contained many troops who had been posted there for two years or even three years. Some of these men, including some of the senior officers, had started relationships with local women, and in some cases it must be said that there were children born as a result. This is not a criticism of the garrison, because of course such things happen in any army when troops are posted to a city for any length of time. This is the way of the world, after all. But the result of this was that I would not have trusted the garrison to conceal the fact of the Typhoon weapon. Word would have spread, that is the way of these things.
Really, Herr Eckhertz, the way you say this makes it sound shocking. But the Allies themselves were bombing French civilians on a daily and nightly basis. Destroying Calais with the Typhoon B system was no more destructive than what the Allies were already doing to France in the guise of ‘liberating’ the country.
D-Day and immediately afterward:
At around two am, a courier arrived by motorcycle, with an instruction to make ready our systems and to be ready for a possible landing or raid by the Allies. There was also a letter for us to present to all Field Police and security units, ordering them to give us the utmost cooperation. We immediately went to our magazine pit and moved the rocket and canister crates inside the half-tracks. This was an exciting phase, because the weapon was to some extent my child, and I wanted to see it at work.
around the twelfth of June, there started to be a general acceptance that the beach landings really were in fact the main strike, and it was in Normandy, around the beach heads, that we would have to push them back to the water.
We knew that the Allies had a tendency to amass their tanks in very tight groups before an attacking operation. Don’t take my word for this, just look in ‘Time’ magazine and those other magazines for pictures of the Shermans in Normandy. Some of them are packed so closely together that it looks like a parking lot. Of course, they did this because they had no fear of air attacks, but it certainly created a very dense and vulnerable target for a powerful blast weapon.
You would sacrifice the German infantry in the blast?
It was not practical to remove them. The Allies would notice any withdrawal, and might surge forward, threatening our launching site. As it was, we expected that we ourselves would become casualties of the blast; perhaps not fatal casualties, but probably with permanent injuries, loss of hearing or lung damage. But we were facing the loss of France itself if the Allies broke out fully, because there was then nothing to stop the Shermans racing on to Paris and then beyond. We knew that the loss of France would lead to a siege of Germany, potentially the loss of the Reich itself . . . the stakes were as high as for any action in the war, you must understand. We were saving the Reich itself with our Typhoon B explosion; that was the calculation, you see.
I decided to fire the weapon earlier than planned, because the air conditions were so well suited at that moment. I felt the hand of destiny on my shoulder at that moment, believe me. I knew we were on the brink of a historic action. … The enemy began a bombardment on us … before we could move the half-tracks the shells burst on our position. I had a periscope with me in the trench, because I wanted to film the launch process, and through this I saw one of the shells land close to the half-tracks. One of the vehicles was knocked onto its side, and with that blast, the canisters exploded. Because they were not dispersed into the air, their explosive power was not equivalent to the full-scale Typhoon system. The kerosene simply ignited in its liquid form, not the vastly more potent aerosol form accelerated by the charcoal dust. There was just a huge fireball of the fuel, which completely destroyed the three half-tracks, and rose up over us to a height of maybe a hundred metres.
After the war, the American and British interrogators didn’t ask about the Typhoon weapon and Bergmann didn’t volunteer. By August of 1945 he was a civilian engineer for an agricultural machinery manufacturer.
Another high-tech weapon was a remote-controlled mini-tank, described in an interview with Cornelius Tauber, “an Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) of engineers.”
Goliath was a small vehicle about the size of a wheelbarrow or similar. It had a petrol engine and ran on tracks like a small tank. Its body was packed with explosives equivalent to a Stuka-type bomb, and it was operated by wires which trailed from behind it, connected to a control unit held by a soldier. The operator would start its engine and control its speed and direction through the wires, sending it close to a target and then detonating it remotely.
I was hopeful that we would knock out at least one of these attacking tanks, but as the Goliath approached them, it tipped into a shell crater and did not emerge. The operator tried to move it forwards and back, but I think it had fallen on its side and was immobilised.
A good reminder to be humble about how far technology can take us in our current and future wars.
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Wow, even Wikipedia has nothing on the Typhoon B system. Very informative (and terrifying), thanks.
The US had its own fuel air weapons – again used on a test basis but never in widespread use. This weapons seem to be impractical – because they cover a large area there are likely to be many “friendly fire” deaths of your own forces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-55
The Russians are perhaps less worried about such things and have used them more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs
which overlaps in power with smaller nuclear weapons.
Wikipedia gives credit to Mario Zippermayr instead and calls the Typhoon B the L40 aerial torpedo but I think they are talking about the same system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Zippermayr
For me the most amazing tech of ww2 were the predictive radar guided guns of the B-29
According to Victor Hansen Davis’s “The Second World Wars” what was dispositive
was the ability of the US and the Soviet Union to turn out large quantities of adequate weaponry rather than esoteric weapons.
Ultimate vaporware, no effects on war outcome. Nazis knew when to fold. Few more months and American nukes would be used on them. Soviets used termobarics -so called vacuum bombs that to use aerosol cloud- in Afghanistan, they are not the ultimate weapon. Sad. You need to be special kind of stupid not be able to wrap it in a single package. Evil is stupid.
The interviewee seems to exaggerating quite a bit about the power of the weapon. A 10km radius of destruction? Surely doing that with a non-nuclear reaction would need a lot more material than could be delivered with the systems described?