This story comes from Antony Beevor's "The Second World War". The Polish resistance found a V2 rocket that had crashed in the Polish marshes. The resistance got to the V2 before the Germans, took it apart and spirited it away. The resistance contacted their Allied support in Britain, and a specially modified C47 transport was flown into Poland to fly the V2 rocket back to England for examination by Allied scientists.
That must have been one awful hairy flight. From Britain to Poland was just about the limit of a Gooney bird's range, even with extra fuel tanks. The flight path either had to cross Germany, which was crawling with fighters and antiaircraft guns, or fly around Germany, presumable over the Baltic sea. Find a landing strip, big enough for a C47, in the dark, with no electronic navigation aids. Then they had to get the V2 rocket inside the Gooney bird, a tight squeeze. And they had to find gasoline in Nazi occupied Poland to refuel the Gooney bird for the return trip. And get off the ground before the Germans arrived to arrest them all.
All in all, flying a B17 to Schweinfurt, or a B24 to Ploesti would be less dangerous.
No comments:
Post a Comment