Watson's Whizzers

 

They called themselves WHIZZERS because they were whizzing around the German countryside in German Me 262 jet fighters.  Watson's Whizzers is the complex story of the meticulously planned and executed disarmament of the Luftwaffe after its defeat in the spring of 1945, and the retrieval and transfer to the United States of Germany's advanced aeronautical technology and world-class scientists. Technology so superior that it would in short measure change the look of United States air forces. Although General Spaatz in May 1945 had under his command 17,000 planes of all kinds, the largest air armada ever assembled, they were of little future use. The future was about swept wing aircraft flying at supersonic speeds, or close to it: the incomparable Boeing B-47 jet bomber and its successor the eight jet B-52; the North American F-86 fighter and its supersonic successor the F-100 Supersaber were the immediate results of the technology transfer and secured America's future in the darkest days of the Cold War. Watson's Whizzers is about those who made it all happen. Two Army Air Force colonels in particular, Watson and Putt, used every wile and ruse available to overcome immense obstacles in their efforts to bring home the "bacon".  Colonel Harold Watson flying the incomparable Arado 234 jet reconnaissance aircraft said, "I knew there was nothing on the drawing boards at Wright Field that resembled this airplane."  Colonel Donald Putt was diligently working away at Voelkenrode in late April 1945, the newly discovered German research center near Brunswick in the British Zone of Occupation. At night he brought in a small fleet of bombers turned into transports and under the noses of his British hosts secretly shipped sensitive laboratory equipment back to the United States.
 
Watson's Whizzers is about people: young P-47 pilots who suddenly found themselves flying German Me 262 jets in the company of some of Germany's best test pilots; a young German speaking P-38 pilot, a Texan, becomes a key figure in a secret project called Paperclip and finds himself running a camp of German scientists in America's heartland. America's technological revival after World War II did not happen by accident, it was due to young men with vision who knew their country's future was at stake and never gave up even when the greatest obstacle at times was their own government. This is a largely untold story based on official Air Force records and the words of the men who made it all happen.