One of my (many) pet hates on this site is the secret weapon or technological breakthrough. You know... "what would have happened had the Australian Army in 1937 not rejected the design for the new Mark Three Combat Boot with its built up heel and slip on facility? Would Singapore still have fallen?" But I've been browsing through Stanley Weintraub's book on the end of the Great War, A SILENCE HEARD ROUND THE WORLD (1985, paperback 1987 Oxford University Press) which has a rather interesting bit in it. In Chapter Three, ARMISTICE EVE, he describes how two American aeronautical engineers, Lester Barlow and Glenn Martin, were working on a scheme by which a plane would carry an unmanned second plane, really a flying torpedo, which could be released some distance from the target, while the parent plane returned to base. Berlin was to be the target. Squier, chief of the Air Corps, was at first sceptical, but according to Benedict Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War, became such a convert that his main fear was that the Germans would hit on the same idea.
In September 1918 government orders for production to begin arrived at Martin's aircraft plant in Cleveland. Martin estimated that 1,000 of these devices could be built for the cost of one battleship. Crowell's account has it that at least fifty of these would be used in a sudden night attack on Berlin. 800 Horsepower, each carrying a load of one and a half tons TNT or poison gas, these would be guided to the centre of the city where charges would be detonated which detached the wings causing the fall of the flying torpedos. Of course, at this point, with the war only two months to run, all of this came to nothing. Barlow said regretfully that they'd had the idea in October 1915 and it was a pity it hadn't been implemented earlier.
Now, I have no personal views on this matter, it's one well outside my usual spheres.Weintraub is, I believe, more of a cultural historian than anything else and the only source he gives in his notes is a NEW YORK TIMES article of 16/10/22, ARMISTICE AVERTED BOMBING OF BERLIN. I'm a hundred miles away from the nearest first class library and about the only thing I've come up with is an obituary of Barlow which makes him sound like a bit of a crank. Does anyone have any views? Was this technologically feasible, and if it had been given the go-ahead earlier what might have resulted?
In September 1918 government orders for production to begin arrived at Martin's aircraft plant in Cleveland. Martin estimated that 1,000 of these devices could be built for the cost of one battleship. Crowell's account has it that at least fifty of these would be used in a sudden night attack on Berlin. 800 Horsepower, each carrying a load of one and a half tons TNT or poison gas, these would be guided to the centre of the city where charges would be detonated which detached the wings causing the fall of the flying torpedos. Of course, at this point, with the war only two months to run, all of this came to nothing. Barlow said regretfully that they'd had the idea in October 1915 and it was a pity it hadn't been implemented earlier.
Now, I have no personal views on this matter, it's one well outside my usual spheres.Weintraub is, I believe, more of a cultural historian than anything else and the only source he gives in his notes is a NEW YORK TIMES article of 16/10/22, ARMISTICE AVERTED BOMBING OF BERLIN. I'm a hundred miles away from the nearest first class library and about the only thing I've come up with is an obituary of Barlow which makes him sound like a bit of a crank. Does anyone have any views? Was this technologically feasible, and if it had been given the go-ahead earlier what might have resulted?
