A postwar report on German efforts to develop a suicide
corps to attack the Allied invasion fleet,
from the Intelligence Bulletin, June 1946.
One of the most hushed-up secrets of the war, back before
the surrender of Japan, was the damage and inconvenience caused by the
suicide-bent Kamikaze pilots of the Japanese Air Force. Troops who sailed to
the invasion of Okinawa remember the Baka bomb, the winged aerial torpedo with
its human pilot. But not until the end of the war, when intelligence officers
began nosing around in the former Nazi domain, was it disclosed that a small
group of fanatical Nazis had also organized a suicide corps for the purpose of
breaking up the seaborne invasion of the Continent with a German version of the
Japanese Baka.
In fact, there is much evidence to indicate that the Nazi
suicidists were laying their plans long before their Japanese allies conceived
the idea for this unconventional tactic. Only bureaucratic inefficiency, and
disinterest in official circles as high as Hitler himself, forestalled the
appearance of the Nazi kamikazes in the air over Normandy on D-Day.
The inception of this strange project goes back to the year 1943,
when the fortunes of war were beginning to turn against the hitherto victorious
German Army. At that time, many people in Germany were beginning to see that
the Fatherland would ultimately go down to defeat, unless some miraculous event
produced a severe setback to the Allied cause. Among these thinking Germans was
a small group of idealists who were determined to do something about it. These
people, who at first numbered no more than thirty or forty persons, came
together from all walks of life. Some of them were from the Army, others were
civilians, and one of the leaders was a well-known German woman flyer.
It was the common belief of these people that the war was
lost unless a most decisive blow could be struck against the Allies. They
believed that this could only be accomplished by the complete disruption of the
eventual Allied assault upon the Continent, thus convincing the Allied leaders
that Germany was secure and impregnable within her "fortress Europe."
An Idea Is Born
From this line of reasoning, the idea of a suicide corps was
born. It was thought that a weapon could be devised in the form of a flying
bomb which, when piloted to its target, could sink a large warship or troop
transport. Enough of these, the idealists believed, could completely wreck any
seaborne invasion with an expenditure of less than a thousand volunteer pilots.
The members of this strange group were ready to volunteer. They asked only that
they be given a weapon which would be certain to achieve its end, and they felt
there were persons among their membership who had the skill to design such a
weapon.
By October 1943, under the leadership of the woman flyer, a
doctor of the Institute of Medical Aeronautics at Rechlin, and a first
lieutenant of the Luftwaffe, organizational plans had advanced to a point where
it was necessary to obtain official recognition and cooperation in conducting
the project further. Because of her unique position in German aviation circles,
this duty fell to the aviatrix.
The woman first presented the idea to the Luftwaffe High
Command, and met with immediate rebuff. The German Air Force was not interested
in an idea they considered to be the unstable reasoning of a group of
psychopaths. After much delay, the Luftwaffe was bypassed, and the aviatrix
went directly to Field Marshal Milch, at the time the head of the German Air
Ministry. Again no progress was made.
After more weeks had passed, the woman determined to exploit
her position and reputation in German aviation circles, and succeeded in
gaining a hearing before the German Academy of Aeronautics. This academy had
the power to assemble the necessary scientists, technicians, and air tactical
authorities, and eventually a meeting was called by the Director of the German
Aeronautical Research Council. After a lengthy conference, the committee of
authorities decided that the idea was indeed operationally sound.
With this authoritative evidence in hand, the next step for
the group of idealists was to obtain official support and leadership for the
suicide plan. Application was made for an interview with Hitler, and in
February 1944, the woman leader of the project was summoned to Berchtesgaden
for a three-hour discussion with the Führer.
Interview with Hitler
Hitler did not approve. He objected to the philosophy of
suicide entailed in the plan, and pointed out that there was no precedent in
German history like it. Therefore, he said, the whole idea was not in keeping
with the character of the German people. The woman countered this with the argument
that never before in German history had the fate of the country been in such a
precarious position. This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say, for Hitler
replied emphatically that the position was not precarious, and that if it ever
became so, then he, Hitler, would personally give the orders for such desperate
measures to be taken.
The interview was anything but successful, but before she
left, the aviatrix did obtain Hitler's permission to continue with the
development and planning so that the organization would be ready to operate if
ever the Führer felt the time had come to take such desperate steps. His
parting remark was to the effect that he did not want to be bothered with the
idea again until the time for action was ripe.
Meanwhile, the group of suicide volunteers had grown to
about seventy or eighty members. As yet no concerned recruiting effort had been
made, and such volunteers as were accepted were a very select group. Once
accepted, a candidate for membership in the suicide corps was required to take
a pledge to the effect that "I hereby volunteer as a pilot of the manned
glider-bomb. I am convinced that this action will end with my death."
On the basis of Hitler's permission to continue with the
development of the program, the matter was laid before the Chief of the General
Staff of the German Air Force. He half-heartedly assigned the official
direction of the project to the commander of a Luftwaffe bomber wing that was
engaged in all sorts of special operations and clandestine activities. At first
it appeared that the plan was finally on the road to fruition, but it soon
became evident that the new commander accepted the assignment mostly because he
saw in it the means of receiving the glory and credit which would be brought by
the self-sacrifice of the volunteers under him.
The Weapon
But at the same time, the German Air Ministry was ordered to
perfect the technical preparations which would be necessary to put the plan
into effect. The Messerschmitt Me 328, originally designed as a fighter or
fighter-bomber, was selected as the flying weapon to be used by the volunteers.
Production of the plane was ordered, but proceeded so slowly that the
volunteers began to suspect that some sort of official sabotage was afoot. As a
result, the suicide group began to look around for another weapon—one which was
easy to produce and would be available on short order. The V-1 "buzz
bomb," rebuilt to carry a pilot, was decided upon. In less than three
weeks, four types of this piloted missile were ready for testing.
Contrary to the wishes of the volunteer group, the Luftwaffe
testing division insisted upon using their own pilots for the test flights. The
two Luftwaffe men were soon seriously injured, and it was then that the woman
pilot was called in and permitted to do the test flying. It was not an easy
proposition. In order to train the suicide pilots, a two-seater "buzz
bomb" had been built. Of course, it was necessary to land this model, if
trainees were to be kept alive for the D-Day mission. But since it was
necessary to glide to a landing without power, and since the missile was not of
conventional aircraft or glider design, the approach had to be made at speeds
approaching 155 miles per hour.
But as the technical development of the weapon went on with
fair success, the rest of the program began to go astray through the bungling
of the Luftwaffe officers put in charge of the volunteers. Although the suicide
group at first believed the Luftwaffe wing commander—the one who had been
appointed their official leader—was fully behind their plan, it soon became
evident that he had little interest in the project. What was worse, he
appointed a staff of other Luftwaffe officers to responsible planning and
operational positions. These officers apparently had no conception of the
original mission of the volunteers—to destroy the eventual Allied invasion
fleet. Instead, they were continually fostering half-baked ideas, such as
suicide attacks upon Soviet ammunition trains on the Eastern Front. Although the
volunteers were willing to give their lives to deliver a smashing blow to the
Allies, they were reluctant to die on some comparatively non-essential mission.
Meanwhile, the training program had also bogged down. Much time was spent in
physical education and pistol shooting, but little attention was paid to
establishing a sound flight training program. The Luftwaffe lieutenant, one of
the original volunteers and who had been the spark plug behind the whole idea,
found himself helpless because of his low rank. Although he tried repeatedly to
make improvements, he could do nothing but take orders.
Again the woman flyer was called upon to use her influence
to try and revive the rapidly failing program. This time she went to Himmler,
in hopes that he might be able to do some good for the cause of the suicide
volunteers. Himmler was not much help. He was not opposed to the suicide idea,
but he was of the opinion that the membership of the corps should be made up of
criminals and the incurably diseased. He offered to take over the program if
one of his officers was permitted to assume the leadership of the entire plan.
It was evident that under Himmler the plan would not receive any better
treatment than it was getting under its present supervision, so his offer was
turned down.
D-Day Arrives
About this time, the Allies took a hand in things by staging
their invasion in Normandy. Neither the suicide weapon, nor adequately trained
suicide pilots were available, greatly because of the mishandling the whole
program had received from its selfish or uninterested directors. The
disappointment of the volunteer group was profound. Within six or seven days
after D-Day, they realized that the invasion was a success, and that the moment
for which they had been preparing had passed.
But, several days after the invasion had started, and all
other efforts to halt it had failed, Hermann Göring suddenly remembered that
somewhere in his Luftwaffe there was a group of pilots who had volunteered for
a suicide mission. In due course, Göring reached the commander of the bomber
wing under whom the volunteers had originally been placed. The commander, a
colonel, immediately declared that the group was ready for action. The
volunteers were astounded. They knew that no planes or "buzz bombs"
were available, and that only a few of the men had any more than the briefest
of pre-flight training. Nonetheless, the commander and his technical
assistants, without consulting the volunteers, set to work on plans to use a
Focke-Wulf FW 190, carrying a 4,000-pound bomb, to crash into selected targets.
Now no one in the German Air Force had ever flown this plane with such a large
bomb load, and it was highly doubtful that the plane would be able to get off
the ground without crashing. Consequently, regular test pilots declined the
honor of testing this experimental makeshift aircraft. Undaunted, the commander
announced that his suicide pilots—none of whom had ever flown an Fw 190, if any
other plane—would within the next few days conduct the test flights themselves.
If they were killed, he said, their names and loyal sacrifice would be recorded
in German history with the same honor they would have received if they had
crashed their plane onto the deck of an enemy ship. Any enthusiasm that had
remained among the volunteers disappeared completely at this point.
Fortunately for these men, Hitler heard about the plans for
using the Fw 190, and ordered the project abandoned. The bomber commander was
removed, eventually, and his successor set about trying to salvage some of the
finer ideas of the original project. But by then it was too late. The Allies
were established in force on the Continent, the hour to strike had passed, and
so the group of suicide volunteers was disbanded.
"And so," to quote the woman flyer, "did an
idea that was born of fervent and holy idealism, only to be misused and
mismanaged at every turn by people who never understood how men could offer
their lives simply for an idea in which they believed."
Conclusion
Were it not for the grievous damage done to our fleet units
a year later by the Japanese Kamikaze corps, this German project might be
passed off as just another unconventional tactical venture which the German
leaders were smart enough to recognize was nothing but foolishness. But in the
light of our later experience with the Japanese, it is possible to draw the
conclusion that the Nazi command failed to realize they were being offered an
impressive counter-weapon to seaborne invasion. It is useless, in retrospect,
to attempt a reconstruction of what might have happened off Normandy on D-Day,
if the Nazi command had recognized the potentialities of these volunteers and
their piloted bomb. Although it is unlikely that the suicidists could have
defeated the invasion, the introduction of such an unconventional tactic, if
exploited on the scale later used by the Japanese, would certainly have offered
another serious threat to an already difficult amphibious operation.
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| Piloted V-1 provisional sketch. |
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| Fieseler Fi-103 Re-4 (V-1 Piloted Flying Bomb). |
