Death-Rays as Life-Savers in the Third Reich - Pedro Waloschek ...

Germany’s few specialists in the field of magnetism, and so it was clear
that he was the right man for the job of developing a Rheotron. In
May 1943, however, he was still heaving rubble about.
Schmellenmeier found out (or perhaps intended) that other than
Gans there was only one other expert in the field that could be
considered for the apparatus’ calculations, and this was Richard
Becker, a Professor at Göttingen University at the time. However, as
Schmellenmeier noted in a letter, Becker was unable to take on the
work due to other commitments. Becker was a party to the Gans
affair, and allegedly his time was fully taken up with ‘projects essential
to the war effort’. Klaus Gottstein remembers that in conversation with
Schmellenmeier it was not Becker but Gerlach who was mentioned as
the alternative to Gans. Nevertheless, Gerlach was just as busy with
‘tasks essential to the war effort’ as Becker was, and this in the end is
what was important.
The development and manufacture of Rheotrons/Betatrons was an
impeccable project from the points of view of science and economics.
However, the authorities in charge of this sort of projects were
somewhat preoccupied with other affaires in the spring of 1943. But
Schmellenmeier needed financial support for his project. So he made
up a case and claimed that, “the expected radiation could be of
great significance to the conduct of the war”.
Schmellenmeier drafted an exposé in which he argued that, “the
bundled, highly penetrant radiation could be used to pre-ionise
the engines of aircraft, which would cause the ignition to cease
functioning, the machines would be unable to continue their flight
and would therefore come into the flak area”. This claim was not
new. The British inventor Harry Grindell-Matthews, for instance, had
already formulated something similar in 1934 and had even
demonstrated examples with a somewhat questionable ‘beam’. Nicola
Tesla had also suggested that aircraft could be shot down by stopping
their engine’s ignition. For these kind of effects, a relatively small
amount of radiation was required.
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