Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  Korolev was well aware that some of his most secret ambitions could be considered anti-Soviet. Even though he was working for the military, he had not lost sight of his ideas, first inspired by Tsander, for space exploration. He was still in touch with another long-standing colleague from the 1930s, the brilliant engineer Mikhail Klavdiyevich Tikhonravov.

  Tikhonravov was interested in the idea of launching a satellite. It had long been understood that in theory, if an object went high enough and fast enough, it should be possible to place it in an orbit around the earth like a second moon. To achieve orbit, Korolev and Tikhonravov knew that, according to Isaac Newton’s law of gravity, the gravitational force that would pull the satellite back towards the earth had to be counteracted by a centripetal force, due the satellite’s high speed, which tended to fling the satellite away from the earth and out into space. If these two forces were exactly balanced, the satellite would still be falling towards the earth, but its forward speed would ensure that its curving plunge would be equal to the curvature of the earth beneath it and it would therefore maintain a constant altitude in space. With the development of more powerful rockets, this goal now seemed within their grasp. Tikhonravov’s team at NII-4 had tentatively begun studies on how to add stages to create a more powerful rocket that could reach orbital velocity – but this work was unaccountably stopped by the authorities. Much as Korolev loved his country, the Soviet Union in 1947 was not a place where dreams came to fruition.

  Another thought preoccupied him. Half a world away, von Braun, he knew only too well from Gröttrup, had similar ambitions. America, the richest country in the world, could surely afford to fund a space programme. Von Braun could even now be working on plans for a satellite that would leave Russia unable to catch up. Korolev began to collect American scientific and technical articles hoping to search out clues from the Western press about possible developments in missile and space technology. He wanted to know what von Braun was doing. He needed a translator.

  At NII-88, there was only one English translator: Nina Ivanovna Kotenkova. She had never heard of Korolev until she was summoned to his office. The articles he wanted translated were heavy with the difficult hieroglyphics of physics and engineering equations. She did her best, struggling with the confusing terminology. When she brought Korolev the translation, he asked her to read it out. She refused, conscious that she had done a poor job. Much of what she had written made no sense to her. He insisted and she read it out while he listened to the unfathomable explanation of Nina’s interpretation on engineering. There were many articles to translate, she protested. She needed an engineer to help her explain the terminology.

  An engineer was duly supplied and Nina’s work improved. The journal articles came to life. Korolev began sending for her more frequently. It soon became clear that he was more intrigued by the interpreter than the journals. They would sit in his office and try to decipher the Western missile programme. One day, Nina recalled, Korolev took her hand. She withdrew it. Was she free on Sunday, he asked.

  On Sunday his chauffeur drove them to a restaurant by the river. It was a day that would change their lives. Suddenly there was more in Korolev’s life than a monkish existence in a lonely flat in Podlipki. On returning home, they found with surprise that they both lived in the same block of flats. In 1947, life in Russia was plagued with shortages. The penetrating cold of winter was an unrelenting enemy. Sometimes unaccountably there would be no water or the heating would fail. Most families lived in one room with few possessions and rations were frugal. Against this bleak background, they set up home together. Soon they wanted to get married.

  Korolev’s first marriage to Ksenia was over. He applied for a divorce but she refused. Ksenia wrote to his mother explaining her feelings: ‘I am alone, forgotten and lost, not loved by the man for whom I had lived for the last ten years, who was the reason I could dream, think and live. I hate him for my broken life, for his lies, for his attachment to a younger woman … I still love him so much.’

  ‘26.8.47 Helmut has gone, suddenly taken away,’ Irmgardt Gröttup wrote furiously in her diary. ‘Soviet pigheadedness has scored this time.’ Managers congregated in the Gröttrups’ house until ‘half the ministry was there,’ she complained and her beloved ‘Helle’ was whisked away yet again. Nothing was explained. Where was he going and for how long? She and the children watched as the car disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  Helmut Gröttrup found himself bundled on to a special train bound for the barren steppes of southern Russia, in Astrakhan. The five-day journey south from Moscow ended in a bleak desert site fifty-five miles from the town of Volgograd, known as Kapustin Yar. This desolate region was to become the first long-range rocket-launching site in the Soviet Union and Gröttrup was to help preparations for the first series of launches of the V-2s in the autumn. The launch site was still in the process of construction. Over the summer, almost eight thousand army engineers were at work, battling against the heat of the day to create basic launch facilities. Nights were icy cold. On days when the rain fell horizontally across the wide featureless plain, the ground became a sea of mud.

  After two months of ‘endless prodding and negotiations’, Irmgardt harried the right people until she was finally given permission to accompany her husband to the launch site. She was the only woman there and her first impressions were distinctly unfavourable. ‘There seems to be no end to the vast plain,’ she wrote. There was nothing: no roads, no sand or gravel for building, just dirt tracks in a world where ‘the camel has not yet been replaced with the motor car’. Nor was there any housing; the village of tents for the army workmen stretched into the distance. Even water had to be transported to the site. Dilapidated test stands and machinery from Mittelwerk stood in the railway sidings looking incongruous, like bizarre pieces of sculpture. An old test stand from Germany quickly welded together by Soviet workmen stood nearby, its 80-foot ladder not quite vertical, at a drunken angle, inviting questions of safety.

  Remembering life at Peenemünde, Irmgardt noticed that the Germans were ‘nearly demented and I don’t blame them – I wouldn’t want to be involved with rocket launching with the Soviets’:

  Their workmen are incredibly bovine and do exactly what they’re ordered to … The other day, with high-ranking army people looking on, one of them fell 60 foot off scaffolding and cracked his skull. The VIPs didn’t turn a hair, the workers went on as if nothing had happened and we were left standing underneath eyeing the scaffolding warily. Our engineers in Peenemünde would have been horrified at such makeshift carelessness … Helmut was talking to a couple of Soviet high ups when a loose girder fell within a yard of them, killing the leader of a brigade. I saw the three of them blanche but in a moment or two, they went on discussing aerodynamics and ballistics …

  The importance of the first rocket of the V-2 series launched from the Soviet Union, built on Soviet soil, was such that it touched Germans and Soviets alike with an almost unbearable tension. The Minister of Armaments, Dimitri Ustinov, had surrounded himself with scientific experts and was making his presence felt. Serov, as Deputy Minister of State Security, also arrived with his entourage from the secret police, not to mention other leading military and state officials. The first launch was arranged for 18 October 1947 and every day seemed to bring insurmountable problems.

  As the planned launch day approached, the Germans discovered a fault with the automatic control system. ‘Our men have been out of their minds all day,’ wrote Irmgardt. Their endless tests yielded nothing. The gyro platform was sensitive to vibration and out of twenty thousand connections they wondered if it would be possible to discover which was faulty with a day to go before the launch. The tense atmosphere grew to boiling point as the Soviets glowered at the Germans and muttered about sabotage. Korolev, never a man of equable temper, was driven to exasperation.

  With the problem finally solved, the day of the launch arrived with bright, clear skies. Irmgardt Gröttrup recorded the momentous eve
nt:

  We are off! Zero minus 10 … Zero minus 9 … Zero minus 8 … Zero minus 7 … Zero minus 6 … Zero minus 5 … Suddenly the launching platform collapses sideways and with it the fully loaded rocket. One leg of the platform has given way – a rivet is broken … Zero hour – stop!

  We make a dash for the bunker while the workmen run towards the platform and, with absolutely no sign of fear, winch the whole thing back into position, platform, rocket and all and prop it up with girders. There’s Russia for you.

  All clear – Zero minus 4 … Zero minus 3 … Zero minus 2 … Zero minus 1 … FIRE.

  With a tremendous roar and a burst of fire, the long, silver shape trembled then slowly rose straight and true into the immense blue. There was sudden, lunatic madness, as the Soviets in particular understood what had been achieved. Everyone was hugging someone, regardless of rank. Ustinov embraced Korolev, Korolev embraced Gröttrup and anyone else within range. Hats were thrown into the air. Tears of joy, dancing, manic laughter and screams of jubilation resounded over the primitive test site in the middle of the empty desert. Readings confirmed the rocket had landed within twenty miles of the intended target.

  Two days after the initial success, however, the next rocket launch was a failure, veering wildly to the left and heading straight for Saratov, a heavily populated area. ‘Everyone looked stricken in horror,’ observed Irmgardt. ‘The Soviets shot sidelong glances of suspicion at Helmut as he wiped the perspiration off his forehead … The Soviets believe the German “devils” capable of anything.’ In the event, although no one was killed, the rocket was over a hundred miles off target. This was followed by yet another failure. Each failure was reported by Serov to his master, Beria. Evenings were devoted to dissecting the carcass of the day’s mistakes. Korolev understood that each error, however large or small, was an opportunity to learn. For Serov it was unacceptable. ‘Why is there such inaccuracy?’ he would demand. ‘Whose mistake is this?’

  Isolated and under pressure, Korolev missed Nina. He would write to her from his carriage on the stationary train imagining her in the Moscow flat as he looked out at the wind whipping up dust clouds on the wide plain. ‘This morning before we left I sent you a telegram. It is Sunday today. How we used to enjoy our free days together. Do you remember our swimming trip? I was thinking about that today and I so wanted to see you just for a moment and to embrace you tight … How much I miss you … How dear and close you are to me … I think about you a lot.’ Korolev wanted to marry Nina, but Ksenia still refused a divorce. He planned to try again when he returned to Moscow.

  While Korolev was building his reputation in the Soviet missile programme with each successful firing of von Braun’s rocket, in America the illustrious name of von Braun was in danger of becoming tainted as investigations continued into Nazi war crimes. He was asked to give evidence to the Dora–Nordhausen War Crimes Trial which was underway in Dachau. Colonel Toftoy refused permission for any of his scientists at White Sands to appear in the Military Court in Germany. Von Braun, however, made a full deposition statement in Rickhey’s defence.

  He denied ever working at Mittelwerk, but conceded that he had visited ‘15–20 times’, to discuss technical matters. He did acknowledge that in the beginning working conditions were ‘extremely primitive since the tunnels … were not fit to absorb many thousands of workers’. Nonetheless, he claimed that conditions ‘were continuously improved during the entire period from the last months of 1943 up to my last visit at the plant’. He claimed that the late Albin Sawatzki had ‘exclusive authority’ on management issues at Mittelwerk, and was ‘personally responsible’ for the feasibility of the programmes. Kammler had seized power and taken charge of production in a ‘dictatorial manner’. Sawatzki had carried out Kammler’s orders ‘expertly but with the utmost ruthlessness’.

  In making these claims, von Braun hoped to spare his former colleague Georg Rickhey, who, if found guilty, could face the death penalty. However, in his deposition he failed to mention the role of one of his own colleagues at Fort Bliss, Arthur Rudolph, director of V-2 production at Mittelwerk. In 1943, Rudolph had arrived with sixty thousand men from Buchenwald concentration camp to build the mine at Nordhausen into a vast underground factory. Slave labour was used to dig out the tunnels that formed the production line and, when the factory was finished, slave labour produced the V-2 wonder weapon. In his deposition, von Braun also overlooked the role of others in his rocket team at White Sands. This included his own brother, Magnus von Braun, whom he had sent to work at Mittelwerk managing gyroscope production, and Dr Kurt Debus, who had been in charge of test launches of the V-2 at Peenemünde. Debus was identified in US government reports as an ‘ardent Nazi’ since it had come to light that he had denounced one of his own colleagues to the Gestapo.

  At the trial, Georg Rickhey was acquitted, fourteen others received prison sentences and one received the death penalty. As for von Braun and his colleagues, a full public investigation as to whether or not they were guilty of war crimes never took place. It was in the interests of the US army under Project Paperclip to draw a veil over the past. In September 1947, the Office of Military Government submitted its report on von Braun:

  Based on available records subject is not a war criminal. He was an SS officer, but no information is available to suggest he was an ardent Nazi. Subject is regarded as a potential security threat by the Military Governor, Office of Military Government for the US. A complete background investigation could not be obtained because the subject was evacuated from the Soviet zone in Germany.

  However, a few months later, on 4 December 1947, a letter from the Director of the Joint Intelligence Directives Agency shows that he was not happy with this conclusion and wanted von Braun and other senior scientists’ cases completely cleared. Pointing out that in the above report Wernher von Braun and other scientists had been identified ‘as potential security threats’ to the US, he requested that their cases ‘be reviewed and new reports submitted’.

  On 26 February 1948, the US Office of Military Government obligingly resubmitted their investigation. This time they concluded that ‘no derogatory information is available on the subject’ and it was likely that von Braun was ‘a mere opportunist’. If his conduct had been exemplary while in the US for two years, ‘it is the opinion of the Military Governor, that he may not constitute a security threat to the United States’.

  With the investigation complete, all evidence that could expose the extent of the White Sands rocket team’s involvement at Mittelwerk was discreetly classified. Cynics would later claim that Project Paperclip was so named because a paperclip was attached to each file which the American authorities sought to whitewash. For forty years, the records that could shed light on von Braun’s role at the V-2 factory and his professed innocence of any knowledge of atrocities were locked away in a mountain of dust-gathering archives. For the time being, the matter was well and truly buried – almost.

  Despite some setbacks, the test launching of a series of V-2s in the autumn of 1947 was a major leap forward for the Soviets. Even with the lack of V-2s, their blueprints and the German experts who had originally drawn them up, Korolev’s team had used its ingenuity to work out solutions to these problems – and all this in a country devastated by war. Buoyed up by this success, in April 1948 Korolev at last received formal approval to start production on the R-1 for launch testing in the autumn. Development work on the R-2, the Soviet missile that he had first begun discussing with Mishin in Germany, could also begin.

  The R-2 represented a considerable advance over von Braun’s V-2 and Korolev felt his future was bound up with it. It would be bigger than the V-2, standing 57 feet. Designed to fly twice the distance of the V-2, it would be much lighter and more accurate. A major innovation gave the rocket more space to carry fuel, increasing range but decreasing weight. This was achieved by designing the upper fuel tank, containing ethyl alcohol, as part of the structure of the rocket. The walls of the tank became the w
alls of the rocket. Achieving this posed considerable problems as this feature changed the external temperature of the rocket, thereby altering pressures in the tank. Another intriguing problem for Korolev was separating the warhead from the main body of the rocket, but keeping the warhead stable. If this could be achieved, another decrease in weight would be a huge benefit. Glushko was able to raise combustion pressure in his new RD-101 engine, achieving 35 tons of thrust and increased power. Finally, the guidance system was much more accurate than that of the R-1. Korolev was confident in the R-2 and keen to test design features but he was constantly thwarted by the impoverished state of Soviet industry. Raw materials were in short supply and supporting industries almost nonexistent.

  It was becoming increasingly clear that the Soviets had learned all they usefully could from the Germans and the time had come to dispense with their services. ‘It’s final: our German working community is to be transferred to the island, lock, stock and barrel,’ Irmgardt wrote despairingly in February 1948. Their destination? The comfortless Gorodomlya Island where the less senior German technicians had first been housed. The train journey took several days through marsh and forest and ended with a boat trip across the Seliger Lake. ‘We were so curious about the island that we hardly noticed the dreaded barbed wire,’ she added. Irmgardt soon found she hated the place. Her husband’s status was diminished, his salary reduced, the car and chauffeurs a distant memory. Although Gröttrup could continue with plans to refine the G-1, over the following months it was looking doubtful that this rocket would get the go-ahead for production. The Gröttrups were housed in something little better than a hut and although water did actually flow from the tap – Irmgardt was not reduced to carrying it in buckets from the lake – living standards were basic and fear about the future now they were of no use to the Soviets was all-pervasive.