Conclusions

Although the US government became aware of science’s importance in warfare following the First World War, officials had to scramble to assemble the country’s scientific resources in time for the Second World War. After the power of the Atomic Bomb shown to the world, military and government officials would not underestimate the power of science in conflict again. “The impact of Allied scientists on the conduct and outcome of the war – from radar, operations research and communications intelligence to the Manhattan project – had been indelibly pressed on the military mind,” said scholar Alan Bayerchen.

While scenes of US troops liberating concentration camps and the Red Army overtaking Berlin, raising the hammer and sickle over the Reichstag, are well known to the public, one aspect of the end of the war that remained in shadows for years was the mad race by all of the Allied nations to capture Nazi Germany’s scientists, research materials, and equipment. The US, UK and USSR started to assess the sciences in Germany and how they could benefit their countries before the war ended. Covert allied units were operating in Germany before capitulation to determine if Germany had the capability to produce an Atomic Bomb, and other units were rushed in as soon as troops discovered rocket launch sites or production centers.

Major General Kenneth Strong, Eisenhower’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence said the Allies should control Germany’s sciences to secure “the major, and perhaps only, material reward of victory, namely the advancement of science and the improvement of production and standards of living in the United Nations by the proper exoloitation of German methods in these fields.”

In 2006, the UK's National Archives released documents revealing that the Ministry of Supply - which coordinated military technology - sought to hold German scientists immediately after the war to prevent the USSR from creating a superior long range bomber force and other advanced weapons. The ministry initially drew up a list of 1,500 leading German scientists to approach in 1946, indicating that they should extricate scientists "as soon as possible from Germany, whether they are willing to go or not." Only100 or so actually ended up in the UK from 1946 to 1947, and many others were handed over to American authorities.

The Soviets were particularly active at capturing Germany’s scientific resources, viewing it as a form of reparations. American intelligence officers in Berlin who tracked the number of scientists leaving for the USSR in 1945 noted high numbers in the years immediately after the war. While many were captured or forced to move to the USSR, others – from younger scientists to a Nobel Prize winner – were enticed by higher pay and the promise of better living and working environments. While Soviet and Russian historians say that scientists from Germany came to the USSR as “volunteers,” Western scholars have written that these scientists, forced with the prospect of leaving “willingly” or being arrested, left Germany under duress, and often for much longer terms than initially thought.

Instead of using science to promote their respective ideologies, in the immediate post-war era, Bayerchen posits, that the US and USSR sought to harness the powers of science for their economic and war-making potential. “The Russians could have claimed science was an antidote to Nazi irrationalism…it would have been a powerful influence supporting the ‘Scientific Socialism’ of Marxist ideology. The Americans…could have used a popular view of the time…that science was inherently liberalizing,” said Bayerchen.

Atomic Weapons Programs

USSR ATOMIC WEAPONS RESEARCH

The Soviet Union, in response to information regarding the Allied Manhattan project in 1943, began an atomic weapons program. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union decided to duplicate as much as possible the design of the Ally atomic bomb. Fueled by espionage, a secret project entitled “Enormoz,” was able to uncover specs on the US atomic Bomb designed in the Manhattan Project. Clearly that bomb worked and the Soviet Union had no time to spare in building a bomb. The program was headed by Lavrentii Beria, Stalin’s former chief of security. He did not trust the reliability of his scientists and would often employ multiple teams of scientists to to work on the same problem. Only when these teams were called together to compare results would each team learn of the others. Under his direction, a few experiments were conducted on different designs acquired from the information received.

The first test in 1949 was known as First Lightening and was based off of the American Fat Man bomb. It packed 22,000 tons of TNT. Another accomplishment was the Joe Four, which was the first hydrogen bomb. The name was actually a nickname given by the Americans, and was not actually a true hydrogen bomb. The first true hydrogen bomb came upon the testing of the RDS-37. It packed explosives in the megaton range, and was a multistage thermonuclear radiation implosion design base off of the US Teller-Ulam.

German Atomic Research

German atomic programs were in the works soon after nuclear fission was discovered. Yet, due to the uncertainty of the leading scientist, Werner Heisenberg, the program eventually became abandoned. In 1941, Heisenberg met with former colleague, Niels Bohr who worked with the Allies. Heisenberg had come to meet with Bohr at his home and it is historically debated what was discussed. Heisenberg says he came to meet with Bohr to discuss his moral objections with development of nuclear weapons. He claimed he was devoting research towards a nuclear reactor. Bohr claimed his feelings were false and that Heisenberg was actually trying to obtain information about Allied bomb research and was contempt in developing nuclear weapons for Germany, and due to Bohr’s Jewish background, this upset him very much. Though when it later became revealed that a conversation between Heisenberg and another German scientist had been secretly recorded, some say Heisenberg did not actually have enough knowledge on how to make the bomb. In reality, financial support for the Nazi atomic weapons program was weak, and the authorities abandoned the program to pursue other weapon development programs.

UK Atomic Research

Much of the UK research on atomic weaponry was conducted after the end of the Second World War. After the war ended, a few groups were implemented in order to regulate advances on atomic programs. Prime Minister Clement Attlee organized a committee of cabinet members titled GEN. 75 and called the “Atom Bomb Committee.” A subset of GEN. 75, termed GEN. 163, was later organized in order to make decisions in relation to the program and an advisory group called “Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy (ACAE),” was also developed. Britain worked complimentary with the US to establish atomic research. In response to calculations collected by Englishmen Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in 1940, the U.K. established the MAUD committee. The research included studies of nuclear fission and enriched uranium and were relayed to the U.S.. A team of scientists, called the “British Mission,” were sent to Los Alamos to work with the U.S. on the Manhattan project.

The Manhattan Project

In 1942, under the assumption that the Nazi’s were developing research on atomic weaponry, tipped off by a letter Einstein wrote to president Roosevelt, the United States began working on an extensive program of their own under the Army Corps of Engineers: The Manhattan Project. Directed by project manager J. Robert Oppenheimer, and based in Los Alamos, New Mexico, this project would revolutionize the way wars are fought for time to come. The result was a bomb that could destroy an entire city in a matter of a split second.

It was called the Atom Bomb, and it had devastating effects when energy was expelled from the nucleus of an atom in a process called nuclear fission that split an atom into parts. There were two designs, one using uranium and one using plutonium. The design using plutonium was proven to be very difficult. In the uranium bomb, uranium was accumulated into a specific amount needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The idea was to shoot a neutron into the isotope (Uranium’s atomic number is 238, whereas U-235, its isotope, was needed) which split the nucleus into smaller fragments. The original atom then becomes split into a few smaller nuclei with a combined mass of less than the original. The weight loss is converted into energy in the form of heat and gamma radiation.

It had been decided by US officials that this bomb would be dropped on either Germany or Japan in an attempt to end the war abruptly.

Wartime Science 5

GERMAN WARTIME SCIENCE

German Radar Research

The Germans had, if at best, mediocre work in the field of radar. Their main project was on the Freya and the Wurzburg. The Freya operated in the 126MHz range bandwidth and provided early warning information to two different Wurzburg’s. These three radar systems formed an operational box the country for the control of searchlights and anti-gun crafts. The Wurzburg’s operated in the 570 MHz range with a 3 meter parabolic reflector which produced a 12 degree beam that could be used in elevation and azimuth (angle) to acquire a target. Later the Wurzburg was increased in size from 3 meters to 8 meters.

_._._ Later the Nazi’s improved on early warning radar systems. The Mammut and Wasserman radar systems were developed. Still though, no new frequency bands were explored. The Nazi radar systems had no cenimetric equipment, and so they could not actively jam any radar systems and were highly vulnerable to being jammed.

German Rocketry Research

The Germans were most known for their development in rocketry during the Second World War. Their rocketry development started in the 1930’s and it was very extensive. The two most prominent rockets they developed, the V-1 and the V-2 will be explored. The V stood for “Vergeltungswaffen,” which translates into “weapon of retaliation.”

_._._ V-1 – The V-1 was first in line for the V-series and was a pilotless bomb that was implemented by a gas powered pulse engine jet. The engine puled 50 times per second and was launched off of make-shift catapult launch pads. The launch pad required chemical or steam power to accelerate the missile to 200 mph. The V-1 used an autopilot system account for height and velocity while a gyrocompass provided feedback to control pitch and roll. The V-1 had some problems though. It was unreliable (had trouble working to begin with), inaccurate, and had a mere top speed of 390 mph that allowed for enemies to easily intercept it.

_._._ The Germans then began work on a piloted V-1, know simply as V-1e. The purpose of this was for the missile to be guided by a pilot on a suicide mission. The V-1e was about 27 feet long and included a cockpit and pilot instruments. The rocket was test flown by test pilot Hanna Reitsch, upon requests when many other pilots were having trouble landing it. She concluded that the rocket was susceptible to vibration resulting from engine noise.

_._._ V-2 – The V-2, powered by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol, was the first man-made object to receive sub-orbital flight. It was guided by four external rudders on the tail fins and four internal graphite vanes at the exit of the motor and consisted of two free gyroscopes (vertical, horizontal) for lateral stability. Using an analog computer to adjust angle, its distance was controlled the moment the engine cut off by a ground controlled Doppler system or by integrating accelerometers. Its top speed was reach at the peak of it flying curve. It reached a height of 60 – 70 miles, flew a distance of up to 200 miles and carried a 1 ton warhead. What made the V-2 devastating was the fact that it traveled faster than the speed of sound. This meant that it could hit its target before it was even heard coming. The V-2 land

Wartime Science 4

RUSSIAN WARTIME SCIENCE

Having seen the power of aircraft, tanks, and gas attacks in the previous war, most of the Soviet Union’s scientific research during the Second World War, Soviet authorities focused on developing powerful aircraft, tanks, and, on a smaller scale, biological weapons. While they initially intended to focus science efforts on industry and production, the Soviet government was approached by military officials to persuade them to dedicate more resources to military scientific research. As the German military launched the invasion of the USSR, in 1941, Soviet authorities were forced to move scientific research institutions and industrial production centers to the east to avoid capture. The threat of German takeover was great portion of the war and research tended to focus on the more pressing problems such as increasing agricultural output and improving steel production.

USSR Rocketry Research

There were many Soviet scientists conducting research on rockets since the early 1920s. In 1935, a Soviet rocket engineer designed and tested a two-stage rocket powered by a gunpowder-sparked motors and a primitive form of jet engine. This caught the eyes of military officials, who ordered another test of the device. It was attached to a traditional propeller-driven aircraft to see how its capabilities would be affected. Like the Germans (although their research on this subject is not expanded upon in this essay), the USSR dedicated a significant portion of their scientific resources to applying burgeoning rocket technology to aircraft. Although not used in the war extensively, Soviet scientists had built and tested a prototype jet aircraft by 1941.

Wartime Science 3

UK Radar Research

Due to the First World War, Britain realized they were easily susceptible to aerial attacks as they were bombed repeatedly by German Zeppelins. As a result, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) devoted Biggin Hill, a base near London, towards developments in research in the field of radar, specifically dealing with communications. The goal of this project was to integrate radar into early warning systems for fighter planes to aide in direction and control of the plane and as data was collected it became evident that radar effectively compensated for differences in maneuvering and navigating aircraft. This new system could provide adequate information on specific technical difficulties due to maintenance of equipment or training of personnel. Another great aspect of this system was that it could detect changes in enemy tactics, for example changes in path of flight.

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Wartime Science 2

Z Battery

Britain also made advancements in the fields of rocketry as well. By 1940 they had developed a three inch rocket in which 128 of them could be fired from a projector at a single time. These rockets were to be used against German aircraft. Soon, a rocket battery called the Z-battery was formed to use these rockets and the first German plane was taken down. A type of Z-battery, the UP-3, was hooked up with a radar system. This system allowed the rocket to predict the flight paths of its target and had a devastating effect. Upon impact, the explosion carried a 70 foot lethal radius, but soon enough the rocket was increased in size in order to carry a bigger warhead.

Air-to-Surface Missle

Another British development was air-to-surface missiles. These missiles were a modification of the UP-3. They were 6 feet in length and could travel up to 1,000 mph. The Royal Navy used these against submarines, and although the army declined the idea of using them, they continued modifications of the UP-3.

Stooge Missile

The Stooge was another missile to be developed by Britain near the end of the war. These missiles were designed primarily to attack Japanese Kamikaze. It was guided by radio, had a range of 8 to 9 miles, reached a top speed of 500 mph and carried a 220lb warhead.

Sonar Technology

US and UK developments of sonar and its ability to locate submarines underwater played the biggest role in the defeat of attacks by Nazi U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943. It was responsible for sinking nearly 1,000 enemy submarines. The Allies cooperated with each other in laboratories as US Navy experts and British Scientists combined US sonar with the best features of British systems.

The submarines were detected using a concept similar to echo-location in Dolphins. A retractable projector were installed under the keel of the ship that sent out sound waves under the surface of the ocean and when a target is hit, the signal echoes back to its source. This echo is then analyzed and could distinguish between different objects (threatening or not) and locate with precision where exactly a target was. The projector was covered by a dome to ensure a clear signal unaffected but outside noise could be received.

A major part of sonar and how it works is the transducer that sends out the signal. Electric energy from a transmitter moves tubes which vibrates the diaphragm of the transducer. A certain “ping” is then sent out and when echoed back, electric current is produced which in turn produces a different ping. Different objects produce different pings so the men onboard can distinguish from a threat and a non-threat.

Wartime Science 1

The most prominent and popular missile the US developed in the Second World War was the Bazooka rocket-powered grenade that was built in 1940. Giving the soldier an effective defense against a tank, they were used by many during the war. It shot a 3.5 lb 21 inch long missile from a 7 inch long tube. The bazooka could destroy a tank from 200 meters away and any stationary object from up to 750 meters away. A positive aspect about the bazooka was that the missile gained its speed after launch, limiting the recoil.

The US also worked on some missile guided bombs. One bomb, the GB-1(Guided Bomb) was a 2,000 pound bomb that had wings and was controlled by a radio guidance system. The VB-1(Vertical Bomb), named Azon, was also guided by radio but had tail fins that were moveable in order to adjust angle and the path of flight controlled by an airborne bombardier.

After the VB-1 came a series of VB bombs. The VB-3, named Razon, had a variable range while the VB-6 was able to home in its target through a thermal guidance system. Tarzon, the VB-13 was the most elegant of the VB series rockets. The missile weighed 20,000 lbs with a 54 inch diameter lift shroud. Measuring in at 20 feet long, it was used to attack battleships that were heavily shielded.

Prelude to War 2

SOVIET UNION PRE WAR

While America and the United Kingdom struggled to organize centralized institutions for scientific research, after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Soviet authorities gave more money to the sciences than any country in the world in the 1920s and 30s and established thousands of research centers. However, many scientists employed prior to the 1917 takeover were considered to be politically questionable, and subsequently were forbidden from working in universities or Soviet science institutions. Further purges of intellectuals under Stalin’s rule led to more shortages in the USSR’s scientific community. This resulted in a tremendous loss of scientific expertise in the years between the wars, no doubt hindering their technological progress during the war. According to scholar Loren Graham, Soviet authorities thought of science in terms of advancing industrial output to meet production demands from the government. Advanced weapons were not at the top of the Soviet science community’s agenda as the USSR struggled to become a modern industrialized nation in the 1920s and 30s.

Similar to the USSR, the Nazi government nationalized science programs shortly after their takeover in 1933, also purging political and social, and in the Germans’ case, religious, ‘undesirables.’ Germany was well advanced in the sciences before the Nazi ascension to power. Created shortly before the First World War, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Sciences was established as a national, centralized institution for scientific research. At the onset of hostilities in 1914, the institute shifted its focus to military research. Since the 19^th century, Germany was well-known internationally for its leading research in physics. Many landmark discoveries, like Albert Einstein’s theories on quantum physics, that were unveiled before the Nazi takeover, were dismissed by the new regime as “Jewish Science.”

These actions are similar to the Soviets’denouncement of scientists and institutions that existed before the communist revolution as vestages of the Tsar’s bourgeois society. This led to official ignorance of scientific progress in both countries because of their totalitarian nature of leadership – dependant on absolute political control of all facets of society. Noted scientists like Albert Einstein left the country after facing the realities of losing their positions and being subject to arrest or worse. Though there were certainly many brilliant scientists that remained in Germany – either by choice or force – the state of German sciences leading up to the war was certainly not aided by the loss of leading scientists and official dismissal of scientific discoveries made by ‘undesirables.’ Although the Nazi government put significant resources towards scientific research, the politicized nature of their actions did not benefit scientific progress.

Prelude to War

Science has contributed to military efforts throughout the ages, from advances in astrology that helped fleets navigate the seas to the advent of gunpowder in China. But it wasn’t until the early 20^th century that nations were forced to develop national science programs in order to remain on an equal playing field with potentially hostile nations. Poison gas attacks, aerial bombardment and reconnaissance, armored vehicles, advanced artillery targeting, and radio jamming were all commonplace by the end of the First World War in 1918. These developments in warfare were a harsh wake up call for government and military leaders around the world, convincing them that science is an asset to national security. Despite these obvious lessons, most countries involved in the Second World War did not devote substantial thought or resources to sciences until it became clear that the world would soon be at war again.

America lacked a sufficient national program for scientific research. Vannevar Bush, the science adviser to President Roosevelt, campaigned to establish institutes to develop new weapons and technology and to determine the technological needs of the military. To foster exchange between the scientific community and the military, Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) in 1940. Almost six months before the US entered the war in Dec. 1941, Roosevelt created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), an organization with broader powers to cull the most accomplished scientists for the war effort.

In the United Kingdom, the government also hurried to put scientific resources towards the war effort as the war approached. While the potential of science was well known to military officials in the 1930s, shortage of resources, lack of a centralized organization, and a lack of communication between scientists and the military forced the government to quickly organize a science program

Introduction

This paper was written for the “Science and Life in the 21^st Century,” class at Suffolk University, which aims to create dialogue between students in the sciences and in the humanities to illustrate how science effects our everyday lives. Reflecting the stated aims of the course, the authors, John S. Forrester and Jonathan M. Cordaro, decided to collaborate on a common project to integrate two different fields of study on the same subject. It is worth noting that this paper focuses on the European Theatre of Operations during the Second World War, excluding operations in the Pacific in the interest of space.

Below are brief profiles of the authors:

Jonathan M. Cordaro from Whitman, Ma., is Electrical Engineering major at Suffolk University. He is in his fourth year of studies, and plans to pursue studies in sound engineering.

John S. Forrester from St. Louis, Mo., is a senior German Studies and Print Journalism double major at Suffolk University and a freelance journalist. After graduation, he plans to work as a writer.

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