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How close did Hitler come to his dream of developing nuclear weapons? What evidence is there for the design, testing and production of such weapons, and their carrier systems?
Again and again in research, one comes across instances of overlap between the German nuclear weapons programme, and the s o-called Todesflieger, i.e. SO-men, SO standing for Selbstopfer, i.e. suicide. As explained by Friedrich Georg in his book Hitler’s Miracle Weapons: Secret Nuclear Weapons of the Third Reich and their Carrier Systems: Volume 1 – The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, possibly such an incident occurred during the first days of May 1945, in Austria.
At that time, 8 black-painted Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers landed unexpectedly on a large field in Seitenstätten, in the forest area close to Loosdorf. But after they had landed the crews were to discover that there was no ground crew organisation, nor facilities for aircraft maintenance. In fact, they had obviously been misdirected. Consequently, during the last few days of the war, they stayed in the village with the local population.
They waited for orders that never came.
While there they said that they had been ordered, after their landing, to pick up ‘atomic bombs’, in order to fly one more decisive attack with them. But it was to be a flight from which there would be no return, i.e. an SO mission. To which NSG [Nachtschlachtgruppe, Night Assault Wing] unit the eight Ju 87s belonged, or what became of the pilots and the aircraft after the end of the war, is unknown. Perhaps it was all hearsay.
Little can be made of an apparently ‘senseless’ landing in some field, of an entire Ju 87 night bomber squadron, close to a small out of the way Austrian village. Naturally, in Allied documents that have been released, no confirmation of those events can be found. Possibly, however, the incident becomes clearer if one considers closely the place where the Stukas landed.
The pilots of the ‘atomic Stukas’ said that they had been ‘misdirected’.
Interestingly, looking at the map of Austria, there is another Loosdorf, close to which there is another Seitenstätten. Even more interesting, those places too can be linked with secret weapons. Close to the second Loosdorf was located the secret object ‘Quarz’, and the second Seitenstätten was less than 20 kilometres south-west of Amstetten. On the Amstetten railway station 30 lorry loads of ‘explosives with exceptional explosive power’ were waiting in vain to be picked up.
Were the Ju 87s that landed in error in Seitenstätten, as had also happened previously with Bf 109s, to be fitted with the Amstetten ‘bombs with exceptional explosive power’? However, the question is raised, in so far as the report is confirmed, as to why the Ju 87 squadron landed in the wrong place. In the chaos of the last days of the war, it may have been a case of simple confusion of place names. It may have been, once again, a case of sabotage. Whatever the case, a possible atomic night attack was prevented.
The night bomber groups were specialised units that flew attacks in darkness, or in twilight.
Their targets had previously been precisely determined, and were at a relatively short distance from the front. The aircraft they flew, at the end of the war, were principally the Fw 190 and Ju 87. In those difficult flights the Ju 87, long since obsolete for daylight attacks, proved to be quite outstanding. On those missions the targets, which had been precisely determined, were marked with flares by other night bomber aircraft.
Some of the attacks were guided by radar, i.e. the Egon procedure. So, it is possible that some of the Seitenstätten Ju 87s were intended to be used on pathfinder duties, in the planned atomic night attack. Perhaps only a few aircraft from the squadron were actually to drop the bombs. Such an attack may have been previously practised elsewhere.
Unfortunately, we have no information as to whether the eight Ju 87s had been converted for their planned special mission, nor whether they were normal production machines of the D–8 type. However, it is probable that the relevant documents and photographs could be found in some Allied archive.
Hitler’s Miracle Weapons: Secret Nuclear Weapons of the Third Reich and their Carrier Systems: Volume 1 – The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine is published by Helion & Company and is available to order here.
Photo credit: PK-Kriegsberichter Karnerth and Richard Opitz Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) via Wikipedia
