pdf - WHALE

With these thoughts in mind, we come to the final point. The
alert was canceled when the test was proven a failure. The question
is, what failed Was it the bomb itself The delivery system or
both
An answer lies, perhaps, in another curious news article that
appeared in the British press almost a year earlier, on Wednesday,
October 11, 1944, in the London Daily Mail:
BERLIN IS 'SILENT' 60 HOURS
STILL NO PHONES
STOCKHOLM, Tuesday
Berlin is still cut off from the rest of Europe to-night. The 60-
hours silence began on Sunday morning - and still there is no
explanation for the hold-up, which has now lasted longer than on any
previous occasion.
The Swedish Foreign Office is unable to ring up its Berlin
Legation.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the major crisis between the
Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party has come to a head and that
"tremendous events may be expected."
To-day's plane from Berlin to Stockholm arrived four hours late.
It carried only Germans, two of whom appeared to be high officials.
They looked drawn and pale, and when Swedish reporters approached
them they angrily thrust their way out of the Swedish Aero-Transport
offices, muttering: "Nothing we can say."
German papers arriving here on to-day's plane seem
extraordinarily subdued, with very small headlines.
It is pointed out, however, in responsible quarters that if the
stoppage were purely the technical result of bomb damage, as the
Germans claimed, it should have been repaired by now. 6
6 Walter Farr, "Berlin is 'Silent' 60 Hours: Still No Phones," London Daily
Mail, Wednesday, October 11, 1944, cited in Meyer and Mehner, Hitler und
die ,,Bombe" p. 81, emphasis added.
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