This passage in the first story is kind of ODD
Even as the war came to an end, the work continued. When Germany accepted defeat and the U-234 submarine surrendered at sea, the entire crew was transferred to 1142. Among the sub’s cargo: an unassembled jet fighter and a load of uranium oxide. “Not the stuff you could make a bomb out of,” says Kolm. But it indicated the Germans were on the right track. Interrogators found out the submarine’s destination had been Japan. “If that had gotten to Japan, we would’ve been facing kamikaze pilots flying rocket planes,” says Kolm.
since the British developed the jet engine prior to WWII. We had the Bell P-59 program going during the war. And our pilots and the British pilots knew right away what they were looking at when the ME-262's and the henikels showed up in the air over Germany.
the Japanese had 5 jet Aircraft in the test phase at the end of the war and as many other programs that were either in development or cancelled at the end of the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jet_aircraft_of_World_War_II
Also the Japanese had a rocket powered Kamikaze plane before the end of the war a few of them were used at Okinawa but the balance were being held for the Home Island defenses. We captured a bunch of them both operational and in production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Special_Attack_Units
One only has to read up on the Oak Ridge, Tennessee project to know the Germans never had a chance to develop a bomb. They just did not have the Copper and Silver to refine the Urainium.
A Quote from the Oak Ridge Wikipedia page "During construction of the magnets which were required for the process that would separate the uranium at the Y-12 site, a shortage of copper forced the MED to borrow 15,000 tons of silver bullion from the United States Treasury to fabricate into wire for the electromagnet coils as a substitute."
Something the Germans just didn't have.
On a side note when I was about 8-9 years old my grandmother called and told dad to have me run over there as there was a man that had come to visit Grandpa they wanted me to meet.
I ran over to Grandpas house and went in there was Harvey Gehring (one of my grandfathers friends and 2 men I did not know. I was introduced to both I was polite I shook hands and I went into the kitchen to scarf down coffee cake grandma had made for the evening. I had little interest in paying attention to what the grown ups were talking about. They talked mostly in German anyway.
Long about the summer of 1969 I found out who it was I met and paid no attention to.
It was one of the men who had defected to the US with Wernher von Braun and was part of the Rocket development team at NASA. (I never caught his name at the time. And now it's beyond my memory to figure out who from Wernher von Braun's team it most likely was.
He had come to my grandfathers house to discuss the Bible. My grandfather was a very accomplished theologian in his own right. Anyway the second man that even was the go between that knew the Scientist and Harvey Gehring who then connected to my Grandfather. I have no idea what his connection was to anything.
They talked well into the morning. The topic was mostly from what I was told later about how the bible changed so much from Greek to Old German and then to the St. James. My grandfather read the bible back through 3-4 translations almost continuously in rotation I think. So he was very knowledgeable about that aspect of it.
Me I ate a belly full of coffee cake and milk and ran back home.
It is one of those odd things from childhood that I really wish I had paid attention. Cause it would have been nice to have maybe written him a letter or two round about the time we landed on the moon. I mean after all we were formally introduced and all. And if nothing else to just know for sure what his name was!
I was just to young to appreciate I was shaking the hand of history at the time.
