Synopsis

In Chapter 1 (KTB #148) ERICH begins his career as a spy, and he lets us know of his love of beautiful women. In Chapter 2 (KTB #149), he was transferred home to Germany and his shipboard romance with Karen ended. In Chapter 3 (KTB #151) he began his training as a spy – and he learned that a spy who falls in love with an enemy spy – gets shot! Last month in Chapter 4 (KTB #152) we see where ERICH falls for a woman who turns out to be a German spy herself, and her job was to lure spies in training to betray themselves - and ERICH nearly does.

Chapter 5: A Plan to Blow Up the Panama Canal

I had long since accustomed myself not to have any personal opinions about the instructions I received from my new Department. An attack on the Panama Canal? Splendid! Why not land on Mars? Why not kidnap President Roosevelt from the White House? It was 1943, and the war, particularly the war on the silent front of the secret agents, was taking a desperate turn.

Blow up the Panama Canal? Why Not Land on Mars? Or Kidnap Roosevelt?

I fully realized for the first time that L. was really serious over his Panama Canal project when I learned that I was to be granted powers extraordinary. Orders went out to the Navy and the Air Force that everything I needed should be placed at my disposal.

I tried to give an impression of confidence while I gambled on the conviction that Operation Pelican would end up as a piece of paper in a desk drawer just as so many other plans had ended.

I was reminded of the case of Dr. Dudt, and escapade of Amt ' VI which was running its course at about the same time as Skorzeny was getting Mussolini out of his mountain fortress. Dudt, an adventurer pure and simple, was a tall, thin Indian, who in some inexplicable way had succeeded in convincing one of the leading officials in Amt VI that he could produce the petrol which was so urgently necessary for the further prosecution of the war, by some new synthetic chemical process. The Indian was comfortably housed in the Hotel Furstenhof and received every day an official issue of two bottles of red wine and a bottle of cognac. He received, furthermore, also officially, two ampules of morphine every day, with which he injected himself.

The firm of Siemens was ordered to place a whole shed at his disposal, and the engineers and scientists attached to the firm watched the experiments of this gaunt Oriental Cagliostro, with scorn in their eyes and with clenched fists in their trousers pockets. They had instructions to grant his every whim, and his whims changed with every day.

His demands became more and more monstrous. Pate de fous gras, oysters, caviar, champagne. He ate only white bread and left the crusts. Every morning he had to have some sort of milk dish which he usually threw on the floor of the Siemens canteen. The women workers there, overworked and under-nourished as they were at the time, were up in arms at this high-handedness, but were threatened with a charge of sabotage if they should make any difficulties for Dr. Dudt, of whose capabilities so much was expected. The Indian's sexual appetite was greater than one would have imagined from his gaunt and spectral figure, and Amt VI had repeatedly to take a hand to smooth out, finance or put an end to his various love affairs. Dr. Dudt's experiments lasted for four months and cost the country several million marks. They produced about ten cubic centimeters of petrol which the magician had siphoned from a laid­up motor-bicycle. He ended up on Dachau. The man responsible in Amt VI was sent to the front and the Dudt case remained a top-­secret affair.

Was I, against my will and needless to say, without all the exceptional perquisites of the genius inventor, to become the Dr. Dudt of the Panama Canal?

I got a surprise.

I discovered that it was actually possible to put the Panama Canal out of action. It was even quite simple if everything went according to plan.

I traveled to Breslau and met the engineer, Hubrich, an old gentlemen with a boyish face who, at the turn of the century, had sought and found the adventure of his life in Central America. Later he had become one of the leading engineers of the Panama Canal and still had all the plans in his possession. I cannot remember how or who had hit upon the idea of approaching Herr Hubrich but I know that as I went on my way to meet him I was still opposed to the project, which I was to direct.

We met in a restaurant, drank lager beer and ate a tasteless fricassee with potato salad which had been mixed with water.

"I want to consult you on a somewhat strange affair," I began. "Do you think there is any chance of our being able to blow up the Panama Canal?"

"Anything that man has built can be destroyed by man," replied Hubrich. It occurred to me he bore a striking resemblance to my first teacher.

"Yes, but there's one snag," I continued. "I haven't as much time to blow it up as you had to build it."

"What's in your mind?" he asked with interest.

"Assuming," I explained, "that we can succeed in some way, yet to be decided, in sending aircraft into the Panama zone and that they can launch an attack on the Gatun locks....."

"Why particularly on the locks?" he interrupted me. "Have you any idea what the Panama Canal looks like?"

"Yes," I replied. The waiter approached our table and I ordered another portion of fricassee.

"You must have a lot of coupons, " said Hubrich. "I'm in a bad way just now. My daughter's gone off with a fellow in the Lufwaffe, and I have to manage with the housekeeping as best I can."

He picked up a beer mat and took a pencil from his pocket.

"Now look," he said. He drew a line. "This, here, is the spillway by Gatun lake, the overflow over the dam, built of very solid material. However, in 1907 of course we weren't thinking of aerial bombardment. I don't know if you can imagine how much water there is in the Panama Canal and what it represents in pressure. With the water on one single lock, a town with a population of a million, like Boston, could be provided for one whole day."

"That is quite clear," I replied.

He was pleased that he had found someone with whom he could talk about the highlights of his life. "I still have the actual drawings at home. At the time I worked out myself how strong the spillway had to be to withstand the pressure of water, and you can depend on it that my calculations were correct."

"That I can believe," I replied.

"Of course I don't understand much about aerial bombardment," Hubrich went on. "I don't even know if they could hit a lock, but that is beside the point, for a lock could be repaired in two to three days and all your trouble would have been in vain."

I nodded.

"If, however, you were to blow up this dam, the following would happen: the dammed up water in the Gatun lake would break through the dam, sweep over the canal and flow into the sea. The Panama Canal has a steep gradient; in fact that was the difficulty in its construction. The water always wants to flow back into the sea. If the dam were destroyed there would be nothing to hold it back, and in my estimation it would be at least two years before the Panama Canal could be put into use again."

He drew a few more lines on the beer mat.

"Come home with me," he said, "and then we can take a look at the drawings. Tell me the explosive power of your bombs and I will tell you whether the spillway will stand up or not. "

It had to blow up, our explosive experts would see to that. But first it had to be hit, and before it could be hit dive bombers, which, as is well known, have a very limited operational radius, would have to be sent by us to the Panama Canal. Now that I knew that it was technically possible to destroy the canal, 1 really got down to work. I was seized with Panama fever and so was Hubrich, the engineer. We sat in a Breslau tavern and made up our minds to take a decisive part in the conduct of the war.

I flew back to Berlin and reported at the Reich Air Ministry. I showed my special authority and was received coolly. I was referred to a Colonel, but as I did not want to tell him anything he in return did not want to give me anything. It was a very silent piece of negotiation. Finally I had to tell him what was afoot.

"I need two fast dive bombers," I said. "1 want to use them to attack the Panama Canal."

"That's all very well," he replied. "You can have the aircraft if you can tell me how you are going to get them across the Atlantic."

"That is my affair," I replied.

"Thank God for that," he grunted. "You can have the machines when you like, but it's a pity. It means two less for us. You will want volunteer pilots I suppose?"

"Yes," I replied.

I went to Kiel, to the Staff Headquarters of Grand-Admiral Donitz. Our talk was almost a replica of that I had just had in Berlin. "I want two U-boats,"I said to a naval commander. "I shall probably need them for about ten weeks. Is it possible to get dismantled aircraft over the Atlantic in a U-boat?"

"Yes, it is," replied the officer. "But how are you going to reassemble them again? The whole idea is quite crazy."

"That's my affair, " I said.

"Ah well, another two boats less for us," he replied. "Everyday someone comes and wants something else." I now had two Stukas and two U-boats. The pilots and the U-boat crews were prepared to go through Panama-fire for me. I rented a long lakeside site on the Wannsee and made it a military area. Here we built an exact model of the Panama Canal. My two pilots meanwhile practiced starting and landing on sandy soil. They were splendid fellows, and were already dancing South American boleros and roasting oxen on a spit in their imaginations. Ten to twenty times a day we destroyed the Gatun spillway.

Then came the most difficult part of the undertaking. My mechanics practiced dismantling the Stukas and putting them together again, and finally managed to do their jig-saw puzzle in two days. In Kiel, meanwhile, the U-boat crews made a systematic and practical study of stowing the parts in the hull, and that too was accomplished. Then I ordered four Stuka bombs of specially concentrated explosive power and these were duly delivered.

My plan looked like this: I would penetrate into the Caribbean Sea with the two U-boats, at a certain point we would surface, get our aircraft parts ashore and assemble them in two days. The aircraft should start from the level shore. The pilots knew exactly the spot on which they were to drop their bombs. As the Stukas dropped their bombs from a very low altitude they could pin-point the spillway. The four bombs had to suffice.

We had to ensure that we got through with both U-boats to the intended landing place. For the landing itself we needed good luck and a thousand hands. If one of the U-boats should be sunk on the way, there was still a chance, given certain conditions, of putting Operation Pelican in hand with one machine. After the attack the two pilots were to fly to a neutral South American country and have themselves interned there. The U-boat men would have already started on their return voyage.

The Panama Canal is 50 miles long and has six double locks, each of which is 330 yards long and 36 yards wide. Without the Panama Canal the voyage from New York to San Francisco was longer by eight thousand miles and the ships would need several weeks more to transfer, for instance, from the Asiatic theatres of war to the European.

Everything was in order. We were to start on an autumn day in 1943. We said our farewells, received Schnapps and food coupons and money.

The two Stukas lay stowed away in the hull of the U-boats. The crews were on board. The time of departure had been fixed. We smoked and drank. We looked at the town with the eyes of those who would not see it again for a long time. There was a speech about the Fatherland, heroism, the Fuhrer and Greater Germany. We listened and thought about the Panama Canal, about the spillway, about the section which we were to blow to smithereens.

"A telegram for you," I was told.

I went to the control room. It must be important if they wanted to get in touch with me at this hour. My mission was of course a secret one, to be divulged to no one. I decoded the message. I could not believe my eyes. I decoded it a second time. But there it was again. "Operation Pelican called off. Report to Berlin at once."

I went back. I could not imagine what had happened. After all the money, work and energy that had been invested in this project. And that wonderful prospects of success if had had! All of us, the tough chaps of the U-boat crews, the dashing pilots, the devotedly keen mechanics - all of us had believed in `Pelican.'

"Tiresome business, Gimpel, " they greeted me. "It's a good thing that we could still get hold of you. Otherwise we'd have had to call you back over the high seas. We have it from a reliable source that the whole thing has been given away. There's no doubt about it. You wouldn't have got very far. You can congratulate yourself that we made our discovery in time."

"And who's behind this betrayal?" I asked.

Who? Who had given the whole thing away? The question hovers over the entire espionage history of the 2nd World War. Where were these traitors? Why had they become traitors? Had they done it for coffee? Or was it a matter of ideals? Was it love of adventures or was it patriotism? Who knows? Who will ever know?

I know nothing of politics and I don't want to. I have never had anything to do with politics, and I never will. So perhaps I shall never understand why there was so much treachery in the war. When only a few months later I sailed in a U-boat for forty-six days, as a soldier in the Second World War fighting on an invisible, silent and brutal front, this operation too was betrayed to America. I do not know who the informer was and I do not know if the traitor has any idea what it is like to be betrayed behind the lines, in the very heart of the enemy. I will tell him in a later chapter so that he may know.

Operation Pelican has, as I have said, been exploded. As was the custom in Amt VI, I was immediately put on to something else. Things were going badly for us in America. Our whole network of agents over there had been hastily contrived after the war had actually started. When we were at peace and preparations could have been made with comparative ease, the Foreign Ministry had declined to do so for political reasons. They feared to compromise themselves, a thing they were anxious to avoid at all costs. It was only shortly before the outbreak of war that they were working too much with amateurs, and not enough with experts. The overseas organizations of the N.S.D.A.P. were made responsible for the greater part of these activities with the poor results one might have expected. They put the members of harmless skittle clubs, folklore societies and rifle clubs of German origin under pressure, and tried to persuade them to work for their former Fatherland against their present home country. In many cases they succeeded in doing this, but the resulting information was on the whole worthless.

The Luftwaffe built up a relatively useful network of agents across North America, but it was discovered at one blow by the F.B.I. shortly before the outbreak of war and we suddenly found ourselves with no secret agents in the country of our principle enemies. We knew absolutely nothing about the Americans. We had no production figures. We knew nothing about their armaments, their standard of Army training, or their reserves; we did not even know the state of their morale.

The dilettantism of the Foreign Ministry, blindly devoted to Hitler and headed by the ignorant Ribbentrop, hustled Germany into war with the richest country in the world. But we had no idea how rich America really was until afterwards.

Towards the end of 1944, the atomic bomb appeared like a ghost on the horizon. We had heard of America's `Manhattan project.' Even before the war the German Professor Hahn had succeeded theoretically in splitting uranium, thereby releasing atomic power. Through his assistant, Lisa Meitner, who emigrated, the results of Hahn's research were taken abroad and reached America via Denmark. Professor Einstein realized immediately that Germany would in a short time be in a position to use atomic power for purposes of war, and that would mean victory for Germany. Einstein warned Roosevelt, and Roosevelt gave the word that the Manhattan Project, that is to say American atomic research, should go forward with all speed. With unlimited resources of money, material and manpower, the atomic bomb was developed on an American scale and an American tempo. That was the position when I was summoned to the Deputy Head of Amt VI, Dr. S.

"That is how things stand," said S. "We have tried everything possible. We have sent agents out there and they have either gone over to the other side or been caught. We can't work with foreigners any more or with stooges. We must put one of our own men on to it and that's where you come in, Gimpel. " "And what am I expected to do?" I asked.

"You are to go to America," he said. "How you are to get there I will now explain to you. We still have a few people to turn to, and through them you will come to the Manhattan Project. You will get everything you need. You can take as many assistants with you as you like. As far as I am concerned you can have the whole Navy and what's left of the Air Force, but you must go, and go at once."

In Amt VII had become used to anything and everything, but for a moment I wondered if I could be dreaming.

"And how am I to get over there?"

"I have already worked out a number of plans.......... You can fly over with a special equipped Focke-Wutf 200 and bail out."

"That's ridiculous,"1 replied.

"Yes, I don't particularly advocate it either," said S. "And what other possibilities have you in mind?" I asked.

"By ship," he replied. "We can charter a freighter, give you the appropriate papers, and depend on your having your usual good tuck. But in this case, of course, you will have to get in via South America."

"I don't much like to the look of that either," I replied. "You can please yourself how you get over there," he went on. 'Perhaps in three days' time you will have thought of something, but remember, it's terribly urgent. I am sorry, I would have liked to spare you this task, but if anyone has a chance of getting through with it, it's you."

I went. The secretary in the anteroom asked me to leave a word with Captain H. He had thought up a plan of his own to get me to America. He had come across a crook who passed himself off as a Hapsburg prince and a nephew of the ex-Empress Zita, who throughout the war had been staying in New York. The man had lost his papers and Captain H. now wanted to fit him out with some new ones. The crook should go through Switzerland to Spain, from there to South America and from there get into the U.S.A. The whole world knew that the Hapsburgs were sworn enemies of Hitler and this is what Captain H. wanted to exploit. I was to accompany the `prince ' as private secretary.

I have a sixth sense which tells me whether a thing has any chance of success or not. I had a look at the 'prince'. He was a tall lanky fellow with an impudent mouth and rabbity eyes. I have never had much to do with real princes, but this one looked just the stock picture-book aristocrat.

Perhaps that was just as well for our purpose, perhaps not. I proposed to H. that we should first of all send the prince to Madrid on a trial mission. We gave him papers and money. He had nothing to do but cross the frontier, show his passport and convince the frontier officials of his identity.

He went off on the express train and immediately attracted attention: He was arrested as he was about to cross the frontier. H. was sent to the front.

So I had to get to America not with the help of the aristocracy but with U-boat 1230. It was all ready for service. Operation Elster had already begun.

In hindsight, one must wonder if some of these so-called plans were the inventions of some Hollywood comedy house. Some were just so wacky they not only had no chance of succeeding, but really had no chance of being believed by any sane person.

Chapter 6 will be in KTB #154 next month; watch for it. ERICH is a fun guy, and filled with great stories. He was with us two times for our `Patrol in the Windy City' but his age, 90 years, is keeping him closer to home and air travel is too much for him. So we continue to tell his story here - a story about crazy spy dreams and tried at reality Some almost made it - others were just interesting.

Spy for Germany

Chapter 3: Training as a Spy in Germany (KTB # 151)
Chapter 4: Spain and My First Mission (KTB # 152)
Chapter 5: A Plan to Blow Up the Panama Canal (KTB # 153)
Chapter 6: (II) Operation Pastrius (KTB # 155)
Chapter 7: To America by Submarine (KTB # 156)
Chapter 8: The Landing in America (KTB # 157)
Chapter 9: Tricked by Billy in NYC (KTB # 158)
Chapter 10 (I): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 159)
Chapter 10 (II): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 160)
Chapter 11 (I): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 161)
Chapter 11 (II): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 162)
Chapter 12 (I): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 163)
Chapter 12 (II): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 164)
Chapter 13 (I): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 165)
Chapter 13 (II): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 166)
Chapter 13 (III): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 167)
Chapter 14 (I): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 168)
Chapter 14 (II): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 169)
Chapter 15 (I): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 170)
Chapter 15 (II): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 172)
Chapter 15 (III): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 173)
Chapter 16 (I): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 174)
Chapter 16 (II): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 175)
Chapter 16 (III): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 176)
Chapter 17 (I): Germany's Capitulation Saves My Life (KTB # 177)
Chapter 17 (II): Germany's Capitulation Saves My Life (KTB # 178)
Chapter 18: The Final Chapter (KTB # 179)