pdf - WHALE

Wehrmacht (OKW). 10
own words:
At this point, it is best to cite Romersa's
There were four of us: my two attendants, a man with worker's
clothes, and I. "We will see a test of the disintegration bomb. 11 It is the
most powerful explosive that has yet been developed. Nothing can
withstand it," said one of them. He hardly breathed. He glanced at his
watch and waited until noon, the hour for the experiment. Our
observation post was a kilometer from the point of the explosion. "We
must wait here," the man with the worker's clothes ordered, "until this
evening. When it is dark we may leave. The bomb gives off deathly
rays, of utmost toxicity. its effective area is much larger than the most
powerful conventional bomb. Around 1.5 kilometers...."
Around 4:00 PM, in the twilight, shadows appeared, running
toward our bunker. They were soldiers, and they had on a strange type
of "diving suit". They entered and quickly shut the door. "Everything
is kaput," one of them said, as he removed his protective clothing. We
also eventually had to put on white, coarse, fibrous cloaks. I cannot say
what material this cloak was made of, but I had the impression that it
could have been asbestos, the headgear had a piece of mica-glass 12 in
front of the eyes.
Having donned this clothing, the observation party then left the
bunker and made its way to ground zero:
The houses that I had seen only an hour earlier had disappeared,
broken into little pebbles of debris, as we drew nearer ground zero, 13
the more fearsome was the devastation. The grass had the same color
as leather, the few trees that still stood upright had no more leaves. 14
There are peculiarities of Romersa's account that one must
mention, if this were the test of nuclear bomb. First, some of the
blast damage described is typical for a nuclear weapon: sheering of
trees, obliteration of structures, and so on. The protective clothing
10
Meyer and Mehner, Hitler und die ,,Bombe", p. 64.
11
"Auflosungsbombe".
12
"Glimmerglas".
13
"Explosionspunkt".
14
Luigi Romersa, private telephone interview with Edgar Meyer and
Thomas Mehner, Hitler und die ,,Bombe", pp. 62-66, my translation from the
German.
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