The Tornado Bomb

Zippermeyer Wirbelwind Kanone.

Dr. Mario Zippermayr, an eccentric Austrian inventor working at an experimental establishment at Lofer in the Tyrol, designed and built a series of highly unorthodox anti-aircraft weapons that were observed very closely by the Reichsluftfahrtamt (Office of Aeronautics) in Berlin. Due to the overwhelming numerical air superiority of the Allies every effort was made during the last year of the war to find ways of exploiting any known phenomenon that could bring down the heavy bombers of the USAAF and RAF. Dr. Zippermayr constructed both a huge Wirbelwind Kanone (Whirlwind Cannon) and Turbulenz Kanone (Vortex Cannon). Both had the same goal – to knock down enemy bombers through clever manipulation of air.


To achieve this, the “Wind Cannon” used a detonation of hydrogen and oxygen to form a highly compressed plug of air that was channeled through a long tube that was bent at an angle and fired like a shell towards enemy aircraft. Impossible as this may seem the Wind Cannon did particularly well on the ground – breaking one inch thick wooden boards from a range of 200 yards! This promising development, however, meant nothing against the Allied bombers that were flying at 20,000 ft! Nevertheless, taken from the Hillersleben Proving Grounds the Wind Cannon was used in defense of a bridge over the Elbe River in 1945. Either there were no aircraft present or the cannon had no effect because it was still intact where it was found.


The Turbulenz Kanone, by comparison, was a large caliber mortar sunk into the ground with fired coal dust and slow burning explosive shells to create an artificial vortex. This also worked well on the ground but again the problem was the same – how to generate a large enough effect to reach the aircraft. Zippermayr did not know if the pressure changes of this device would be sufficient to cause structural damage to an aircraft but the vortex would definitely have an effect on the wing loading as even clear air turbulence had brought down civilian airliners.


Even though Zippermayr could not make either of these weapons any more potent, three outcomes came from his research. The first was the coal dust shell application used with light artillery in the Warsaw Ghetto which involved nothing more than shortening the barrel of the artillery piece and detonating the shells in flight. The improvised weapon was named “Pandora” and was sadly used to deadly effect against the Jewish freedom fighters.


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A special catalyst had been developed by the SS in 1943 and the following year Zippermayer turned his energies to a heavy air (Schwere Luft) bomb. Encouraging results were obtained from a mixture consisting of 60% finely powdered dry brown coal and 40% liquid air. The first trials were carried out on the Döberitz grounds near Berlin using a charge of about 8 kg powder in a tin of thin plate. The liquid air was poured on to the powder and the two were mixed together with a long wooden stirrer. The team then retired and after ignition everything living and trees within a radius of 500 to 600 metres were destroyed. Beyond that radius the explosion started to rise and only the tops of trees were affected, although the explosion was intense over a radius of 2 kilometres.
Zippermayer then conceived the idea that the effect might be improved if the powder was spread out in the form of a cloud before ignition, and trials were run using an impregated paper container. This involved the use of a waxy substance. A metal cylinder was attached to the lower end of the paper container and hit the ground first, dispersing the powder. After 0.25 seconds a small charge in the metal cylinder exploded, igniting the funnel-shaped cloud of coal dust and liquid air.


The ordnance had to be filled immediately prior to the delivery aircraft taking off. Bombs of 25 kgs and 50 kgs were dropped on the Starbergersee and photographs taken. SS-Standartenführer Klumm showed these to Brandt, Himmler’s personal adviser. The intensive explosion covered a radius of 4 kilometres and the explosion was felt at a radius of 12.5 kilometres. When the bomb was dropped on an airfield, destruction was caused as far as 12 kilometres away, although only the tops of trees were destroyed at that distance, but the blast flattened trees on a hillside 5 kilometres away.


These findings appear in the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee Final Report No 142 Information Obtained From Targets of Opportunity in the Sonthofen Area. Although one suspects initially that the radius of the area allegedly affected as described in this report had been worked upon by the Propaganda Ministry, the fact is that this bomb is never heard of today. Furthermore British Intelligence published the report without comment and what tends to give the description weight is the fact that the Luftwaffe wanted aircrews flying operationally with the bomb to have knowingly volunteered for suicide missions. The idea that the bomb had unusual effects was hinted at not only by the head of the SS-weapons test establishment but also possibly by Goering and Renato Vesco. On 7 May 1945 in American custody, Goering told his captors, “I declined to use a weapon which might have destroyed all civilization”. Since nobody knew what he meant, it was reported quite openly at the time. The atom bomb was not under his control, although the Zippermayer bomb was. Vesco reported that the supreme explosive was “a blue cloud based on firedamp” which had initially been thought of “in the anti-aircraft role”. On the Allied side, Sir William Stephenson, the head of the British Security Coordination intelligence mission stated:


“One of our agents brought out for BSC a report, sealed and stamped This is of Particular Secrecy telling of liquid air bombs being developed in Germany of terrific destructive power.”


A 50 kg bomb was said to create a massive pressure wave and tornado effect over a radius of 4 kms from the impact point, a 250 kg bomb for up to ten kms. A sequential disturbance in climate for a period after the explosion was reported. Radioactive material added to the explosive mixture was possibly to give it even better penetration and distribution. Zippermayer’s device fits the idea of a high pressure bomb which Professor Heisenberg seemed to know about and to which he alluded in his eavesdropped conversation at Farm Hall. The bomb would have been the equivalent of a tornado but covering a far wider diameter, sucking up in its path everything but the most solid structures and scattering radioactive particles over the wide area devastated by the initial explosion. The survivors of the explosion would be suffocated by the lightning effect at ground level burning up the surrounding air.


The head of the SS-Weapons Testing Establishment attached to the Skoda Works was involved in the destruction of the catalyst at the war’s end. He had personally witnessed it being tested at Kiesgrube near Stechowitz on the Czech-Austrian border. These must have been the first tests, since he describes the astonishment of the observers at the force of the blast and tornado effect.


Various other smaller tests were carried out at Fellhorn, Eggenalm and
Ausslandsalm in the Alps. After these a larger experiment was made at Grafenwöhr in Bavaria described by the SS-General in the following terms: “We were in well-constructed shelters two kilometres from the test material. Not a large amount, but what power -equal to 560 tonnes of dynamite. Within a radius of 1200 metres dogs, cats and goats had been put in the open or below the ground in dug-outs. I have seen many explosions, the biggest in 1917 when we blew up a French trench complex with 300,000 tonnes of dynamite, but what I experienced from this small quantity was fearsome. It was a roaring, thundering, screaming monster with lightning flashes in waves. Borne on something like a hurricane there came heat so fierce that it threatened to suffocate us. All the animals both above and below ground were dead. The ground trembled, a tremendous wind swept through our shelter, there was a great rumbling, everywhere a screeching chaos. The ground was black and charred. Once the explosive effects were gone I felt the heat within my body and a strange numbness overcame me. My throat seemed sealed off and thought I was going to suffocate. My eyes were flickering, there was a thundering and a roaring in my ears, I tried to open my eyes but the lids were too heavy. I wanted to get up but languor prevented me.” An area of 2 kilometres was utterly devastated. Several observers on the perimeter were seriously affected by the shock wave and appeared to suffer from a kind of intoxication effect which lasted for about four weeks. That the weapon failed to make its debut on the battlefield in 1943 arouses the suspicion that very real fears existed regarding its knock-on effect on the climate. Within sight of Gernany’s defeat, it was tested again at Ohrdruf in the Harz in early March 1945.

No Atomic Bomb Version I

German A-bomb?

The first crucial issue confronting American leaders without nuclear weapons would be the prospects for Olympic. While Truman had initially approved Olympic in June, this was before the shocking intelligence revelations on Japanese preparations. Moreover, he singled out the fact that the Joint Chiefs had unanimously supported the operation as a key reason for his sanction. Even with MacArthur and Marshall’s obdurate support, if the navy withdrew its endorsement, and the radio intelligence picture appeared so bleak, Olympic could not have survived a second review by Truman. Moreover, the ULTRA portrait of Japanese ground deployments to greet Coronet was equally appalling. Chances are zero that either of these operations would have been executed in 1945.

The two obvious alternatives to invasion were diplomacy and the blockade and bombardment strategy. With the possible exception of Joseph Grew, the assistant secretary of state, however, no senior American policy maker was likely to press for negotiation since the minimum Japanese position involved the preservation of not just the imperial system, but of the old order that produced the war. Intelligence analysts had expressly warned policy makers on July 27 that so long as the Imperial Army remained convinced of its success in Ketsu Go, there was no prospect that Japan would yield to terms America could abide. It is vastly more likely that policy makers would have switched their attention to blockade and bombardment and just at that moment they would have learned the prospects for that strategy were waxing dramatically.

In May 1945, a survey team from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) mounted a whirlwind investigation of Germany to derive lessons that could be applied against Japan. The USSBS party concluded that attacks on oil production and the Reich’s transportation system had “contributed in decisive measure to the early and complete victory.” Added to the very dim American understanding of Japan’s war economy, this in formation triggered a fundamental change in the direction of the strategic bombardment program in the Pacific.

On August 11, 1945, Major General Curtis LeMay, who was then the chief of staff for General Carl Spaatz, the commander of United States Strategic Air Forces, Pacific, promulgated a new targeting directive. Under Spaatz’s command were the Twentieth Air Force, based in the Mariana Islands, and the Eighth Air Force, redeploying from Europe to Okinawa. For the over 1,200 B-29s these two air forces would field by October 1, 1945, the directive listed a total of 219 targets. The new blueprint drastically curtailed the program of systematic incineration of Japan’s cities begun in March and instead gave top priority to fifty-six railway yards and facilities and thirteen bridges that formed the core of Japan’s land transportation system. Then came targets in the aircraft industry, munitions storage, and thirty-five urban industrial centers.

On cursory inspection, this new directive appears far more satisfactory as a means of reducing noncombatant casualties than city burning. But its actual effect would have been to inflict a catastrophic mass famine. In 1945, three of four Japanese resided on Honshu, the largest of the four main home islands. Nearly half the total population clustered in the south-western half of that island. Japan harvested the great bulk of her food on Hokkaido, northern Honshu, and parts of Kyushu. The annual rice harvest in September and October marked the crucial event in the food supply. A host of factors tumbled the rice production from over 10 million tons in 1942 to only 6.3 million tons in 1945.

Japan customarily bridged the gap between domestic food production and need with imports, but the destruction of her merchant fleet virtually extinguished that source by August 1945. The collapse of the water transportation system threatened even more dire peril. Unlike any other major industrialized nation, Japan relied upon seagoing transportation for domestic as well as international trade. If Japan lacked ships to haul food from surplus to deficit areas, her only alternative was her railway system. That system, however, was limited and extraordinarily vulnerable to air attack. Postwar study by USSBS calculated that a mere half-dozen cuts of the major net along the Pacific coast of Honshu would have incapacitated the whole system. The B-29 force, not to mention carrier-based aircraft, would have inflicted many times this damage in a few days. Destruction of the railroads would have been cataclysmic. After the surrender in August 1945, as it was, Japan tottered through the 1945–1946 Rice Year in desperate shape. The food ration officially dropped to 1,042 calories per day in Tokyo by May 1946. This was with functioning railroads and a civil administration in place. The effects of the new air-targeting directive would have first struck Japan’s heavily industrialized and populated region along the south-western rim of Honshu. These cities filled the rice needs of their populations with shipments. Tokyo, the worst case, met only 3 percent of requirements from local growers. Without water or rail transportation, these teeming centers would have swiftly depopulated, sending millions of hungry refugees swarming into the countryside. Not only would this have brought the collapse of industrial production, it also would have unhinged the civil government, essential to ration and distribute the available food. By late spring of 1946, all food supplies in the south-western half of Honshu would have been consumed. This would have compelled the weakened survivors of what was originally half the nation’s population to migrate in search of food, or perish.

The resulting tragedy would have engulfed the Japanese and other peoples in a catastrophe. Millions would have perished in Japan from starvation or disease due to the famine during the 1945–1946 Rice Year. The vastly diminished population of Japan would have been reduced for years to a crude rural subsistence-level existence stalked by the continual ravages of a food shortage. Moreover, all of the Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees in Japan would have perished—as would millions of others. Most, if not all of the two million Japanese under arms outside the homeland would have held out until annihilated by battle, disease, or starvation. With them would have died millions of noncombatants throughout Asia. The Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees would have shared the fate of their peers in Japan, bringing the total deaths in this category to over 300,000.

Post-Midway IJN Carriers

The stunning loss at Midway of four carriers, two-thirds of the First Air Fleet, shocked Japanese naval authorities into a radical change in construction policy. The battle had not only proved positively that the carrier was the new prime weapon of sea warfare, it had also left Japan sadly bereft of that same crucial weapon. New carriers were authorised to join those already building, but it would be months or years before any of these appeared. Shipyards were already overcrowded with vessels needing repairs, and soon the pinch of material and labour shortages would make itself felt. One stopgap expedient that could offer aircraft platforms relatively quickly was the conversion of vessels already afloat or on the stocks, and such proposals were advanced even before the end of June 1942.

The desperation with which the IJN strove to rebuild its carrier force after the Midway disaster is demonstrated by how hastily the conversion programme was conceived. By the end of August 1942, the Naval Technical Department (Kaigun Kanseihonbu), vigorously prodded by the Naval Aviation Department (Kaigun Kokuhonbu), had drawn up plans for the conversion of the incomplete super-battleship Shinano, third unit of the Yamato class, into a flight-deck carrier. Other ships targeted for conversion included the incomplete cruiser Ibuki, two of the big seaplane tenders, seven merchant ships and three existing warships that would become hybrids: the cruiser Mogami and battleships Ise and Hyuga.

Hyuga and Ise as reconstructed during 1943, with aircraft deck and other aviation facilities aft, catapults amidships and retaining four 14in turrets.

The after superstructure and mainmast were retained. Parallel to them were two 85ft catapults, one on each beam, raised on tall pedestals to the level of the aircraft deck. The catapults overlapped no 4 turret and the muzzles of the no 3 turret's guns, thus severely restricting the training arcs of both.

Secondary armament was radically revised by removal of all sixteen 5.5in casemate guns (a number already reduced from the original twenty during reconstruction in the 1930s) and their replacement by eight more 5in AA guns in twin mounts, bringing the heavy AA battery up to a respectable sixteen barrels. Light AA armament was increased to fifty-seven 25mm guns in triple mounts.

Conversion of Ise began at Kure on 15 March 1943 and was completed on 8 October; Hyuga was converted at Sasebo between 1 August and 30 November 1943.

The redesign of the Ises involved the removal of considerable topweight; the two after turrets weighed 864 tons each, and their barbettes represented a reduction of an additional 800 tons or so. Japanese naval architects had become particularly skittish about stability as a result of prewar problems, which had culminated in the capsizing of the torpedo boat Tomodzuru in 1934; they were consequently worried that the loss of so much topweight on the Ises would increase the metacentric height to a point where rolling would become too rapid, an undesirable quality both for aircraft operations and good gunnery. Consequently, an 8in layer of concrete was added to the aircraft deck. This apparently had the desired effect, for the total displacement of the ships was reduced by only about 600 tons and draught by 6in.

Ise and Hyuga have often been referred to as 'seaplane carriers', but this was not the designers' intention. The twenty-two machines were originally to be Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Comet) dive bomber aeroplanes (Allied code name Judy). The aircraft's design was based on a German Heinkel He 118V4 imported in 1938. It began life as a high-speed carrier-based reconnaissance aeroplane, as the IJN had finally come to the conclusion that its carriers needed a few aerial scouts of their own. It was developed, with several variants, into a dive bomber to replace the increasingly obsolescent Aichi D3A, the mainstay dive bomber since the start of the war.

Most references give the complements of the hybrid battleships as twelve Suiseis and ten Zuiuns, but Admiral Matsuda told American questioners during a postwar interrogation that there were eleven of each type per ship, half carried in the hangar and half on deck, with a mix of types in both places.

Design: The Shinano was laid down as a battleship of the Yamato class but converted, beginning in mid-1942, into an aircraft carrier. The original plan was to deploy the Shinano as a replenishment and support ship for carrier task forces but this was modified to include an operational air group of 40–50 aircraft in addition to large numbers of replenishment machines for other carriers. There was a single open hangar 550 feet long built over the existing battleship hull and supporting a 3.1-inch armored flight deck served by two elevators. A greatly enlarged iteration of the Taiho’s island structure was fitted.

Service: The Shinano was completed for trials on November 19, 1944, but never commissioned. While in transit from Yokosuka to Kure for final fitting out it was struck by four torpedoes fired by the submarine Archerfish on November 29, 1944. The watertight doors for its very extensive internal subdivision and much of the pump machinery were yet to be installed so it sank within seven hours due to uncontrolled flooding.

Hybrid: In addition to conversion of the incomplete battleship Shinano into a carrier, the IJN studied conversion schemes for all ten of the older battleships: the four ex-battlecruisers of the Kongo class, and the two-ship Fuso, Ise and Nagato classes. All had been completed between 1913 and 1921, and all had undergone at least one major reconstruction and several extensive refits. None except the Kongos had fired a shot in anger since the beginning of the war, and with the sudden new dominance of the carrier some officers doubted that they ever would.

The battleship conversions would have been radical: all superstructure, main batteries and casemated secondary guns would be replaced by full-length flight decks, island superstructures, offset funnels and a battery composed exclusively of AA guns. Aircraft capacity of each was estimated at about fifty-four.

The Kongos, with their 30.5 knot speed, would have been the best bet for such remodelling. They were the only battleship hulls that could keep pace with existing or future carriers. However, that speed made them valuable as the only big-gun carrier escorts, a role they had played since the Pearl Harbor operation, and it was probably that unique quality that eliminated them from consideration.

Speed, or the lack of it, was the Achilles' heel of the other battleships. Although their modernisations had raised their average speed to about 25 knots, this was still too slow for carrier operations. And in the case of the Nagatos, there was reluctance to deprive the fleet of their 16in guns, second only to the 18.1 in guns of the Yamatos in range and hitting power. There was still a lingering, if remote, chance that a battleline action could come about.

After considerable discussion, conversion of Shinano was authorised but the rest of the project foundered, principally on the factors of time and resources. It was estimated that full conversion of the older ships could take up to twenty-four months, and the navy needed carriers sooner than that. Moreover, the enormous scope of the work would divert labour and material from completion of carriers already building and postpone the laying down of others.

"The Skunk Works."

Lockheed XP-80A (44-83021)

In late 1944 the Army pilots visited Muroc to fly the Gray Ghost and Lulubelle in mock combat against such front-line fighters as the P-38, P-47, and P-51 and various bombers. The secret tests were designed to find out what tactical formations, if any, could be used against the German jets then being seen in combat over Europe. The jets bested the propeller-driven planes every time. The results of the exercise made production of American jet fighters all the more urgent to counter the German threat.

 

On January 8, 1944, the Lockheed XP-80 Shooting Star Jet fighter made its first flight at Muroc. At the controls was Milo Burcham. The plane soon proved capable of reaching over 500 mph. Tex Johnston knew what it meant for the P-59. After seeing the first flight, he telegraphed Bob Stanley: "Witnessed Lockheed XP-80 initial flight STOP Very impressive STOP Back to the drawing board." Later, a mock dogfight was held between a P-80 and a Grumman F8F Bearcat, the navy's latest prop fighter. Unlike the YP-59A, the P-80 held the initiative, controlling the fight. The F8F was never able to catch the jet in its sights long enough to get a shot. The era of the prop fighter was over.

The XP-80 contract specified that the prototype was to be delivered in 180 days. Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, Lockheed's chief designer, went to company chairman Robert Gross. Gross told Johnson, "Go ahead and do it. But you've got to rake up your own engineering department and your own production people and figure out where to put this project."

For some time, Johnson had been asking Lockheed management to set up an experimental department where there would be direct links between designer, engineer, and manufacturing. Johnson decided to run the XP-80 program on this basis. The only place for the new section was next to the wind tunnel. The tools came from a small machine shop Lockheed bought out. The walls were wooden engine boxes, while the roof was a rented circus tent. Johnson assembled a group of twenty-two engineers; the new group had its own purchasing department and could function independently of the main plant. Working ten hours a day, six days a week, they had the XP-80 ready in 163 days.

Part of the secrecy surrounding the project was that Johnson's new section had no name. Soon after the makeshift shop was finished, Lockheed engineer Irving H. Culver was at the phone desk. The phone rang, Culver was alone, and he had not been told how to answer the phone. Culver was a fan of Al Capp's comic strip "L'l Abner." In the strip, "Hairless Joe" brewed up "Kickapoo Joy Juice" using old shoes, dead skunks, and other ingredients. On impulse, Culver answered the phone with the name of that brewery.

It was called "the Skunk Works."

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