I adore how you write the TL exactly as a history book. It feels like a history book and I have to think about it and say to myself this isnt real.
The Anglo/American - Nazi War
- Thread starter CalBear
- Start date
- Status
So I am guessing that with a few years of relative peace in terms of land-warfare, that the stockpile of British manpower has been replenished to a small amount. Are the various dominions and colonies being utilized more. And forgive me but did I miss any updates on India, what is the current state of affairs on the sub-continent?
Wait... the Germans developed their own 'ultimate weapon'? And it wasn't a nuclear weapon? And the Allies had no knowledge it existed?
Okay, colour me curious, what could it be?
Deadlier strains of nerve agents like VX? Tipped on ballistic missile platforms?
That doesn't sound good, in any case.
Although the allies did not have nerve agents OTL during WW2, I wonder in this TL if they would not have realized the Nazis had them. After all the "warm war" has been going on for some time (in to the 1950's), the "bug spray" agents that were the precursors to nerve agents (discovered by accident) were discovered in the 1930's, and the Allies had relatively good spy assets in Europe. All of this IMHO combines to the allies having some, though probably not as many types as the Nazis, of nerve agents & an understanding of the effects & how to protect.
Even with just gas masks & fully clothed & wearing gloves, troops have decent protect against nerve agents though not as good as chem suits. The problem with chem agents is getting them where you want when you want in the concentration you need is not easy, and can be very dependent on temperature, humidity, wind etc. Additionally you create a "chemical environment" that is a royal pain in the ass for your troops to operate in. For all these reasons, chem warfare against allied troops is an ugly nuisance but no more.
If the Waffen-SS & the NSDAP leaders decide to drop nerve gas on Brit cities it will be ugly, however even use of non-nerve agents like phosgene, mustard, lewisite on an unprotected civilian population is nasty & the Brits were prepared to do that OTL. Lastly, even with VX it will take a lot of bombs to deliver enough to cause massive casualties & the Luftwaffe can't be sure of that many getting through - whereas if 10 bombers attack a city with an A-bomb & only one gets through......
Even with just gas masks & fully clothed & wearing gloves, troops have decent protect against nerve agents though not as good as chem suits. The problem with chem agents is getting them where you want when you want in the concentration you need is not easy, and can be very dependent on temperature, humidity, wind etc. Additionally you create a "chemical environment" that is a royal pain in the ass for your troops to operate in. For all these reasons, chem warfare against allied troops is an ugly nuisance but no more.
If the Waffen-SS & the NSDAP leaders decide to drop nerve gas on Brit cities it will be ugly, however even use of non-nerve agents like phosgene, mustard, lewisite on an unprotected civilian population is nasty & the Brits were prepared to do that OTL. Lastly, even with VX it will take a lot of bombs to deliver enough to cause massive casualties & the Luftwaffe can't be sure of that many getting through - whereas if 10 bombers attack a city with an A-bomb & only one gets through......
CalBear,
My congratulations on creating a truly First Class story.
I don't post much on this board, but I felt I had to let you know that your work in creating this story is greatly appreciated. I will be looking forward to seeing the rest of the story as it comes out.
DarkObelisk
My congratulations on creating a truly First Class story.
I don't post much on this board, but I felt I had to let you know that your work in creating this story is greatly appreciated. I will be looking forward to seeing the rest of the story as it comes out.
DarkObelisk
Dan Reilly The Great
Banned
I hate to sound impatient or anything, but what gives? It's been the better part of a month since the last update. Is there going to be anything new on this any time soon?
This T/L was really meant to trace a potential political result of Nazi Victory and how it would impact Europe. However, there have been a number of requests to continue the TL into the actual war.
I will therefore give it a shot in the coming days. That will be followed by the long awaited return of Pacific War Redux.
I will therefore give it a shot in the coming days. That will be followed by the long awaited return of Pacific War Redux.
Markus
Banned
I will therefore give it a shot in the coming days. That will be followed by the long awaited return of Pacific War Redux.
Wow, PWR is still alive!
This T/L was really meant to trace a potential political result of Nazi Victory and how it would impact Europe. However, there have been a number of requests to continue the TL into the actual war.
I will therefore give it a shot in the coming days. That will be followed by the long awaited return of Pacific War Redux.
Huzzah, both will live again!
As promised here is the first installment of the actual combat portion of the TL. More will be posted in the coming days.
Comments are, as always, actively sought.
Enjoy.
1.
The trigger for the move from Warm War to Hot was the infamous 1954 St. Patrick’s Day Raids. It is very unfortunate that most of the Luftwaffe records surrounding the planning for the Raids, not to mention the no doubt acrimonious debates that preceded the decision to break the long-standing informal, but very real, bombing holiday & de facto truce between the Reich and the Western Allies. The potential success of the Raid, even if it had exceeded the most optimistic expectations in the surviving Luftwaffe documents, seems today to hardly have been worth the effort involved, not to mention the inevitable Allied reaction to the action. Alas, with the lack of records, and the dearth of eyewitnesses to the debates, we are left with only the raids themselves to tell the incomplete tale. It is, however, interesting to note that Helmut Goebbels, the eldest son of Hitler’s closest confidant Joseph Gobbels, was killed in action aboard U-1632 on his first patrol as a naval officer cadet on January 8, 1954
The 1953 attacks were, of course, not the first Nazi attempt to attack North America. This distinction goes instead to the Luftwaffe crews who participated in what is now generally called the HMS Premier Quail Shoot. The Premier was an Ameer class escort carrier assigned as the flag of a ASW Hunter-Killer Task Force operating in the Denmark Strait in search of U-boats attempting to gain access to the North American coast by moving through the less heavily patrolled seas north of Iceland. As was typical of her class performing ASW work her air wing consisted of 12 F4F-4 Wildcats (nee: Matlets) and 6 TBF Avengers, with the Avengers normally carrying depth bombs in place of torpedoes.
On September 27, 1945 at 10:00 hours one of Premier’s escorting destroyers, HMCS Haida, reported a very strong airborne radar contact 25 miles to the northeast of the TF. The two plane Wildcat CAP was immediately sent to investigate, and the carrier launched two more fighters to take their place over the formation. Roughly ten minutes later Flying Officer Robert Evans VC radioed in to report “Tally Ho. Angeles 15. A formation of the biggest bloody Hun bombers I have ever seen”. Evans had become the first Allied pilot to see one of the Ju-390 “Amerika Bombers” moments later he became the first Allied pilot to attack a Ju-390.
The Ju-390 was indeed “a bloody big bomber”. The aircraft sported twenty defensive machine guns and 20mm cannon, six engines and, with a wingspan some twenty FEET greater than the B-29 bomber and thirty-eight feet greater than the Avro Lancaster, and a range of over 9,000 miles, was the largest operational bomber in the world at the time. Developed in considerable secrecy, the Ju-390 was supposed to “bring the Americans to their knees” by exposing U.S. civilian populations to strategic bombing. While the probability of knocking the U.S. out of the war was remote, the effect of having Americans dying on home soil would have, unquestionably, been dramatic. Unfortunately for the Reich, the Ju-390 was not the right weapon for the job.
The Ju-390 was able to achieve its magnificent range at the cost of performance in other areas, with airspeed, being limited to 219 MPH during its long over water flight and a maximum speed of only of 317 MPH at full wartime emergency power with a service ceiling of only 19,000 feet. The Luftwaffe’s operational commanders has been horrified at the prospect of putting any aircraft with this level of performance into a combat situation, but had found themselves overruled by both Goring and Hitler, both of whom were mesmerized by the vision of New York in flames. With the resources of Europe at its disposal, the Reich was able to build up a force of nearly 50 of the huge bombers in relative secrecy (the Allies knowing only the Germans had finally built a true heavy bomber, one that both the Americans and British expected to be used against the UK). It was this huge force that Premier had accidentally encountered.
With the Evans contact report Premier’s flight deckexploded into activity. Every ready aircraft, including three TBF bombers were rapidly clawing for altitude in an effort to intercept the Luftwaffe formation. Radio reports were also made to Coastal Command bases in both Halifax and Iceland to warn of what could only be an attack against North America. Even as the Morse message crackled from its transmitters, the carrier’s aircraft made contact with the German formation.
The Luftwaffe crews had no idea that they had been found until the first firing pass by F.O. Evans. Following advice he had heard third hand from a captured German ace (“The first thing you must do is kill the tail gunner”), Evens put his first burst into the tail gunner’s compartment, killing the Luftwaffe Sergeant manning the position, and proceeded to concentrate his fire on first the port, then starboard, inboard engines, setting both aflame, again as the German flyer had revealed (“if the inner engine catches fire, it will burn off the wing”). Evans and the second pilot in his element, following Evans calmly given instructions repeated this process until both aircraft ran out of ammunition, As the two stubby Grumman aircraft headed back to their ship they left nine burning Junkers (six of them belonging to Evans) spiraling toward the cold Atlantic water. As he headed back to rearm Evans passed the priceless knowledge from the Luftwaffe bomber killer on to the other fighters heading toward the German aircraft.
With only enough fuel to spend 20 minutes at maximum speed, speed that would be needed to clear the target after the bomb run ahead of avenging enemy aircraft, and still make it home, the German pilots were faced with an impossible choice. Most chose to increase speed and hope for the best. One nine aircraft element of the formation, including three damaged planes, attempted to sacrifice itself by slowing to only 160 knots in hope of diverting the remaining FAA fighters. This ruse failed, as the fighters continued on to the bombers, leaving the slow formation to the pilots flying the slower, far less well armed, TBFs. Two of final four Ju-390s in this decoy formation fell to the guns of freshly rearmed F.O. Evans.
By the time the plodding bombers managed to escape the Premier’s angry brood thirty-one out of the original forty-six Ju-390s had either been shot down or crippled to the point that they disappeared forever into the cold, cruel North Atlantic mists. Alerted to the enemy’s approach, RCAF Mosquitoes, directed by pilots of patrolling Liberators diverted from their ASW duties to search for the enemy formation, found and destroyed the remaining German aircraft as they flew past Newfoundland’s coast. Of the nearly 500 Luftwaffe crewmen who had departed from Norway that late summer evening, only 12 were rescued, one by one of Premier’s escorting destroyers, HNoMS Stord and the rest by Catalina flying boats out of Conception Bay. FAA losses were two Wildcats and three TBF, along with a total of five aircrew. The battle itself was buried under wartime secrecy for nearly a decade, only becoming public knowledge in 1954 when the, by then, Captain Evans was awarded his richly deserved and long overdue Victoria Cross in the public relations effort following the St. Patrick’s Day Raids.
While the German attack of 1945 was defeated, no one in the Canadian or American military or civilian leadership was fooled. The raid would have succeeded, at least insofar as hitting targets in North America, even if the raiders had later been obliterated, as was very likely considering the number of fighter units stationed along the Atlantic coastline from Labrador to the Florida Keys. The reaction was, as noted by CIGS Brooke (later Lord Alanbrooke), classically American in that it locked the barn door after the horse had escaped, much like the robust response to Pearl Harbor had been. The American, and to a lesser extent Canadian, response to this comment was, in effect, “well, we have a lot more horses in there”. Regardless of the timing, the reaction was impressive in scope and endurance. The USN dedicated an entire destroyer flotilla to radar picket duty with additional ground based radars set along the Atlantic coast as well as on Greenland and Iceland. The introduction of the EB-36 in 1951, with its great loiter time and, for the time, extremely powerful radars, improved and extended these long range warning picket lines far out into the Atlantic. The USAAF also deployed a series of ever more powerfully armed interceptor aircraft to defend the Continental U.S. and Canada, with the F-89 Scorpion and its Genie missile reaching service in late November of 1953. What the Reich actually knew of these radar barriers and air defenses has long been a matter of some debate, but their presence did not, it seems, noticeably interfere with the Luftwaffe’s battle planning.
The German attack plan was remarkably simple, even crude, by comparison to some of the Reich’s efforts in the early years of the war, even if it was bold. The plan, which was unusually reliant on timing considering the sites of the various attacks, was the first combat action of the Ju-688 super heavy bomber, an aircraft similar to the American B-36, although with a smaller bomb load and with even greater range than the huge USAAF Peacekeeper. The German military had been operating in a practical vacuum since the 1947 bombing pause with no real knowledge of the changes in strategic bombing that had been in progress since 1947. Both the U.S. and Britain had gone to surprising lengths to keep the existence of their pure jet strategic bombers a secret, allowing only scant mention of them into the media, with the American B-36 and B-45 and the British Canberra being the public face of the Allied bomber force. Whether detailed knowledge of the B-47, B-52, and the RAF’s “V” bomber series would have altered Luftwaffe operational thought is unknowable, but the Reich’s planners advanced into the 1954 bombing under the impression that an aircraft similar to the B-36 was still viewed by the Western Allies as a serious deep penetration threat.
The Reich had spent several years gathering the bomber force that was used on St. Patrick’s Day and, by any measure, had developed a considerable force. Nearly 600 of the Ju-688s were involved in the attacks, launching from almost twenty airfields across Europe. Over 400 of these aircraft, in eight separate formations, were destined for the United States. Had the Luftwaffe selected different targets than those that were actually attacked, enormous damage could have been visited onto the American industrial heartland. However, no matter how many staff officers pushed for attacks on Detroit and Chicago and Windsor, attacks that would actually be of consequence to the Allied ability to make war, the Nazi Party powers would not hear of it. Instead the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard, irresistible to the amateur political minds making the actual tactical decisions about the raids, were selected.
Half of the raiders were assigned to New York, with two other groups aimed at Boston and the last two groups meant for Washington DC. Again, for reasons lost in the fog of war and time, the targets for the New York and Boston attacks were not of any military utility at all, instead the Luftwaffe was ordered to time their attacks to catch the maximum number of civilians possible by striking Manhattan and downtown Boston at mid-day. (It has long been speculated that Hitler was actually trying to target the famous Parades held on the 17th of March in both cities, but in this author’s opinion, this is too insane a plan even for the Reich’s mad leader).
The aircraft attacking the U.S. left the ground just before sunset on March 16, 1954. Of the 406 aircraft assigned to the mission 378 actually were able to take off and proceed to North America. Eleven of the assigned aircraft suffered mechanical failures on the ground, while seven suffered engine failure while still close enough to their launching points to successfully abort. Surviving Luftwaffe records also indicate that at least 30 bombers fell out of formation during the Atlantic crossing, never to be heard from again. The remaining Ju-688s continued toward the United States.
The first formation, the northernmost, was detected by an EB-36 operating out of Keflavik USAAF base. As soon as the alert was received, additional ships, including two carrier TF, and aircraft began to move into preplanned defensive positions as air bases and defensive missile and gun positions moved into warning status. In what would be seen as nearly criminal nonchalance today, air base and anti-aircraft unit commanders were authorized to deploy the most secret of systems available to the Allies at their individual discretion. Control of these systems devolved from the President of the United States to Captains and Lieutenants with a single telephone call.
The radar barrier quickly identified seven of the eight attacking formations. Unfortunately one of the bomber groups was lost within the radar shadow of an Atlantic Storm system and got inside the warning line undetected. What our history, and today’s world, would look like if this storm had been off-set by 30 or so miles, is one of the great “what could have been” questions of our time. The storm, however, was where it was, with the well know results.
The Luftwaffe forces may have known that they had been detected. The radio operators on the bombers could hardly have missed the sudden, dramatic, increase in radio traffic, both coded transmissions and soon, voice transmissions. Once can be sure that the crews were preparing for battle, with defensive gun crews making final checks of their control systems, pilots ensuring that crews were on supplemental oxygen in case pressurization was lost, bombardiers arming weapons, and all the manifold other tasks that are part of preparation for battle in the air.
The Ju-688 was, with all due respect to the fabled B-17, a true flying fortress. Unlike the Allies, who had come to believe after years of air combat over Europe that, with the exception of tail guns, defensive armament was a waste of weight on a strategic bomber, the Luftwaffe still believed in defending the bomber with rapid fire guns. The Ju-688 carried half a dozen four gun remote controlled turrets, four containing 20mm cannon and the other two armed with huge 35mm auto cannon. What this says about the true effectiveness of the bomber box and its defensive fire during the 1940-47 strategic campaign is outside the scope of this work, but the fact that the service that had been forced to face the guns of the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command festooned their most advanced aircraft with defensive guns is nonetheless interesting. It was also, as events were to prove, a waste of effort.
History was, of course, made just after 08:00 hours on that March 1954 morning when Major Ed Williams made his radar intercept of Flight 12, consisting of 37 Ju-688 bombers, 350 miles northeast of Boston. At a range of just over five miles, Williams launched one of his two AIR-2 Genie rockets in the direction of Flight 12, known to Williams as Raid One. Williams had just enough time to make his combat break away from the Genie, having lowered his face shield immediately before weapons launch, before the rocket arrived in the vicinity of Flight 12, close enough to trigger the proximity trigger in the nose of the weapon. A fraction of a second later the Genie’s 1.5kt warhead detonated, marking the first combat use of a nuclear weapon.
The Luftwaffe formation was, not surprisingly, devastated. Twenty-four of the aircraft were within the 1,000 foot instant kill radius of the weapon and instantly caught fire or suffered structural collapse from the massive overpressure of the detonation. These planes were the lucky ones, with their crews killed also instantly. The remaining 15 aircraft, however, survived the initial blast, although generally with considerable damage. They were also, uniformly, piloted by men who had been instantly and permanently blinded by the sudden, utterly unexpected and totally unimaginable, appearance of a second sun less than a half mile off the nose of their aircraft. A number of other crewmen in the surviving aircraft had also suffered loss of some or all of their vision. Of the 425 men manning Flight 12 thirty-six managed to escape their aircraft before the planes went out of all semblance of control. Twelve of these men were eventually rescued by USN and USCG patrols.
Between 08:10 and 09:00 hours, even as air raid sirens sounded up and down the Atlantic Coast of North America, six additional Genies were fired at five Luftwaffe formations (one weapon failed to detonate and was lost at sea) with nearly identical results. The nuclear age had dawned in a most spectacular manner, although no one in Germany had any idea that the world had dramatically changed. Still, two German formations remained.
Flight 7, the second of two formations targeted on Washington DC, was not intercepted until it was only 35 miles off the Maryland Coast. This was, in the opinion of the intercept commander, too close to use a nuclear weapon. Instead this formation was attacked by two squadrons of F-94 Starfires and a squadron of F-84F Thunderstreaks. As was the case with the doomed Genie targets, Flight 7 was torn to pieces; however, in this case the crews at least understood what was happening. The F-94s were armed with 2.75 inch Mighty Mouse rockets. These had been developed as a longer range alternative to conventional cannon or machine guns, but had, in trials, been something of a disappointment, with a rather disturbing tendency to spread all over the sky when fired, making them a poor choice for engaging a single aircraft. However, when fired en masse by two squadrons of twenty-four aircraft (with each aircraft carrying 48 rockets), the results were devastating. The Mighty Mouse killed 26 of the Ju-688 of Flight 7 and severely damaged three others. The attacks of the Thunderstreaks chopped down eight more bombers, as the JU-688 gun crews found it nearly impossible to target the 700 mph fighters as the flashed through the tatters of the Luftwaffe formation. Despite the best efforts of three full fighter squadrons five of the Ju-688s made it to the Washington DC area. Two were killed by Nike SAM before they could drop their bombs, but three of the German aircraft managed to drop their bombs on the outskirts of the American Capital, killing nearly 200 civilians. None of the Ju-688s made it back to open water before being blotted from the sky.
Flight 5 was the only Luftwaffe formation to manage anything close to a coordinated attack. Having managed to get through the initial radar barrier undetected it was not located until it was less than 200 miles from New York City. It immediately attracted the attention of no less than 12 fighter squadron flying everything from elderly P-51s to nine early model F-100 Super Sabers flying from Wright Patterson airfield in eastern Ohio, as well as F-9 Cougar fighters from the USS Guadalcanal. The courage of the Luftwaffe pilots flying through this gauntlet can not be overestimated, as they had learned of the obliteration of most of their fellows while en-route to the target as one squadron after another reported enemy contact and then dropped off the air. Only eight of the German bombers made it to within sight of New York City with six of them managing to make a successful bomb run over central Manhattan, while a seventh aircraft crashed in lower Manhattan. All told some 18,000 pound of bombs struck Midtown, causing serious damage and claiming over 800 lives, all but 26 of them civilians. As would be expected, the Ju-688s did not escape the vengeful efforts of the American fighters as they attempted to withdraw.
To put 36 bombs onto Manhattan, and an additional 18 bombs into Georgetown the Reich had expended 378 aircraft and over 4,000 men.
The Luftwaffe also targeted London as part of the St. Patrick’s Day Raids. Here, there was no surprise at all; as radar stations along the English coast watched the Luftwaffe formations form up in increasingly alarming numbers. At almost the same moment as Flight 7 was meeting its fate off the Maryland coast, the largest air battle since 1945 began over the English Channel. Here, the RAF and its USAAF allies didn’t have the luxury of time or distance to intercept the enemy hundreds of miles out to sea, no Genie rockets with nuclear warheads to swat the enemy from the skies over the vastness of the open ocean, the British defenders didn’t have the advantage of attack unescorted 400 mph bombers with 700 mph fighters. Here the fighting was done at knife-fighting distances as close to 2,400 aircraft struggled for the upper hand. London was heavily damaged as several hundred German bombers struck at the British capital in the heaviest raid against the City since January of 1946. By the time the last Luftwaffe aircraft retreated behind the flak curtain along the French coast almost nine hours had passed. The toll, both in damage and in aircraft was enormous. RAF and USAAF fighters claimed 228 kills, while AAA crews claimed an additional 306 Luftwaffe aircraft shot down (post war records indicate that the actual Luftwaffe losses were between 256 and 292 aircraft) while the RAF had lost 56 fighters along with 19 American aircraft lost.
Even before the last German pilot had been debriefed Washington and London had made a joint decision to end things in the only way that was certain to work. Europe would have to be invaded, the Reich met and utterly defeated in the field.
2
After the…
Comments are, as always, actively sought.
Enjoy.
1.
The trigger for the move from Warm War to Hot was the infamous 1954 St. Patrick’s Day Raids. It is very unfortunate that most of the Luftwaffe records surrounding the planning for the Raids, not to mention the no doubt acrimonious debates that preceded the decision to break the long-standing informal, but very real, bombing holiday & de facto truce between the Reich and the Western Allies. The potential success of the Raid, even if it had exceeded the most optimistic expectations in the surviving Luftwaffe documents, seems today to hardly have been worth the effort involved, not to mention the inevitable Allied reaction to the action. Alas, with the lack of records, and the dearth of eyewitnesses to the debates, we are left with only the raids themselves to tell the incomplete tale. It is, however, interesting to note that Helmut Goebbels, the eldest son of Hitler’s closest confidant Joseph Gobbels, was killed in action aboard U-1632 on his first patrol as a naval officer cadet on January 8, 1954
The 1953 attacks were, of course, not the first Nazi attempt to attack North America. This distinction goes instead to the Luftwaffe crews who participated in what is now generally called the HMS Premier Quail Shoot. The Premier was an Ameer class escort carrier assigned as the flag of a ASW Hunter-Killer Task Force operating in the Denmark Strait in search of U-boats attempting to gain access to the North American coast by moving through the less heavily patrolled seas north of Iceland. As was typical of her class performing ASW work her air wing consisted of 12 F4F-4 Wildcats (nee: Matlets) and 6 TBF Avengers, with the Avengers normally carrying depth bombs in place of torpedoes.
On September 27, 1945 at 10:00 hours one of Premier’s escorting destroyers, HMCS Haida, reported a very strong airborne radar contact 25 miles to the northeast of the TF. The two plane Wildcat CAP was immediately sent to investigate, and the carrier launched two more fighters to take their place over the formation. Roughly ten minutes later Flying Officer Robert Evans VC radioed in to report “Tally Ho. Angeles 15. A formation of the biggest bloody Hun bombers I have ever seen”. Evans had become the first Allied pilot to see one of the Ju-390 “Amerika Bombers” moments later he became the first Allied pilot to attack a Ju-390.
The Ju-390 was indeed “a bloody big bomber”. The aircraft sported twenty defensive machine guns and 20mm cannon, six engines and, with a wingspan some twenty FEET greater than the B-29 bomber and thirty-eight feet greater than the Avro Lancaster, and a range of over 9,000 miles, was the largest operational bomber in the world at the time. Developed in considerable secrecy, the Ju-390 was supposed to “bring the Americans to their knees” by exposing U.S. civilian populations to strategic bombing. While the probability of knocking the U.S. out of the war was remote, the effect of having Americans dying on home soil would have, unquestionably, been dramatic. Unfortunately for the Reich, the Ju-390 was not the right weapon for the job.
The Ju-390 was able to achieve its magnificent range at the cost of performance in other areas, with airspeed, being limited to 219 MPH during its long over water flight and a maximum speed of only of 317 MPH at full wartime emergency power with a service ceiling of only 19,000 feet. The Luftwaffe’s operational commanders has been horrified at the prospect of putting any aircraft with this level of performance into a combat situation, but had found themselves overruled by both Goring and Hitler, both of whom were mesmerized by the vision of New York in flames. With the resources of Europe at its disposal, the Reich was able to build up a force of nearly 50 of the huge bombers in relative secrecy (the Allies knowing only the Germans had finally built a true heavy bomber, one that both the Americans and British expected to be used against the UK). It was this huge force that Premier had accidentally encountered.
With the Evans contact report Premier’s flight deckexploded into activity. Every ready aircraft, including three TBF bombers were rapidly clawing for altitude in an effort to intercept the Luftwaffe formation. Radio reports were also made to Coastal Command bases in both Halifax and Iceland to warn of what could only be an attack against North America. Even as the Morse message crackled from its transmitters, the carrier’s aircraft made contact with the German formation.
The Luftwaffe crews had no idea that they had been found until the first firing pass by F.O. Evans. Following advice he had heard third hand from a captured German ace (“The first thing you must do is kill the tail gunner”), Evens put his first burst into the tail gunner’s compartment, killing the Luftwaffe Sergeant manning the position, and proceeded to concentrate his fire on first the port, then starboard, inboard engines, setting both aflame, again as the German flyer had revealed (“if the inner engine catches fire, it will burn off the wing”). Evans and the second pilot in his element, following Evans calmly given instructions repeated this process until both aircraft ran out of ammunition, As the two stubby Grumman aircraft headed back to their ship they left nine burning Junkers (six of them belonging to Evans) spiraling toward the cold Atlantic water. As he headed back to rearm Evans passed the priceless knowledge from the Luftwaffe bomber killer on to the other fighters heading toward the German aircraft.
With only enough fuel to spend 20 minutes at maximum speed, speed that would be needed to clear the target after the bomb run ahead of avenging enemy aircraft, and still make it home, the German pilots were faced with an impossible choice. Most chose to increase speed and hope for the best. One nine aircraft element of the formation, including three damaged planes, attempted to sacrifice itself by slowing to only 160 knots in hope of diverting the remaining FAA fighters. This ruse failed, as the fighters continued on to the bombers, leaving the slow formation to the pilots flying the slower, far less well armed, TBFs. Two of final four Ju-390s in this decoy formation fell to the guns of freshly rearmed F.O. Evans.
By the time the plodding bombers managed to escape the Premier’s angry brood thirty-one out of the original forty-six Ju-390s had either been shot down or crippled to the point that they disappeared forever into the cold, cruel North Atlantic mists. Alerted to the enemy’s approach, RCAF Mosquitoes, directed by pilots of patrolling Liberators diverted from their ASW duties to search for the enemy formation, found and destroyed the remaining German aircraft as they flew past Newfoundland’s coast. Of the nearly 500 Luftwaffe crewmen who had departed from Norway that late summer evening, only 12 were rescued, one by one of Premier’s escorting destroyers, HNoMS Stord and the rest by Catalina flying boats out of Conception Bay. FAA losses were two Wildcats and three TBF, along with a total of five aircrew. The battle itself was buried under wartime secrecy for nearly a decade, only becoming public knowledge in 1954 when the, by then, Captain Evans was awarded his richly deserved and long overdue Victoria Cross in the public relations effort following the St. Patrick’s Day Raids.
While the German attack of 1945 was defeated, no one in the Canadian or American military or civilian leadership was fooled. The raid would have succeeded, at least insofar as hitting targets in North America, even if the raiders had later been obliterated, as was very likely considering the number of fighter units stationed along the Atlantic coastline from Labrador to the Florida Keys. The reaction was, as noted by CIGS Brooke (later Lord Alanbrooke), classically American in that it locked the barn door after the horse had escaped, much like the robust response to Pearl Harbor had been. The American, and to a lesser extent Canadian, response to this comment was, in effect, “well, we have a lot more horses in there”. Regardless of the timing, the reaction was impressive in scope and endurance. The USN dedicated an entire destroyer flotilla to radar picket duty with additional ground based radars set along the Atlantic coast as well as on Greenland and Iceland. The introduction of the EB-36 in 1951, with its great loiter time and, for the time, extremely powerful radars, improved and extended these long range warning picket lines far out into the Atlantic. The USAAF also deployed a series of ever more powerfully armed interceptor aircraft to defend the Continental U.S. and Canada, with the F-89 Scorpion and its Genie missile reaching service in late November of 1953. What the Reich actually knew of these radar barriers and air defenses has long been a matter of some debate, but their presence did not, it seems, noticeably interfere with the Luftwaffe’s battle planning.
The German attack plan was remarkably simple, even crude, by comparison to some of the Reich’s efforts in the early years of the war, even if it was bold. The plan, which was unusually reliant on timing considering the sites of the various attacks, was the first combat action of the Ju-688 super heavy bomber, an aircraft similar to the American B-36, although with a smaller bomb load and with even greater range than the huge USAAF Peacekeeper. The German military had been operating in a practical vacuum since the 1947 bombing pause with no real knowledge of the changes in strategic bombing that had been in progress since 1947. Both the U.S. and Britain had gone to surprising lengths to keep the existence of their pure jet strategic bombers a secret, allowing only scant mention of them into the media, with the American B-36 and B-45 and the British Canberra being the public face of the Allied bomber force. Whether detailed knowledge of the B-47, B-52, and the RAF’s “V” bomber series would have altered Luftwaffe operational thought is unknowable, but the Reich’s planners advanced into the 1954 bombing under the impression that an aircraft similar to the B-36 was still viewed by the Western Allies as a serious deep penetration threat.
The Reich had spent several years gathering the bomber force that was used on St. Patrick’s Day and, by any measure, had developed a considerable force. Nearly 600 of the Ju-688s were involved in the attacks, launching from almost twenty airfields across Europe. Over 400 of these aircraft, in eight separate formations, were destined for the United States. Had the Luftwaffe selected different targets than those that were actually attacked, enormous damage could have been visited onto the American industrial heartland. However, no matter how many staff officers pushed for attacks on Detroit and Chicago and Windsor, attacks that would actually be of consequence to the Allied ability to make war, the Nazi Party powers would not hear of it. Instead the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard, irresistible to the amateur political minds making the actual tactical decisions about the raids, were selected.
Half of the raiders were assigned to New York, with two other groups aimed at Boston and the last two groups meant for Washington DC. Again, for reasons lost in the fog of war and time, the targets for the New York and Boston attacks were not of any military utility at all, instead the Luftwaffe was ordered to time their attacks to catch the maximum number of civilians possible by striking Manhattan and downtown Boston at mid-day. (It has long been speculated that Hitler was actually trying to target the famous Parades held on the 17th of March in both cities, but in this author’s opinion, this is too insane a plan even for the Reich’s mad leader).
The aircraft attacking the U.S. left the ground just before sunset on March 16, 1954. Of the 406 aircraft assigned to the mission 378 actually were able to take off and proceed to North America. Eleven of the assigned aircraft suffered mechanical failures on the ground, while seven suffered engine failure while still close enough to their launching points to successfully abort. Surviving Luftwaffe records also indicate that at least 30 bombers fell out of formation during the Atlantic crossing, never to be heard from again. The remaining Ju-688s continued toward the United States.
The first formation, the northernmost, was detected by an EB-36 operating out of Keflavik USAAF base. As soon as the alert was received, additional ships, including two carrier TF, and aircraft began to move into preplanned defensive positions as air bases and defensive missile and gun positions moved into warning status. In what would be seen as nearly criminal nonchalance today, air base and anti-aircraft unit commanders were authorized to deploy the most secret of systems available to the Allies at their individual discretion. Control of these systems devolved from the President of the United States to Captains and Lieutenants with a single telephone call.
The radar barrier quickly identified seven of the eight attacking formations. Unfortunately one of the bomber groups was lost within the radar shadow of an Atlantic Storm system and got inside the warning line undetected. What our history, and today’s world, would look like if this storm had been off-set by 30 or so miles, is one of the great “what could have been” questions of our time. The storm, however, was where it was, with the well know results.
The Luftwaffe forces may have known that they had been detected. The radio operators on the bombers could hardly have missed the sudden, dramatic, increase in radio traffic, both coded transmissions and soon, voice transmissions. Once can be sure that the crews were preparing for battle, with defensive gun crews making final checks of their control systems, pilots ensuring that crews were on supplemental oxygen in case pressurization was lost, bombardiers arming weapons, and all the manifold other tasks that are part of preparation for battle in the air.
The Ju-688 was, with all due respect to the fabled B-17, a true flying fortress. Unlike the Allies, who had come to believe after years of air combat over Europe that, with the exception of tail guns, defensive armament was a waste of weight on a strategic bomber, the Luftwaffe still believed in defending the bomber with rapid fire guns. The Ju-688 carried half a dozen four gun remote controlled turrets, four containing 20mm cannon and the other two armed with huge 35mm auto cannon. What this says about the true effectiveness of the bomber box and its defensive fire during the 1940-47 strategic campaign is outside the scope of this work, but the fact that the service that had been forced to face the guns of the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command festooned their most advanced aircraft with defensive guns is nonetheless interesting. It was also, as events were to prove, a waste of effort.
History was, of course, made just after 08:00 hours on that March 1954 morning when Major Ed Williams made his radar intercept of Flight 12, consisting of 37 Ju-688 bombers, 350 miles northeast of Boston. At a range of just over five miles, Williams launched one of his two AIR-2 Genie rockets in the direction of Flight 12, known to Williams as Raid One. Williams had just enough time to make his combat break away from the Genie, having lowered his face shield immediately before weapons launch, before the rocket arrived in the vicinity of Flight 12, close enough to trigger the proximity trigger in the nose of the weapon. A fraction of a second later the Genie’s 1.5kt warhead detonated, marking the first combat use of a nuclear weapon.
The Luftwaffe formation was, not surprisingly, devastated. Twenty-four of the aircraft were within the 1,000 foot instant kill radius of the weapon and instantly caught fire or suffered structural collapse from the massive overpressure of the detonation. These planes were the lucky ones, with their crews killed also instantly. The remaining 15 aircraft, however, survived the initial blast, although generally with considerable damage. They were also, uniformly, piloted by men who had been instantly and permanently blinded by the sudden, utterly unexpected and totally unimaginable, appearance of a second sun less than a half mile off the nose of their aircraft. A number of other crewmen in the surviving aircraft had also suffered loss of some or all of their vision. Of the 425 men manning Flight 12 thirty-six managed to escape their aircraft before the planes went out of all semblance of control. Twelve of these men were eventually rescued by USN and USCG patrols.
Between 08:10 and 09:00 hours, even as air raid sirens sounded up and down the Atlantic Coast of North America, six additional Genies were fired at five Luftwaffe formations (one weapon failed to detonate and was lost at sea) with nearly identical results. The nuclear age had dawned in a most spectacular manner, although no one in Germany had any idea that the world had dramatically changed. Still, two German formations remained.
Flight 7, the second of two formations targeted on Washington DC, was not intercepted until it was only 35 miles off the Maryland Coast. This was, in the opinion of the intercept commander, too close to use a nuclear weapon. Instead this formation was attacked by two squadrons of F-94 Starfires and a squadron of F-84F Thunderstreaks. As was the case with the doomed Genie targets, Flight 7 was torn to pieces; however, in this case the crews at least understood what was happening. The F-94s were armed with 2.75 inch Mighty Mouse rockets. These had been developed as a longer range alternative to conventional cannon or machine guns, but had, in trials, been something of a disappointment, with a rather disturbing tendency to spread all over the sky when fired, making them a poor choice for engaging a single aircraft. However, when fired en masse by two squadrons of twenty-four aircraft (with each aircraft carrying 48 rockets), the results were devastating. The Mighty Mouse killed 26 of the Ju-688 of Flight 7 and severely damaged three others. The attacks of the Thunderstreaks chopped down eight more bombers, as the JU-688 gun crews found it nearly impossible to target the 700 mph fighters as the flashed through the tatters of the Luftwaffe formation. Despite the best efforts of three full fighter squadrons five of the Ju-688s made it to the Washington DC area. Two were killed by Nike SAM before they could drop their bombs, but three of the German aircraft managed to drop their bombs on the outskirts of the American Capital, killing nearly 200 civilians. None of the Ju-688s made it back to open water before being blotted from the sky.
Flight 5 was the only Luftwaffe formation to manage anything close to a coordinated attack. Having managed to get through the initial radar barrier undetected it was not located until it was less than 200 miles from New York City. It immediately attracted the attention of no less than 12 fighter squadron flying everything from elderly P-51s to nine early model F-100 Super Sabers flying from Wright Patterson airfield in eastern Ohio, as well as F-9 Cougar fighters from the USS Guadalcanal. The courage of the Luftwaffe pilots flying through this gauntlet can not be overestimated, as they had learned of the obliteration of most of their fellows while en-route to the target as one squadron after another reported enemy contact and then dropped off the air. Only eight of the German bombers made it to within sight of New York City with six of them managing to make a successful bomb run over central Manhattan, while a seventh aircraft crashed in lower Manhattan. All told some 18,000 pound of bombs struck Midtown, causing serious damage and claiming over 800 lives, all but 26 of them civilians. As would be expected, the Ju-688s did not escape the vengeful efforts of the American fighters as they attempted to withdraw.
To put 36 bombs onto Manhattan, and an additional 18 bombs into Georgetown the Reich had expended 378 aircraft and over 4,000 men.
The Luftwaffe also targeted London as part of the St. Patrick’s Day Raids. Here, there was no surprise at all; as radar stations along the English coast watched the Luftwaffe formations form up in increasingly alarming numbers. At almost the same moment as Flight 7 was meeting its fate off the Maryland coast, the largest air battle since 1945 began over the English Channel. Here, the RAF and its USAAF allies didn’t have the luxury of time or distance to intercept the enemy hundreds of miles out to sea, no Genie rockets with nuclear warheads to swat the enemy from the skies over the vastness of the open ocean, the British defenders didn’t have the advantage of attack unescorted 400 mph bombers with 700 mph fighters. Here the fighting was done at knife-fighting distances as close to 2,400 aircraft struggled for the upper hand. London was heavily damaged as several hundred German bombers struck at the British capital in the heaviest raid against the City since January of 1946. By the time the last Luftwaffe aircraft retreated behind the flak curtain along the French coast almost nine hours had passed. The toll, both in damage and in aircraft was enormous. RAF and USAAF fighters claimed 228 kills, while AAA crews claimed an additional 306 Luftwaffe aircraft shot down (post war records indicate that the actual Luftwaffe losses were between 256 and 292 aircraft) while the RAF had lost 56 fighters along with 19 American aircraft lost.
Even before the last German pilot had been debriefed Washington and London had made a joint decision to end things in the only way that was certain to work. Europe would have to be invaded, the Reich met and utterly defeated in the field.
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Holy crap. Looks like Goering is going to be shitting his pants after this cock-up. Right before Hitler has him shot...
The Allied response looks to be sudden and overwhelming. What with nuclear weapons and fast jet bombers, the war looks to be vicious and rather one-sided.
Good job, keep it up.
The Allied response looks to be sudden and overwhelming. What with nuclear weapons and fast jet bombers, the war looks to be vicious and rather one-sided.
Good job, keep it up.
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