Warbird Information Exchange

i'm reading a fascinating book on german epionage activities in ww 2 entitled " the game of the foxes" by ladislas farago, a highly respected authority on ww 2 history, who wrote amongst other books "patton" which later became the movie, so i think his credentials speaks for itself. i have another post re: this book on the site already as well. the book mentions a german spy based in the u.s., 1 hermann lang who stole the norden bombsight. the info does not go beyond that statement. can anybody elaborate more facts??

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Lang was a member of the the Duquesne Spy Ring. The case is the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions. On January 2, 1942, 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Frederick or Fritz Joubert Duquesne were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison. They were brought to justice after a lengthy espionage investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Of those arrested on the charge of espionage, 19 pleaded guilty. The 14 men who entered pleas of not guilty were brought to jury trial in Federal District Court, Brooklyn, New York, on September 3, 1941; and they were all found guilty on December 13, 1941.

Herman W. Lang went to the United States from Germany in 1927 and became a citizen in 1939. He was one of the four people Sebold had been told to contact in the United States.

Until his arrest, Lang had been employed by the Carl L. Norden Corp. which manufactured the Top Secret Norden bombsight and other highly confidential materials essential to the national defense of the United States. During a visit to Germany in 1938, Lang conferred with German military authorities and reconstructed plans of the confidential materials from memory.

Upon conviction, Lang received a sentence of 18 years in prison on espionage charges and a 2-year concurrent sentence under the Registration Act.

(All the above is from wikipedia, just edited to make it legible in context)

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

muddy buddy, you da man with the info. so, reading between the lines he stole the plans for the norden, not the actual hardware. i was wondering how lang would hump that chunk of metal out of the factory undetected!! did the germans try to build a copy??

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

It doesn't appear that the Germans used the information, or at least not much of it. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1004.htm

They probably saw through the hype and decided the Norden wasn't worth copying!

August

There is a friend of mine looking down from above right now, and he is smiling, August. Wayne was involved with the Sperry sight and always wondered how come they never got any press.....

Scott

so much for the pickle barrel myth....

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!