From: bx916@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ross W. Starkey)
Subject: V-1s with nerve-gas warheads?
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:51:41 GMT


From bx916@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ross W. Starkey)



A little while ago I read a book by Ian Slater called FORBIDDEN ZONE.

The book is a novel which claims to be based on historical fact.  I was
wondering if the novel was really based on fact, or if it is a work of
fiction.

Slater claims that on June 26 1944, 240 V-1s with nerve-gas warheads were
transported to the French Coast after being loaded with Tabun nerve gas,
produced by I. G. Farben, in a town in Silesia called Dyrhenfurth.  They
were to be used against the Allied beachheads in Normandy, as well as
against Southern Britain.  Future plans included the launching of
nerve-gas carrying V-1s against the Eastern United States (from U-boat).

Slater claims that the V-1s were being prepared for launch in a subterranean
tunnel, parked nosecone to tail and fully fueled, when a single British
agent (actually an American called David Adam) was able to slap plastic 
explosive on the first one, which started a chain reaction destroying them 
all!

Before any more nerve-gas V-1s were ready for launch, the launch sites had 
been overrun.

The war ended before any U-boats were equipped to launch V-1s against the
United States (from what I understand).

The book contains an epilogue which tells what happened to the main characters
of the story after the war.  It claims that David Adam was "recommended for
the Victoria Cross... but could not receive this decoration because of a 
time-honored stipulation that written eyewitness reports must accompany any
such recommendation."

I was just wondering if any of this was true, or believed to be true.

I was also wondering about a fantastic armored train described in the novel,
EISENBAHN PANZERZUG 81.  Did this train actually exist?

Incidentally, the author is an Australian who was a "Defense Officer for the
Australian Joint Intelligence Bureau" who has a Ph.D. in Political Science,
according to the "about the author" page in the back of the book.

The author prefaces the novel with an "author's note" which reads:


"This novel is based on fact.  While some of the names in the story will be 
recognized by most who are at all familiar with the Nazi hierarchy, lesser 
known characters are fictional, for, as with most stories of closely guarded 
secrets in Hitler's Germany, so many of those who could have testified to the 
outside world about the full horror of Hitler's plans against the Allies were 
tracked down and savagely murdered by the various branches of the Nazis' 
secret police.  ---Ian Slater"

Again, I just want to know whether an attept was, in fact, made to use
nerve-gas against the Allies.  I would think that if Hitler had decided to
use it against us, he would certainly also have ordered it used against the
Soviets...
 


-- 
Whom first, whom later         No one is fool enough to choose war instead of
did you kill in battle,        peace - in peace sons bury fathers, but in war
Patroklos, when the gods       fathers bury sons.  It must have been heaven's
were calling deathward? HOMER  will that this should happen...      HERODOTUS

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