Comments on: A Japanese death ray?

By: JDK

JDK — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:15:51 +0000

Where else? There's work to be done (or is one, perhaps) on 'things that don't exist but everyone knows should (or will) exist'; ray guns, intergalactic credits, faster than light power etc. Not to mention miracle cures, the winning ticket and all the other things used to separate fools and money.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:49:41 +0000

Thanks for that, Bill, nice to see you here again. A decent summary of the Sun Gun can be found here; it has links to the Time and New York Times articles at the bottom. I've also found an article in Flight from 1951, but it doesn't seem to have any more information than in is the NYT article. It seems odd to be relying on press clippings after all this time. There must be something in a US government archive somewhere (or perhaps in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style warehouse).

By: Bill Fanning

Bill Fanning — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:59:31 +0000

On second thought, I have another comment. This is in reference to the Overy quotation above about the Western powers having abandoned by the 1930s the quest to develop a death ray. There were at least two instances during WW II in which the Germans tried to do so. The most ambitious was the "Sonnengewehr," or sun gun. Shortly after the German surrender, American forces came across a secret installation at Hillersleben and captured a team of German scientists working on a weapon of true science fiction dimensions. They were going to build a large space platform mounted with a more sophisticated version of Archimedes' fabled weapon and direct the concentrated heat rays of the sun to targets on earth. The scientists admitted to interrogators that it would take at least 50 years to develop and would therefore have not been of any use to the German war effort. Nevertheless, it was funded and they applied themselves to the work. A fairly detailed account appeared in the New York Times on 29 June 1945, pp. 1, 5. The title of the article is "Nazis' Scientists Planned Sun 'Gun' 5,100 Miles Up." Time magazine also featured it as "Sun Gun," 9 July 1945, p. 58. The American officer in charge of the interrogation was Lieutenant Colonel John A. Keck, an engineer in civilian life.

The other instance was described by Mario Beck in the Leipziger Volkszeitung under the title "Schiebolds braune Sciencefiction." 16/17 April 2005.
http://www.waloschek.de/pedro/lvz-rezension-beck-A4.pdf. This is also from Pedro Waloschek's Todesstrahlen als Lebensretter. (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, GmbH, 2004). A man by the name of Ernst Schiebold showed up one day in April 1943 at the office of Field Marshal Erhard Milch and presented a plan to construct a weapon based on powerful X-rays and protect German cities from Allied air raids. Milch agreed to fund the program, but it was canceled after about a year. There is a brief reference to this in Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich. He related that Robert Ley came to him one day all excited and told him that death rays had been invented. Speer, who obviously did not share Ley's faith in such a wonder weapon, jokingly remarked that Ley could assume an additional title as "Commissioner for Death Rays."

By: Bill Fanning

Bill Fanning — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:52:37 +0000

Just some additions on sources that I did not see mentioned. The New York Times had a brief article entitled "Japanese Had 'Death Ray' in Stage of Development," 7 October 1945, p. 32. This was based on a report released by General MacArthur's headquarters. However, there was mention as early as 1937 about the Japanese experimenting on rabbits with a type of death ray. This can be found in Kurt Doberer's Der Elektrokrieg. I have seen only the English translation (On the Way to Electro War) which did not come out until 1942. The reference can be found on page 46 of the English version. As you may know, Doberer and Max Seydewitz co-authored a fairly comprehensive study entitled Todesstrahlen und Andere Kriegswaffen (Death rays and other war weapons) published in 1936. That's all I have on the Japanese death ray.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:00:11 +0000

Thanks again!

By: Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E.

Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E. — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:32:07 +0000

A copy of Karl Compton's draft report "Mission to Tokyo" of findings during the scientific intelligence survey for the U.S. military in Japan in 1945 is included in the collection archived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under: Office of the President, Records of Karl Taylor Compton and James Rhyne Killian, AC 4, box X. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

By: Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E.

Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E. — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:28:15 +0000

Immediately after Japan's surrender, Dr. Compton headed the United States Scientific Intelligence Commission to quickly examine the high-technology developmemts in Japan during the war. I have never seen a full copy of the Commission's findings (commonly called the Compton Report, but I am certain that it was initially classified. There are references, however, in a number of subsequent papers, mainly those of electronics, radio, and radio -- particulrly related to magnetrons.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:22:10 +0000

Thanks very much for this, Raymond, most interesting. Especially Nakajima's suggestion that Japan invented cavity magnetrons a year before Britain did, ie. in 1939. Probably lucky for the Allies that they used them for death ray research instead of spending the time developing AI radar or ASW radar! I came across a couple of references on the web to testimony on the death ray by physicist Karl Taylor Compton (then head of MIT) given to the (presumably U.S.) Senate Committee on Military Affairs on 25 October 1945, e.g. here. Perhaps you know of it? I couldn't find any reference in the New York Times so it may have been a closed hearing.

By: Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E.

Raymond C. Watson, Jr.; Ph.D., P.E. — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:31:57 +0000

Subsequent to finishing the book (Radar Origins Worldwide) previously referenced, I found a number of additional sources concerning the Japanese death-ray work. In a brief report from Captain C. G. Grimes of the U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan, dated 17 January 1946. there is an Enclosure entitled "Magnetrons and Other Vacuum Tubes Used by the Ninth Military Technical Laboratory in Death Ray Experiments." Item E of the Enclosure includes the following:

"A large multple segment magnetron, designed to deliver 100 kw CW output at approximately 400 mc, was in the process of development when the war ended. . . . It was intended to connect ten of these magnetrons in parallel to obtain 1000 kw (CW) output but details had not been worked out."

This may be found on the Web at the following URL:

http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ%20Reports/USNTMJ-200B-0465-0502%20Report%20E-13.pdf

The reference to "rabbits" likely comes from an interview (#212) by the IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering with Dr. Shigeru Nakajima, who was the brother of Captain (Dr.) Yoji Ito (see p. 315 of my book) who coordinated the project. Read it for yourself at:

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:Shigeru_Nakajima#Wartime_Weapons_Research

By: Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:31:59 +0000

Hey, at least the Japanese were playing with magnetrons. When Tizard brought his to the United States, it was, "hey, why didn't we think of that?"
(Although recession/depression driven lack of research funding will have that effect.)
By the way, if anyone is interested in magnetrons in WWII, the research line I've worked up but never pursued focusses on their lack of tunability. The geometry of the magnetron determines its frequency, and so you have to machine them to get the frequency you want, which is rather tough for centimetric radiation. The British 10cm magnetrons all broadcast around 9.8 cm, but each magnetron had to be individually matched to its receiver. There's some great articles in the special issues of _Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers_ that came out in 1948 and 1949.