12/17/2023 0 Comments War of the gods ancient nukes![]() The Me 163 flew so fast that it was challenging to carry out a gunnery run on an American bomber and it exhausted its propellants in five minutes, at which point the pilot would glide back to base. In late July, the first Me 262 turbojet aircraft were deployed as well. The Me 163 rocket interceptor first entered combat in May, zooming through bomber formations at high speed. In spring 1944, USAAF concern peaked regarding the imminent appearance of German reaction-propelled fighters. ![]() In late 1943 and early 1944, the construction of missile launch and storage sites in northern France led the Allies to divert strategic bombers to try to put the sites out of operation. Carried out in August, it was designed to kill the rocket engineers and disrupt the project, but was only a partial success. When British intelligence detected that program in spring 1943, Churchill ordered a special air raid on the Peenemünde rocket center on the Baltic. Hitler himself made vague threats of coming superweapons in 1939, perhaps thinking of the Army’s ultra-secret rocket project that would yield the V-2. It led directly to the U.S.-British-Canadian atomic bomb project, after German physicists first detected nuclear fission in Berlin at the end of 1938. As a result, the new fighters and missiles allegedly came “too late” to change the course of the war.įear of Germany’s advanced technology had been a constant since the 1930s. After the war, the feeling in the West that we had experienced a close call was reinforced by the memoirs of German ex-generals, who blamed Hitler for holding these weapons up. From the Nazi side, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels stoked fear with claims, beginning in 1943, of coming Wunderwaffen (wonder or miracle weapons) that would turn the tide and exact Vergeltung (vengeance or revenge) for the indiscriminate Allied bombing of German cities. Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had discussed those very scenarios. ![]() If the Nazis had begun firing V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 rockets at Britain earlier, could they have disrupted the D-Day invasion preparations or caused mass panic, derailing the British war economy? Key Allied leaders like Gen. Army Air Forces (USAAF) leadership certainly were concerned. Messerschmitt Me 163B-1a Komet on display at the Steven F.
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