Henry_H@Q_ wrote:

I meant to say that although Truax didn't have the right answer for
airplanes, that work lead directly on to the whole world of hypergols
in the US, many, many vehicles and engine/motors.

Got it. He did come up with some brilliant design work, which
he must have know were inappropriate for aircraft. Most rocketeers
of the time had their eye on spaceflight and had to search hard to
justify their projects. There was considerable opposition to wasting
resources on "that Buck Rogers stuff."

Those are the same figures in Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Elements."
I figure that Mano Zeigler gave different numbers in "Rocket Fighter"
due to conditions in Axisland--with the Allies bombing their plants
and supply lines, they may have had to settle for anything that could
flow through the lines and burn.

If I remember the book, and I am pretty sure I do, it was sort of a
"quick and dirty" account based on very limited sources. I think I
first read it myself only a couple of years after the war, so it has
been around a while. A lot of documentation showed up later that the
author didn't have then.

I checked the copyright dates in my book, and the oldest date for
"Rocket Fighter" is 1961. I vaguely recall seeing another book about
the Komet somewhere, but I never had a chance to read it.

That was a typical condition in the Reich. And, given how hard it was
to find self-confessed Nazis after the war, the condition persisted.
Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" is a classic example.

You have to be careful about testimony of participants. You have to be
ten times more careful when they are under duress. And, being a POW
after having lost a war is a LOT of duress.

Speer wrote his book in Spandau, and he managed to keep
it secret from the jailers. He was clearly writing with an eye
on redeeming his reputation, such as it was. How it fooled
anyone is beyond me.

(Although the military historian SLA Marshall claims that the
Germans did, indeed, get the "Nuts!" message. Marshall interrogated
Manteuffel and his staff after the war. At one session Manteuffel
kept blaming his mistakes on his staff. At last one of his subordinates
leaned forward, waggled a finger in Manteuffel's face and shouted
"Nuts! Nuts!")

Another sub plot to that story that I have seen in one account was
that there was some junior officere there who was an English language
expert. He thought up the idea of the surrender demand. And wrote it
and got permission to deliver it. But, when he got the answer, he
didn't know what it meant.

That's the version which played on the British series "World At War."
An American officer said, more or less, "'I told him 'The general said
"nuts!"' The German said 'I do not understand that word in this context.'
I said 'Do you understand "Go to hell"?' The German said 'Yes, I
understand that.'")

--Bill Thompson