Albert Speer noted in his book “Spandau: The Secret Diaries” (1975) that Hitler fantasized about seeing New York City consumed in flames. The fantasies had their beginning in August 1938, when a Lufthansa airliner, a four-engine Focke-Wulf Fw 200, made the trip from Berlin to New York City.
By 1941, the Fw 200 Condor would earn the nickname “The Scourge of the Atlantic” for its exploits as a long-range recon-bomber supporting the Kriegsmarine’s U-boats. However, while the Condor looked like a strategic bomber, it was only capable of carrying 2,200 pounds of bombs with a 2,210-mile range. Consequently, the Luftwaffe began the “Amerikabomber” program, striving to find an aircraft that could carry a useful bomb load on the 7,200-mile round trip from German-occupied Europe to New York City.
Laying the Groundwork
In 1941, Hitler voiced his ideas of attacking the eastern coast of the United States by air via long-range bombers based in the Portuguese Azores. Early in the war, the Portuguese allowed the Germans to refuel ships (particularly U-boats) in the Azores, but by 1943 the Portuguese changed course and leased bases on the islands to the Allies. Any Amerikabomber would have to make long trip to NYC from Luftwaffe bases in Western Europe.
Since Germany had planned and prepared for a “lightning war,” the Luftwaffe had no aircraft to support a long-range strategic bombing program. When German designers began to address the challenge of ultra-long-range bombing, there was little direction from the Luftwaffe.
The engineers at Messerschmitt initially offered the design with the greatest potential, the four-engine Me 264 (four BMW 14-cylinder engines) — but the prototype demonstrated several failings, from slow climb to altitude, sluggish maneuverability, and an overall lack of stability in the air. The initial prototype was tested without weapons and armor plate, and the addition of six heavy machine guns and protection for the crew made it all the worse.
The Me 264 looked remarkably like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and could potentially carry a 6,600-pound bomb load over a range of 8,950 miles. However, the Me 264’s engines proved too weak and, while a six-engine Me 264B (six BMW 801E radials) was considered, the project never progressed beyond three prototypes — two of which were destroyed in Allied bombing raids.
The “Amerikabomber” program settled, albeit briefly, on the massive six-engine Junkers Ju 390 (165-foot wingspan). After its successful test flight in October 1943, the German Air Ministry ordered six prototypes followed by up to 20 of the proposed Ju 390A-1 production variant.
The Ju 390 was the subject of several rumors in the early postwar period, particularly its supposed early 1944 transatlantic recon flight to within about 12 miles of New York City, originating from a base near Bordeaux. Ostensibly this information came from interviews with Luftwaffe prisoners, but no official records, flight logs, or photos have ever been found. Also, the Junkers Ju 390V2, the only prototype hypothetically capable of making the journey, was never flown.
Even so, the rumor of a long-range bomber reaching the U.S. east coast from Europe ignited many fears for government officials in the early days of the atomic bomb era. The questions arose: could America be bombed with an atomic weapon? Might the Nazis have done it if they had an atomic bomb in early 1945? Ultimately, the answer was yes, but such an attack was dependent on a wide range of technical factors.
If the Germans had developed an atomic weapon and had decided to use it against the United States, the target almost certainly would have been New York City. As previously mentioned, Hitler dreamed of seeing the Big Apple in flames. Herman Goring said that if he had bombers that could reach New York: “I would be extremely happy to possess such a bomber, which would at last stuff the mouth of arrogance across the sea.”
But those bombers were never built, and the Nazi’s atomic bomb potential was unrealized. Even so, there were other cards the Third Reich might have played to attack America.
Rocket-Launching U-Boats
Throughout World War II, Germany’s most successful strategic weapon was her U-boat fleet. Their subs’ ability to penetrate close to the United States’ east coast remained a constant threat until 1945.
In the spring of 1942, a series of tests conducted at the Peenemünde Research Center focused on submarine-launched solid-fuel rockets. These unguided weapons proved useless for attacking warships, but the concept of firing on an enemy coastline remained valid. At this stage, the U-boat’s weapons load consisted of six 30cm Wurfkörper 42 rockets, each with a 100-pound warhead and a range of less than 5,000 yards. Even with the most effectively planned sneak attack, this amount of firepower would amount to nothing more than a pinprick on American shores.
Even so, the Germans kept working on the submarine-launched attack concept. While the Luftwaffe’s plan to fly across the Atlantic to bomb New York was grounded by the lack of range and useful bomb load, the Kriegsmarine’s U-boats still offered the best option.
As 1944 rolled around, a new weapon surfaced in the form of a rudimentary cruise missile: the Fieseler Fi 103 (“Vergeltungswaffe V1”).The V-1 offered the Kriegsmarine interesting potential, but its ongoing interservice rivalry with the Luftwaffe meant the new weapon was generally unavailable for navy tests. Initial concepts featured a V-1 with a steam-powered catapult launcher mounted on the deck of a U-boat.
On June 12, 1944, the V-1 offensive against England began, with about 25% of the weapons reaching their targets to detonate their 1,870-pound warhead. The maximum range for the gyroscope-guided cruise missile was about 160 miles — enough to cross the English Channel and reach London, and certainly enough to reach New York City when fired from a surfaced U-boat lurking off the coast of the United States.
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Apparently, the concept of V-1 launched from a U-boat made even more sense to Allied intelligence than it did to the German high command. During September 1944, intel reports from Norwegian assets identified a U-boat at a base in Norway described as having “a pair of rails extending from conning tower to the bow and terminating at a flat, rectangular surface”. US Naval Intelligence concluded this represented a German plan to attack America’s eastern seaboard using the V-1.
The Nightmare Scenario
Intel reports and rumors of missile-armed U-boats continued, and this kept the U.S. Navy on edge. The Royal Navy’s assessment was that such attacks were highly unlikely, but reports from Danish and Swedish sources stoked American concerns.
In early December 1944, a German spy (landed by U-boat on the coast of Maine) named Willian Colepaugh was captured. During his interrogation, he claimed that U-boats were “being equipped with long-range rocket launchers”. While his claims were later disproved, at the beginning of 1945 the U.S. Navy was becoming deeply concerned — so much so that Atlantic Fleet command Vice Admiral Jonas H. Ingram warned of a missile attack threat during a press conference on January 8th.
Also in January, Reich Armaments Minister Albert Speer said in a radio broadcast that V-1s and V-2s would fall on New York City by February 1st.None of this chatter was substantiated, but missile attack innuendos were driving real responses at sea.
As far as anyone in America knew at that time, any prospective U-boat-launched V-1 attack against the USA would be conventional in nature. Allied intelligence had concluded that the Germans had not been able to create an atomic explosion, but one U.S. report contained anecdotal evidence of an odd mushroom-shaped cloud witnessed by a pair of German pilots flying near Ludwigslust in early October 1944. In all fairness, this information would have certainly heightened American concerns.
This culminated in Operation Teardrop, conducted by the U.S. Navy between April and May 1945, where American sub hunter/killer groups aggressively went after any U-boats heading to or operating off the U.S. Atlantic coast. During this time, five Type IX U-boats were sunk, four of them with all hands lost.
While the V-1 was notably inaccurate, and this would minimize the effectiveness of its launch from a U-boat, there was a V-1 variant that exponentially increased the Buzz Bomb’s accuracy: the piloted version of the V-1, The Fieseler Fi 103R “Reichenberg”. Had the V-1 received an atomic warhead, it would make sense that a human pilot would guide the precious nuke to its final destination.
Prüfstand XII
The V-2 ballistic missile, with its liquid propellant engine, 200-mile range, and 2,200-pound warhead provided the world with a terrifying view of the future of warfare. Even while the Germans were launching the V-2 at targets in England, they also devising ways to attack America with it.
A V-2, contained in its own watertight launch silo, was to be towed within range by one of Germany’s latest submarines, a Type XXI U-boat. A chilling report from the Peenemünde research labs in January 1945, describes the potential of this system:
“This project opens the possibility of attacking off enemy coasts (i.e.: northern England or eastern America), very distant but strategically important targets that are currently out of range. In addition, it deceives the enemy about the real range of the missile and offers new strategic and political opportunities.”
The towed silos were massive (300-feet long and weighing 300+ tons), and while a Type XXI U-boat could tow three of them across the Atlantic, the journey would take at least a month with the sub traveling at periscope depth. At least one of the submarine silos was created, but the project was abandoned as the Soviets closed in on the testing site.
Without an atomic warhead available for the V-2, most historians question the value of such an expensive form of attack using conventional warheads. However, there was one other potential weapon, maybe the dastardliest of all: a chemical weapon. In this case the chemical warhead would contain Germany’s deadly Tabun nerve gas.
Tabun was developed, accidentally, during 1936, and its existence was never reported. Consequently, the Allies only learned of the gas when it was discovered in captured German ammunition dumps during the last days of the war.
A New Direction
After the war, the U.S. Navy proceeded with sub-launched V-1 program that the Germans were rumored to have started. The Republic-Ford JB-2 “Loon” was a nearly exact copy of the V-1, originally intended to be used in the planned invasion of Japan.
After the war, a pair of USN subs were provided with watertight containers as well as launch ramps on the rear deck for the Loon. Several launches from the surfaced submarines were conducted between February 1947 and September 1953, and the concept was proven — cumbersome but achievable.
Could the Nazis have attacked America? Many of the necessary elements were there, but the German efforts were unfocused, and ultimately never progressed beyond the planning stages. However, those plans and many of the weapon concepts were highly influential in the development of our current supply of world-ending nuclear arms. Yet, it’s still terrifying to consider them in the hands of the Third Reich and what it might have done with them.
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