Obviously Germany never was able to do this but what would the reaction be if they had?
Even if it was a small bomb would it have caused some backlash against the war?
I am assumming NYC and DC were the only cities Germany would’ve been interested in targeting.
I assume we’d have gotten REALLY pissed at them.
In all likelihood, bombing the USA would have simply caused an enraged public to demand more bombing of Germany.
Strategic bombing in WWII served to demoralize civilians only where the bombing was so devastating and shocking and part of a general collapse (e.g. Rotterdam) or was a protracted, helpless struggle, such as in the case of Japan. Just pissing off the target didn’t work.
Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT true that Allied civilians were universally behind the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan. (Especially Germany.) Throughout the war, many people in the Allied nations had serious misgivings about the morality of strategic bombing. I would guess that a raid on NYC would have probably converted some of them to the cause of Spaatz and Harris.
I’ll have to find a cite, but I recall reading that all sides before World War II agreed not to target civilians in bombing campaigns. My history professor seemed to imply that it was the British who started this, not the Germans, who of course retaliated. In my opinion, this is one of the great tragedies of the war, senseless killing of civilians. Seems kind of hard to take the moral high ground when your country is roasting civilians in Tokio or Dresden.
According to the History Channel (okay, not scholarly but there it is) Germany sent one recon. bomber with extended range tanks within 12 miles of New York to plan for expected bombings in late 1944 or early 1945; but the realities of the way the war was going precluded any further ‘progress’ in that direction.
It would certainly have incensed the American public, but Army Air Corps bombings were already maxed out so there wouldn’t have been much more we could have done about it in return.
Believe it or not I remember those days. I lived close to Wright-Patterson field in Dayton, OH. We had blackout drills where everyone was told to have their lights off during a certain time. One night an inspector stopped at our house and made us blow out a candle. Although I was small at the time, I got the impression that no one would have been surprised if some night it had been for real. So it would not have been completely unexpected, as the OP seems to think.
As a resident of the once-great railroad city of Altoona, PA, (the beating heart of stateside war transportation at the time) I wish to lodge a protest!
There’s a persistent rumor that a German frogman/spy was apprehended on the East Coast with a list of Hitler’s major targets for aerial bombing should such a measure have ever been effected. Altoona is said to have been on that list.
Of course, it’s most likely completely untrue. But local patriotism compels me to mention it. 
jayjay
As I recall, the Germans dropped bombs in London by mistake (they got lost and confused the city proper with their primary target). Churchill retaliated by ordering a raid against non-military targets in Berlin, and Hitler re-retaliated by officially ordering the bombing of London.
Hey we (NYers) almost were bombed!
From an FBI website:
In June 1942, a major, yet unsuccessful, attempt at sabotage was made on American soil. Two German submarines let off four saboteurs each at Amagansett, Long Island, and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. These men had been trained by Germany in explosives, chemistry, secret writing, and how to blend into American surroundings. While still in German clothes, the New York group encountered a Coast Guard sentinel patrolling the beach, who ultimately allowed them to pass. However, afraid of capture, saboteur George Dasch turned himself in–and assisted the FBI in locating and arresting the rest of the team.
I may have the name of the ship wrong, but there seems to be suspicion that spies or saboteurs blew it up in New York Harbor…
The submarine spies (Dasche, et al) were pretty comical in a lot of ways, one account has them wandering the streets blowing money in strip bars and such. They were all executed, I think.
Ted, according to my sources the 1942 demise of the Normadie – a speedy luxury liner that was being converted into a troopship – was not due to any foul play. It caught fire when sparks from a worker’s torch set fire to some life jackets. The sad, charred, overturned hulk lay at a West Side pier for over a year.
Okay. Hm. Now I’m reading that it was possibly sunk by the Mob, for various reasons. At least it could possibly be termed “suspicious” in nature.
I guess it was common to cut the short wave band coils on radios brought in for repair if they had german or italian sounding names. Can’t have “those” people listening to Il Duce or Der Fuerher late at night, ya know. This causes no end of grief to antique radio repair people these days, when they find one that’s had that ‘modification’…
Had the war gone on long enough, or had it gone another way, say, V3 rockets raining nuclear weapons on the US… game over. Historians don’t like “what if” scenarios, but it’s pretty scary to contemplate.
“In January of 1944 a prototype of a German heavy bomber, the Ju 390, took off on a top secret mission. This six engine bomber, the largest aircraft made by the Germans during the war, carried enough fuel to stay in the air for 32 hours. Testing the feasibilty of bombing New York city in the United States the Ju 390 came within 12 mi (20 km) of the American Coast undetected. Averaging 222 mph (357 km/h) during the 6,000 mi (9656 km) round-trip which took more than a day the bomber sucessfully returned to base.”
From http://www.danshistory.com/ww2/germanb.html
Whew!
Actually, the Horton brothers were building a prototype jet powered flying wing which would have had the range to attack the U.S. and return. Had the war lasted until '46, undoubtedly there would have been bombing runs made on DC and NYC. These flying wings would have flown at about 550 MPH at 40,000 ft. One prototype was captured and returned to the U.S., where it languished in the Smithsonian’s airplane facility until the early 1980, when a group of engineers came to study it. They were interested in one crutial, interesting and largely forgotten property of the aircraft-It was very hard to spot on radar. These engineers, from Northrop, went on to build the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Imagine that plane, and imagine if Germany HAD managed to produce atomic weapons. ( Heisenburg and company didn’t-for a lot of reasons, one of the big ones being that German planners forsaw a short war and never allocated the reasourses that the U.S. gave the Manhatten Project.) Stealth German bombers armed with atomic bombs, capable of reaching the U.S. and returning. Think they might have been able to sue for peace if that had come about? Chilling thought. Compare the 2 planes for yourself.
I seem to remember reading that singlewing designs did not handle very well. They were inherently unstable and designs were abandoned. With fly-by-wire and some other gadgets they finaly managed to get it to work.
My questions are: ‘is this true?’ and ‘how did Horton get the wing to fly if it was unstable?’
Re the Northrop YB-49, an eight jet flying wing developed just after WWII:
Italics mine. FromJet Bombers by David Anderton and John Batchelor. At that stage of the game, the Nazis were not interested in precision bombing or limiting collateral damage - they just wanted to hurt people.
Well, since the USCG Beach Patrol has been mentioned, here’s a bit of info. Please note that the west coast was shelled, and it made little difference. Hell, it was barely noticed.
Actually, if memory seves the Horton HoIX was a fighter design but the brothers did have a long range-bomber version in the making too.
Damn! I hate looking up cites at 7:30AM.
And yes, Germany did have a heavy bomber that was capapble of reaching the mainland US but the idea was abandoned…which is interesting in itself since Hitler had such a “soft spot” for Vengence weapons.
Fortunately, the Go-229 was supposed to carry only 1,000kg of payload, which wouldn’t have been enough to carry the atomic weapons of the time.
Hey, Weirddave, in case you are interested, I’m pretty sure that a Horton is still sitting up at the Garber Facility, wingless but nevertheless an amazing piece of work. One of the most unusual things about it, and many of the other WWII German jets, is that “wood-carbon powder composite” used in its construction is plywood!
You can see the planking in [url=“http://www.onthenet.com.au/~billzila/horten.jpg”]this picture. Most of the German jets which I have seen partially disassembled appear to use plywood extensively.
The YB-49, or some variant of it, eventually sprouted vertical tail-fins. I think the Horton probably would have, too.
The HO-229 was a “1000” bomber: 1000kg of bombs for 1000km at 1000kph. Purely a tactical aircraft. The HO-18 was the aircraft intended to cary nukes to the US.
jayjay, read my previous link to the USCG Beach Patrol… You’ll find Altoona mentioned in there.
