During World War II, the USAAF Intelligence Service sent teams to Europe, initially based out of the United Kingdom to gain access to captured enemy aircraft, production, technical and scientific reports, research facilities, qualified personnel, and any and all weapons systems for study in the United States. The Air Technical Intelligence (ATI) teams from the Technical Intelligence School at Wright Field, Ohio, collected any and all enemy equipment to learn everything about Germany’s technical developments.
These teams were also in direct competition with thirty-two other Allied technical intelligence groups all working to collect as much information and equipment recovered from crash sites, repair depots, airfields, and even spare parts warehouses as possible. These various intelligence teams found themselves changing from a purely tactical intelligence gathering unit to functioning as a postwar investigation and intelligence exploitation entity.
Watson’s “Whizzers” was the nickname given to Col. Watson’s Lusty teams in 1944 from the groups of intelligence experts located at Wright Field. These specialists had developed very detailed lists of advanced aviation equipment they wanted to examine, and the men assigned to Lusty were very qualified, as most were pilots, engineers, and maintenance men.
Watson worked with sheer autonomy, with having no one to answer to, and he had the freedom of movement to get anything he wanted by any means. Watson organized his Whizzers into two separate sections, with one team dispatched to collect all jet aircraft, while the other was given the mission of securing all new conventional piston engined aircraft and any jet and rocket equipment.
Perhaps the greatest bonus to Watson’s efforts was the inclusion of the top Luftwaffe test pilots to their team. One example was Hauptman Heinz Braur, who on May 8, 1945, had flown seventy women, children, and wounded troops to Munich-Riem airport to escape the Soviets in the east. This field was in American hands, and they had captured nine Me 262s, intact, and they wanted to know how to fly them. Therefore, Braur was offered a choice: Go to a prison camp or fly and cooperate with the Whizzers team. Being a pragmatic man (as are all test pilots), Braur chose to fly, joining Karl Baur, Herman Kersting, Ludwig Hofmann, and engineer Gerhard Coulis.
The end of the war was really just the beginning of the hard work that lay ahead of the Whizzers, and time was not on their side. Following the Yalta Conference and subsequent agreements reached that previous February, time was a problem. The ink was not yet dry on the surrender documents when the four Allied powers began to secure their respective zones of military occupation. The Americans were much less concerned with the British and French occupation forces, as there were agreements on sharing captured technology. The great concern was the rapid, voracious, and quite unpredictable Soviet military incursions snapping up technology and the brilliant minds that created it, possibly leaving the Western Allies behind the curve.
Watson’s units covered Europe by land and air to find the aircraft on their self-described “Black Lists.” Once anything of value was found, it had to be broken down, inventoried, and packed up to be shipped back to the United States. Fortunately, for the effort, the British were willing to loan the small aircraft carrier HMS Reaper, where the captured aircraft would be loaded up at Cherbourg, France.
The Me 262s and other aircraft were flown from locations all over Germany and Austria to Lechfeld, where they were checked out further, and then flown to St. Dizier and Melun and then to Cherbourg. Upon arrival, all of the aircraft were disassembled, crated, and wrapped to protect them against the salt air and weather. Once they were prepared and manifested, they were loaded onto the carrier and brought to the United States, where various stateside teams of the U.S. Army and Navy evaluated them. The teams had collectively acquired 16,280 items (for about 6,200 tons), and of this collective, they selected 2,398 separate items for more detailed technical analysis.
Seeing the long-term value of the massive collection, Gen. Hap Arnold ordered the preservation of one of every type of aircraft used by the enemy forces once testing was completed. The Air Force brought their captured aircraft to Wright Field (later named Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), Ohio, with many of the surplus aircraft being sent to Freeman Field, Seymour, Indiana. Later, the larger aircraft were sent to Davis-Monthan Field, Arizona, and the fighter aircraft were sent to the Special Depot at Park Ridge, Illinois. In 1953, some of the aircraft were moved to the National Air and Space Museum in Silver Hill, Maryland, and the remaining aircraft were scrapped.
The German aircraft technology was prioritized, with every known German design placed on a “wish list.” Along with the Me 262 and Me 163, the AR 234 was on the “high priority” listing. The last Ar 234s were delivered early in March 1945, and on March 29, the order was given by Albert Speer for selective demolition teams to destroy the main Arado plant to deny it to the advancing Soviets. Speer resisted and, in fact, refused Hitler’s directive to destroy everything, and the high-value assets in the west were, for the most part, left intact for the advancing Western Allies. This was not simply due to an altruistic moment; Speer knew that he had to have a bargaining chip when the war finally ended.
A total of 210 Ar 234Bs and fourteen Ar 234Cs were delivered to the Luftwaffe, yet due to the rapid deterioration of the German war machine, only a handful ever saw combat. A final inventory of existing Ar 234s on April 10, 1945, listed thirty-eight working units in service, of which twelve were bombers, twenty-four were reconnaissance aircraft, and two were built specifically as night fighters. These aircraft remained in active service until Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945. Most of these were shot down in air combat by enemy aircraft or destroyed by flak. Some were destroyed by their crews, especially in the east as the Soviets advanced. The surviving units were captured on their airfields, primarily due to a lack of parts or fuel to continue operations, as stated by Dietrich Pelz:
“The bomber units using both the Me 262 and the Ar 234 suffered from the same problems, primarily a lack of supplies, especially fuel. Ironically, it was not due to the fuel not being available, it was mostly due to the transportation network being so badly bombed and constantly strafed that nothing could move, and when it did, it did not move very far. Bridges would be blown, and they would have to be rebuilt. Rail was always destroyed, and that had to be repaired, and this was done almost on a daily basis. In the end, it was tactical Allied bombing of our transportation system that denied us the opportunity to fully exploit our jet aircraft potential, and much less Allied fighter superiority.”{2}
The end of the war terminated a number of interesting and ongoing Ar 234 developments. A number of different variants of the Ar 234C were in the planning stage, including an advanced two-seat night fighter version with the newer version of Neptun and other detection devices, including an infrared targeting indicator, the first ever planned for use on an aircraft, although the Germans had a working model, which also made the Operation Lusty wish list.
There was also design work underway for the two-seat Ar 234D bomber and reconnaissance variant, which was planned to contain a powerplant of two Heinkel-Hirth He S011 turbojets, each with 2,850 lb of thrust, and for an additional version of the two-seat night fighter version, the Ar 234P. This version would have been complete with all of the above innovations, but with the addition of a pressurized cabin, a two-stage rocket-powered ejection seat for both the pilot and radar operator/navigator, and a radio-guided rocket attachment guided by a joystick, much like a modern cruise missile. According to Pelz, the speed of this aircraft would have exceeded 700 miles per hour.