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magnetic proximity torpedoes. 22 At least one corroboration of this
strange encounter occurs in the BIOS report:
Vierling has heard of electrical homing devices for torpedoes and their
firing by a proximity effect. Torpedoes used magnetic fields varying at
about 500 cycles per sec. Torpedoes were built by AEG in Berlin.
Some work was done also at Gdynia. These torpedoes were reported to
have sunk 12 Destroyers in one engagement in Arctic waters. 23
C. Computers
The Allies, as is known, perfected early digital computing
machines during the war, which machines were instrumental in
breaking the "unbreakable" German Enigma machine's ciphers, but
also of incalculable value in assisting the Manhattan Project
engineers with difficult calculations needed for the atom bomb. In
some rarely encountered but sophisticated versions of the Allied
Legend, this constitutes another reason for the German failure to
develop truly long range rockets and, of course, the atom bomb.
But here too, the declassified reality is quite at odds with the
postwar spin.
A computing machine was used at Gottingen for researches in airplane
stability and ballistics. Machine could solve equations mentioned in
two or three minutes with errors less than 3%. Only one such machine
has been made. It uses ordinary vacuum tubes, a multiplying principle
and two cathode ray rubes, one of which has a spiral scan. One tube
draws the curve which is the solution and the other indicates the
complex roots of the solution. 24
The Gottingen computer, however, appears not to have been the
only computer designed and built in the Third Reich. Indeed, since
the reunification, reports and actual photographs have surfaced of
an enormous, "Eniac" sized computer built by none other than the
22
Q.v. Henry Stevens, The Last Battalion (German Research Project).
23
"Production and further Investigation of Wesch Anti-Radar Material,"
British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee 1/549, Report 132, p. 63,
emphasis added.
24
Ibid.
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