military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) (05/05/89)
From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm
For a bit more background on Project Weasel, here is another quote from
PIECES OF THE ACTION by Vannevar Bush:
"The plan, which originated in April 1942, was to build a large number of
snow vehicles and have them ready to be dropped ny parachute into Norway
in November. They were to attack, among other things, power plants where
heavy water was being made, it being then thought the Nazis needed it badly
in their atomic energy program. The vehicles were to be small and light
enough to be carried by a British Lancaster bomber, rugged enough to stand
the drop, fast enough so that the Nazi ski troops could not catch them in the
snow. Pyke had a grand scheme for propelling them by a pair of Archimedes'
screws.
When General Moses turned to O.S.R.D. for help, Hartley Rowe's section,
and notably Palmer Putnam and his group, went to work. My first contact with
the plan, and my first contact with Pyke, was at a meeting where General
Moses and General Hoag represented General Marshall; Pyke and Colonel
Wedderburn represeneted the British; and Rowe, Putnam, and I represented
O.S.R.D. I was naturally skeptical about it, questioning supply, weapons,
communication problems, and the like. I also wondered whether surprise could
be attained, for otherwise the heavy water plant would be well protected,
and snow vehicles would make good targets. I was not consulted by General
Marshall before my people were called in, which did not trouble me, for it
happened all the time, and Army and O.S.R.D. relations were in this case
excellent. But I assumed, naturally, that the plan had been given rigorous
study in Britain before it was mounted full scale, and given high priority,
so I agreed to go ahead.
Things had to happen fast, and they did. Putnam carried the ball
throughout, and he certainly made it move. While the basic design was in
process, a rugged search for a proper test site--with the right kind of
snow and plenty of it--took men to Alaska, Banff, Chile. Snow conditions on
the Columbia River ice fields north of Banff finally turned out to be right,
and a road was built to give access to them while the new design was being
rushed into the prototype stage. Army engineers, incidentally, buily the
entire road in twenty days, which shows the pace of the whole affair. Pyke's
cherished Archimedean screw would not work, as was readily apparent to any
competent engineer, and was discarded over his protests. Putnam designed a
caterpillar type, with very wide rubber treads which gave great promise,
and it was rushed into production, before its design was fully worked out,
at a Studebaker plant. The details of this mad rush against time would fill
a book. The net result was that a fleet of vehicles was built, capable of
negotiating hard or soft snow, mud, and sand, with reasonable speed and life,
and all this was done in a small fraction of the time normally required for
such a job. The tough, versatile machine was called the Weasel. A special
regiment had been trained to use it, and a thousand of the versatile vehicles
were delivered to the regiment by the end of 1942.
Then the whole program was turned down flat, and it was decided to rely
on fifth-column sabotage to knock out the power plants. Apparently Air Marshal
Harris whose planes were supposed to be used, heard of the Weasel for the
first time only when its major problems had been solved, and he said "no"
with emphasis. My recollection of the affair, as I heard about it at the
time from Marshall's aides, is this: Churchill presented the plan to Marshall
when the latter was visiting him at Chequers, and told him, "My people have
looked into the problem. They conclude the best way to do it is by dropping
snow vehicles from Lancasters." Marshall naturally assumed the whole plan
had been carefully reviewed and endorsed. So did I. It was only after much
hectic effort, and interference with other plans, that I found out that
General Harris, in charge of the Lancasters, had never heard of it. One is
reminded of the remark of the switchman who observed two trains headed for
each other on a single track. "That's a hell of a way to run a railroad."
But the Weasel was not a total loss. In fact, before the end of the war
it had accomplished fine things in one theater, for it carried men and
supplies to the front in Italy through mud and snow, and carried wounded
back. Of course this was in no way commensurate with the confusion and delay
it had caused, for it was given priority over the B-17 for ninety days and
caused confusion in W.P.B., the Engineer Corps, and O.S.R.D. This on a
project which was never evaluated before it was launched, and which was
merely an instance of Churchill's unbridled enthusiasm."