Epic Rivalry

by Von Hardesty

  1

  THE GREAT TROPHY HUNT

  Major Robert Staver of U.S. Army Ordnance arrived in London in early January 1945. His wartime mission aimed to learn more about the V-2, the newly deployed Nazi ballistic missile. This formidable aerial weapon had first appeared in the skies of the British capital the previous autumn. The sudden onslaught of the V-2 evoked fear of a renewed and massive bombing campaign against Britain. The new missile approached its target at a phenomenally high speed with little or no warning. The stark realization that an incoming V-2 could easily overwhelm conventional air defenses prompted grave concerns. What the Nazis called their “vengeance weapon” represented a radical breakthrough in technology, a unique weapon with an unknown potential to wreak havoc in London and to reshape the course of the war.

  For Staver, as it turned out, his special mission to London proved to be a perilous journey. The young American officer soon discovered that he was in the crosshairs of the Nazi barrage. On the day Staver reported to his commanding officer, Major Calvin Corey, at 27 Grosvenor Square, he faced the sudden fury of the revolutionary ballistic missile—an incoming V-2 exploded nearby, throwing both men to the floor. When Staver reached a window, he looked out on a scene of devastation: The V-2 had exploded prematurely in the air, raining down debris on the street below.

  Shortly after this harrowing incident, Staver moved into his living quarters near Marble Arch. No sooner had he taken up residence in his new apartment than he found himself once again in harm’s way. His neighborhood was hit by a V-2 at night, exploding just yards from Staver’s bedroom. The impact of the explosion threw him from his bed to the floor. He later observed that the force of the explosion “made the drapes of my window stand straight out from the wall.” When another V-2 hit nearby Hyde Park, 62 people were killed. Now, for the first time since the 1940 blitz, Londoners began to look skyward again for any telltale signs of the enemy.

  Staver’s final encounter with a V-2 came on a leisurely car trip to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough: While en route he observed a missile attack on a warehouse just a half mile away, which killed 15 workers and destroyed a large amount of war matériel. For Staver—as with all Londoners that year—V-2 attacks were an unnerving experience: There was no air-raid siren, no effective radar alert, and no telltale sound to warn those at ground level of the approaching danger. At ground zero, the V-2 typically spewed destruction across a wide swath, collapsing buildings and filling the streets with a cloud of churning debris. The V-2 left a crater about 30 feet in diameter, the signature footprint of Hitler’s weapon of retaliation.1

  Staver had come to Europe at the behest of Colonel Gervais Trichel, then chief of the rocket branch of U.S. Army Ordnance, a man who was keenly interested in investigating the enemy’s new missile technology. With the anticipated collapse of Nazi Germany, Trichel had ordered the seizure of a hundred V-2s for evaluation, along with all technical documentation associated with the rocket. No less important to this top-secret mission was gaining access to Germany’s talented cadre of rocket scientists and engineers. At the top of this list was the name of Wernher von Braun. Colonel Holgar Toftoy, an intelligence officer stationed in Paris, took charge of the trophy hunt, now given the name “Special Mission V-2.” Clustered around Toftoy and Staver were a select group of intelligence officers, ordnance specialists, and civilian technical advisers. In the closing months of the war, these men soon discovered that they were not alone in the quest for the V-2 technology: Once the Soviets took Berlin, they, too, would display a keen interest in the German advances in rocketry.

  The quest to gain access to the German rocket program was complicated by the war and its accompanying destruction. Major German cities, factories, and military bases had been routinely bombed. The ground assault on Germany proper in the spring of 1945 only augmented the ruin and disruption. The triumphant occupiers of Germany faced the daunting task of sifting through the debris of a defeated nation to discover what could be learned about the V-2 rocket and those who created it.

  THE HIDDEN WORLD OF GERMAN ROCKETRY

  The success of the V-2 resulted in no small measure from the leadership of rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun. Going back to the late 1920s, he had contributed both vision and organizational drive to the German rocket program. As a youth, von Braun had joined a band of rocket enthusiasts in Berlin. This small circle—with impressive engineering and technical skills—turned its attention to experimentation with liquid-fuel rockets.

  During these formative years, the German rocket program was an exclusively civilian affair, animated by a vision of space travel and conducted on a shoestring budget. This civilian-controlled phase of rocket experimentation, however, proved to be short-lived. In 1932, the German army approached the fledgling rocket community with an offer of financial support for baseline research within the framework of military weapons development. Von Braun welcomed this overture from the army, arguing that such patronage was essential to move rocketry from the realm of a hobby to an arena for serious technological experimentation. The resulting alliance with the German military proved to be a fateful move, not just for von Braun and his fellow enthusiasts but for the history of modern rocketry.

  Von Braun brought to the embryonic rocket program solid academic credentials, having earned a doctorate in physics at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm University at the age of 23. His dissertation had focused on the theory of liquid-fueled rockets. While formally trained in physics, he had a flair for engineering, a rare combination of attributes that enabled von Braun to assume a role of leadership. He possessed a remarkable sense of timing, ultimately making peace with the Nazi regime, but also knowing when to act decisively to protect himself and his associates in moments of supreme danger. No one in the German rocket community, civilian or military, occupied a more elevated position of influence than von Braun.

  Working with the German military (and later as part of Nazi Germany’s war effort) inevitably raised questions about von Braun’s motives and actions. The question of whether he was a Nazi sympathizer has prompted much debate. He did join the Nazi party in 1937 and, three years later, Heinrich Himmler’s SS organization, the Schutzstaffel (“elite guard”). Both formal associations, his defenders have argued, should be viewed as expedient steps taken to sustain his research in rocketry. According to this interpretation, the formal links to the Nazi state did not reflect any personal ideology or, for that matter, any explicit sympathy for Hitler’s political aims. In fact, von Braun expressed in small groups his disdain for the Nazi regime. In 1944, he was arrested and temporarily imprisoned by the SS on suspicion of not being wholly dedicated to the war effort; in the postwar years, this incident added some credibility to the argument that von Braun was a man at odds with the Nazi leadership.

  However, the charge of complicity or passive acceptance of the Nazi regime would persist throughout von Braun’s long career. In particular, Nazi Germany’s genocidal employment practices in the war years intersected in controversial ways with von Braun’s work. Slave labor was mobilized for the manufacture of the V-2 rockets in horrific conditions at Camp Dora, and more than 30,000 people died from forced labor, starvation, and illness. Both General Dornberger and von Braun, given their high rank, knew of the use of slave labor, even though they lacked any direct involvement in the administration of the camps. Von Braun and others, in varying degrees, were guilty at the very least of complicity. They did not challenge openly the use of forced labor, knowing it was vital to the German rocket program, and Camp Dora remains an inescapable black mark on the von Braun legacy.

  Von Braun did not work in isolation, but at the epicenter of a remarkable community of rocket experimenters. Early on, he worked actively with the Society for Space Travel (Verein für Raumschiffahrt, or VfR), which served as an umbrella organization for these space visionaries. He also was an admirer of rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, who had published in 1923 a pivotal theoretical work, “The Rocket into Planetary Space” (Die
Rakete zu den Planetenräumen). Oberth’s classic study offered a compelling basis to believe that space travel was technically feasible. Unlike literary visionaries Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Oberth brought to his analysis a sophisticated understanding of aerodynamics and physics. Among his conclusions was the prophetic notion that a rocket with liquid propellants offered the optimal path for the future rocket development. Oberth, along with other prominent pioneers—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia and Robert Goddard in the United States—worked in isolation, at a time when there was no systematic body of theoretical knowledge on the principles of rocketry. From these lonely beginnings, Germany would become a fertile ground for many bold experiments with rocket-powered automobiles, sleds, and rail cars, which hinted at the future: the creation of a rocket to reach the upper atmosphere and beyond.

  By the early 1930s, the VfR had established a test facility outside Berlin for a series of rocket experiments, attracting a talented group of engineers including Rudolf Nebel, Klaus Riedel, and the young von Braun. The rocket enthusiasts soon moved to a new locale for their experiments, a former munitions-storage complex in the Berlin suburb of Reinickendorf. Later dubbed the Raketenflugplatz (“rocket airport”), the abandoned site offered an ideal environment for experimental work: It contained concrete barracks, bunkers, and blockhouses surrounded by earthen walls 40 feet high and 60 feet thick. While the financial underpinnings for the Raketenflugplatz remained minimal, there was no lack of enthusiasm, as von Braun later observed.2 Nebel, an engineer and former World War I pilot, took the lead in seeking out essential raw materials to sustain the rocket experiments. Soon the test site was filled with a lively group of engineers, electricians, draftsmen, sheet metal workers, and technicians—all drawn by the lure of rocketry.

  Given the primitive nature of liquid-fueled rockets, many failures punctuated the work of the VfR, but the Raketenflugplatz nonetheless recorded some notable successes. The VfR enthusiasts took pride in the fact that they were able to launch arrow-shaped rockets that attained an altitude of 1,500 feet, then quite an achievement. These benchmarks soon attracted the attention of the German army, which viewed the rocket as a potential new avenue for weapons development. Germany had suffered a calamitous defeat in World War I (1914-1918). The resulting Versailles Treaty of 1919, which formally ended the war, placed burdensome restrictions on the German military. The victorious Allies used the treaty as a tool to severely curtail any future German program of rearmament and militarism. But there was a loophole to exploit: The treaty had not banned rockets or, for that matter, research on pilotless aircraft.

  Seeing the loophole, Colonel Karl Becker, the army’s chief of ballistics and ammunition, recruited members of the VfR to assist in the development of military rockets. Artillery captain (later general) Walter Dornberger, himself a rocket enthusiast, assumed oversight for the far-reaching experimental project. Von Braun and others in the VfR who joined the army program experienced a curtailment of freedom with the demise of the older civilian-sponsored rocket program. But that loss was offset by the realization that military sponsorship offered a more assured pathway to success. Now the army was in charge, subordinating the older vision of space travel to the real-world requirements of army weapons procurement. The previous goal remained a personal vision, but no longer the animating principle shaping German rocket research.

  In 1932, the army shifted its rocket program to Kummersdorf, located 60 miles from Berlin, where a series of pivotal rocket experiments began. The army’s goal was to build a long-range rocket, which would be the world’s first ballistic missile. Such a missile, if operational, would be a formidable weapon, to be fitted with a one-ton warhead and capable of flying to a target between 100 to 200 miles away. The first major prototype, the A-1 (Aggregate 1) proved to be a dismal failure: It exploded on its initial launch at the Kummersdorf site. Never discouraged, the team then modified the essential design of the A-1 and fashioned a new rocket, the A-2. In December 1932, two A-2s, one called Max and the other Moritz (named after two celebrated German cartoon characters), completed impressive flights from an island on the North Sea, reaching an altitude of approximately 6,500 feet. The A-2 registered an important milestone, ensuring the continuation of army funding—at a higher level.

  Once Adolf Hitler assumed power in 1933, he began to reorient Germany toward massive rearmament, in open defiance of the Versailles Treaty. The army rocket program benefited from the new government’s largess toward weapons research. Though small and highly experimental, the rocket program soon received ample funding—all supplied in a context of tighter governmental controls and increasingly under a cloak of military secrecy. In early 1936, construction work began on the Peenemünde facility, situated on the island of Usedom on the Baltic Sea. This area, set apart for weapons research, housed the army rocket program, but also provided space for the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, to begin a parallel program on a new pilotless aircraft, later to be known as the V-1.

  Von Braun assumed the post of technical director of the army rocket-research center at Peenemünde. He and his team moved to the remote site in April 1937. Their first major project was the development of the new A-3 rocket prototype, which was 22 feet long and powered by an alcohol-oxygen engine with a rated thrust of 3,200 pounds.3 Notwithstanding its advanced design, the A-3 proved to be a spectacular disappointment: In December 1937, three separate firings of the A-3 ended in failures. The rocket had a tendency either to explode suddenly or to fall into a spin and crash. The abortive A-3 launches placed new pressures on Dornberger to perfect the liquid rocket, and he realized that continued failures would lead to the cancellation of the army-funded program. The A-5, a companion to the A-3, finally proved to be successful, reaching an altitude of eight miles in 1938, at the time a stunning achievement.4

  When World War II began in September 1939, von Braun’s talented team settled on the A-4 (later V-2) as the most promising option to meet the army’s requirement for an airborne weapon to hit distant enemy targets. The successful launch of the V-2 on October 3, 1942, set a milestone. Dornberger and von Braun briefed Adolf Hitler on the new rocket in July 1943, showing a film of the dramatic October launch. The V-2 offered a compelling prototype for a ballistic missile, given its size, range, and ability to carry an explosive warhead. However, the rocket remained a highly complex mechanism, costly to build, and never easy to operate. Albert Speer expressed some enthusiasm for the V-2, but he still retained some doubts about rocket’s wartime utility. In the end, Hitler ordered the rocket into production.

  DEPLOYMENT AS A VENGEANCE WEAPON

  The initial V-2 strike on London took place on September 8, 1944, the first of 1,403 missiles to reach the city and other targets in southern England.5 An estimated 5,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the V-2 bombardment campaign (with an estimated total of 12,685 killed by all V-1 and V-2 attacks). These casualty figures were modest when compared to the civilian deaths inflicted by the Allied strategic bombing campaign against major German cities. The V-2 had no counterpart in the Allied arsenal of weapons and was stunning in its impact. The famed American radio correspondent Edward R. Murrow, then posted in London, referred to the V-2 rockets as a manifestation of “malignant ingenuity” on the part of German science, more the harbinger of a future war than an effective weapon against the Allies in World War II.6

  The Allies found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine the place and time for a V-2 launch. Unlike the slow-moving V-1, the V-2 struck its targets from a very high altitude and at velocities in excess of the speed of sound. Even if spotted on the approach to a target, there was no effective air defense against the futuristic weapon. Nor could the launching pad be bombed. German firing crews fully exploited the mobility of the V-2 rocket. The rockets were transferred to their launch sites by truck. The first step in the launch sequence was to place the V-2 on a Meilerwagon, an ingenious vehicle invented solely for the missile operations. Once attached to a special cradle, th
e rocket was raised by hydraulic means to a vertical position. A launching platform, a reusable 10-foot ring housed in a square frame, was then slipped under the rocket. The launch platform, supported by jacks on each corner, assumed the weight of the rocket, allowing the Meilerwagon to be removed. Each mobile unit required a command and control truck, assorted transport trucks, trailers, fuel storage tankers, and personnel carriers—typically 30 vehicles. Once a launch site had been selected, the German army cordoned off the area and removed all the local inhabitants; this procedure allowed for maximum security. Each crew took four to six hours to launch a V-2 rocket.

  Before the launch the crew followed a precise routine to install guidance equipment, engine igniters, fuel, steering vanes, and other components. The V-2 required electrical power to operate, which was supplied by ground power and then batteries while the rocket was in flight. Given the dangers associated with any launch of a V-2, great care was taken to test fuel and ignition systems. The launch crew consisted of 20 soldiers, who were clad in special protective overalls and helmets for the fueling of the rocket. During the actual launch, the V-2 rose slowly off its metal platform, continued in a vertical ascent for about four seconds, and then inclined into its preprogrammed trajectory, controlled in flight by an inboard gyroscopic guidance system. The chosen angle of the trajectory, typically 45 degrees, determined the precise range for the missile. Engine shutdown came at around 70 seconds; at this point, the V-2 was moving across the sky at 50-55 miles altitude and at a velocity of 5,000 to 6,000 feet per second. The missile then made its descent, reaching the target five minutes after the launch. The impact on London and other cities was sudden and devastating. Even as the missile sped to its intended target, the V-2 firing crew quickly evacuated all their equipment and vehicles to avoid detection or counterattack by the Allies.