The Walls Have Ears by Helen Fry;

Author:Helen Fry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300238600
Publisher: Yale University Press

V-1 AND V-2

References to the V-1, V-2, Peenemünde, secret weapons and rockets continued to be picked up in subsequent conversations, not only from the German generals, but also lower-rank prisoners being held at Latimer House and Wilton Park.48 One particularly important prisoner being held at Latimer House was Herbert [Peter] Cleff, a member of the German army’s scientific civil service. Cleff became disillusioned with the Nazi regime after his own brother died at Stalingrad and decided to help the Allies. He provided helpful information about the V-1 and V-2. Captured at the end of 1942, Cleff was valuable to British intelligence because he had first-hand experience in the field. Lieutenant Commander Donald Burkewood Welbourn, a Naval Intelligence interrogator at Latimer, described Cleff as:

Probably the most brilliant all-round engineer I have ever known, being skilled with his hands at anything from watch-making to general fitting, and being certainly the most original kinematician of his generation. I soon was spending a lot of my time walking the fields round Latimer with him, talking both engineering and politics. I lent him a few books on theoretical engineering which I had with me, and he started to write for his younger brother the superb notebook on kinematics.49

Cleff told Felkin, head of Air Intelligence at Latimer, that he knew of a new type of aircraft engine working on the ram jet principle. Within a few months, this was identified as the V-1.

On 30 July 1943, a German pilot referenced Peenemünde and told his cellmate: ‘The experimental flights were carried out up there in the Baltic from Peenemünde.’50 Another conversation between two German bomber pilots came less than a week after the RAF had bombed the site. A pilot codenamed A713 asked: ‘Is it all complete?’ His cellmate, A130, replied: ‘Yes, all completed … now they are going to bring out the “Peter X 2” … that is … being tried out. They have it at Peenemünde at present.’51

Other prisoners discussed the destruction of Peenemünde.52 On 27 October, two soldiers (one captured from Regimental Headquarters in Italy, the other in Tunisia) showed concern that they might find themselves under one of the rockets being fired on England:

M238: It’s hell being a POW and perhaps on top of it all, we’ll get one of these new things dropped on us.

M304: The whole of the civilian population was evacuated from Rügen three years ago and from Peenemünde as well.

M238: They must got … somehow … under cover when they set a thing like this going.

M304: How do you mean? The thing is set up, it is ignited by remote control, electrically, and then it goes off.

M238: They get into shelters beforehand, below ground …

M304: Well of course. They may be something … it is ignited electrically by remote control and then it rises very slowly from the ground with mighty crashing, banging and hissing – it is frightful!

M238: And they fire over to –

M304: Over to England – they can fire it 500km. They fire up the whole

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