Luftwaffe over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II - Manfred Griehl

Could have been better

The subject matter of the book and the illustrations are first-rate. With that being said, the organization of the chapters into six-month increments doesn't really work well and many of the illustrations do not seem to be in the right place.

paper dreams and ugly realities

Several of the reviewers get the point of this book but one or two do not. The bungling command of the Nazi war effort is never better revealed than in the numerous verbatim quotes from this well researched book. This was in itself almost enough to ensure that the Luftwaffe would never have the ability or will to attack the American East Coast. (Can you imagine Donald Douglas successfully appealing to FDR to reverse a decision of the American military about some project? That kind of thing happened all the time in the Third Reich.) The addtional factors of lack of natural resources, the overwhelming pressure of the Combined Bomber Offensive (another controversial subject)and Allied ground advances further lengthened the odds against any successful strategy of America attack.

One additional point that author makes clear is the lack of engineering design and development resources available to the Nazi state.
Even if raw materials had been avialable through conquest, it is clear that there was a major bottle neck in detailed design and engineering development skills, especially being frittered away between competing and overlapping projects. The subcontracting of such work to engineering staffs in occupied countries gave the surely to be expected nil results. There appparently was no lack of conceptual design resources, hence all the visionary paper sutudies that it took decades to actualize. The protracted and painful history of the He177 was being repeated in the Great Hope project of the Me 264, a B29 look alike that with Boeing's resources could have been no doubt sucessfully developed.(The B29 project was very difficult and fraught with problems overcome with a massive and determined effort.)

The arguments put forth in the great science fiction short story "Superiority" are never more evident than in reviewing this history. The best was so clearly the enemy of the good enough. This book cannot explain, nor has any work explained, the devotion to the doomed concept of coupled engines that crippled the He177 project. Everyone in the world tried coupled engines and no one ever made them a success, so everyone but the Germans quit trying. Another example was the Ju290 which could have given the Lufwaffe a real ability to help the U boat arm in the critical year of 1943 it it had not been continually shouldered aside by more "advanced" concepts that never amounted to anything.

The author leaves the Luftwaffe at the end and the last couple of chapters about rocket weapons and nuclear waapons are apparently thrown in to satisfy the continuing facsination with alternate history that we all enjoy so much.

Greihl's final conclusion seems to be that it would have been possible, given better direction and will (a counterfactual assumption in itself) for the Luftwaffe to mount some very small scale attacks on the US coast in late 1942 or 1943 using air to air refueling and available aircraft. He does not speculate on the effect of such attacks but they certainly don't seem like outcome changing events given the steely determination of FDR and WSC and Stalin to destroy the Nazi regime no matter what the cost.

This book gets four stars as a well researched account of interest to the specialist or enthusiast who already has considerable knowledge of the historical context. Also,the sequence of the many interesting photographs and plan reproductions does not match the sequence of the text. The editor should have done better there.

An Interesting and Well Written Book!

This interesting and well written book examines developments in Nazi Germany to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against the United States following a successful invasion of the Soviet Union. Fortunately for the American people, the German invasion of Russia was not so successful. Had it been, Adolph Hitler would have had the resources available to produce enough long-range strategic bombers to pummel the American east coast.

The style of the book is a bit technologically oriented. Nonetheless, there is a great deal that the reader will find eye-opening.

First, are indications that the Nazis may have detonated two small atomic bombs late in the war, indicating that they were much further along in the development of atomic weapons than has been previously believed.

Certainly the portion of the book devoted to trans-Atlantic bombers is of tremendous interest, especially since the Third Reich's flying wings appear to be precursors of American Stealth aircraft.

The Germans also experimented with mid-air refueling for their bombers and the use of towed, winged fuel tanks.

I found the parts of the book devoted to submarine launched ballistic missiles and even submerged barge-launched ballistic missiles of particular interest, proving that there are few obstacles that human ingenuity and technology cannot overcome.

Finally, the author discusses the threat of Nazi weapons of mass destruction, especially chemical and biological weapons.

It is for good reason, then, that the Americans classified documents discussing all these developments for a period of 100 years following the Second World War.

Particularly disturbing were hints by the author that some of the German WWII underground facilities, which may have numbered in the several hundreds, were never found.

Could there be a Nazi flying wing, loaded with weapons of mass destruction, waiting in some long-forgotten underground hanger?

An interesting read!

Why America Wasn't Bombed in WW2

Manfred Griehl's 'Luftwaffe over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II' is a well researched documentation of why and how the United States was not subjected to ongoing aerial attack by the Germans during World War Two. This inability on the part of the German war machine stands in stark contrast to US and British efforts both in the European and the Pacific theaters of war.

In point of fact, it is the Pacific analogy - included early efforts in 1943/1944 to bomd Japan from India and China - that is more similar to the challenge facing the Germans: development and production in meaningful quanitites of a long-range, multi-engine bomber with sufficient payload to daamge US industry and population centers. Flying from occupied Europe to England or England to Germany was one thing; flying thousands of miles across an ocean and back was another.

Author Griehl takes a year-by-year chronological appraoch to explaining why Germany was not able to achieve this critical piece of war-making capability. His analysis shows a plethora of reasons, ranging from strategic short-sightedness on the part of the Nazi leadership; battles between aircraft manufacturers over contracts that makes current lobbying int he US look like solidarity; a strong tendency toward poor aircraft design and the inability to produce reliable high-power aircraft engines like those of Rolls-Royce/Packard and Curtiss Wtight, for example.

Along the way, we learn about virtually all efforts at developing a strategic bombing component for the Luftwaffe. Actual aircraft such as the FW-200, HE-177, and the ME-264,among others, are discussed with candor. The book also addresses more heady R&D aircraft that were technologically beyond actualization at the time. As mentioned, Griehl also comments on the difficulties with prop and jet power plants and the somewhat more esoteric issue of weaponry.

Although his European style of writing and command of English is a little bumpy for the American reader, Griehl's work meets its objective on providing an accurate and objective desecription of the Nazi strategic bombing programs, as well as a primer on weapons program R&D activities.

Good Look at Nazi Procurement Mess

First off this is not a book about dangerous flights or shootouts with submarines on the high sea. It is a detailed look at the (thankfully) complex and ever changing priorities of the Nazi aviation R&D establishment. The Germans never bombed the East Coast because they could never decide what aircraft they should concentrate on. Land based or seaplane? Which model? Which engine to choose? None of them worked very well. What materials to use? They were making planes out of iron because they didn't have enough aluminum to go round. In the end the long range bombers were never a priority and none of the endless staff meetings came to anything. The book's text does not jump off the page at you but it is a good look into the inner workings of the German war machine.