Chastise. Max Hastings. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Max Hastings
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Историческая литература
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008280543
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the RAF’s 1937–38 dream, of an assault upon Germany’s dams.

      The array of brass assembled at the MAP on the afternoon of 26 February 1943 was told that the chief of air staff had given his assent, or rather had issued an order, to proceed with immediate development of Upkeep. Portal wrote: ‘I think this is a good gamble.’ The reaction of Sir Charles Craven, who was also present, is unrecorded. He must have felt privately foolish, if not furious, following his ugly dressing-down of his designer four days earlier. What the CAS demanded, however, Vickers must seek to provide.

      Wallis’s commitment to Upkeep, by contrast, was total, and now confronted him with a dramatic challenge. At breakneck speed he must convert his theoretical concept into a viable bomb, while work was simultaneously rushed forward on building the modified Lancasters. Avro, the plane’s manufacturers, agreed to fit the necessary electrical release gear, along with strongpoints where the bomb doors must be removed, and hydraulic power for backspin pulleys. Vickers would meanwhile make protruding retainer arms for the Upkeeps, to be attached to the strongpoints; a rotational driving mechanism; and the bombs themselves. All the latter work would be carried out at Weybridge, with Avro dispatching a team to work on the Vickers site. Wallis promised to provide working drawings of the latest version of Upkeep within ten days. Craven expressed concern about whether a revolutionary weapon of such size could be machined within the necessary time-frame.

      Before the final decision, some minor obstacles had to be swept away. By coincidence Combined Operations, then headed by the frisky Lord Louis Mountbatten, was proposing an attack on the Möhne, which Mountbatten described as ‘one of the great strategic targets’. Special Operations Executive also suggested an assault by parachute saboteurs. Both bodies’ proposals were now quashed, fortunately for those who might have been charged with implementing them, in favour of what was designated Wallis’s ‘rolling bomb’. It would be the RAF which destroyed the dams of north-west Germany. Or nobody.

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