The Race for Hitler's X-Planes E-Book

John Christopher

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 373

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

During World War 2, Hitler's engineers had pioneered an incredible array of futuristic secret weapons, from the Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, to the deadly V2 inter continental ballistic missile. With the Third Reich shattered and lying in ruins, in the summer of 1945, the Allies launched a frantic race to grab what they saw as the justifiable spoils of war. The Americans and Russians in particular were anxious to secure not only the aircraft and the research and production facilities, but also the key German scientists and engineers. This Nazi technology would define the balance of power in the phoney peace of the Cold War era, launching an arms race that shaped our modern world for decades to come. But what of Britain's role in this supermarket sweep? The Race for Hitler's X-Planes tells the untold story of the British mission to Germany.

Leseprobe

Images have been obtained from a number of sources including the US National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), United States Air Force (USAF), Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust (RRHT), US Library of Congress (LoC), US Department of Defense (US DoD), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Archive (DLR), National Aeronautics & Space Administration (Nasa), the San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM), Campbell McCutcheon (CMcC), Nimbus227, MisterBee1966 and Rottweiller. New photography is by the author (JC). Thanks also to Shaun Barrington of The History Press for his patience, and to my wife Ute for her support, proof reading and assistance with translations.

First published 2013

This paperback edition published 2023

The History Press

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Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© John Christopher, 2013, 2023

The right of John Christopher to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75247 711 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction: The Spoils of War

  1.   A Very British Affair

  2.   The Reich in Ruins

  3.   Wings of Change

  4.   Entering the Jet Age

  5.   Pistons and Props

  6.   Dispersal of Production

  7.   A Vision of Hell

  8.   Hitler’s Smart Bombs

  9.   Ingenuity and Desperation

10.   Oberammergau

11.   Captured Aircraft

12.   Secrets by the Thousands

13.   Epilogue

Appendix 1: Itinerary of the Fedden Mission to Germany, 1945

Appendix 2: Captured Jet and Rocket Aircraft Removed by the Allies

Glossary

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Images have been obtained from a number of sources including the US National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), United States Air Force (USAF), Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust (RRHT), US Library of Congress (LoC), US Department of Defense (US DoD), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Archive (DLR), National Aeronautics & Space Administration (Nasa), the San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM), Campbell McCutcheon (CMcC), Nimbus227, MisterBee1966 and Rottweiller. New photography is by the author (JC). Thanks also to Shaun Barrington of The History Press for his patience, and to my wife Ute for her support, proof reading and assistance with translations.

The JB-1 ‘Bat’ manned glider produced by Northrop in 1944 to test the flying qualities of a ‘power bomb’ inspired by the German V-1 Doodlebugs. At first sight it resembles the Lippisch DM-1 shown on page 170, but the Bat has a conventional tail and swept wings unlike the DM-1’s Delta configuration.

Typical of the scenes encountered by the advancing Allies in 1945, an abandoned airfield littered with a variety of German aircraft including a Messerschmitt Me 262A. (NARA)

Introduction

The Spoils of War

In the later stages of the Second World War the skies above Europe were filled with death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Day and night the endless hordes of Allied bombers were pounding Germany’s cities and war factories to dust. But as Hitler’s thousand-year Reich faced its darkest hour, its Götterdämerung, the twilight of the gods, the Führer unleashed an arsenal of deadly Wunderwaffe; the wonder-weapons which he believed could turn back the tide in Germany’s favour. These included not only the V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets, the Vergeltungwaffen (meaning ‘reprisal’ or ‘revenge weapons’) intended to ‘shock and awe’ the British into submission, but also a range of highly advanced jet- or even rocket-powered aircraft together with a plethora of guided missiles designed to strike at the enemy’s bombers. Such was the extent and sophistication of these weapons that in most cases they were ahead of any technology possessed by the Allies. If the German forces had managed to delay the Allied advance even by just six months or by a year the new weapons might have become available in sufficient numbers to change the outcome of the war.

Fortunately Hitler’s war machine came to a grinding halt in the spring of 1945. With overwhelming Soviet forces pushing their way through the streets of Berlin and just a block or two from the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler took his own life on 30 April 1945. General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of German Armed Forces High Command, signed the documents of unconditional surrender on 7 May, signalling the surrender of all German forces to the Allies on the following day.

The conclusion of the war (in the European theatre at least, as the Pacific war still had several more months to run) brought to an end a conflict noted not only for its terrible toll in human suffering, but also for the massive technological strides made in the fields of aviation and armaments. This was particularly so in Hitler’s Germany and the legacy of his scientists and engineers was a lexicon of new weaponry including jet-fighters, inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), guided missiles and smart bombs. Even before the end of hostilities the Allies had recognised that possession of this technology, not to mention the German scientists and engineers, held the key to power in the uneasy post-war peace. Inevitably there were other factors of course. In particular the Americans desperately needed to prepare themselves in case they encountered similar weapons that Germany might have shared with it Axis partners in Japan. Then there were the wider issues of retribution, compensation and commercial gain, not to mention the very genuine concern that Germany should not be able to rearm herself as she had done in the decades after the First World War.

A remarkably intact Messerschmitt Me 262A abandoned in a forest clearing beside the Autobahn. In the final stages of the war some motorways were used as makeshift airfields. (USAF)

It was against this background that the defeat of Germany in May 1945 signalled a frantic technological supermarket sweep undertaken by the Allies and a widespread plunder of the fallen nation’s resources. It was as if Germany was a sweet shop and the advanced aircraft and weaponry, the research and production facilities, the papers and documents, even the scientists, engineers and technicians, were the sweets to be stuffed into the victors’ pockets. To the Allies these were the rightful spoils of war and in the headlong rush to acquire them the needs of the defeated were cast aside. Time became the enemy. The Allies were in a race not only against looters looking for valuables in the various facilities, but also the wanton vandalism of the slave workers and prisoners who sought revenge against their former oppressors. And, of course, they were in a race against each another. Ostensibly America and Britain collaborated in their efforts, but as for the Russians, that was a different matter altogether. To further complicate the situation, alterations to the Allied Control Zones meant that some areas would change hands within weeks of the war ending.

In recent years much has been published and broadcast on the Americans’ efforts to bag the best of the Nazi technology, including Operation LUSTY (a somewhat tortuous acronym derived from LUftwaffe Secret TechnologY) and Hal Watson’s legendary Whizzers, a team of crack American pilots who scoured the ruined airfields of Germany to secure the latest jet aircraft, such as the Me 262, Arado 234 and the rocket-powered Me 163. The spotlight has also been turned on the German rocketry experts and scientists taken to the USA under Operation Paperclip and their part in launching the space race that put a man on the moon. These have tended to overshadow the less glamorous role played by the British.

During the war the British had been actively engaged in evaluating captured German aircraft, most notably at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, and the round-up of enemy aircraft continued after Germany’s capitulation. The British sent technical intelligence teams to work in cooperation with the Americans under the control of the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS). But there was one post-war British mission to Germany that stood apart from the others, and it was the one I stumbled across by chance forty years after the war had ended.

‘The Fedden Mission to Germany Final Report’ proclaimed the title on the faded tan-coloured cover of the document among a box of papers at a local auction of furniture and general items. Many of the lots in the auction came from house clearances of estates following the death of their owners and the report was with a number of aeronautical reports, papers and photographs relating to the Bristol Aircraft Company. This was located at Filton, just to the north of Bristol and approximately 15 miles from the auctioneers. There was much about this document that attested to its interest and its significance. The word ‘Secret’ caught my attention initially, and then there was the striking logo adorning its cover. Clearly someone had taken the trouble to design and draft a special logo, an act which seemed whimsical, almost inappropriate, given the official nature and content of the report. (I later discovered that this had been devised by Sir Roy Fedden himself.) This simple graphic device encapsulated the story contained within. Here was the swastika, the instantly recognisable emblem of the hated Nazi regime, with the German eagle pierced through its heart by a spear-like flagstaff bearing a Union Jack, and around the edge were token stars and stripes to represent the USA. Even now the message is blunt, almost shocking. It symbolises the total and absolute defeat of Germany at the hands of the Allies, or, more precisely, the British and Americans, as the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union are conspicuous by their absence.

Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket-powered interceptor. This is V21, the V standing for ‘Versuchsmuster’ or experimental/test aircraft.

Just a few weeks after the end of hostilities Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain’s Minister of Aircraft Production, sent a hastily prepared team headed by the renowned engineer Sir Roy Fedden off to Germany to root out whatever they could about the Nazi’s secret aeronautical treasures. Among the rubble of the battered cities and airfields, aircraft factories and research centres, they uncovered a wide range of advanced aircraft and power plants. However, this story is about much more than just the aeronautical hardware the Fedden Mission uncovered in Germany. Travelling through this ‘conquered and disintegrated country’ Fedden’s team witnessed the appalling devastation of the war and the impact it had upon the lives of the ordinary people. They also discovered the unremitting horrors of the vast Mittelwerk underground weapons factory tunnelled into the Harz Mountains, where inmates from the Dora concentration camp were worked to death.

It is almost seventy years now since the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War. As L.P. Hartley once wrote, ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ The events of the Second World War seem distant now, but the technological innovations that came out of it, and out of the subsequent peace, have shaped the modern world.

John Christopher, 2013

1

A Very British Affair

In June 1945 London still wore its wartime scars like an old and shabby coat. The rubble-strewn bomb sites, where the walls of ruined buildings looked out like eyeless skulls, had become a familiar part of everyday life for its inhabitants. The euphoria of VE Day, a little over a month earlier on 8 May, had already faded and many just wanted to forget about the war and start rebuilding their lives instead. For most Londoners 12 June 1945 was just another day. They may have read in the newspapers that ‘Ike’, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, was in town to be awarded the Order of Merit by the King and presented with the Freedom of the City at the Guildhall, but nobody cast a second glance at the cars taking Sir Roy Fedden and his newly assembled team of scientists and engineers on the short journey across London from the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP) offices at Cooks House in Stratton Street, just off Piccadilly, to RAF Northholt.

Situated on the north-western edge of the city, within the Borough of Hillingdon, Northolt had played an important part in the defence of the capital. Before the war it had been the first RAF station to take delivery of Hawker Hurricanes, with No.111 Squadron receiving four in December 1937. During the Battle of Britain it had been a Sector Airfield of the No.11 Group consisting of several units, including the No.303 Polish Fighter Squadron. From 1944 the reconnaissance squadrons No.16 and No.140 operated both Spitfires and Mosquitoes from Northolt, with No.69 Squadron’s Wellingtons joining them later on. It was also home to Winston Churchill’s personal aircraft, a modified four-engine Douglas C-54 Skymaster, which was used to fly him to his meetings with the other Allied leaders. But now that the war was over and the fighter aircraft were no longer needed the future of the airfield was uncertain. The camouflage paint that had so effectively protected the various buildings from Luftwaffe attack by making them look like an extension of the houses and gardens that surrounded the airfield on two sides looked faded and was beginning to flake.

The team assembled in the Officers’ Mess and Fedden briefed them on the purpose of their mission. Only a few weeks earlier Sir Stafford Cripps, the Minister of Aircraft Production, had called Fedden to his office and instructed him to lead this special mission to Germany. Unlike some of the more thoroughly prepared American teams already sifting their way through Germany, the Fedden Mission was to be a very British affair. Ostensibly its primary purpose was to visit universities, research departments and engineering works in Germany, and to earmark plant, equipment and documents that would be suitable for the new college of aeronautics which was to be established in England. Particular emphasis was to be placed on the developmental work and manufacture of the latest jet engines, as well as the wider subject of fuel injection and ignition for piston engines, and the development and manufacture of variable pitch propellers.

Fedden’s team had been hastily but carefully put together from some of the finest experts in their particular fields: Dr W.J. Duncan, Professor of Aeronautics at the University College of Hull and currently seconded to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE); J.C. King of the Structural and Mechanical Engineering Department of the RAE; Flight Lieutenant A.B.P. Beeton of the Engine Department, RAE; and Bert Newport of Rotol Ltd. Organisational backup would be provided by W.J. Stern of the Control Commission for Germany – who would also act as a translator – and Wing Commander V. Cross, Liaison Officer to the Mission, who had been seconded from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Frankfurt. The pilots flying the two RAF Dakota transport aircraft allocated to the Mission were Flight Lieutenant Reid of the RAF, and Flight Lieutenant Cheaney of the RAF Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR). And then, of course, there was Sir Roy Fedden himself.

1937: Roy Fedden takes centre stage in this group photograph of his Cosmos Engineering team. In 1920 the defunct company had been purchased by the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company. (RRHT)

The lightweight and reliable Jupiter nine-cylinder radial air-cooled engine which cemented Fedden’s status as Britain’s finest engine designer of the inter-war years. This example is displayed at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Sir Roy Fedden

Alfred Hubert Roy Fedden was a formidable figure within the world of aeronautical engineering. Born on 6 June 1885, he was the third son of an eminent Bristol family that had done well for itself in the sugar business. He went to school at Clifton College in Bristol, and although he excelled at sporting activities, his academic performance failed to impress his tutors. For a while he contemplated a career in the military, the usual avenue for those labelled as underachievers, but in his heart he yearned for something more practical, something more ‘useful’. Then in 1903 his father, Henry Fedden, purchased an 8.5hp two-cylinder Decauville motor car and hired a chauffeur to both drive and maintain it. The car was only the fourth to be registered in Bristol and only the fiftieth registered in the whole of the country. Typical of such early cars, it proved to be thoroughly unreliable and it struggled to cope with Bristol’s notoriously steep hills. In fact it broke down so often that Fedden senior soon swapped it for another car obtained from the Bristol Motor Company. Tinkering with these vehicles proved to be the vital spark in young Roy Fedden’s choice of career, and much against the expectations of his family he resolved that he would become an engineer. His father was supportive and paid for him to take a three-year apprenticeship with the Bristol Motor Company, and by night he studied automotive engineering at the technical college.

Drawing upon his experiences with the temperamental Decauville, Fedden decided to design a small-engined two-seater that could be driven and even maintained by its owner, and in 1907 he took his drawings for the Shamrock, as it was to be called, to S. Straker at the Brazil Straker car company which was based in Fishponds, Bristol. Liking what he saw, Straker agreed to build the Shamrock and he hired Fedden to head the engineering team. The Shamrock was very well received when unveiled at the London Motor Show later that year. In its production version the little 12 to 14hp four-cylinder car sold for £315, which was considerable less than most cars on offer at the time. It was soon followed by the 15hp Straker Squire with an entirely new 3-litre engine, and this proved to be a hugely successful model with around 1,300 cars sold before the outbreak of the First World War.

In June 1914 Fedden made his first trip over to Germany, primarily to obtain car components from the Bosch engineering company, but it was a chance encounter at Mercedes that was to set his engineering career on a new course. As he later recalled:

I remember visiting the German Mercedes factory on motor car business, and seeing, what to me at that date, were very large numbers – actually about fifty – of the 75hp six-cylinder in-line liquid cooled aero engines, all lined up in one shop.

On 12 June 1945, the day that the Fedden Mission left for Germany, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was at the Guildhall in London to receive the Freedom of the City.

So impressed was he by the sight that upon his return he persuaded the directors of Brazil Straker to take on repair work for various aircraft engines. Among them was the American-built OX-5, an early V-8 which powered the Curtiss aircraft being used by the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) to train its new pilots. The OX-5 often proved unreliable and Fedden set about re-designing the engine with the assistance of draughtsman Leonard Butler. The company’s role was soon expanded to include building Rolls-Royce aero engines; the water-cooled straight six-cylinder Hawk used to power the SSZ class of coastal patrol non-rigid airships, as well as the bigger V-12 version known as the Falcon for the Bristol Aircraft Company’s F2 fighter biplane and the Falcon II and III for the twin-engined Blackburn Kangaroo reconnaissance and torpedo bomber.

Fedden and Butler also set about designing their own aircraft engine, the 300hp Mercury, which was based on an air-cooled radial configuration with the cylinders arranged like the spokes of a wheel in two staggered circles of seven. Air-cooling, it was argued, did away with the weight of the water-cooling systems which were also prone to freezing or overheating in extreme climates. With the radial design all of the connecting rods drove a single crankpin and as a result the crankshaft is shorter and stiffer than with an in-line arrangement. In general a radial air-cooled engine weighs less, has fewer components and so costs less, and performs better. The obvious disadvantage of the radial engine was an increased frontal area resulting in increased drag, but the advantages greatly outweighed this drawback. Following on from the Mercury, Fedden went on to develop the more powerful 450hp Jupiter which featured a single circle of nine cylinders. He also produced a smaller lightweight 100hp engine which was known as the Lucifer and had just three shortened Jupiter cylinders.

Early flight trials with the Mercury, and the Jupiter in particular, were very encouraging but the engines had come on the scene too late to enter wartime production, and the financially struggling Brazil Straker company was purchased by an Anglo-American financial group and re-branded as the Cosmos Engineering Company. With all war work drying up Cosmos went into liquidation and was sold to the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC) in July 1920 to form the basis of their new Engine Department at Filton airfield on the northern outskirts of Bristol. At BAC Fedden was given the opportunity and the financial backing to continue with the development of the Bristol Jupiter, as the Jupiter was renamed, to its full potential. But BAC had underestimated the engine’s phenomenal commercial success when they agreed to pay him a commission on each and every one sold, and as a result Roy Fedden swiftly became the most famous and, in all likelihood, the highest-paid engineer in Britain.

This Bristol Bulldog Mk.IIA biplane was typical of the RAF’s inter-war aircraft fitted with Fedden’s Jupiter radial engine.

For Fedden the reliability of the Jupiter was paramount. Through extensive testing on rigs as well as on aircraft, any flaws were ironed out. Failed engines would be dismantled and minutely scrutinised to discover the cause, and the failed parts added to Fedden’s black museum for future reference. In one exercise six Jupiter engines were disassembled and the parts mixed up and reassembled to confirm the interchangeability of the components. Furthermore, a continuous programme of development and a succession of new models saw improvements both in terms of the Jupiter’s reliability and its power output; increasing from 400hp on the early engines up to 500hp on later versions. The Jupiter was widely regarded as the best aero engine in the world for many years from the mid-1920s and well into the early 1930s. Over 7,000 Jupiter engines were built and they were fitted on so many different aircraft, 262 different types in total, that it is hard to single out any particular one. They powered seventeen of BAC’s own aircraft, including the famous Bristol Bulldog fighter, plus a host of others produced by manufacturers such as de Havilland, Fairey, Gloster, Handley Page, Short, Supermarine, Vickers and Westland. Then there were the high-profile long-distance airliners, the Handley Page HP.42 and HP.45, eight of which were operated by Imperial Airways on its European services during the 1930s. The HP.42 was fitted with four Bristol Jupiter XIFs of 490hp each while the HP.45, intended for much longer distances, had the more powerful supercharged XFBM 555hp model.

The Jupiter-engined Bristol Bulldog was sold to a number of countries and this advertisement published in Popular Flying in 1935 featured the ‘BU’ registration of the Finnish Air Force. Clearly the swastika symbol, shown here in reversed form, was not used exclusively by the Nazis.

The Fedden and Butler team also produced several successors to the Jupiter. The first of these was the Bristol Mercury, a revival of the old Cosmos Mercury name, followed by the Pegasus. Launched in 1932, both featured the familiar radial configuration, this time with nine cylinders each, and had superchargers to improve performance at altitude. The Bristol Mercury had shorter cylinders to reduce the frontal area and was intended primarily for the RAF’s fighter aircraft, whereas the Pegasus was the same size as the Jupiter and was designed for bombers. Later variants of the Pegasus could produce 1,000hp and the long list of famous Pegasus-powered aircraft includes the twin-engined Bristol Blenheim light bomber, the Vickers Wellesley, early versions of the Vickers Wellington, as well as the Short Empire and Sunderland flying boats.

With a general increase in aircraft size and with it an ever-growing demand for more power, Fedden and Butler turned to the sleeve valve for their next engines. This mechanism consists of a thin tube, or ‘sleeve’, which sits between the cylinder and the cylinder wall and either rotates or slides so that holes in the sleeve align with the cylinder’s inlet and outlet ports. In theory this promised an improvement over the conventional poppet valve system which was considered to have run its course. In practice, however, the sleeves had to be immensely strong and capable of resisting high temperatures, and needed to be made with enormous precision. The direct result of this move to sleeve valves was a whole family of new engines which emerged from Bristol. The Mercury became the Bristol Aquila and the Pegasus was reborn as the Perseus with power outputs in the 500hp to 900hp range. From these grew even more powerful engines with two-row cylinder configurations. The various Taurus models produced 985hp to 1,060hp, the Hercules managed 1,290hp to 1,735hp, while the Centaurus, which was developed from the Hercules, achieved a massive 2,520hp by the latter stages of the Second World War. (It was the Centaurus, or at least eight of them, that would power the huge post-war Bristol Brabazon into the air when it flew for the first time on 4 September 1949.)

An Imperial Airways long-range HP.42 biplane fitted with four Bristol Jupiter XIFs. This is G-AAUD Hanno, photographed during refuelling at Samakh, Palestine, in 1931. (LoC)

The success of the Bristol aero engines, especially the Jupiter, was not confined to the home market. The Jupiter was also licence-built in seventeen other countries including the USA, Japan, the Soviet Union and, significantly, in Germany. In 1924 Ernst Heinkel won the first all-round Germany race, the Rundflug, with a Bristol-engined aircraft. Dornier had produced a number of flying boats powered by Jupiter engines, including the mammoth Do.X which was fitted with twelve Siemens-built Jupiter engines when it first flew in July 1929.

Naturally these overseas business interests enabled Fedden to establish very close working relationships with many of the leading figures within the German aviation community. During the 1920s this had mainly come about through the regular appearance of the German engineers at the Bristol Aircraft Company’s Engine Department in Filton, including visitors from the Heinkel, Dornier and Junkers companies. In turn Fedden made several trips to the German companies in the years leading up to the Second World War. Later, in 1945, he wrote candidly about these pre-war relationships and how he came to be highly respected by his German counterparts, not only for his undoubted engineering prowess, but also because he was a man they had come to trust:

Herr Koch, chief engineer of the Rohrbach Company, came to Bristol on several occasions and stayed with me. Later he became a prominent Nazi, had a great deal to do with the training of German aircraft engineering personnel, and organised and built the great Heinkel bomber factory at Oranienburg. I believe I was the first Englishman to be taken over to this plant.

Developed from the Jupiter, later variants of the supercharged Mercury could produce up to 800 hp of power. The nine cylinders are shorter and squatter than on the Jupiter to reduce the frontal area. (Nimbus227)

The introduction of the sleeve valve saw a new family of engines emerge from Bristol including the Perseus which was a reworking of the nine-cylinder Pegasus. (JC)

On the political front one of his most significant contacts was Erhard Milch. A squadron commander in the First World War, Milch had been a founding director of Deutsche Luft Hansa in 1926 (known as Deutsche Lufthansa from January 1931 onwards). ‘He paid several visits to Bristol, stayed with me, and kept up a correspondence on certain of my papers afterwards,’ recalled Fedden. In 1933 Milch became Under Secretary of State of the newly formed Reichsluftministerium (RLM), the German Aviation Ministry, answering directly to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. In 1939 Milch was also appointed as Inspector General of the new Luftwaffe and in 1942 became Head of Air Armament. Two years later, after failing to oust the increasingly maverick Göring, he re-emerged in a new role as deputy to Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production.

Another distinguished signature in the Bristol visitors’ book was Ernst Udet’s. Germany’s second-highest scoring ace of the First World War, Udet subsequently became the head of aeronautical research and development under the Nazi regime and was once described by Fedden as the mainspring of the Luftwaffe. (Udet committed suicide in November 1941, a fact unknown to Fedden at the time of his German Mission because Udet’s sudden death had been explained by the German authorities as the result of an unfortunate accident during the testing of a new aircraft.)

In May 1937, Milch invited Fedden to come over to Germany to see for himself the extent of their new air force. There was to be no concealment, well almost no concealment, as the whole purpose of the trip was to convince the British that they couldn’t possibly hope to compete with the Luftwaffe in the event of a war. Milch believed that Fedden, the highly respected engineer, would serve as a willing and credible witness to this fact. Fedden, for his part, seized this opportunity to gather as much useful intelligence as possible on the state of Germany’s aviation industry and its rearmament programme. On his arrival, on 17 May 1937, he was met by both Milch and Udet who took him to the German Aero Club where lunch was followed by a lengthy discussion on the state of the German aviation:

Milch knew me, thought my opinion could be trusted technically, and he had sent for me to show me the extent and size of their production. He said that they were so far ahead that they could never be caught up, that they wished to be friends with England if we would fall into line, and he generally endeavoured to impress me with the size of the new air force. About four o’clock he pushed a sheet of paper over to me, and told me to write down where I would like to go. I jotted down seventeen names, covering development, experimental and materials works, never expecting to be allowed to go.

Fedden solved the problem of increasing the number of cylinders on a radial engine by staggering them in two rows. This cutaway of the powerful eighteen-cylinder Centaurus is on display at the Bristol Aero Collection. (JC)

The fourteen-cylinder Hercules was the first of the sleeve valve Bristol engines to see widespread use. This example is at the Museum of Flight in East Fortune, Scotland. (HairyHarry)

Milch immediately agreed to all of them and over the next twelve days Fedden was taken by Junkers Ju 86 – a twin-engine monoplane originally produced as a fast civil airliner but also capable of operating as a medium bomber – and by official staff car to many of the locations he had listed. In general he was permitted to go where he chose, although this inevitably precluded the more sensitive research and development facilities of which he was not aware and hence did not request to see. As it was, he couldn’t get through the whole list during the time available and he went back to Germany in September later that same year to continue his tour.

Fedden returned to Germany once again in October 1938, less than a year before the outbreak of the war, on what was to prove his last pre-war trip. This time the main purpose was to present a paper on sleeve-valve engines at the Lilienthal Gesellschaft conference where, in his role as President of the Royal Aeronautical Society, he was also to present Hugo Eckener of the Zeppelin Company with the Society’s Gold Medal. By this stage the once-influential Eckener had been ostracised by the Nazis and the reputation of the giant airships had been tainted forever by the destruction of the Hindenburg on 6 May 1937 as it came in to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Hindenburg’s sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II, had only been launched a month before the 1938 conference, and it would carry out a number of propaganda flights within Germany plus several covert missions to probe Britain’s fledgling radar defences. In April 1940 Hermann Göring, who had never bothered to conceal his contempt for the airships, gave the order for both the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin II and its namesake, the old LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, to be scrapped and their hangars at Frankfurt dynamited to make way for his precious aircraft.

Fedden himself was also honoured at a grand ceremonial dinner held during the Lilienthal Gesellschaft conference at the Neues Palais at Potsdam, the former winter palace of the Prussian kings and German emperors. It was here that Adolf Hitler personally presented him with the Lilienthal Ring in recognition of his contribution to aeronautical engineering. Fedden has left us no record of this encounter with the Führer, perhaps because he was more taken aback by a fellow guest at the event, the renowned American aviator Colonel Charles Lindbergh. According to Fedden, Lindbergh was totally mesmerised by the power and output of Germany’s aircraft industry and was outspoken on the hopelessness of Britain pitting itself against the mighty Luftwaffe. In his own words, published in his Autobiography of Values, Lindbergh later wrote:

The organised vitality of Germany was what most impressed me. The unceasing activity of the people, and the convinced dictatorial direction to create the new airfields, and research laboratories.

While still in Germany Fedden was offered, and eagerly accepted, the opportunity to inspect several of the aircraft factories he had visited previously in order to ascertain the progress made over the past year, which, as he put it, proved to be ‘outstanding’. After each of these trips to Germany Fedden compiled highly detailed reports on his findings, but to his disbelief they were discredited by most of the Air Staff and politicians back in Britain. The official verdict was that Fedden had been duped by the Germans as to the real state of their planning and aircraft manufacturing output. Fedden was branded as a dangerous scaremonger and his valid warnings were never heeded.

Undaunted, Fedden was continuing his work on aero engines at BAC when, on 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced in a radio broadcast that Britain was at war with Germany. ‘We are ready,’ the Prime Minister had said, but his words were met with a profound silence at first, followed by a general sense of relief that the period of the so-called phoney war was over. Gas masks had been issued and barrage balloons already flew above London, but in many respects the nation was far from prepared for a war with the mightiest military force ever gathered; a war in which command of the skies would play such a decisive role.

The Bristol Taurus engine was already in production when war was declared. With the Hercules still undergoing testing, work on the big Centaurus engine was put on hold for the time being. In truth the Centaurus was ahead of the game as the newer aircraft types needed to carry this hefty 2,500hp power plant, such as the Hawker Tempest, wouldn’t come on stream until later on in the war. By 1941 production of the Hercules was in full swing at Filton, despite the attention and explosives lavished upon the works by the Luftwaffe’s Heinkels which caused heavy casualties and, by sheer chance, the destruction of Fedden’s house.

The year 1942 proved to be an especially momentous year for Fedden. For a start he was knighted for his services to aeronautics by creating the most successful aero engine of the inter-war years. But satisfying as this recognition must have been, ironically it was Fedden’s success that contributed to his undoing at Bristol. The Engine Department was in danger of eclipsing the aeroplane side of the company – a case of the tail wagging the dog perhaps – and he found himself increasingly embroiled in open conflict with the main board. A powerful and charismatic character, Fedden’s particular brand of pragmatic single-mindedness and bluntness of speech was often misconstrued and unappreciated by those on the receiving end. There were power struggles, arguments about funding and priorities, and in the end Sir Roy Fedden and BAC parted company. In other words, he was sacked.

At a time of such urgent national need Fedden was not destined to be idle for long and he took up a post as Special Technical Advisor to the Minister (STAM) at MAP. This department had been formed by Churchill in 1940 to preside over an enormous increase in aircraft production, initially to deal with the demand for more aircraft leading up to and during the Battle of Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940. Since 1941 Fedden had already been working closely with MAP in his role as chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) Committee to the Minister.

At MAP one of the first acts of Colonel John Llewellyn, who succeeded John Moore-Brabazon as the minister in early 1942, was to assign Fedden to head a fact-finding mission to the USA, where he was to learn what he could about the latest American aviation technology and production methods. Between December 1942 and March 1943 Fedden and a small team toured a comprehensive list of research facilities, aircraft and aero-engine plants throughout the USA, including those at Curtiss Wright, Glen Martin, Boeing, Bell, Douglas, Lockheed, Northrop, Fairchild, Grumman and Republic, plus various US Navy and US Air Force establishments. Fedden was immensely impressed by several of the aircraft he saw in production including the P-51 Mustang, the A-26, which later became the B-26 Invader, and the big B-29 Superfortress, but more importantly he felt that the UK aviation industry had much to learn from the size and scope of the Americans’ engineering departments – in particular the flexibility of their manufacturing methods and the close liaison between the technical staff and the production departments. He estimated that in general the American companies had between eight and fifteen times as many technical people than was the practice with UK companies. His findings went into a comprehensive report, ‘The Fedden Mission to America’, but typically of Fedden (who was not known for his brevity) it was a massive tome. Equally predictably, its recommendations were met with resistance by large sectors of the home-grown industry, although some UK companies were keen apply the lessons learnt.

For Fedden his experiences of pre-war Germany and from the wartime mission to the USA reinforced his conviction that Britain had to do much more to bring together the training given by the universities and the practical needs of the aircraft industry. In October 1943 Sir Stafford Cripps, the new minister at MAP, appointed him chairman of an inter-departmental committee tasked with preparing proposals for a school of aeronautical science. Their report, published by MAP in 1944, would lay the foundation for what would later become the Cranfield College of Aeronautics (now known as Cranfield University).

In September 1944 Sir Roy Fedden was sent overseas once again. This time heading a hastily prepared mission to Italy with a view to securing enemy equipment captured in the newly liberated areas. On 29 September he flew to Pomigliano, near Naples, but soon realised that he had been sent on a fruitless task as everything that might possibly have been useful or usable had been systematically destroyed by the retreating German and Italian forces. Following the fall of Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945, Fedden suddenly found himself summoned to the MAP building in Stratton Street once again. This time he was to lead a mission to Germany, and so it was that Fedden and his team found themselves waiting out the weather at RAF Northolt on 12 June.

The Bristol Beaufighter, derived from the Beaufort torpedo bomber, was a long-range heavy-fighter equipped with twin Hercules engines.

The Dakota aircraft were finally able to depart from Northolt at 2.15 p.m. Their intended destination was Bückeburg in northern Germany, about 25 miles (40km) to the south-west of Hannover. As most of the conventional airfields were still out of action because of bomb damage inflicted by the Allies, temporary airstrips were built using wire mesh laid out on farmland. The two aircraft landed at 4.30 p.m. in heavy rain, but they were not allowed to stay at Bückeburg and the pilots were instructed to fly on to another airfield. This was just the first of the many difficulties the team would encounter trying to get about in this war-ravaged country. It was 9.30 p.m. by the time they finally arrived at the Tactical Air Force (TAF) Headquarters in Bad Eilsen, weary after their travels but grateful for something to eat and the opportunity to discuss their itinerary with the RAF Liaison officers. Afterwards they were driven to the nearby 2nd Army Group Headquarters at Bad Oyënhausen where they were billeted for the night. The following day was going to be a very important one. Their destination was one of the Nazis’ most secret and extensive aeronautical research facilities, the Hermann Göring Institute at Völkenrode. At least, that was the intention.

On his mission to America Fedden was impressed by the flexibility of their manufacturing methods and the close liaison between technical staff and production departments. This is Consolidated’s Fort Worth assembly plant producing B-24s. (USAF)

2

The Reich in Ruins

On Wednesday 13 June 1945 Fedden’s team made an early start to get to Army Group Headquarters to obtain travel permits and to make arrangements for the first destination on their itinerary, the secret Luftfahrtforschungsansalt (LFA or aeronautical research institute) at Völkenrode. For their first two or three days in Germany they encountered unseasonably cold and wet weather and this may have been why it was decided to travel the 60 or so miles (95km) by road, instead of using the aircraft. Each of the Dakotas carried an American-built Jeep and unloading them was a tricky manoeuvre which entailed making a sharp turn rearwards out of the side of the aircraft’s fuselage and then down two narrow and steep wooden ramps. But this operation soon became second nature to the crews, as Fedden noted:

We were profoundly thankful that we had been given adequate transport, and the method of taking our own Jeeps in the Dakotas was of immense value. At first we had some delays in getting them in and out, but the crews soon became expert, and in a few days it was possible to be on the road in ten minutes or so after touching down.

For this first excursion they also managed to borrow a spare US Army Dodge truck for their ‘luggage’, which presumably meant the booty they were hoping to bring back with them.

Völkenrode is located to the east of Hannover near the city of Braunschweig, a little north of the Harz Mountains. But getting there was going to introduce the mission to the sort of conditions they would encounter throughout their stay in this battered country. The physical effects of the war were to be seen everywhere, from the countless abandoned vehicles lining the roads to the burnt-out carcasses of the ruined buildings. There were endless delays on the roads, even on the autobahn, caused by bomb damage, obstructions, or where bridges and viaducts had been systematically destroyed by the retreating German army.