One of the mainstays
of the Cold War was the employment on both sides of the Iron Curtain of massive
numbers of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles more commonly called ICBMs for
short. Upon notification at the push of a button, a weapon can be launched utilizing
rocket technology to propel a potentially destructive warhead on a one way trip
anywhere on the globe to deliver a destructive message upon the enemy. The
threat of nuclear destruction from the heavens was the stuff of nightmares but
yet an ever present danger in throughout the years of the Cold War. Each side
was always trying to best the other. Rocketry has become a weapon of war on a
scale never seen before capable of not only breaching the outer perimeters of
our atmosphere but also in propelling weaponry at speeds inconceivable years
before at such great distances that detection or interception is difficult. The
development of the ICBM is derived of technology envisioned decades earlier as
the brainchild of one man. His name was Wernher von Braun.
Born Wernher Magnus
Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun in Wirsitz, in the province of Posen at the time
part of the German Empire on 23 March 1912, Wernher was the second of three
sons born to a Magnus Freiherr von Braun and Emmy von Quistorp. He was born
into an aristocratic family thus inheriting the title of Freiherr or 'Baron'
and he could trace his family heritage to medieval European royalty as a
descendant of Phillip III of France, Valdemar I of Denmark, Robert III of
Scotland, Edward III of England, Mieszko I of Poland and ultimately
Charlemagne. In his early years von Braun developed a passion for astronomy.
Following the signing of the armistice and the end of the First World War,
Wirsitz was transferred from Germany to Poland and the von Braun family moved
to Germany settling in Berlin. It was here that he had his initial encounters
with rocketry when he at the age of 12 was inspired by the speed records set by
Max Valier and Fritz von Opel in rocket propelled cars. After blowing up a
weapon to which he had attached fireworks he was arrested only to be released
shortly thereafter.
An avid amateur
musician, he learned to play both Beethoven and Bach from memory. By 1925, he
was enrolled in a boarding school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar. With his
passion for space travel and rocketry fuelling his young mind, he acquired an
influential work on the subject the book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen or By
Rocket into Interplanetary Space written by Hermann Oberth a leading rocket
pioneer. After being transferred to Hermann-Lietz-Internat, another boarding
school located on the island of Spiekeroog; von Braun applying himself to the
studies of physics and mathematics determined to pursue his interest in rocket
engineering.
By 1930, he was
attending the Technische Hochschule Berlin or 'Berlin Institute of Technology'
where he became a member of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt 'Spaceflight Society'.
He obtained a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Institute in 1932.
From his early exposure to rocket sciences he developed the conclusion that
rocket science was not advanced enough to support space exploration and would
require more aspects of science than were currently applied to the field. He
enrolled in the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin for post graduate
studies in the fields of physics, chemistry and astronomy where he would
receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physics in 1934. He received
encouragement for his studies from the high altitude balloon pioneer Auguste
Piccard.
Coinciding with his
developing interests in rocket science, the situation in Germany has been
shaped in years of turmoil and political upheaval. After the end of the First
World War and the abdication of the German monarchy, the Weimar Republic had
been instated with a liberal democracy. President of the Weimar Republic Paul
von Hindenburg, a former Prussian General Field Marshal during the First World
War initiated dictatorial emergency powers and reinstated the position of
Chancellor of Germany by 1930. Germany would see several Chancellors in
Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher before finally Adolf
Hitler was appointed Chancellor with the ascent of the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers Party commonly
abbreviated as NSDAP or Nazi Party in 1933. With his focus on his doctoral
studies, von Braun seemed for the most part unaware of the changes sweeping
across Germany at the time. As a German born to an aristocratic family, he was
patriotic towards his country but rocketry was his main focus. On 12 November
1937 he applied for membership in the Nazi Party and was assigned the
membership number 5,738,692.
His activities with
the Verein für Raumschiffahrt caught the attention of the Reichswehr, Germany's
armed forces in 1932. While attending one of the launches of von Braun's
rockets, Army officers took notice of the young engineer and the promise that
he garnered towards the development of German rocket science. Walter
Dornberger, an Artillery officer in the German Army Ordnance Corps presented
von Braun with the opportunity to further develop his rockets through
researching military applications for rockets. Presented with the opportunity
of having his rocket research paid for at the behest of the German Army, von
Braun couldn't refuse and accepted Dornberger's offer. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles following the end of the First World War, Germany had been
prohibited the development of military aviation applications, rocketry had not
been barred from research and thus development in rocketry was rapidly
advancing.
In 1934, Wernher von
Braun completed a work on the subject of rocketry in which he titled
'Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the
Liquid Propellant Rocket'. Its contents were determined to be so vital to the
national security of Germany that the document was given a classified status
and transferred to the control of the German Army. Germany showed great
interest in the works of American scientist Robert H. Goddard's works and
regularly contacted him in the years leading up to the Second World War with
technical questions and concerns. It was Goddard's works that von Braun
incorporated into the development of his Aggregat or A series of rockets. The
word Aggregat is a German word meaning 'The use of multiple appliances or
machines to fulfill a certain technological function'. With von Braun now
working with the German Army, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt which had rejected
proposals from the German Army had a hard time finding funding for its own
continued research and was dissolved in 1933.
With the dissolution
of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt group, civilian rocket launches were banned by
the new Nazi government with only rocket tests conducted for military purposes
being authorized. The home for the advancement of these rocket tests and the
location von Braun would come to call home was a large facility built near the
village of Peenemünde in northern Germany located on the Baltic Sea. The Artillery
Captain who had initially brought Wernher von Braun into military rocket
science, Walter Dornberger became commander of the Peenemünde facility with
Wernher von Braun as technical director. It would be here at Peenemünde in
association with the German Luftwaffe that von Braun would contribute to the
development of the A-4 ballistic missile and a supersonic guided anti aircraft
missile designated 'Wasserfall'. Large amounts of research were dedicated to
the development of liquid fuel rocket engines to power not only missiles but
also aircraft engines and jet assisted takeoff devices.
On 22 December 1942,
Adolf Hitler issued an order to initiate the A-4 rocket into the Vergeltungswaffe or 'Revenge Weapon' program
with aims of targeting London. Following the presentation of a film documenting
a demonstration of the A-4, Hitler was so enthused by its promise that he made
von Braun a professor of science. Following a bombing raid on the Peenemünde
facility which killed several of von Braun's scientists by RAF Bomber Command,
the first A-4 now designated V-2 for propaganda purposes was fired at England
on 7 September 1944. Von Braun's rocket development in Peenemünde was in later
years criticized for the use of slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora and Buchenwald
concentration camps.Under the influence of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler,
Wernher von Braun had been commissioned as an Untersturmführer 'Second
Lieutenant' in the Allgemeine SS. Having expressed regret that he was not
progressing his research towards his achievement of space exploration but that
his scientific exploits were squandered on weapons for waging war, one that was
not going well, Von Braun was arrested by Gestapo under charges trumped up by
Himmler stating that he was a communist sympathizer with plans to sabotage the
German rocket program before fleeing to England. He was only released from
prison through the exploits of Walter Dornberger and Albert Speer, the Reichsminister for
Munitions and War Production.
With the Soviet Army
near Peenemünde in 1945, von Braun assembled his staff and decided that enough
was enough they had to surrender and bring an end to their war atleast. But to
whom would they surrender to? It was decided that surrendering to the advancing
Soviet Army was out of the question. The Soviets were well known for their
brutal treatment of prisoners of war especially those who were documented
members of the Nazi Party. It was decided that they would flee the Peenemünde
facility and surrender to American forces. Under orders from SS General Hans
Kammler, the team was to be relocated from Peenemünde to central Germany to
progress their work. In the final days before the relocation, a contradicting
report from Kammler ordered the scientists to join the Army and fight against
the advancing Soviets. He and his team of nearly 500 associates fabricated
documents and were transferred to Mittelwerk but not before ordering that many
of his documents and blueprints be hidden away in an abandoned mine shaft in
the Harz Mountains to avoid their destruction by the SS.
Following a car
accident in which he suffered a compound fracture of the left arm and shoulder,
he had his arm placed in a cast although a month later his arm would have to be
rebroken and realigned due to negligent care of his wound. He was then
transferred to the town of Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps.
Von Braun's brother
Magnus also a rocket engineer approached an American Private from the 44th
Infantry Division and announced his intentions to surrender to the United States
on 2 May 1945. On 19 June 1945, two days before the area was to be turned over
to Soviet authorities US Major Robert B Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion
Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps
in London and Lieutenant Colonel R.L. Williams transferred von Braun and his
team to Garmisch near Munich where they were then flown to Nordhausen and
Witzenhausen in the American sector of Germany to avoid their fall into Soviet
custody. After being debriefed by American and British intelligence officials
he was recruited under Operation Paperclip where he was relocated to the United
States.
Upon arrival in the
United States, von Braun along with his team were granted funding to continue
rocket research under the United States government and in exchange their
association to the Nazi Party would be expunged from their records. Once their
records had been cleared, the government granted the scientists security
clearances for work at some of the nation's most sensitive facilities. The
first stop for many of von Braun's associates were to Aberdeen Proving Ground
in Maryland to organize the documents brought to the United States from
Peenemünde. Von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde team were sent first to Fort
Bliss, Texas and White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico where they trained
military personnel on the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles before
helping refurbish, assemble and launch a number of captured V-2 rockets
transported to the United States from Germany.
By 1950 and the
outbreak of the war in Korea, Wernher von Braun and his team were transferred
from Fort Bliss, Texas to Huntsville, Alabama where he would lead a U.S. Army
rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal. The results of the research
conducted by the team was the PGM-11 Redstone Rocket on 8 April 1952. The
development of the Redstone rocket led to the first live nuclear ballistic
missile tests conducted in the United States. A subsequent development in the
development of the Redstone rocket was the first high precision inertial
guidance system mounted on a rocket. Soon he would be appointed as Director of
the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, where
von Braun and his team would led the development of the Jupiter C series rocket
which was essentially a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter C rocket would go
on to perform three suborbital spaceflights throughout the 1950s before
launching the West's first satellite known as Explorer I on 31 January 1958.
Von Braun remained
determined to utilize his research in the subject of space exploration he began
advocating space flight. With the Soviet Union launching Sputnik I on 4 October
1957, the way had been paved for von Braun to accomplish his dreams as the United
States became determined to outdo the Soviets in the realm of space
exploration. On 29 July 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
better known as NASA was established and in 1960, the Marshal Space Flight
Center was opened at Redstone Arsenal. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency was
transferred to NASA control under the provision that von Braun and his team be
allowed to continue their research on a much larger rocket than the PGM-11 or
Jupiter C series rockets which would be designated as the Saturn series rocket.
Von Braun was designated as the Marshal Space Flight Center's first director
presiding over the facility from July 1960 to February 1970.
From the successes of
the Saturn program, the Apollo program for manned moon flights was developed
and his dream for putting a man on the moon was realized when on 16 July 1969,
one of his Saturn V rockets propelled the crew of Apollo 11 beyond the
atmosphere of planet Earth to the lunar surface. Throughout the duration of the
Saturn program, von Braun's rockets would put six teams of astronauts on the
moon. He would be influential in the establishment of the US Space & Rocket
Center in Huntsville. He also envisioned the idea of U.S. Space Camp for
training children in the fields of science and technology. After relocating
from Alabama to Washington DC to take a senior level position in NASA, von
Braun retired from NASA on 26 May 1972 with the realization that his goals for
space exploration and those of NASA's were not one in the same. In his latter
years he would serve as Vice President for Engineering and Development for the
Fairchild Industries company and performing services as a public speaker at
colleges and universities across the country.
He helped to
establish the National Space Institute in 1975 and became its first chairman as
well as become a consultant to the CEO of Orbital Transport und Raketen AG, or
'Orbital Transport and Rockets, Inc' a West German company based in Stuttgart.
His health gradually declined following the onset of kidney cancer which forced
him to retired from Fairchild Industries on 31 December 1976. He was later
hospitalized from complications due to cancer and was unable to attend a
ceremony in which he was presented the
National Medal of Science. Wernher von Braun would die on 16 June 1977 of
pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia at the age of 65. He was buried at
Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.
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