text © Don Davis
The first V-2 and the dawn of the Space Age
The developments leading to launchers capable of lifting spacecraft have their origins in weapons development. Technology is available, as is much of everything, to destroy or to build. The use of rockets to explore space later became the means of understanding many things formally unknown to us, giving us the insight to ask more questions of the Universe. A historic benchmark on our path to this knowledge was the first successful flight of the 'V-2' rocket on October 3, 1942, the day the rocket graduated from a firework to a vehicle.
Because of a vivid recollection
which Krafft Eriche personally shared with me of that first successful
V-2 launch, while we attended the Apollo 17 launch cruise, I felt
inspired to learn what I could of that great moment. Such an event
is a tangible expression of many underlying causes and trends,
and a brief sketch of some of these is given as the background
to this technological milestone, which approached the atomic bomb
itself as the most significent invention of the Second World War.
In this presentation of the first succesful
flight of the V-2 and its historic background, the written accounts
of the participants were used whenever possible, particularly
the vivid recollections of Dornberger and Von Braun which appeared
in 'The Coming Of The Space Age' edited by Arthur C. Clarke. Where
Dornberger and Von Braun's accounts differ I defer to Von Braun.
Dornberger
& Von Braun
The romance of big rockets excited
the imaginations of several important Germans who realized what
could be done with enough resources. In a society rebounding from
losing the 'War to end all wars', rockets were adopted as a cause
by many young enthusiasts in the wake of circulation of ideas
of space travel in literature, especially the publication of Hermann
Oberth's 1923 book The rocket In Interplanetary Space.
Fritz Lang's Frau Im Mond ('Girl on the
Moon') had appeared in theaters as among the last of the silent
movies in 1928. This influential film introduced to the screen
many of the elements familiar to space enthusiasts, such as the
stage rocket, and the effects of acceleration and weightlessness.
The most enduring legacy of this film was the dramatic device
of the countdown of the last seconds before the ignition of the
rocket. This was later adopted as practice for actual launches
as well as for nuclear bomb tests! Oberth was sought out as technical
advisor on the film, and he tried unsuccessfully to build a liquid
fuel rocket for the premier of the movie.
German Rocket enthusiasts, with networking between
them facilitated by Willy Ley, actually built small but functioning
liquid fuel rockets which relied on combining fuel elements through
complex plumbing to create a controlled combustion. This is fundamentally
different from the ancient powder filled tubes invented by the
Chinese in the early 1200's A.D. One of these new rockets
climbed over 1000 feet in October 1931. The next year the
German Army showed interest in their work with Captain Walter
Dornberger, head of powder rocket development, visiting their
facilities. In 1929 Dornberger had been assigned the task, by
Army Ordinance development, of developing a rocket capable of
greater range than Germany's legendary 'Paris Gun' which lobbed
shells 65 miles during the World War. What Dornberger saw led
to his offer to key personnel to work for him in an Army development
program. Among these young tinkerers was Wernher Von Braun, most
gifted of that generation of German rocketeers.
After spirited debate some of them took the
offer, seen as an opportunity to perform the kind of Research
and Development they had only dreamed of with the pocket money
previously available. After years of doing work in garages it
must have seemed miraculous to see buildings, test stands, and
manufacturing plants spring up to support their needs. They
were defining the essentials of a new technology, as other individuals
in other countries were doing, except that one country's government
generously funded the crucial research and development and the
others didn't. Although obviously a tool for war at its inception,
the potential for other uses later on must have been a factor
in the motivations in at least some of these people. Rockets
were not specified as forbidden by the treaty Germany was bound
by following it's defeat in the first World War, so pouring money
into developing such vehicles could proceed without raising undue
alarm. Within a few years working liquid fuel rockets were
being fired from test stands. The many failures were dealt with
and the art of rocketry began to mature. The versatility and inventiveness
of the rocket team was shown in January 1935 when Major Von Richthofen,
a cousin of the famous ace, paid the facilities a visit to express
curiosity about using rockets to propel aircraft. Within 6 months
a Heinkel fighter plane was modified to carry a rocket engine
which was operated by the pilot. This was test fired on a stand
for Von Richthofen, who was greatly impressed with the speed with
which the work had been carried out as much as it's success. Thereafter
money poured into the place, the larger scale of the operation
causing the facility to be moved to Peenemunde, an isolated peninsula
of land from which significent work could be done without attracting
international attention.
By mid 1937 most of the old rocket crowd had
been gathered into Dornberger's group, of which Von Braun was
the most important in the overseeing of the work. Von Braun and
the other technicians had to join the National Socialist party
in order to continue their work, although ironically the Nazi
party was largely hostile to intellectual and academic interests. Among
the prominent people the gifted engineer Arthur Rudolph was rare
in apparantly being an enthusiastic Nazi, joining the party early
in its ascendency. Dornberger used his diplomatic and political
abilities to protect Von Braun and the others from the predatory
bureaucrats lurking in the Nazi government. A few other influential
visionaries saw to it the program was nursed through periods of
wavering support. Many military development projects were
under way in Germany at the time, often redundant but a few truly
important. A few of these, such as the deployment of Jet fighters,
were subject to irrational delays often initiated by Hitler himself.
Adolf Hitler tended to mistrust new technologies evolving since
his World War I career, and was slow to grasp their advantages.
At times he even seemed to let omens he saw in dreams affect his
priorities. By the late 30s the process of rocket development
had attracted some influential fans, including Army Supreme Commander
Field Marshall Von Brauchitsch, and most importantly the powerful
Minister of Armaments Albert Speer. In 1939 Hitler cut off funding
for big rockets, however Speer and Von Brauchitsch arranged for
hefty production contracts for Peenemunde to keep the facility
busy. Speer continued to arrange covert funding for large rockets
in what became a 'pet project' for him during the early crucial
years of development.
In a sheltered supportive environment the Peenemunde Group labored to quickly develop a large military rocket. Besides having a range considerably greater than that of the shells from the Paris Gun, a design constraint was that the missile had to be able to fit through existing railway tunnels. The final design for their big rocket, called the A-4, was a 46 foot long behemoth which could hurl a one ton warhead up to 200 miles. It's smooth aerodynamic shape and streamlined fins had the exotic look of a space vehicle, it seem like a visitor from the future. Engineers and various ranks of workers of very different status, such as university professors, specialist prisoners of war, and soldiers worked on the project. In those days people had jobs as 'computers', almost all women. These rows of slide-rule wielding ladies at their desks in one building were called the 'measurement girls'. One group of these 'computers' used so much paper to display trajectory data they were nicknamed the 'wallpaper girls'.Recruitments of competent people was done through universities and through a unique device of creating a specialized 'battalion' of military personnel with scientific and technical skills drawn from the general military population. Among the people suddenly finding themselves ordered to Peenemunde was a tank platoon leader who had fought from Dunkirk to the suburbs of Moscow, Krafft Ehriche. In the spring of 1940 Wernher Von Braun was approached by an aid of Reichsfueher SS Heinrich Himmler who urged that he join the SS. After getting Dornbergers advice, Von Braun finally wrote his consent and was promptly appointed a Lieutenant, with yearly promotions.
The year 1942 was an especially crucial year of World War II. Hitler's conquests had made him the ephemeral master of Europe. Germany's penetration of Russia was reaching it's peak, with Stalingrad becoming the focus of vast resources for devastating attacks by the Germans and unrelenting defense by the Soviets. The two armored Colossi of Western and Eastern Europe were locked in a death struggle, as vast as the rest of the Second World War put together. Some German technical advancements which could have changed history for the worse if fully exploited fell victim to fundamental weaknesses in the mentality of the Nazi ruling elite and the wartime disruption of industrial production. Jet and rocket propulsion were being tried in fighter aircraft, but the jets underwent years of delay to satisfy Hitler's irrational whims. The tiny Komet rocket fighters, admittedly fast and deadly, were woefully brief in their powered flight after which they helplessly glided to a touchdown on a ski like skid. A few of the Komets would blow up suddenly in flight. On June 13, 1942 the first full scale test flight of an A-4 was attempted. After rising for one second the thrust stopped, causing the giant projectile to settle back to Earth, the fins crumpling as it tumbled on it's side. Smacking into the concrete, the fuel filled body burst like a great water balloon then flashed violently into a billowing inferno. Number 2 was launched August 16, and rose majestically until it spun out of control and exploded about 45 seconds into the flight, about 8 miles high. Unfortunately a lot of VIPs were witnesses to that failure. The pressure was on. The midsection of the missile was strengthened, and ongoing design improvements were incorporated into the next flight vehicle. By this time a do-or-die sentiment made everyone especially careful, knowing the hazards of being an expensive exotic government program unable to produce results in wartime.
The turning point came on the third try.
The morning of October 3,
1942 was clear and beautiful at the Peenemunde complex. Atop one
of the camouflage draped buildings Captain Walter Dornberger stood
with a microphone in one hand, his powerful binoculars in the
other. Near him a small television apparatus provided a tiny pale
picture of the A-4, which was hidden from direct view by a tree
covered low hill. The benevolence written into his features was
starkly highlighted in the bright sun with lines of worry. This
was probably going to be the critical demonstration of the worthiness
of the idea he and his gathered talent had long slaved for. Next
to Dornberger stood his lifelong friend, Colonel Leo Zanssen.
Both men had no love for the Nazis and as a military commander
of Peenemunde Zanssen had assisted Dornberger in keeping the Party
types at arm's length.
The paved facilities around them gave away in
the distance to green marshlands and coastal forests. A red brick
cathedral stood above the green hills, clear in the sunlight.
Nearby other observers were taking their places. On the
isolated launch pad stood the results of everyone's best work,
eagerly watched through periscopes by engineers in their nearby
concrete buildings, others watching through closed circuit television.
The tall rocket displayed the graceful tapering contours dictated
by the extremes of natural conditions it would experience, a vision
of the future. Further away, among the buildings, were many
others 'in the know' but not really supposed to be there. Roofs
were swarming with spectators, every vantage point seemingly taken.
Tinny voices on loudspeakers barked out the status of the various
systems, and engineers were queried on how their part of the process
was going. A voice over the loudspeaker called out "X minus
three, Counting off".
Swinging his binoculars sideways, Dornberger
spied Wernher Von Braun among a small group atop a nearby building.
Apart from them sat a pair of professional observers, both peering
through special binocular periscopes and giving their own accounts
of what they were witnesing, each with a secretary taking down
what they independently said. White vapor poured from the Oxygen
tank valve near the base of the rocket, with a band of frost encircling
the location of the oxygen tank itself well above the middle of
the vehicle. The access platforms were moved away, leaving the
massive projectile standing alone as Man's newest challenge to
the sky.
"X minus one" barked the announcer. The
Pennemunde Minute, legendary for it's subjectively great length,
had begun. The preparations were over, and the situation was in
the hands of the kind of fate people have prayed to in hopes of
influencing it as they stand helplessly by. Dornberger forced
himself to stare at the television image of the rocket and not
at his watch. A green smoke trail appeared as a flare signaling
10 seconds left was fired. The wind changed it's shape only slightly.
"Ignition" was loudly announced as sparks sprayed from
the engine nozzle and quickly turned into a violent column of
flame roaring against the concrete. Cables fell away from the
rocket, smoke billowed around it and the missile was then operating
under it's own battery power. The announcement "Cleared"
was made as the final buildup of thrust carried it's force past
that needed to allow the 13.5 ton machine to overcome gravity.
Slowly, magnificently, the pointed tip of the A-4 rose above the
smoke and into the view of everyone.
Dornberger saw it seemingly emerge from the
treetops through his binoculars, gleaming in the Sun against first
the distant green scenery then the blue sky, unleashing a column
of bright flame as long as the rocket itself. It rose steadily
along it's intended path, straight and true with no spinning.
Five seconds after ignition, the thunder of the launch reached
the buildings, the waves felt as well as heard while rippling
through everything. The roar filled the skies and rolled over
the forest and across the oceans beyond. Higher and faster the
rocket climbed, becoming lighter as fuel was spent, the continuing
engine thrust acting against less weight every moment. Slowly
the missile began it's programmed tilt in it's path to achieve
the desired 45 degree angle for maximum range.
The rocket's roar began
to change into a sputtering of slowly lowering tone, with other
local noises gradually emerging from the din.
The seconds elapsed since the flight began were
counted out continuously on the loudspeaker, but other speakers
gave information, such as a 'measuring tone' of a slowly changing
pitch broadcast from the rocket which gave an audible indication
of the speed the vehicle was traveling due to the sensitivity
of the receiver to the 'Doppler' shift of the rocket's transmitter.
The tone was changing from a low humming to a piercing trill as
the speed built up. During the otherwise monotonous counting,
occasional flight milestones were announced, such as "Sonic
velocity". Now supersonic speed had been reached! Through
the binoculars the rocket, shortened by perspective, spouted it's
orange flame brightly against the dark blue heavens. A half minute
had passed, and double the speed of sound was reached. The rocket
now flew higher than any mountain on Earth. Just after 40 seconds
into the flight a trail of vapor appeared, with alarmed murmurs
from the crowd expressing fears that the rocket had exploded.
An announcer reassured everyone what they saw was simply the oxygen
vent opening.
Now that this rocket had lasted longer than
it's predecessor, each moment was spent in new territory. Other
voices expressed fears the rocket was flying erratically, when
what they observed was actually the initially straight vapor trail
being stretched about by swift high altitude winds. Until that
moment only meteors had left trails at such altitudes. At the
54 second mark the engine cut off was announced, and only the
glowing vanes along the inner edges of the rear fins were seen
as a tiny white speck at the end of the faint darker mass of the
still climbing rocket.
The A-4 was sailing higher than any human being
would go for another 18 years. If one could be at missiles vantage
point the sky above would be jet black, with brighter stars and
a diagonal line of planets visible in the same sky as the brilliant
morning Sun. The distance to the horizon was a thousand miles
and growing, with the curvature of the Earth obvious. A fuzzy
envelope of luminous sky colored air separates the dark blue seas
and lushly forested coastlines below from the eternal empty vastness
above. With practically all the air left behind the rocket arced
in a graceful mathematical path unhindered by wind resistance,
in a sterile vacuum environment. Unfiltered sunlight harshly illuminated
one side of the projectile, outlining in crisp shadows every dent
and rivet along its length. A painting of a woman sitting on a
crescent Moon looked out from between the fins of the missile
towards the actual waning crescent Moon high in the southwestern
sky. As the A-4 reached the peak of its arc it skimmed the realm
of the rest of the universe.
Dornberger at last put down his binoculars,
drawing his breath slowly. It had worked! A decade of work had
made a huge mark on History! Turning to Zanssen, who was tearfully
laughing, they shook hands, yelled, and gleefully embraced like
victorious schoolboys at the end of an important ball game. Atop
and between buildings people were shaking hands, clapping, and
even dancing. Dornberger descended from his vantage point and
grabbed a vehicle, weaving his way through the jubilant confusion.
Spying Von Braun, he pulled him into the car and careened to the
launch site to join the people gathering there. The scene at the
smoldering pad was chaos as everyone babbled their impressions
to the senior staff present. The flame's effects on the firing
area was worse than expected but would be planned around the next
time. By now the rocket was in it's fourth minute of flight, falling
with great speed.
Dornberger hushed everyone up to hear the end
of the flight take place. The tone broadcast from the rocket still
sounded, but the 3000 mile per hour speed of the missile was about
to be quickly slowed by one third as it re-entered the dense atmosphere,
and the danger of overheating and breakup haunted him, a moment
of truth no less than the actual launch. Then, a few seconds short
of 5 minutes of flight, the measuring tone abruptly began lowering
as the speed dropped during the atmospheric descent, with the
word "Impact" cutting off the tone. Now it was an unqualified
success! A dye capsule in the rocket would reveal it's location
to a search plane. The impact point was some 124 miles distant,
with an altitude of nearly half that having been reached.
Professor Hermann Oberth ran out of a building and
clasped hands with Dornberger with congratulations while exclaiming
"This is something only the Germans could achieve!"
The crescent Moon with a lady sitting on it painted on the
fin was in honor of the film 'Frau im Mond', for which Oberth
was technical advisor. Dornberger replied to Oberth "The
day on which we had been privileged to take the first step into
space must also be a day of success and rejoicing for you, and
that the congratulations must go to you for showing us the way".
At the foot of the building Dornberger had witnessed the launch
from an engineer had just placed a large boulder with the words
"A great weight has fallen from my shoulders" painted
on it. That evening a small celebration was held in the officer's
club with many key workers on the project addressed by Dornberger,
who clearly saw past the immediate use this invention would be
put as he said:
"The history of technology will record that for the first time a machine of human construction, a 5.5 ton missile, covered a distance of 120 miles with a deflection of only two and a half miles from the target. Your names, my friends and colleagues, are associated with this achievement"..."Our self steering rocket has reached heights never touched by any man-made machine. Since the tilt was not carried to completion our rocket today reached a height of nearly 60 miles. We have thus broken the world height record of 25 miles previously held by the shell fired from the now almost legendary Paris Gun. The following points may be deemed of decisive significance in the history of technology: We have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time-mark this well- have used space as a bridge between two points on the Earth: we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. To land, sea, and air may now be added infinite space as a medium of future intercontinental traffic. This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation, that of space travel..." The lecture then turned to the need to develop and deploy the new weapon as soon as possible.
In some ways that day became
the peak experience of the Rocket Team's German days. Never again
would the accomplishments of Peenemunde seem to offer so much
potential, nor would the wartime environment again be so friendly
towards realizing their dreams. But the power of that day's triumph
radiated forth like the sound of a shot in the night.When Speer
mentioned the success of the test to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer
at last took an interest in the project. A meeting between Hitler,
Dornberger, and Von Braun took place on July 17, 1943. In
the three quarters of a year since that first successful A-4 flight
(later renamed the V-2 by Goebbel's propaganda ministry) the War
had taken disastrous turns for Germany. Early in 1943, after running
the gauntlet of the fortunes of war, dwindling supplies, and the
freezing weather the remnants of the army trying to take Stalingrad
hobbled in long tattered lined into surrender, having lost 100,000
men over the last three weeks of fighting. They were forbidden
by Hitler to retreat, and 130,000 soldiers were taken prisoner,
most never to return. This event marked the pivotal turnaround
in the war with Russia, after which Germany never really regained
the initiative. The recent surrender of the famed Afrika Corps
during the loss of North Africa was another alarming loss of territory
under German control. In March of 1943 the Germans were deprived
of the 'heavy water' they needed to pursue their nuclear weapons
program in a well directed raid by Norwegian resistance forces.
This alone did more to seal the fate of the Third Reich than many
of the large scale battles yet to come. The walls were slowly
closing in on the Reich, and drastic new weapons seemed more inviting.
As Von Braun and Dornberger waited for their
audience, they kept reviewing what would be said. Finally they
were admitted to Hitler's presence with pomp and ceremonial announcements.
The Fuehrer stepped forwards, from the first moment appearing
not quite so 'bigger than life' as he once was. To Dornberger
the strain of the recent years on Hitler's appearance showed alarmingly,
with an appearance of weariness and a stooped posture the main
differences noted from his 1939 meeting. The man who had been
able to project a Messiah like persona before millions was turning
into the reclusive over medicated tyrant of his last days. Accompanying
the harried dictator were Speer and other top officials with their
aides.
Von Braun knew his presentation well, leaping
into an enthusiastic description of the workings of the rocket
and it's effects upon impact. At this point Hitler interrupted,
and cautioned that a very sensitive fuse would be needed to assure
the warhead didn't bury itself to excessive depth before exploding,
thus limiting it's effect. Hitler was never shy on offering his
opinion on anything. The rest of the lecture went well, and at
the proper moment the lights were dimmed and a color film of the
October 3 test was shown. The vision of this streamlined leviathan
hurling itself skyward upon a piller of fire transfixed Adolf
Hitler. As the rocket roared to life on the screen the fires of
the previous decades reawakened in his piercing blue eyes. It
was as if the deliverance he yearned for was being revealed to
him, and sudden hope animated his further intrigued inquiries.
His desperate imagination brought significance beyond rationality
to what this weapon could mean to the war. Amid an obsessive tirade
on the need to build more destructive weapons of this type, he
paused for a moment and reflected "Europe and the World will
be too small from now on to contain a war. With such weapons humanity
will be unable to endure it."
Hitler than gave the A-4 weapon the highest
priority, at least in his mood of the moment. When Von Braun returned
to Peenemunde, a check on Hitler's concerns of delayed detonation
upon impact proved them to be valid! Hitler had a knack for inspired
intuition but often trusted it in inappropriate domains. A funding
crisis early in the program was initiated by a dream Hitler supposedly
had suggesting the V-2 would be a failure. Similarly reasoned
decisions fatally delayed the appearance of German jet fighters
and imprudently cut back on arms production while operating under
optimistic wartime scenarios. Whole armies were made to fight
to the death where they stood rather than retreat and live to
fight another day. Germany was to begin fighting a grim 'delaying
action' war, especially against the Russians. Although the Germans
would inflict lopsided casualties on the Russians, desperation
increased as the territory under German control steadily dwindled.
In the meantime Allied bombing increasingly disrupted the industries
needed to quickly bring about the dreams of the engineers. Only
a few projects went anywhere, such as the V-1, a primitive cruise
missile, and of course the V-2, forerunner of the ballistic missiles.
The Olympian days of German rocket
development were over. It was time to turn the missile into a
weapon. Long gone were the days of public exposure to ideas of
space travel in Germany. In the meantime German news media had
been forbidden to use the word 'rocket' at all, and every copy
of Lang's film Frau im Mond within German reach was quietly
confiscated and destroyed. With success at Peenemunde came interest
from the dreaded Heinrich Himmler, with his overtures followed
by heavy-handed measures to move the SS into the rocket game.
In a meeting called by Himmler in February 1944 at his East Prussian
headquarters, Von Braun found himself being invited to join the
inner staff of the man he described as being "as mild mannered
a villain as ever cut a throat". In his polite delivery Himmler
assured him of greater access to the Fuehrer and the end of delays
caused by Army red tape. Von Braun quickly reiterated his loyalty
and admiration for Dornberger, emphasizing the delays were primarily
due to technical and not organizational causes. Wernher then faced
down Himmler, telling him that the V-2 was like a fragile growing
flower which needs sunshine, a gentle gardener, and a measured
amount of manure. What Himmler was proposing, he then said, was
like a jet of liquefied manure which could kill the little flower!
The head of the SS stared at Von Braun, by then a Major in Himmlers
paramilitary empire, and regarded him sternlywith squinty steely
eyes behind his tiny wire rimmed glasses.
Two weeks later Von Braun and others were arrested
by the Gestapo, facing a treason charge which in wartime Germany
was courting a death sentence, although they were evidently spared
the brutality most others similarly charged went through in the
hands of the SS. After two weeks they were rescued by Dornberger
successfully appealing to Speer and even Hitler for his rescue,
on the grounds that without Von Braun there would be no V-2. By
this time, however, the introduction of such a weapon was of declining
importance to the outcome of the war.
Continuous high priority status
may have led to the missile being available close to a year earlier.
Allied bombing and shrinking frontiers steadily pinched off necessary
supplies for this and other new weapons. In a way the very pursuit
of the V-2 project sapped the efforts of rocket specialists who
might have developed better air defense methods which, along with
the jet fighters properly deployed, may well have defeated the
allied air offensives. Speer later actually regretted his going
out of his way to push the V-2 rockets, each one of which used
nearly enough resources to build a fighter plane. It was yet another
fatal error in the conduct of the war which saved the world from
a German plunder based slave empire. Within Hitler's shrinking
realm suffering beyond precedent continued, largely due to the
activities of the dreaded SS. From the sheltered enclaves of the
laboratories rocket production shifted to the dank realms of the
new massive underground facility near Nordhausen in the Hartz
Mountains, prepared to foil bombing raids such as one which had
devastated Peenemunde in August 18-19, 1943.
The failed attempt to kill Hitler on July 20,
1944 caused a violent purge of the German Army officers, including
the head of Army armaments Friedrich Fromm, who had the misfortune
of being the commanding officer of Lt. Col. Klaus Von Stauffenberg,
the man who left the briefcase bomb in the conference room. Himmler
assumed the imprisoned Fromm's duties, and the leadership of the
Rocket program soon passed from the best of Germany's Prussian
military tradition, represented by Dornberger, to it's worst.
Himmler soon appointed a favorite 'rising star' in the organization,
SS Major Hans Kammler, to run the rocket program. Things really
got ugly under his influence.
Kammler was an icily calculating man whose ambition
was matched only by his cruelty. His grim career included the
demolition of the ruins left by the bloody suppression of the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the overall architectural layout of
the Auschwitz death camp, including the fabrication of the gas
chambers and crematoria. His new project was the 'Mittlework'
V-2 factory tunneled within the Harz Mountains. Kammler would
gather a work force by the expedient method of mass arrests, boasting
openly about the 'protective custody' his workers toiled under.
Early in one morning he awakened officers by firing a machine
gun, yelling that if he couldn't sleep no one else would! In the
deteriorating conditions of the later months of the war he assembled
a sizable slave empire, and desperate projects were undertaken
with no regard to the human cost. A few of the Peenemunde group
who were assigned to work with him were later to regret that association,
most notably Arthur Rudolph, a brilliant engineer who, after his
work on Apollo's leviathan Saturn V rocket a generation later,
would be hounded by reports of his working at the 'Mittelwork'
plant. While searching for specialists in various critical fields
among those caught up in the SS roundups, Von Braun once visited
the Buchenwald concentration camp and transferred prisoners from
there to Mittlework. As bad as the use of slave labor is, at least
such prisoners were moved to a place where the idea was to manufacture
machines faster than manufacturing corpses. Thousands nevertheless
died at Mittlework under hellish conditions. Kammler and his underlings
worked masses of people to death in dank noisy tunnels. Shafts
being tunneled by prisoners using hand tools often collapsed,
burying in one case hundreds. Explosions killed more, with subsequent
manufacturing improvements geared towards efficiency rather than
safety. Under Kammler's direction over 1300 rockets wound strike
England, 518 on London.
In February 28, 1945 Kammler placed a pilot
inside a 'Natter', which was a small piloted missile. This man,
Luftwaffe Lieutenant Lothar Siebert, became the first person to
be launched vertically in a rocket. The honor was a brief one.
After climbing 330 feet, the cockpit bubble tore loose, abruptly
decapitating the pilot. At 1600 feet the Natter faltered and dived,
ending this inglorious debut for manned vertical rocket flight.
In the end, Kammler plunged to the depths of depravity, shooting
groups of prisoners himself just for the hell of it. Once over
200 inmates fell victim to one of his blood orgies. Finally he
retreated to his special train, the 'vengence express' and issued
a flurry of orders fewer people each day could respond to. Probably
realizing his diminishing career potential, he finally ordered
an aid to shoot him before the approaching Russians could capture
him. Another story has him meeting his end in Czechoslovakia in
an April gunfight with partisans. His boss Himmler, after years
of a pampered life, had an especially brutal awakening. Within
Himmler's SS empire Hitler's darkest visions were realized as
several groups, especially the Jews, Russian prisoners of war,
and the Gypsies were worked to death, starved, and murdered by
the millions in secluded concentration camps. The collective list
of death and POW camp victims of the above categories probably
approaches 10 million, about 6 million of that number being Jews,
which Hitler vowed to exterminate above all others. Shunned in
his pathetic diplomatic overtures to the West, Himmler, once among
the most feared men in Europe, spent his last days hiding until
his capture and suicide.
On April 30, with the walls of his underground
bunker shuddering from Russian shells, Hitler shot himself in
the temple while biting on a poison vial, his new bride Eva Braun
at his side. The blanket wrapped bodies of the newlyweds were
carried upstairs and lowered into a shell crater outside the bunker's
emergency exit where cans of scarce gasoline were poured over
them, then ignited with a tossed blazing rag. The battle taking
place around the small funeral thundered among burned out facades
of once gleaming edifices like the rumblings of fierce thunderstorms
across great granite peaks. The small shell crater's gasoline
fireball briefly flared, then after initially retreating the small
group of officers stepped forward from the shelter entrance to
the pyre and raised thair right arms in a final Nazi salute. As
the bodies burned the city of Berlin around them blazed from one
end to the other. The sparks rolled skywards in twisting forms
as if a malevolent spirit was glimpsed in its retreat.
The bulk of the Peenemunde group migrated westward
amid the chaos of collapse toward the Americans and away from
the Russians. The story of the archiving of their engineering
data and the exodus Westward, culminating in the surrender to
the Americans and their subsequent adventures essentially continuing
their previous work, has been well described elsewhere. They were
fortunately regarded as valuable by the country the group knew
they had the best chance to continue their work in.
Many of the Peenemunde group ended up crafting
the near mythical behemoths of the Apollo program, the greatest
peacetime project in history. The German rocketeers were able
to finally fulfill their lifelong dreams with the spectacular
Saturn rockets which carried men to the Moon. In two developmental
'windows of opportunity' a generation and an ocean apart, two
very different charismatic leaders, Adolf Hitler and John F. Kennedy,
sponsored the vital work which in one case began, and in the other
matured, the means to spread human presence far beyond the reach
of those who came before.
In both of these efforts substantially the same
German rocket team worked themselves into the right place and
the right time to assume a pivotal role in fullfilling a grand
vision. The accomplishment of the Moon landings will beam
forth like a lighthouse across the ages as a noble use of a great
nations scientific and technological prowess.
Books referenced for this account:
Clarke: The Coming Of the Space Age. Meredith Press, 1967
Ordway, Sharpe: The Rocket team. Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1979
Speer: Inside the Third Reich. Macmillian Company, 1981
Piszkiewicz: Wernher Von Braun The Man Who Sold The Moon
Yves Bon : Planet Dora