Nazi Killer Missile Base - V-1 Rocket Nerve Gas Attack?

Añadido: 2026-05-25

[00:00:16]In London yesterday, the military conducted an exercise located in one of the disused parts of the underground railway system concerning a Russian conventional attack on the United Kingdom. The press also carried stories about how Russian cruise missiles could strike targets in Britain with virtual impunity. And I felt vindicated in this assertion as I had made two videos highlighting this very problem around the time of the beginning of the Ukrainian war.

[00:00:46]that in a scenario where NATO and Russia gets into a conventional war, perhaps over Ukraine, Russia could use cruise missiles launched from bombers outside of our airspace to conduct precision attacks on British infrastructure and power generation, not to mention our dwindling number of functioning RAF and naval bases, and we would be extremely hardressed to stop them.

[00:01:09]I received some criticism at the time.

[00:01:12]Yet, it seems I was vindicated if the current British military exercises and the accompanying press articles are anything to go by.

[00:01:21]I was trying to warn that the continual downsizing of the British military means that the UK is becoming increasingly vulnerable to conventional precision strikes. and the war with Iran and the ability of the Iranians to fire very long range missiles at for example British Indian Ocean territory and its vital US air base at Diego Garcia not to mention the drone attacks on RAF Acriteri in Cyprus highlights this further. Please watch my video on Russian cruise missiles and whether Iran can hit Britain with missiles links in the end screen.

[00:01:57]82 years ago, Britain faced a very similar threat of missile attack. At that time, the German V1 and V2 campaigns that were the first sustained cruise and ballistic missile campaigns in history.

[00:02:11]A few years ago, a new V1 story emerged that has a direct link to the current exercises in London. cruise missiles as delivery systems, perhaps for chemical warfare agents, something the Ministry of Defense is undoubtedly concerned about today.

[00:02:29]In 2017, a minor historical kathuffle broke out online over an alleged World War II discovery on the island of Alden in the Channel Islands. That collection of British crown dependencies just off the coast of France that were the only British soil occupied by the Germans in World War II. The gist of the claim was that at some point late in World War II, the Germans had begun planning a possible chemical weapons attack on the mainland United Kingdom from the island of Alden, the most heavily fortified of all the Channel Islands. The originator of this theory was Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, along with research partner John Weingold.

[00:03:12]Oldeny is the most remote of the Channel Islands and the closest to Britain.

[00:03:17]Captured and occupied in 1940 along with Jersey, Gernzi, and SAK, Olden was different from the others in that its population had been almost entirely evacuated to Britain before the Germans arrived, leaving almost no witnesses to what the Germans were up to on the island over the next four years.

[00:03:36]Many years ago, when I was a military history author before I became a YouTuber, I had become very interested in Olden's dark World War II history and had planned to write a book about the German labor camps built on the island, the only place in Britain where the SS operated.

[00:03:54]The book never panned out, largely due to so much information about Oldeny in World War II still being classified in the early 2000s.

[00:04:04]However, other authors later managed to piece together what occurred there. All of the Channel Islands were heavily fortified by the Germans with bunkers, machine gun positions, artillery positions, anti-tank walls, and many other bastions being built by organization to often using impress labor. But was different and it was the only place where the SS ran a concentration camp in the Channel Islands, Lara Zilt, the camp house.

[00:04:33]Soviet prisoners of war, Jews and other prisoners of the Nazis and was brutally run by SS Hobbsdom Furer or Captain Maxmillian List.

[00:04:43]Some 5,000 prisoners were forced to labor on defenses and huge numbers died of exhaustion, beatings or hangings in the camp.

[00:04:53]The question that Colonel Kemp asked was why was the SS brought into Alden? Why not just use organization to like everywhere else in the islands?

[00:05:04]He and Weineold discovered that there was a more sinister reason for the SS being on Old than simply running a concentration camp. The island has one small town, St. An's. And just outside of it is a track called Water Lane that runs through a narrow valley called Laval Router. A tunnel system still exists there from World War II. Hune from the rock by prisoners from Laga Zilt under almost intolerable conditions and great SS brutality.

[00:05:34]I am indebted to the website Subterraneia Britannica for providing these photographs of the tunnels beneath Old. I'd encourage everyone to explore further using their website. Please follow the link in the description box.

[00:05:48]Historians contend that the system of tunnels and rooms in Water Lane were for fuel and ammunition storage or a power generator of some kind. But Kemp and Weineold felt that the reality didn't add up.

[00:06:02]There are two tunnel systems on either side of the valley.

[00:06:07]Each main tunnel is 10 ft wide and 9 ft high. A narrow gauge railway line once ran along its length, and the roof and sides were once lined in wood.

[00:06:17]Kemp and Weineold also found the remains of bumen sheets used to line the tunnel to make it absolutely waterproof. An unusual degree of fitting out compared to other German tunnels on the Channel Islands and in France.

[00:06:31]The two investigators felt that whatever the Germans had stored in this tunnel was delicate, valuable, and needed special protection from rockfalls and dripping water. Kemp and Weineold, drawing on their experience, felt that the idea that the tunnel had been a fuel store or some kind of electricity generating station to be wrong.

[00:06:53]Ventilation was poor and the tunnel dimensions were wrong.

[00:06:58]The other accepted idea was that it was used for ammunition storage was likewise discounted. Tunnels too small and difficult to work in. The investigators also noted the tunnel's odd shape. It has curves and bends. It was inefficient in its use of space compared with a regular German military storage tunnel, and plenty of those still exist in the Channel Islands to compare.

[00:07:22]Whatever was kept in the tunnels sat on trolleys that ran on the small railway line bolted to the floor.

[00:07:29]It appeared to Kemp and Weold that whatever it was was long and thin, and could be shunted outside when needed.

[00:07:37]They came to the conclusion that a Fiseler FI103 or V1 flying bomb, its wings detached for storage, as was standard, would fit perfectly in the tunnels.

[00:07:49]Armies follow handbooks when laying out facilities, and the Germans followed the same when setting up V1 launching positions. Kemp and Weineold noted that outside the tunnel on each side was a huge embankment of earth and rock from the excavations.

[00:08:05]It seemed as if the spoil from the excavations was deliberately piled up to create two slopes running from the tunnel exits to flatten the areas. Was this the site of a so-called ski ramp or V1 launcher? The researchers also noted that the site had once held a water tank, which was strange if it was an ammunition storage or electricity generator. However, comparison of the Olden site with those of known V1 launch sites in northern France raised many comparisons. Regarding the water tank, one was integral to V1 launch sites to allow crews to wash down the ramp of chemicals that were used from the firing of the missile.

[00:08:47]coupled with the length of the tunnel and the way spoil had been used to create large slopes outside the exits, plus the high build quality in the tunnel and the rails bolted to the floor. All pointed, according to Kemp and Weold, to the site in Oldin being a V1 launch site and the researchers concluded that these tunnels could each have held 72 disassembled V1s on trolleys.

[00:09:13]But why the Germans had built a V1 site on Alden was a mystery. It was too close to the coast and was very vulnerable to attack if discovered by the British.

[00:09:24]Kemp and Weineold noted that a quarter of a mile inside the hill, two smaller side tunnels branched off the main tunnel in each complex. Each was 30 yards long and led nowhere.

[00:09:38]Both were extremely wellb built and completely dry. Such chambers were not present at V1 sites in France.

[00:09:47]The researchers speculated that all the V1s would have been wheeled along the main tunnel and as they passed the side passages, something could have been fitted to them.

[00:09:57]Could these very well-built side chambers have held special warheads that required special storage?

[00:10:04]In the British archives, a report exists of a Gernzi fisherman who came into St. Anne's harbor one day during the war and witnessed Germans unloading yellow painted barrels from a ship. As Chem points out, yellow is the international recognition military color for chemical weapons then and now.

[00:10:25]Further evidence for this hypothesis was the fact that the Germans on Alden had frequent gas drills, often lasting all day long, as related by surviving labor camp prisoners after the war, who witnessed their guards in respirators at the time. Coincidence? Perhaps?

[00:10:44]The Germans certainly developed and stockpiled a series of very frightening chemical agents in World War II, including the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin, which are horrifically deadly. I did some research on the V1 missile and discovered that the Germans indeed designed a special chemical warfare variant called the FI103D1, but as far as is known, it did not enter serial production. But the fact is we just don't know whether some production of special warheads was not undertaken or indeed that the D1 variant was built in small numbers. What is well known is that Hitler himself was very loathed to use such weapons even when facing obliteration in the last weeks of the war. His objections are noted in many documents that have survived.

[00:11:32]But in the case of the island of Alden, whatever was being done there was being done by the SS. That is under the direct authority of Rexfurer SS Hinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Germany after Hitler and a man well known for his secret operations.

[00:11:49]So what about the practical issues involved? The underground complexes found by Kemp and Weineold could have been V1 launch sites. If you were going to locate one away from France to attack mainland England, the Channel Island of Old would have been a good place for several reasons. The closest point of mainland Britain is only about 60 mi away, well within the V1's standard range of up to 150 mi. The island was almost completely empty of civilians and heavily militarized.

[00:12:21]The labor used during the work was disposable and under direct SS control, so no interference would come from other parts of the German armed forces.

[00:12:33]No one wanted to upset Himmler, the most feared man in Germany. The question arises, why not simply launch a nerve agent attack from the regular V1 bases in northern France? Why the elaborate subtifuge of doing so from Oldeny?

[00:12:48]Several possible answers present themselves.

[00:12:52]Firstly, the nature of the island and its almost complete lack of civilian population meant that there was never any indigenous resistance organization that would be poking their nose into what the Germans were up to and reporting to London, as was the case, of course, in northern France. Secondly, the British would not suspect such a facility in the Channel Islands. It made little sense from a German logistics view to ship complicated weapons like V1s to an island to fire them against England. Northern France was perfectly adequate.

[00:13:25]Thirdly, any accident with the very horrendous nerve agents that could have been used in this attack could be contained in one small place, an island 4 mi long in the middle of the sea, and not spread over a wide area full of German troops and defenses such as in northern France.

[00:13:44]Kemp and Weineold stated that two launch ramps had been built, one for each of the tunnel complexes on Old. One ramp lined up with the port of Plymouth and the other with Weaimoth, which was an interesting discovery. Both of these ports were vital ports for the D-Day operation, crowded with warships, transports, troops, and supplies headed for Normandy, and even after the landings had taken place, continued at maximum capacity for months afterwards, sending supplies and troops to Europe.

[00:14:15]The researchers suggested that the nerve agent armed V1s were going to be fired at these two ports in an attempt to disrupt the Allied invasion effort. The V1 was not a precision strike weapon, rather an area bombardment missile that could generally hit within a 7 km circumference of a target. Hence, it's being used to bombard London, the largest city in Britain. But if the Germans fired enough of them at Plymouth and Weimoth, the law of averages suggests that some of them would have got through to hit. In the case of London, about 20% of V1s successfully got through the extensive defensive belts of anti-aircraft guns, balloons, barrage balloons, and fighters to impact causing immense damage and loss of life and injury.

[00:15:02]It must also be pointed out that most of the defenses combating V1s which were fired from northern France were concentrated in southeast England and not in the west of England. Meaning that any V1s fired from Olden would have faced less opposition.

[00:15:30]The closest target was Weimoth, a distance of about 60 mi almost due north from Olden.

[00:15:38]Plymouth is slightly further at about 110 mi, both within the range of a standard V1 flying bomb, regardless of its warhead type. The V1 flew at around 400 mph, giving a flight time of 9 minutes for Weimoth and 16 1/2 minutes for Plymouth.

[00:15:58]For London operations, V1 launch crews could reasonably fire 10 to 15 missiles per day. In the case of Alden, there would have been one battery firing over two ramps. So, they could have fired upwards of 20 to 30 missiles in a day.

[00:16:16]Given that Kemp and Weal calculated that each tunnel could accommodate 72 missiles or 144 collectively, it could have meant taking into consideration damaged or malfunctioning missiles, the Germans could fire for 3 days continuously at both ports. And unlike the high explosive warhead normally attached to V1s, the devastation caused by even a handful of successful nerve agent hits on cities like Plymouth and Weimoth could have been devastating.

[00:16:45]Naturally, Kemp and Weineold's work has been heavily criticized by other historians, notably Trevor Davenport, the author of Fesdong Oldeny, a book about the German defenses on the island.

[00:16:58]He dismissed the idea as quote utter nonsense, though he also stated, quote, "There are of course many things we do not know. That is accepted. It's always been accepted." It was quite secret.

[00:17:11]So, what do you think? Could the Germans have been planning to launch nerve agent tip V1s at England in 1944 or 1945? Or is the evidence presented by Kemp and Weineold plausible? I think the very special nature of Oldin in World War II, the secret activities of the SS on the island, and the analysis of the tunnels at Water Lane are compelling. But I guess until an actual German document is produced discussing this operation, it will be very difficult to prove. I will say one thing, it would have made an absolutely fantastic plot for a Jack Higgins novel.

[00:17:51]Many thanks for watching. Please subscribe and share and also visit my audio book channel, War Stories with Mark Felton. You can also help to support both of my channels at PayPal and Patreon. Details in the description box below.