American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets

Rating:
Summary: A captivating true account
Review: American Raiders: The Race To Capture The Luftwaffe's Secrets is the true story of the bitter race to seize German military secrets in aviation, including the nuts and bolts behind buzz bombs, V-2s, and the first jet fighters, after the close of World War II. Two bold American Army Air Forces colonels set out to regain America's technological edge from the world-class scientists that were the Nazi's "intellectual capital", and so began a race to conquer the mysteries of air, space, sound and speed before the Soviet Union could. A captivating true account, exciting and highly accessible to lay readers, and a "must-have" for American military aviation history reference shelves.

Rating:
Summary: THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF THE US HUNT FOR LUFTWAFFE SECRETS
Review: In this book Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official USAAF records and veterans' interviews the stories of the Luftwaffe disarmement and Operation Lusty,the hunt for German top secret technologies.At the end of World War 2 the USAAF bombers encountered the first German Me-262 jet fighters .This and other German secret weapons (V1 and V2 above all) sparked a race between USA and URSS for German scientists and armaments.Two USAAF colonels,Harold E. Watson and Donald L. Putt and a young pilot of Germen descent Lloyd Wenzel succeeded in this operation which laid the foundation for US civil and military aviation of the future.This study is the best written to date on this fascinating yet neglected topic-how the hunt was originally planned,modified and then executed.This book is exhaustively researched and extremely well written.Samuel has done an excellent job of bringing to light the key players and concepts that shaped Operation Lusty.Highly recommended.