12 Seconds Of Silence

How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon

Jamie Holmes

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780358508632
• eBook ISBN: 9781328459855
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies
• Index: History

The riveting story of the American scientists, tinkerers, and nerds who solved one of the biggest puzzles of World War II—and developed one of the most powerful weapons of the war
 
12 Seconds of Silence is the remarkable, lost story of how a ragtag group of American scientists overcame one of the toughest problems of World War II: shooting things out of the sky.
 
Working in a secretive organization known as Section T, a team of physicists, engineers, and everyday Joes and Janes took on a devilish challenge. To help the Allies knock airplanes out of the air, they created one of the world’s first “smart weapons.” Against overwhelming odds and in a race against time, mustering every scrap of resource, ingenuity, and insight, the scientists of Section T would eventually save countless lives, rescue the city of London from the onslaught of a Nazi superweapon, and help bring about the Axis defeat. A holy grail sought after by Allied and Axis powers alike, their unlikely innovation ranks with the atomic bomb as one of the most revolutionary technologies of the Second World War. Until now, their tale was largely untold.
 
For fans of Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre, set amidst the fog of espionage, dueling spies, and the dawn of an age when science would determine the fate of the world, 12 Seconds of Silence is a tribute to the extraordinary wartime mobilization of American science and the ultimate can-do story. 

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

AIP Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics

APLAA pplied Physics Laboratory Archives

DTMD epartment of Terrestrial Magnetism Archives

E entry

JAVA James Van Allen Papers

LOC Library of Congress

MAT Merle Antony Tuve Papers

NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland

NDRC National Defense Research Committee

n.d. no date

OH Oral History

OSRD Office of Scientific Research and Development

RG Record Group

TNA The National Archives, United Kingdom, Kew

UI University of Iowa Archives

VB Vannevar Bush Papers

PROLOGUE

On May 7, 1944: Chemical Warfare Service, “A Unit History of the 130th Chemical Processing Company,” n.d., NARA, RG 407, E NM3-427. Hereafter referred to as 130th Unit History.

had no speedometer: Information on the specific train line that the 130th used, the LMS, can be found in Samuel Edward Hatch, “Of Sorrow and Joy: July 3, 1994,” London Memorial, June 16, 2004, at http://www.londonmemorial.org/bombing/testimonials/testimonial-hatch.html; David Wragg, The LMS Handbook: The London, Midland, and Scottish Railway 1923–47 (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2016), chapters 12 and 19.

This London felt otherworldly: Felicity Goodall, “Life During the Blackout,” Guardian, November 1, 2009; Geoff Manaugh, “How London Was Redesigned to Survive Wartime Blackouts,” Gizmodo, January 6, 2014; Leonard James, The Blackout 1939–1945 (Surrey, UK: Bretwalda Books, 2013).

“He comes when he wants”: Mackay, Half the Battle, 76.

alter its overwhelming reliance: Jacobsen, The Deadly Fuze; Dobinson, AA Command, 231.

twenty thousand to one: Maurice W. Kirby, Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970 (London: Imperial College Press, 2003), 94. Kirby also discusses British efforts to address the rounds-per-bird problem, as does Stephen Budiansky, Blackett’s War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare (New York: Vintage Books, 2013).

“It would be just a sheer”: Douglas Birch, “ ‘The Secret Weapon of World War II’: Hopkins Developed Proximity Fuse,” Baltimore Sun, January 11, 1993.

highlighted on the targeting maps: Sam Tonkin, “Hitler’s Plans to Destroy London: Rare Map Revealing Germany’s WWII Bombing Targets Is Discovered After 75 Years in an Attic,” Daily Mail, February 24, 2017.

Samuel Edward Hatch: Hatch, “Of Sorrow and Joy.”

“D+7”: Jones, Most Secret War, 417.

with chemical weapons: See chapter 23; Zachary, Endless Frontier, 177; Samuel Edward Hatch, “Service Above All,” London Memorial, December 28, 2018, at http://www.londonmemorial.org/service-above-all-samuel-edward-hatch-in-his-own-words/; “Here Are the Four Main Gases Used in World War I,” Business Insider, May 21, 2014; Johannes Preuss, “The Reconstruction of Production and Storage for Chemical Warfare Agents and Weapons from Both World Wars in the Context of Assessing Former Munitions Sites,” in One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Development, Consequences, ed. Bretislav Friedrich et al. (New York: Springer, 2017), 289–333.

In the first war in history: Stewart, Organizing Scientific Research for War, ix.

American science and Nazi science: The Allies’ greatest achievements in military science were the atomic bomb, advances in radar, code-breaking, and the proximity fuse; the Nazis’ greatest advancements came in the field of aeronautics. The battle between the fuse and the V-1 marked the clearest tête-à-tête between the rival technologies. Radar, as will be noted, also played a significant role in defeating the V-1.

4,900-pound “robot bomb”: V-1s weighed roughly 4,900 pounds, with some variation between different models. Hölsken, V-Missiles of the Third Reich, 335.

twelve seconds of silence: Ramsey, The Blitz, vol. 3, 386; Longmate, The Doodlebugs, 191. There were actually two quite different ways in which V-1s fell on their targets. As noted in D. G. Collyer, Buzz Bomb Diary, 131: “Some of these V-1s glided on, with a distinctive whistling sound, others came straight down.” The flying bomb was originally designed to go into a power dive that could last well over a minute; a design flaw caused many of them to cut out suddenly and fall in mere seconds.

more than seven thousand: The number was 7,500, according to data from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. Roy Stanley, V-Weapons Hunt: Defeating German Secret Weapons (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Aviation, 2010), 207.

faster than its airplanes: See chapter 29.

morale to its lowest point: Mackay, Half the Battle, 135.

rounds-per-bird ratio of a hundred to one: E. O. Salant to L. R. Hafstad, memo, “Status of VTF in the U.K.,” September 5, 1944, NARA, RG 165, E NM84-421. As Salant noted, this ratio held for “both visual and blind fire.”

scientists made shooting planes: As emphasized in chapter 29, the SCR-584 radar and the M9 gun director also helped shoot down the V-1s.

By September, the V-1s: There were three phases of the V-1 attack on England. See Pile, Ack-Ack, 286. The main phase, as Pile explained, ran from roughly June 13 to September 1. Pile also testified that the fuse was ultimately responsible for the 100 percent success rates against the V-1s and was the “final answer to the flying bomb.” Frederick Pile, “U.S. and Flying Bombs: Use of ‘Proximity Fuses,’ ” London Times, April 5, 1946. Capturing the launching sites helped, but as Max Wachtel himself later wrote, London was not out of reach of the V-1s until November 19, 1944. Wachtel, “Unternehmen Rumpelkammer,” 110. Also see Dobinson, AA Command, 438: “In the period from 13 June to 5 September the Germans had sent 8,617 ground-launched [V-1] missiles toward Britain, together with about 400 delivered by aircraft, the vast majority in both categories toward London. This was by far the greater proportion of all flying bombs directed at Britain during the war . . . comprising 97 per cent of the ground-launch...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Peace
• Zing-a-Zing!
• Emergency Mode
• Scientific Spies
• The Wizard
• Section Tuve
• Choice Overload
• Uncanny Days
• Peenemünde
• Don’t Slow Down
• Prying Eyes
• Escalation
• War
• Ready or Not
• No Alibis
• Dr. Jones’s Raid
• The Garage
• Photos
• Three Runs, Three Hits
• Into the Fleet
• New Tricks
• Cherry Stone
• A London Fuse
• Amniarix
• Victory
• Ski Shapes
• Ranch Country
• Chemical Boys
• Things Carried
• Wachtel Is Hiding
• A Comet Gone Wrong
• “Turkey Shoot”
• Ack-Ack Girls
• A Cold Winter
• Tug of War
• Downtime
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Selected Sources
• Index
• Also Available from Jamie Holmes
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH