>From: milsurplus

On Behalf Of gfsmith
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2024 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Asheville NC Radio Museum looking for proximity fuse for display

>Along with the Atomic Bomb and Radar, the Proximity fuse was one of the 3 technical developments that won WWII. For anyone interested in the development of the Proximity Fuse, please read "12 Seconds of Silence" by Jamie Holmes (Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Seconds-Silence-Inventors-Tinkerers-Superweapon/dp/0358508630 ). Very very readable, it goes into great detail of not only the development of the fuse but also the impact of its development and the impetus of the after war missile development. Few people realize the massive damage that was done to London by the V-1 Flying Buzz bomb and even fewer know how the proximity fuse stopped the V-1 cold in its tracks.

>73, Gordon KJ6IKT

I am very surprised to read here the “massive damage done to London”. I have a book of about 500 pages on the V weapons attacks; not going to cite its title, as i’m not

sure, and i may have given it away already. The V weapons program were a “massive” waste of resources by German Reich, in terms of the actual paltry returns done to

the  UK industrial establishment versus the resources devoted to their attack. By strict control of the British press, misdirection by feeding false information back to

Germany by British controlled, German spies, the actual damage to UK war production was minimized. If i recall, the Germans also missed going after the radar towers

too, this while the German press crowed about the “massive damage” to Britain and held out the promise for the Reich that ‘wonder weapons’ would turn the war and save

the Reich. What a delusion.

One thing was learned by the German effort: the viability of mobile rocket launchers. The Allied search for and bombing of rocket launch sites was not very successful. What

really did impinge on the V weapons work was the steady shrinking of the Reich, which necessitated frequent relocations of the equipment. That book i read about the V weapons program gives a practically week by week account of their movements.

Oh – lest we forget – the lives of thousands of slaves, living underground in the V weapons factories, whose lives were reckoned no more value than the  nuts and bolts of the

mechanical assembly.

These song lyrics by Tom Lehrer come to mind:

“When the rockets go up

  who cares where they come down.

That’s not my department,

Says Wehrner von Braun.”

To be fair, i just read the Wiki article on von Braun, before i let loose this post. He was what you would call, a “complex character”. I didn’t know that the Russkis, by using

agents in British uniforms, had tried to kidnap von Braun, or his later life religious conversion.

-Hue Mille