Please Take Care of Bethany

“The Final Mission”

  You cannot grow up without a fascination for wartime history, not when you have a background like mine. Dad, Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, must have been involved in so many bombing raids, but Sofia is the only one he makes direct reference to in his letters home. For what reason I do not know, and I understand that after all these years now that I will never know this answer. Trying to find out all about the missing pieces of what is a fascinating jigsaw of a man’s final moments, led me to a final story, one that none of us had known previously. I had realised many years ago the controversy caused by the British and Allied strategic bombing campaigns and had always assumed this was the reason why Dad and so many thousands of others, had no memorial, why Dad had no service medals or other written authoritative accounts praising the actions of the Thompson Bomber Crew. These three men had, as we were told, changed the course of the war. Why on earth did we still know so little about them? What really happened that day? I thought about it continually. The more I found out about my father and of his personal involvement in the war, the more answers I needed. When one was given, always without fail, it led me on to a further question.

  It was all this latter curiosity that would lead me to the final answer. My research and my letters, the many letters that I wrote to the few, but still living, former Bomber Command veterans; writing to them to ask for knowledge of my father. It was an internet forum that finally unveiled the truths to long unanswered questions. After Doreen died I had so much time to myself. Loneliness creeps in very fast, like a cold frost, and after a time I tried to go out and meet new people. Just to get out of the flat, that endless climbing of the walls, and to make friends again.

  In 2005, I joined the Liverpool Veterans of WW2 Association and they were the golden goose. They had so much information for me. The story about my father as told to my mother Evelina back in 1956 was the known by all at the time version of events; they, the old guys, who would sit at the bar and just drink beer all day as they hand-rolled their cigarettes. They knew nothing more than this, this original and official version of events. The forum, the forum online that they had recommended to me, was the final link. The forum, Friends of The Forgotten Heroes of Bomber Command WW2 - as it was so named. I placed the following ad under a thread called ‘Searching for The Forgotten’. It read:

  “Brian Josef- Benjamin Wilkinson born Liverpool 1945 to Evelina, seeking knowledge of his father, also Brian. Can anybody with knowledge of Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson please make contact? Flew with Bomber Command North Africa and Southern Italy WW2. Involved in bombing raids of Sofia, Bulgaria, as a rear gunner. Later flew on a final ill-fated mission, a B17 American Bomber. Pilot known to be American, an unknown Texan with French bombardier named Pierre. Aircraft re-named the Thompson. Crew nickname was the Magnificent Three. Any help is most appreciated.”

  And then, three days later, on January the 12th 2005 at 4.16 pm precisely, a reply came. It read;

  “Far too much information there lad. All you needed to say was ‘Bull’s-Eye’. Best God-damned gunner in the sky, wasn’t a lad at base who wouldn’t fly with ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Brian.’ What can I do for you son?

  Yours Albert.”

  I talked for a while to this old chap about my dad’s wartime history. I heard many stories that confirmed just what I had read in so many of Dad’s private letters to Mum. I told him all about Dad’s letters before I finally posed the unanswered question. “What was Dad’s final mission?” I asked. A reply soon came;

  “Not a bloody clue lad but I know a man who will; Stanley Jack, a Londoner living in The Midlands now, suppose he couldn’t help that bit. Very old mind, in a care home now just like the rest of us sad old buggers. I’ll do what I can. You won’t find him on the computer, wants nothing to do with them. Back soon, fingers crossed. Consider the mission accepted.

  Yours Albert.”

  It felt that weeks had passed until I finally heard back from old Albert. In reality it was only eleven days. He had contacted Stanley Jack and had messaged me in private. There was Stanley’s home address in front of me, a hospice on the outskirts of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. I worried about this, a hospice address, was Stanley dying? I didn’t want to trouble a dying man but equally, and I know quite selfishly, I had a sense of urgency. Time was limited. So I wrote to Stanley Jack immediately and, to avoid any further and unnecessary loss of such valuable time, I invited myself down to Wolverhampton for a cup of tea.

  I remember his first words to me as I walked in. “Got your letter my boy. Well there’s a thing, a double of the man himself, spittin’ bloody image you are,” he said to me. “Sit yourself down, just watching the race.” So there I sat for over an hour watching the race, and the next one and so on; horse racing. The room was comfortable, a window over the garden. Benches placed around rose-beds with older people and families enjoying the sunshine. “Don’t look out there son, nothing out there but niggers, all niggers now son, whole bloody country’s niggers,” he would go on to say to me. Not the better of first impressions for a policeman, I thought.

  And then, after the racing, with the telly now finally turned off, the conversation began. “Outside now, come on let’s go. I need a fag. You have got some fags lad haven’t you?” he uttered forcibly. I couldn’t help but see the oxygen cylinder to the left hand side of Stanley’s bed and looked back at him quite astonished. Though, outside we went, him in this old grey NHS wheelchair, and we both sat beside the pond, a pond full of fish to which Stanley again added, “Don’t be looking in there son, niggers all of ’em.” Commenting on what was obviously quite a fine and rather expensive collection of mixed Koi carp.

  Just like my father before me, I hand-rolled my own baccy, and I rolled him a cigarette. Stanley’s hands were clearly too fragile and shaky to do so for himself. They wouldn’t allow him to smoke inside and without family visits he was quite stuck. The nursing staff were very kind to him, he told me, but they were expressly forbidden to give patients cigarettes. He remarked that he thought the world had gone crazy, that he had survived World War II, and here he was now, not allowed to have a “bloody cigarette”. I didn’t ask why he was there, at the hospice. He seemed to think the only reason was that somehow he had driven his wife crazy back at home, and she’d now got him out of her way. I knew that there had to be so much more to the story than this, but I didn’t pry further.

  Despite it being January, it wasn’t too chilly outside in the garden, in fact a crisp but warm sunny afternoon. Stanley wasn’t too

  quick off the mark in telling me what I had driven all this way to hear, and soon wanted to go back in. Not for long mind, he clearly had other plans, but he wanted to show me something. He directed me to a beside cabinet, lower left hand drawer, a photo album contained within. An old fashioned grey card cover and the title ‘The Boys’ written across it. “First page lad,” he shouted to me as he beamed me a smile.

  There on the front page, the very first picture I saw, there was Evelina my mother. Sat there on the side of a bed and with her skirt pulled up, not too risqué but just enough to display a silk stocking top to the right crossed thigh. My face dropped and I turned to look back at him. “No worries there lad. It’s a photo of a photo your dad took of her. Gorgeous woman your mother, never met her personally but felt like I was married to her myself,” was the reply he gave to my expression of total amazement. Just like old Mr Parker had said, it seemed that not just everybody in Liverpool, but now everybody in the RAF had wanted to catch the affections of my mother.

  He explained to me that the photo was taken from another photo that my father had kept beside him in his original Wellington aircraft. Stanley had taken a photograph of the original picture. It then dawned on me just how well Stanley must have known my father to be able to do such a thing. Had he actually flown with him? I had so many questions but didn’t like to just ask them without the opportunity having first arisen. Stanley was clearly very ill and I didn’t want him to
feel that I had only come to bother him with my own selfish inquiries.

  Then we were off yet again. “Bring the baccy,” he said. So me, a 94-year-old terminally ill war veteran, and an old metal NHS wheelchair went to The Nag’s Head, only a short walk from his room at Willow Drive Hospice and we were both soon there together in the pub. There were two pubs on Willow Drive that I had noticed but this one was the only choice given to me. Not really any choice at all. “Don’t wanna go in that one son. Ain’t nothing in there but niggers,” was by now quite the predictable comment from this bigoted old school racist.

  I wanted to challenge his racism, this old age bigot that I had found myself in the company of today, but I couldn’t. A war veteran, a terminally ill one at that, a very ill 94-year-old man who had known my father. He, Stanley, using this grossly offensive word that I had heard used previously and frequently within my dad’s own personal letters. He was just of a generation Stanley Jack, his behaviour quite unacceptable but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of understanding. There wasn’t anything I was going to be able to say to him now that would alter his behaviour. He just wasn’t going to understand.

  All of the cigarettes were on me, as was all of the beer that day; in total eight pints over a period of three hours that he had, by now, drank. However; the conversation soon proved to be priceless. A conversation for which I would have paid ten thousand pounds. The conversation in which I learnt so much about my dad. A conversation that told me the following.

  Dad had originally been based in North Africa and had bombed Italy extensively throughout the early years of the war. On 3rd September 1943, the Allies had invaded mainland Italy. He had then transferred to operations based there and had therefore subsequently been involved in the bombing raids of Bulgaria. It was in Italy that Dad and Stanley had first met. It also transpired that Stanley wasn’t his real name after all, but a nickname he had earned for himself, just like my father had during the war, from other servicemen in Bomber Command. Jack was his first name; his last name was Shirley. I could fully appreciate why and after the end of the war, he had stuck to using the name I had known him as, Stanley Jack.

  He flew with Dad on many occasions. Stanley was a pilot. During one particular bombing run they had been shot down. They had been attacked by three German fighters that evening and Father had managed single handedly to take all three of these attacking fighters out of the air. They had received considerable damage. The Wimpy as Stanley called it (the Wellington was popularly known as the Wimpy by service personnel, after J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons) was in critical condition. He (the pilot) and the co-pilot and navigator were unhurt; the Bombardier was seriously injured as was another gunner. The fifth member of the crew, also a gunner, had already been killed. “Can’t do anything about it now son. He was gone, clean and quick,” Stanley coldly told me.

  The crew had bailed out over Italy just 30 miles from base. The hydraulics all shot up and quite useless. My father and the navigator (a man who Stanley had only referred to in the conversation as Arnold), had parachuted the injured crew to safety whilst the two pilots had fought hard together to maintain the control and altitude of the wounded aircraft. They had also ’chuted the body of the dead gunner. The remaining three had then jumped at low altitude after a desperate bid to save the Wellington had failed.

  “And there we were son, back on terra-firma again, only your dad wasn’t quite with us yet,” he laughed. I looked at him agonisingly and imagined my father to be still stuck inside the plane. Then he said to me, “In the bloody tree son, your dad had got himself all caught up, the useless sod, stuck in a bloody tree. That’s why they call me Stanley lad. I was the only one of us that still had a knife to cut him down from there; a Stanley knife it was. That’s how your dad got his name too, the name ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, for bringing those three bastards down all on his own.”

  Mum had never told me anything of this story and Stanley Jack assured me that she wouldn’t have known about it. He told me that all of the crews would never tell their wives and girlfriends of such things. “War is war son and you leave it at the back-door,” was his humbling response. The two injured crew that had been bailed-out by my father and Arnold had both survived. The body of the gunner was later recovered by local villagers and remains buried to this day in the small village cemetery of Carpi, Modena Province. His name was, and will always remain to be known; Gunner Joshua Petterson aged 23 years. Of the remaining crew, they are all now long deceased except the pilot, Stanley Jack.

  I reached into my top left-hand-side jacket pocket and pulled out that letter, the last letter that Dad had ever written to my mother, Evelina. Somehow the timing just seemed to be appropriate. Stanley read it quietly. I know he read through it more than once. “Sofia changed a lot of us son. The war was nearly won and this just didn’t seem to be right,” he said, and I saw a single tear drop from him before he quickly wiped his eye. “It all brings so much back to me now, I watched your dad leave that night with the B17 on February 26th 1945 at 22.30 hours precisely. All that the man in the black bowler hat told your mother in 1956 is correct but…” and then he paused.

  “Do you know about your granddad son?” he asked me. “All I knew of my grandfather, Papa Wilkinson as Dad called him, is that he died in France during the First World War,” - I replied. “Oh he did indeed,” replied Stanley. “We killed him you know, not the Hun.” “We?” I queried. “I don’t understand what you mean.” “We,” he stated firmly once again. “The British. We shot him for desertion of duty. He was executed by his own side,” Stanley explained to me cautiously.

  Stanley didn’t have any further details other than to say that this story was commonly known to be correct back at Bomber Command. Dad had told him personally that this was the truth and that Dad had somehow thereafter felt the need to prove himself. Grandfather Wilkinson had suffered from shell-shock apparently, and had been quite ill. He had left the front and had been found later hiding in a French village. “Sorry son to have to tell you this,” Stanley softly uttered. “It was never necessary. Cold blooded murder of our own, that’s all it was. Why your dad even gave it a second thought is beyond me,” he said. “It wasn’t just what had happened in Poland to your mother’s side of the family that had made him volunteer that night. It was also something he held much deeper down inside. Take me home now son. I’ve ‘ad too much drink and I’ve said far too much I know. Take me home and I’ll put the kettle on.” We talked about what had really happened to granddad on the way back. I had absolutely no memory or recollection of anybody in the family ever talking about Granddad Wilkinson’s fate. The penny had never dropped. Did anybody else know anything about this secret within the family? Why hadn’t they told me? I just grew up believing he had been killed during the First World War in France. When I ponder on this thought now, I suppose that nobody had ever lied to me about this. Then again, they certainly hadn’t told me the whole truth either, had they? Perhaps they thought it would upset me in some way.

  Thereafter, when back inside the warmth of Stanley’s own room (after three hours of drunken wartime conversation down at The Nag’s Head), I asked him directly; “What was Dads final mission Stanley? Please tell me what you know?”

  He told me how Dad and he were the best of friends, confidants to each other. How he and the boys that night had gone to a bar and drunk heavily, all except Brian who was prepared to fly. Stanley and the other boys that evening had gone upstairs to seek comfort from, as he put it, the young Italian girls. Brian had not gone with them, he was adamant of this fact. “Your dad would never do such a thing,” he told me again and again, and talked about how my dad was so completely and utterly devoted to my mother.

  He hadn’t seen Dad leave the bar that evening. He had left quietly and quite unnoticed much earlier on. Though, they had all watched Father’s plane, the Thompson, take off at 22.30 hours that very same evening. They had all returned drunkenly to base for evening curfew. “I’ll
tell you the truth Brian now. Your father would want that, I know,” he said in a very calm and almost by now sober manner. “Roll me another cigarette then,” he asked of me. “There’s nothing those fuckers can do about it now I don’t suppose anyway. Top-secret my arse. You couldn’t keep a secret like that quiet down at Bomber Command,” he said, “That’s the truth lad and your father had already told me everything before he flew that night, regardless.” The Thompson had taken off as scheduled on February 26th, 1945 at 22.30 hours precisely, from the base in Foggia, Southern Italy. The crew, known as the Magnificent Three had been hand-picked because of their military expertise. It was a joint Allied forces mission of the upmost importance and secrecy. The Thompson had left Italy that evening en route for Soviet occupied Bulgaria, and to deliver a single massive payload explosive.

  I was told that the Soviet forces, our new wartime allies, were to believe that the bombing mission had been conducted by German aircraft and that the plane had been subsequently shot down by the British over France. Two German scientists, now working as captives in a recently Soviet acquired former Nazi research facility in North Eastern Bulgaria, had supplied covert information. They had confirmed military intelligence gathered from the original radio communications known to be from Major Frank Thompson. This had been crucial information obtained from partisan resistance fighters before communication had been lost with them on the ground on the 23rd May 1944. A weapon of such magnitude had been developed; an atomic weapon that had the Soviet Union not have invaded Bulgaria in 1944, would have most certainly been used against us by the Germans. A weapon that had been just months away from field use and commission.

  Although no longer a direct threat to the Allies at the time, this former Bulgarian-based German research facility could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Soviets. The Thompson’s mission was to deliver the bomb onto the target, to bomb the facility and in doing so the Soviets were to believe that all German research personnel had been killed in the airstrike. The Thompson was to land prior to the attack and pick up both scientists. These now allied friendly German scientists and at a secret pop-up airfield constructed for the single use mission purpose within rural, Soviet occupied, Bulgaria. Having landed and collected the two additional passengers as covertly organised, it would take off and thereafter go on to destroy the facility behind them. Many lives would be lost alongside the technology housed within. “All we wanted to steal that night was the brains behind it all,” Stanley said.

  Ironic as it sounds, our once German enemy was now going to assist us in defending ourselves from the future attack of our now wartime allies, the Soviet Union. The plane had been stripped to allow for the massive increased weight of this single bomb, the additional crew of two and one ton of aluminium piping. The aluminium piping, rods of approximately three feet in length which all but filled the plane, were to be dropped individually and slowly by parachute throughout the mission. This system was known to defuse the effectiveness of both early Soviet and German radar systems alike. The two German scientists responsible for the creation of this atomic weapon were to be smuggled on board the Thompson to the safety and future containment of the British mainland.

  “The fact that the Thompson crashed during her return at Dover can only be confirmation that this mission must have proved successful,” Stanley confirmed.

  I sat bemused by what I had heard from Stanley and was completely lost for words. “Before you go,” he said, “Just one more thing. Pass me that photo album of mine, the photos of your father and the boys again?” He opened the front page and there with his pen he wrote inside, “Upon the time having come, I give this album to Brian J. B. Wilkinson of Liverpool, son of Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, the best rear gunner in the sky and to him I owe my life.”

  So there I was. I had just been told how my father had saved the world from nuclear obliteration and within the same sentence he, Stanley, then says to me, “Before you go.” I would most definitely be arranging to chat with old Stanley again and very soon about this rather important Bomber Command revelation but the words, “Before you go” intimated to me that Stanley was by now tired of conversation and clearly needed to sleep. “Where there’s war you find heroes and where you find heroes there’re secrets,” he said. A wartime revelation of such magnitude that now appeared to be so just a matter of fact for him.

  Stanley Jack died peacefully on the 4th February, soon after we first met. The wartime photo album, as promised, was given to me at Stanley’s funeral later that week. It contained many photographs of Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson that had never previously been seen by me or my family before.

  Had Nazi Germany really been that close to developing an atomic bomb? At the out-break of the World War II, Germany, under the leadership of the fascist dictator Adolf Hitler, had maintained a significant advantage over the Allies in regard to innovative weapons technology. These secret German weapons, as they were known to the Allied Forces, were referred to at the time and back in Germany as, the Wonder Weapons. This was not a coincidental advantage. Pre-war Germany was an extremely and technologically advanced nation with a firm technological history, born out of its military innovation, such military innovation that led to her resurgence as one of technological superiority once again toward the end of the war.

  Hitler had been elected on the back of his firm and declared mandate to go to war. He did, however, win by only a narrow margin. Massive financial budgets were released to his military officials alongside an unlimited supply of natural resources and raw materials within a national offensive to prepare for such a war. By the outbreak of WW2, the German military machine was already well equipped with the most advanced weapons available to them.

  The Allies at this same time, noticeably the British, were not prepared to return to war and as a nation were crippled by post-WW1 pacifism and the human losses of the previous conflict. The First World War had been huge and incalculable; the will to fight Germany once again was long gone. Nothing remained of a viable British defence budget and any realistic military response to this new rising threat of post-World War One fascist Germany was inconceivable. Stalin’s Soviet centralist totalitarian regime had also failed. Failed not only to support the free thinking of Soviet Russian military and technological innovation, but had also actively repressed it. These combined factors all added together to allow Germany, during the period 1933 until 1939 to maintain a significant military advantage over its enemies.

  Hitler’s over confident attitude and assurances of success during the early stages of the war led him to make new wartime budgetary cuts. These financial cuts were made on all new weaponry and any such new weaponry that would not be expected to be operational or to be available for use in the field beyond an eighteen month time period. This short-sighted decision and the subsequent gross lack of German military investment, only resulted in those previous militarily and technologically advanced gains that had been made to be soon and swiftly lost. This was all to the struggling Allies’ full advantage.

  The advantage was only regained by Germany through massive re-investment toward the end of the war. But all at the cost of immediately existing and readily available resources being taken away from the desperately and much needed mass-production of mature field weaponry. Germany’s sudden and desperate re-investment in new weapons’ technology, though producing some impressive results, had now come far too late to save her. By this point in time Germany, now at war with the USA also, was all but in name, already defeated.

  These German technological innovations included the Arado 234 - the world's first jet bomber, a highly advanced single-seated bomber with automated pilot ejection seat. Fitted with twin jet-engines and breakthrough technology in regard to aviation stream-lining, it was quite simply too fast for the Allies to intercept. The Arado was also fitted with the first rear-facing, though at the same time, pilot-aimed machine gun. Jet fighter technology also included the Messerschmitt 262, the world's first jet fighter a
nd used predominantly as a bomber interceptor. Its sister plane, the Messerschmitt 163 was the world's first rocket-powered fighter, again an incredibly fast and extremely agile short-range defence bomber interceptor. Resembling more the characteristics of a re-usable anti-aircraft missile, it could scramble at immediate notice and counter-attack Allied bombers at speeds exceeding 600 mph.

  It would attack without prior warning, exhaust its very limited fuel supply quickly and then glide back to base. Even this unpowered gliding speed was still far too fast to allow any Allied bomber crew or accompanying fighter escort to catch it. It is noted that one single German pilot using such a 163 was able to shoot down three B-17 heavy bombers, this consecutively during one single sortie. Allied bomber crews, those who came face-to-face with it in air-combat, were thus considered to be nothing less than sitting ducks.

  The Heinkel 162 was another jet fighter but one designed to be mass-produced by a minimally skilled workforce using readily available and non-strategic materials and further to be piloted by fresh young pilots with minimal training. Just 69 days after Heinkel was given the production go-ahead, the 162 made its first successful test flight.

  Other advanced German aircraft of the time included the Dornier 335. Unlike typical twin-engine aircraft fitted with propellers (one on each wing), the Dornier fighter had one propeller mounted to the central engine front-nose position and a secondary propeller mounted at the aircraft’s tail. It could climb at a rate of speed far great than any other propeller powered fighter available. The Junkers 87, more commonly referred to as the ‘Stuka’ was the world's first efficient precision bomber. To this day it is still considered to be the best dive bomber ever manufactured throughout WW2. It played a key role in the German Blitzkrieg victories.

  Germany also produced the first militarily operational helicopters, notably the Flettner 282. This was a small maritime reconnaissance helicopter. Another, the Focke Achgelis 223 was a utility helicopter used extensively during the battle of the Mediterranean. Due to successful Allied bombardment however, Germany’s helicopter production remained low.

  The Schrage Musik was an upward-facing recoilless machine gun and the Sondergerate, its directly downward firing equivalent. Both guns were installed on many fighter aircraft. The guns were automatically triggered by photoelectric sensors when flying under the target bomber's night-time shadow or at the targeted tanks on the ground below.

  Other German firsts included guided weapons systems such as the Henschel Hs-293. On August 27th 1943, during its first operational use, it successfully sank a British warship. The Hs-293 was a radio-controlled guided missile that had a 500kg warhead. Over 2300 of such missiles were used with deadly accuracy throughout the final years of the war. They were launched mid-air by the bomber crew’s bombardier.

  The first guided bomb, the Ruhrstahl Fritz-X was responsible for the sinking of the Italian warship Roma on the 9th September 1943. Comparable to today’s modern bunker-busters, the two radio-controlled Fritx-X bombs (weighing over 3460 lbs each) hit the 45,000 ton vessel so hard that it sunk immediately. Only 20 per-cent of Fritz-X bomb weight was actually explosive material, the remaining weight being solely solid metal giving it the ability to pierce even the hardest of battleship amour known and available to the Allies at the time.

  The V-1 rocket was the world's first cruise missile. This jet-powered rocket was fitted with an 1875 lb warhead and could travel to any destination within a range of 125 miles. Launched from fixed ground positions, these mobile launchers were very hard to identify and find. Only occasionally were they ever launched mid-air from bombers. A piloted suicide attack version of the V-1 rocket was also developed but never actually used in combat. The later developed V-2 became the first long range ballistic missile, delivering a 2150 lb warhead to a range of 200 miles. Unlike the cruising altitude of the V-1, the V-2 ballistic missile would fall directly downward from extreme altitude and at speeds exceeding 2500 mph.

  Unlike today’s modern nuclear submarines, the diesel-powered equivalents of World War II were designed to submerge only when required to attack. They were required, out of technical necessity, to spend the vast amount of their time on the sea surface. The German Type 21 however, was the first developed to be able to submerge throughout its entire patrol.

  With most impressive submerge and resurface speeds and a battery-powered range of over 300 miles, it was required to re-surface only to use its diesel engines for necessary battery recharge. This resurfacing and recharge technique only required a minimal snorkel type exhaust system to be raised to break the water surface and not the resurfacing of the entire submarine. It used advanced SONAR to target allied shipping whilst remaining submerged and without having to raise a periscope.

  It was also fitted with a secondary electric motor especially for silent combat running and also air-conditioning systems. It is said that the Type 21 could reload its missile tubes faster than any other submarine. A later development, the Type 23 was a smaller version of the Type 21 and developed specifically as an attack submarine weighing just 250 tons. Manned only by a crew of 14 submariners, it was designed for use in low level waters and coastal tidal areas. The Type 23 could complete a full dive in less than ten seconds if required.

  Years in advance of its time was also a stealth type submarine with a painted coating that made surfaced German submarines almost invisible to infra-red night time detection. The coating was also an absorption layer capable of absorbing Allied RADAR waves, this coupled with the first use of electrically powered torpedoes that did not leave bubble traces or streams in the water behind them. These older and dated torpedo traces were often used by the Allies to detect the position of an attacking sub.

  Other notable German advances in war technology included radio navigation, the forefather of the modern GPS systems had been used by bomber crews since the beginning of World War II. German bombers could efficiently navigate their way to their targets using this new system during their complete darkness night-time raids. The system operated on fixed radio transmitters and radio receivers installed within the bombers super-structure – an equivalent to which the Allied forces did not develop until much later in the war.

  The German army were also issued with the Sturmgewehr 44 - the world's first assault rifle. At the time of issue this gun was equivalent to the technology of a modern M-16 and AK-47, it being a practical compromise between the basic field rifle and the sub-machine gun but now combining the combat advantages of both. The German army had use of the first synthetic fuel, a replacement to the traditional reliance on petroleum based products; but one which despite massive quantity of production plants involved in production process, proved to be far more expensive. It was consequently proven economically unviable for mass manufacture.

  And now to end this post-war chapter of mine and on a much more terrifying note. Germany was also the first country in the world to develop chemical weapons: this being three defined types of nerve gas. They were tabun gas in 1936, sarin gas later in 1938 and finally soman gas during 1944. They were all far more lethal than any previously known or previously used.

  Unlike mustard gas, which would burn away at human skin tissue, these new nerve gases behaved more akin to snake venom by paralysing the essential muscles required for breathing. The Allied forces were oblivious to the existence of this most vile and horrific secret German weapon and had no knowledge until the end of the war that German artillery forces had already been fully equipped with it.

  Germany on the other hand wrongly presumed that we, the Allies, already possessed chemical weapons which were equal to the

  power and destruction of their own. Winston Churchill publicly announced to Hitler that should Germany ever use chemical warfare against us, then he would in retaliation “Rain down the entire British stockpile.” It was this false sense of the mutually assured destruction of both nations that prevented Germany from using them in combat.