Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s (37 page)

The V-2 absorbed a vast amount of effort which might otherwise have been directed against the enemy armies. In the opening phase of the campaign alone, between 15 October and 25 November 1944, nearly 10,000 sorties were flown by the Second Tactical Air Force, based on the continent, against the district between The Hague and Leiden, and around the Hook of Holland. Fighter Command flew 600 more from British airfields, much of the burden being borne by the Spitfire, employed as a fighter-bomber. During November and December 1944, 12 Group dispatched machines laden with two 250 lb bombs whenever the weather permitted against suspected storage areas at Wassenaar, Voorde and Hus te Verve, and repeatedly strafed with bombs and cannon fire the Haagsche Bosch, the ‘Hyde Park’ of The Hague, an attack also being delivered on the Hotel Promenade, believed to contain Kammler’s headquarters. If they achieved little, these attacks at least made possible such morale-boosting reports as that which appeared on the front page of the
Daily Mirror
on Tuesday, 5 December:

Power-diving 5000 feet though a rapidly closing gap in thick cloud, RAF Spitfires raced against deteriorating weather to pinpoint a V-2 storage depot and vehicle park in Holland yesterday. More Spitfire bombers made pinpoint attacks under equally bad weather conditions on V-2 erection and launching sites.

On Christmas Eve 33 Mark XIV Spitfires, from 229 and 602 Squadrons RAF and 455 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, managed, by refuelling in Belgium, to increase their load to one 500 lb and two 250 lb bombs each, and aimed them against a block of flats thought to house rocket troops near the Haagsche Bosch. It was badly damaged and had to be evacuated, but requisitioning new accommodation presented no problems for the Germans. Attacks were also made on Leiden station, rightly suspected of being a rocket collection point – they were taken from there to the De Wittenburg area of The Hague to have their warheads fitted – and on the Langehorst estate and Duindigt racecourse, which were favourite launching sites betweeen November 1944 and January 1945. But as the RAF’s own historians admit, these efforts were ‘largely ineffective’, being kept up because they were ‘the only riposte the Royal Air Force, or indeed the armed forces of the crown in general, could make’.

For years the ‘bomber barons’ had maintained that they held the real key to victory, but they too proved impotent against the rocket. On 22 December 1944 Herbert Morrison urged, in a paper addressed to the Chiefs of Staff, that the heavy-bomber force should be used against the launching sites in The Hague, which could, he argued, be annihilated. The following day General Ismay tendered their professional advice firmly rejecting the suggestion. To do the job thoroughly, they believed, would require a force of 150 Lancasters to make ten sorties each, resulting, if normal accuracy was achieved, in complete devastation within a radius of 600 yards of the aiming point, and some damage for twice that distance. The loss of life of friendly civilians was, the Chiefs of Staff advised, unacceptable, especially as the Germans would simply recommence operations elsewhere. Herbert Morrison persisted in his campaign until the matter reached the Cabinet, where on 18 January 1945 the Chiefs of Staff firmly squashed it.

We . . . strongly recommend that heavy bombers should not be employed to attack rocket installations in Holland, but that present efforts to destroy them by precision bombing with individual aircraft should be intensified, and we understand that this recommendation [when made in December] was accepted.

That a heavy-bomber attack would have been either ineffectual or, for the Dutch, catastrophic, there seems little doubt, but in any case the weather kept the Allied air forces grounded day after day. In the first two weeks of January nearly one-third of the 300 sorties mounted against The Hague had to be abandoned, and in the second two weeks only nine attacks were launched. Seven armed reconnaissances, in search of targets of opportunity, were attempted, but only two completed, and the only real success of this period came on 22 January 1945, when four squadrons of bomb-carrying Spitfires knocked out a liquid oxygen factory at Alblasserdam. Another such factory, at Loosduinen, was attacked five times between 3 and 9 February, the pilots, in the official historian’s words, ‘trickling their bombs towards the target’ from the one open side; on three others it was surrounded by civilian houses. About a third landed in the target area and it was believed that the factory had been put out of action. Mostly the Allies’ response to the steady rain of rockets on London was, however, merely to ‘strafe’ suspect wooded areas, and ‘the general results’, the RAF’s historian admitted, ‘must be described as meagre’.

No one liked acknowledging that the Germans, on the verge of defeat, had outwitted and out-generalled the Allies. On 26 January 1945 the Cabinet Defence Committee urged that precision bombing should be intensified, with assistance from the medium bombers of the Second Tactical Air Force, that SOE should be asked to extend their operations against rocket-orientated activity – it does, in retrospect, seem remarkable that British agents and saboteurs achieved so little – and that the Central Works should be bombed. Variations in the number of rockets arriving did suggest that RAF activity over Holland helped to keep down the number of daytime launchings, and Fighter Command now redoubled its efforts, especially against the Haagsche Bosch. Reconnaissance on 24 February showed that, if there had been
Meillerwagen
there, they had gone, and the Duindigt racecourse now became the main object of attack, along with a transport park located north-west of Rotterdam.

That week rocket arrivals reached a new peak, of more than ten a day, intensifying the discontent already widespread in the affected areas, and even some of those which had so far escaped lightly. On 24 January Herbert Morrison had obtained Cabinet consent to respond favourably to a request from Alfred Barnes, Labour MP for part of East Ham, that he should discuss the rocket situation with all the MPs for London constituencies, and this seems to have cleared the air for a time. On 20 February, however, William P. Sidney, the recently returned Conservative MP for Chelsea, now serving in the army in a position that made him, as he explained, aware of ‘the main facts of the situation’, wrote a private letter to the Prime Minister:

As a London Member, I am deeply concerned about the possibilities of an intensification of the long-range rocket attack. . . . The average number of incidents per 24 hours remained very steady at 7 for nearly four weeks and has lately risen to 10. It seems quite probable that this figure may rise still further to 17 to 20. If such a rise were accompanied by a shifting of the mean point of impact 3 or 4 miles to the west, the results would be very serious indeed. . . . I know . . . that it is the policy to inflict the minimum of injury and damage to Dutch life and property. Nevertheless I cannot refrain from asking whether by a comparatively small increase in the strength of the air forces devoted to attacking the launching sites, effective delays and interruptions could not be imposed on the enemy’s supply system and greater embarrassment caused him during the launching operations. . . . A fairly small diversion of effort now might save a great many casualties later both in this country and in Holland.

This letter was referred to General Ismay, who reported that two more Fighter Command squadrons, as well as the Second Tactical Air Force, were now being diverted to attack rocket targets, and William Sidney was invited to hear this explanation for himself, at Downing Street. He remained dissatisfied, repeating, a note of 1 March by the Prime Minister’s staff revealed, that in his view heavier bombing was needed to improve the situation. Meanwhile other MPs were also becoming alarmed – and none with more reason than the Conservative Member for Ilford, Major Geoffrey Hutchinson, who as mentioned earlier, on 24 February, four days after William Sidney’s letter to Churchill, had written to the Secretary of State for Air to ask for a meeting. Some of what was said on this occasion can be deduced from a letter Sir Archibald Sinclair wrote to the clearly discontented MP on 2 March, which set out the familiar arguments about the danger to Dutch civilians, but also dealt with an entirely different issue.

The idea that we are influenced in any degree whatsovever by the situation of the palace of the Queen of Holland is utterly fantastic. The queen is not in residence there, and the situation of her palace has never entered into our calculations.

By now dissatisfaction about the V-2s was widespread, as the Prime Minister’s private secretary, J. H. (later Sir John) Peck, formally warned him, in a note on 26 February:

I think you should know that the daily post contains a growing number of letters about rocket attacks from your constituency [Epping] and from Ilford and the most seriously attacked areas in East London and Essex. Unlike the letters when the flying-bombs were at their worst, they are for the most part not anonymous or couched in abusive terms. They do, however, make three points:

1. There is an underground feeling that if the main weight of attack had been falling not on the East End but on the Whitehall area and Buckingham Palace, far more vigorous attempts would have been made to counter the attack.
   
2. If the rocket sites are being spared heavy bombing attacks in order to save Dutch life and property, they would much prefer if there have to be victims that they should be Dutch rather than English.
   
3. They ask for some public announcement which would show the discontented members of the population that the government took some interest in them and would inform them whether any serious attempt is being made to put an end to rocket attack.
   

I understand that Sir James Hawkey [a leading local Conservative and former mayor of Woodford] is becoming rather anxious abut the attitude of the constituency. The Secretary of State for Air is considering whether he can include in his ‘Estimates’ speech next week some references which will reassure the districts most affected by rockets that they have not been forgotten or neglected.

General Ismay wrote on the same day to the Prime Minister repeating the Chiefs of Staff’s opinion that the only real way to stop the rockets was to liberate Holland. Churchill was clearly not impressed. On 28 February he sent a note to his private office which he presumably intended should reach the ears of their opposite numbers in the Air Ministry and the latter’s military ‘masters’:

I am not at all convinced that they are exerting themselves as they should, or as they would be forced to do if the bombs were falling in the Whitehall area. I am not at all satisfied with the efforts the Air Ministry are making in this matter.

The following day Ismay tried again, repeating the Chiefs of Staff’s arguments and pointing out that they had been accepted by the Defence Committee on 26 January and again on 26 February. That same 1 March, however, another note arrived, from Herbert Morrison:

Nearly every 24 hours bring further loss of life and homes and sleep to the war-weary inhabitants of the areas experiencing their fifth year of bombardment. Members of Parliament are receiving complaints and there is a growing murmur that ‘It’s time the government did something about it’, with a suggestion that the government is indifferent to the loss of life and suffering. People cannot help contrasting the spectacular advance now being made into Germany against the seemingly static position of our troops in the north of Holland. To the layman it seems that our line in the north need advance only slightly to overrun or cut off the firing points. Instead of this comforting prospect, we are having to consider some reopening of evacuation arrangements, a measure which, when it becomes known to the troops in the front line, is bound to cause them additional anxiety about the safety of their wives and children at home.

Churchill, practising his own ‘Action this day’ philosophy, replied immediately:

I would be glad if you would go yourself and discuss the matter with the Chiefs of Staff. I have put pressure upon them and I am satisfied that they will do all that is possible. I will also discuss the matter with Field Marshal Montgomery and General Eisenhower when I see them tomorrow and the next day. No one feels it more than I do, with my poor constituents bearing the brunt, but ‘What can’t be cured, must be endured’.

What Churchill said at his meeting with the Allied commanders is not on record, but from the Chiefs of Staff on 7 March Herbert Morrison received little consolation. Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke assured him that a land attack in the Arnhem area and a seaborne assault on the Dutch coast had both been considered but turned down, while Air Chief Marshal Portal said that as soon as the RAF cut one railway route serving The Hague the Germans opened another and that the Central Works, because of its site, would be almost impossible to knock out by bombing. Morrison could only repeat that both the police and the Regional Commissioner for London shared his concern abut morale, which, he argued, could only be adversely affected by the growing emphasis on night launchings, since ‘perhaps the chief cause of anxiety was the feeling that no night was free from the danger of domestic disaster, if not serious personal injury’.

Meanwhile, under pressure from all sides to do
something
, Sir Archibald Sinclair had made the public case for the RAF’s inability to stop the nuisance in the middle of a far-ranging speech on the Air Estimates on 6 March 1945:

The government are deeply conscious of the strain to which these attacks are subjecting many thousands of our fellow countrymen. The loss of life and homes, the injuries and the human suffering which they inflict are grievous. . . . No practical means of abating these attacks has been neglected by the Royal Air Force, but the launching site of a V-2 is small and hard to identify. Any space of ground – hard or artifically hardened – 23 feet by 23 feet, will serve as a launching site for the rocket. . . . We may know that certain areas near or in a particular town or village in Holland are being used for launching. To send some squadrons of Bomber Command to obliterate that town or village would destroy the lives and homes of hundreds, or even thousands, of our Dutch allies, who are already suffering terribly; but the men who operate the rockets would emerge from their deep shelters when the bombardment was over, and either carry on their nefarious work elsewhere, or perhaps clear a space, and continue to operate from the same devastated town. By attacks on storage sites, on supply routes, motor transport parks and lines of communication, we are reducing the scale of attack far below what the Germans hoped to achieve; but . . . the only way to silence this form of long-range artillery is the physical occupation of the sites from which these weapons are fired.