Crossbow and Overcast

New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc, 1964. Combined Registry Edition [stated]. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Fair/Fair. [8], 279, [1] pages. Illustrations. Map. Appendix. Notes and Sources. Index. DJ worn, torn, soiled, chipped, and damaged at back with repair. Covers worn, soiled and stained. Interior pages are good to very good. Reading copy. Crossbow was the code name for the operation which first discovered and then defeated Germany's rocket potential. Overcast was the top-secret follow-up plan which eventually brought Wernher von Braun and other top German rocket scientists to the United States one jump ahead of the Red Army. Derived from a Kirkus review: McGovern has done a remarkable job of gathering and assembling some not easily available material relating to the development of the V-2 rocket in Germany and to the ultimate U.S. coup of getting 100 rockets and 115 German scientists to the States. The final value of this action was that the U. S. went into the rocket race with men who had three decades of rocketry experience and were the most well-versed team in the world. The British began their spy operations into the German mystery weapon in 1942. Try as they did, they could not discover what the weapon was until it was practically upon them. They did discover, however, these enigmatic concrete ""ski slides"" pointing toward London and they put into operation project Crossbow: massive bombing attacks on the mystery installations. Eventually, the U. S. decided to get into this also and developed a secret project named Overcast whose objective was to capture rockets and scientists. The material presents also concerns the Germans themselves, notably Wernher von Braun and General Walter Dornberger. The author interviewed both men. The race between the Americans, British and Russians gets quite exciting.