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KNOBEL: What! It does an easy 500 as a reconnaissance aircraft.

KAMMEYER: Opinions vary considerably. In July last year one man stated that it had a speed of 450 and another said it did 400 or 420, whilst a third said it did 380.

KNOBEL: That’s quite wrong. Have you seen the aircraft in flight?

KAMMEYER: Yes, I have seen it in the air.³⁶²

KNOBEL: I am absolutely convinced that it does at least 500 as a reconnaissance aircraft, and I’m also convinced that it can do 500 as a bomber.³⁶³

This conversation took place six months before the He 177 was commissioned for battle, but German soldiers were already engaged in lively debate about technical details like its top speed. The POWs’ naïve enthusiasm for technology sometimes led them to formulate exaggerated expectations for new pieces of military hardware. The English would be “scared to death” of the He 177. It was “the most amazing thing so far produced” with “heavy armament and great speed.”³⁶⁴

The He 177 was considered a miracle weapon, and rumors abounded as to the feats it had already achieved. Some POWs even claimed it had flown across the Atlantic. Midshipman Knobel had heard in mid-1942 that the plane had flown from the Luftwaffe’s test airstrip in Rechlin to Tripoli and Smolensk and back. Asked whether the He 177 had flown over America he replied: “Over CANADA, I think, not over AMERICA.”³⁶⁵ Another POW, a low-level officer, was far more confident when asked whether the He 177 really possessed that sort of range. “Of course,” he said. “I was told six months ago by people who know all about the aircraft that ‘177’ had already dropped leaflets over NEW YORK.”³⁶⁶ This story was repeated by a gunner from a Ju 87 dive-bomber in April 1943.³⁶⁷ The idea of being able to fly to New York and drop leaflets (or better still: bombs) was a bit of wishful thinking, whose appeal was such that the soldiers did not want to let reality disrupt illusion. No such flight ever took place, although rumors that it did survived even the war itself.³⁶⁸

Similar stories were told in reference to Japan. Such a flight would have been technically possible, and there were indeed plans of this sort aimed at improving connections between Berlin and Tokyo.³⁶⁹ The fact that the flight never happened didn’t stop soldiers from talking about it. Sergeant Gromoll, for instance, reported that the Me 264 was to be used to shuttle diplomats and dispatches between Japan and Germany, flying across North America with 27,000 liters of fuel on board. A first lieutenant who was shot down over the Algerian coast in November 1942 went into similar detail: “The B.V. 222 flies to JAPAN. It has a cruising speed of 350 k.p.h. They refuel for the last time at PILLAU and fly by night across RUSSIA to JAPAN. The Russians have either no night-fighters or only very few.”³⁷⁰ We have no way of reconstructing how the officer arrived at this fantasy. It’s possible that he saw a BV 222 while training on the Baltic Sea and sought to explain the presence of the gigantic amphibious aircraft.

In any case, Luftwaffe POWs were particularly fascinated by large-scale airplanes. The latter were few in number, so any contact with one was something special. Anyone who could claim to have seen a six-engine BV 222 was assured of a rapt audience. The narrators of such stories reveled in details about the size and capabilities of the plane: