At the close of World War II, Allied forces faced frightening new
German secret weapons---buzz bombs, V-2s, and the first jet fighters.
When Hitler's war machine began to collapse, the race was on to
snatch these secrets before the Soviet Red Army found them. The last
battle of World War II, then, was not for military victory but for
the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders: The Race to
Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets Wolfgang Samuel assembles from
official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely
untold stories of the disarmament of the once mighty Luftwaffe and of
Operation Lusty---the hunt for Nazi technologies. In April 1945
American armies were on the brink of winning their greatest military
victory, yet America's technological backwardness was shocking when
measured against that of the retreating enemy. Senior officers,
including the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces "Hap" Arnold,
knew all too well the seemingly overwhelming victory was less than it
appeared. There was just too much luck involved in its outcome. Two
intrepid American Army Air Forces colonels set out to regain
America?s technological edge. One, Harold E. Watson, went after the
German jets; the other, Donald L. Putt, went after the Nazis'
intellectual capital---their world-class scientists. With the help of
German and American pilots, Watson brought the jets to America; Putt
persevered as well and succeeded in bringing the German scientists to
the Army Air Forces' aircraft test and evaluation center at Wright
Field. A young P-38 fighter pilot, Lloyd Wenzel, a Texan of German
descent then turned these enemy aliens into productive American
citizens---men who built the rockets that took America to the moon,
conquered the sound barrier with their swept wing aircraft designs,
and laid the foundation for America's civil and military aviation of
the future. American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's
Secrets details the contest won, a triumph that shaped America's
victories in the Cold War.
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