Epic Rivalry Read online

  The Soviets’ key weakness was their inability to attract high-ranking and talented German scientists associated with the rocket program at Peenemünde. The major exception was the recruitment of Helmut Gröttrup, a former assistant to von Braun and a leading figure at Peenemünde, where he was the director of the laboratory for guidance control and telemetry. Rejecting the option of joining von Braun in Bavaria or, more important, surrendering to the Americans, Gröttrup—with his family—decided to join the Soviets at Institut Rabe in September 1945. He accepted an affiliation with the Soviets in no small measure for the material inducements offered by the Russians and the prospect that he could remain in Germany. Other key figures were also persuaded to join the Soviet side: aerodynamicist Werner Albring, design engineer Josef Blass, guidance and control expert Johannes Hoch, gyroscope specialist Kurt Magnus, and propellants chemist Franz Mathes, among others.20

  The dependence on German specialists reflected the backwardness of the Soviet rocket program. The Germans who collaborated with their Soviet overlords enjoyed many privileges and financial rewards, but their status remained a highly subordinate one, always governed by the Soviet mania for secrecy and the ubiquitous presence of the secret police. They were strictly relegated to a consultative role with minimal independence. Working in the Russian rocket program was fraught with peril, as shown in October 1946, when Stalin’s secret police forcibly deported selected German technical specialists, including Gröttrup, to the Soviet Union. An estimated 2,200 German experts in aviation, nuclear energy, rocketry, electronics, and radar technology were compelled to work in a variety of Soviet industrial entities. This traumatic deportation contrasted sharply with the fate of Wernher von Braun and the Peenemünde specialists who opted to work in the United States.

  Irmgard Gröttrup, the outspoken and assertive wife of Helmut Gröttrup, noted with bitterness in her memoirs that the Soviets had promised the German experts they would never be sent to Russia. Instead, she found herself and her family on a train to the east: “Their grin was as friendly as ever. Indeed they even made a few promises: a flat much larger and much nicer than ours, a life without any restrictions, a life in a magnificent city amongst grand people. The only thing they couldn’t promise was when we should see our country again…. At one point, simply to be free for a moment, I tried to get out through the back door. Impossible! The barrel of a gun—a broad face: ‘Nyet.’”21 The Germans with specializations in rocketry were assigned to a variety of research and test facilities in and around Moscow. They labored in difficult conditions for several years, and some were finally allowed to return to Germany at the end of 1950. Gröttrup and six others were the last of the German scientists to leave in the mid-1950s. Their release signaled that the Soviet rocket program no longer required the tutelage of these former Peenemünde veterans.

  In September 1945, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the future leader of the Soviet space program, made his first appearance in occupied Germany. Korolev was a dynamic figure, with an impressive portfolio in both aviation and rocketry. An engineer by profession, Korolev took an early interest in rocketry in the 1930s. He was arbitrarily arrested in 1938 during the purges. Accused of subversion and treason, Korolev was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in Siberia. At the infamous Kolyma gold mines in eastern Siberia, Korolev labored under the most severe conditions, working in extreme cold, often without proper clothing. His health declined dramatically; he lost all his teeth and then developed a heart condition. In September 1940, aviation designer Andrei Tupolev arranged for Korolev to be transferred to his “sharashka,” or police-run workshop, in Moscow. This timely intervention saved Korolev’s life. He went on to survive the war years, though plagued by a chronic heart condition. Soon he emerged as a valued engineer in the Soviet drive to exploit the V-2 rocket technology.22

  Sent by the People’s Commissariat of Armaments in Moscow, Korolev arrived in Berlin to study German rocketry. As with many civilian experts, he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Soviet army to legitimize his activities in the former war zone. While in Germany, Korolev worked diligently to familiarize himself with the V-2 design. In October, he viewed an actual V-2 launch by the British at Cuxhaven on the North Sea. At the Institut Rabe, Chertok was struck with Korolev’s intelligence and personal drive. Not only did Korolev prove to be a thoroughgoing student of the advanced V-2 technology, but he also demonstrated an impressive skill at refining the basic rocket design. He created a special task force named “Vystrel” the portfolio for the group included research on pre-launch preparation equipment and flight-mission control.23 The sojourn in Germany heralded a new phase in Korolev’s life. He thrived with his new freedom. By 1946, Korolev assumed a new job, as chief designer for long-range missiles, with the NII-88, a research institute in Moscow responsible for the production of Soviet missiles based on the V-2 technological template.24

  By the summer of 1947, the Soviets had succeeded in reassembling a small number of V-2 rockets for tests at Kapustin Yar, located 56 miles southeast of Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd). Here Korolev played a key role, supported by Gröttrup and the other interned German technicians. The test range was remote, situated in a desert, but adjacent to a rail link to Stalingrad. Conditions at Kapustin Yar were austere, with no permanent structures, few amenities, and only primitive housing for the staff—with many forced to live in tents or railcars. The weather was extreme and unforgiving, and for the unwary, poisonous snakes and tarantulas added a note of peril to life there.25 The first V-2 launch took place on October 18, as a partial success, but the rocket disintegrated upon reentry into the atmosphere. A total of 11 rockets were launched, with five classified as successes, but the others deviated from their targets, exploded, or experienced some sort of technical failure. This work at Kapustin Yar was important for the future of the Soviet space program. By contrast to the Americans, the Russians possessed only a handful of workable V-2s, and they made excellent use of them. The launches at Kapustin Yar allowed the Russians to engage in upper-atmosphere research for the first time. The program ended with the decision to manufacture the R-1 rocket. It would become the Soviet Union’s first rocket design in the postwar years.

  THE AMERICANS TEST THE V-2 AT WHITE SANDS

  The men who had designed the V-2 rocket constituted an important war prize. The United States War Department through its Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) set in motion a campaign to recruit the most talented specialists from Peenemünde. Such specialists, it was thought, were necessary to assist the United States in the testing and development of the V-2 rocket. The secret program was first called “Operation Overcast,” but it eventually acquired the name “Operation Paperclip.” This peculiar code name, as the story goes, derived from the practice of placing paperclips on the immigration forms for key scientific recruits from Germany. The twofold purpose of Paperclip was to recruit the best German specialists on rocketry and simultaneously deny this same technical expertise to the Soviets, who quickly emerged as a major rival to the United States for war spoils. Nearly 500 German recruits with their families participated in Operation Paperclip in 1945, a group led by von Braun. The Germans were sent to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Proving Ground, near Fort Bliss, in New Mexico. Here they were reunited with the 100 V-2s seized at the Mittelwerk factory in May 1945.

  The entire program was controversial from its inception, prompting criticism in the War Department among many who opposed the importation of any individuals associated with the Nazi regime. The recruitment and processing of these German rocket experts took place outside routine State Department review or approval. The first contingent of Germans reached the United States in November 1945. Personnel files of many of the Germans approved for Paperclip did reveal a wide variety of associations with the Nazi-controlled government. President Harry S. Truman had approved the Paperclip project in August 1945 with the understanding that no one with a record of political activism would be admitted to the Unite
d States. As it turned out, this high standard was not consistently maintained, in part because the German rocket experts were so important for American national security. Much of Operation Paperclip would remain classified in the decades after World War II.

  Von Braun emerged as the dynamic leader of the transplanted community of German rocket scientists. His leadership skills had been established in Germany, notably in the dangerous escape from Peenemünde and subsequent surrender to the Americans. He came by this trait naturally, since he was born into a Prussian Junker family. He made a dramatic impact on all those who encountered him: He was a tall man (5 feet, 11 inches) with thick blond hair, a square jaw, and striking good looks. He was known for his athleticism, booming laugh, and skills as a conversationalist. Friends and strangers alike were taken with his personal charm, his fluency in several languages, and his diverse cultural interests. At Peenemünde, for example, he participated in a chamber music group, and took great delight in playing both the piano and cello. Throughout his life, he proved to be an avid reader with myriad interests in philosophy, religion, geography, and politics. If frank and direct in his dealings with those around him, he also was devious, ruthless, and capable of astute political maneuvering in the high-risk world of Nazi Germany. For all of his pragmatic skills, however, he had never stopped embracing the dream of space exploration, a fixation that added a prophetic dimension to his career.26

  Life at White Sands for von Braun and his colleagues was difficult and challenging, filled with equal measures of professional attainment and bouts of personal unhappiness with their uncertain status. On the one hand, they launched nearly 70 V-2 rockets, far exceeding the parallel program of the Soviets at Kapustin Yar. The White Sands tests were highly successful, offering a floodtide of scientific and technical data.27 On the other hand, though, the Germans lived in primitive barracks, in a complex with rudimentary support facilities: a mess hall, administrative and supply buildings, and a recreation club. Initially, the men working at White Sands did not have passports or documents to allow them to move freely beyond the army base. At least there were no fences, since the desert itself offered a barrier to the outside world. Beyond the proving grounds were the San Andreas and Sacramento mountains. The summer days were hot and stultifying. The nearest urban center was El Paso, Texas, where the Germans were allowed to visit on occasion.28

  Daniel Lang, a writer for the New Yorker, visited White Sands in 1948 and has left a vivid image of the V-2 test program: “White Sanders whose outlook is anything but downtrodden—[are] highly enthusiastic men who are glad to be almost literally shooting for the moon.” The rocket firings, Lang reported, took place every few weeks, and often these launches attracted high-ranking military figures. Those civilians who lived near White Sands had grown accustomed to “whizzing flashes over the desert waste.” The proving ground is 40 by 90 miles, a reservation of “endless sand” filled with rattlesnakes and other natural hazards. Those working at White Sands, Lang reported, were a mix of German veterans from Peenemünde and assorted American experts drawn from the military, industry, and academia. On launch days a “gala” atmosphere reigned, with civilians clogging Route 70, which ran through the military reservation. The public spectacle of the V-2 firings was mirrored in the crowds converging on White Sands: “Buses loaded with Boy Scouts, R.O.T.C. cadets, college students, National Guardsmen, and delegations from chambers of commerce and civic clubs….”29 White Sands, with its relative openness, contrasted sharply with the hidden nature of the Soviet V-2 rocket experimentation.

  The testing of the V-2 at White Sands possessed a clear scientific purpose. Rockets launched at the proving grounds were routinely fitted with instrumentation to study solar spectroscopy, cosmic rays, and the measurement of pressures and temperatures in the upper atmosphere. There were problems associated with this pioneering research, in particular because the trajectory of the V-2 allowed for only short interludes at extreme altitudes. Engineers gave careful attention to utilizing the V-2’s warhead compartment to house instruments. Special access panels were created to install and adjust the variety of scientific instruments used in the program. Cameras were mounted on several V-2s launched at White Sands, taking photos of Earth from altitudes of up to 100 miles. The rocket,” observed Ernst H. Krause in 1947, “has opened the door to vast regions of space which at present are known to us primarily through the astronomer’s telescope.”30

  The momentum of the White Sands program continued well into the 1950s. A Viking rocket launched in May 1954 returned pictures from 158 miles above Earth, showing El Paso, the winding Rio Grande, several railroad lines, clouds, and, of course, the surrounding desert. Some of the pictures, taken at an oblique angle, showed the curve of the Earth and even the blackness of space beyond the planet’s atmosphere.31

  The images, which were released to the public, were precursors of several vital aspects of the coming exploration of space. First, they showed the potential of space photography to peer into what intelligence agencies sometimes euphemistically referred to as “denied territory,” the Soviet Union. Second, the photographs demonstrated that views from space could enable meteorologists to see, for example, hurricanes and storms forming at sea well before they reached land—in time to warn those in the path of adverse weather. Finally, and perhaps most important in the long run, these early space photos were steps in a journey that eventually would enable humans to view the entire planet and much else beyond and to understand Earth’s place in the solar system.

  Nor did such early “peaceful” space experimentation stop at sending cameras into space. Monkeys, dogs, and mice were launched on short, suborbital rides. Beginning in mid-1948, several V-2s carried rhesus monkeys and mice on flights in the United States, with mixed results. Some of the animals survived, while others did fine on the ride but were killed on impact at the end of their flights. Such tests continued into the early 1950s.32

  As for rocketry development itself, the original testing of the V-2 was part of the Hermes ballistic missile program. Efforts were made to improve the basic design of the V-2 and experiment with two-stage rocket configurations. On February 24, 1949, one V-2 was modified to fit a second stage called the Bumper WAC rocket. In this pivotal experiment the redesigned rocket reached an altitude of 250 miles.33 This milestone signaled the advent of multistage ballistic missiles, which would be developed over the next decade.

  In 1950, von Braun and his team of transplanted German rocket scientists left White Sands for the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The German specialists greeted this decision with enthusiasm. The chance to escape the isolation and austerities of White Sands raised morale. The several years of experimentation with captured German V-2 rockets had run its course. It was time to move on. The Army facility at Huntsville housed a pair of former arsenals, including one used in World War II for the manufacture of poisonous gases and other chemical munitions for artillery projectiles. By 1950, these two separate arsenals had been combined into a single facility and selected for the newly created Army Ordnance Rocket Center. A friend recalled von Braun’s excitement when he returned to White Sands after his first visit to Huntsville before the move: “Oh, it looks like home! So green, everything is so green, with mountains all around.”34 Over a period of several months, beginning in April 1950, 115 of von Braun’s former Peenemünde team members and their families moved from the desert of New Mexico to the rolling hills of northern Alabama. They were joined by others from the White Sands facility, including a few hundred General Electric Company contractor employees and a group of U.S. Army draftees holding math, science, and engineering degrees.35

  Von Braun was 38 years old when the move took place; he arrived with his wife, Maria, whom he had married in 1947, and their young daughter, Iris Careen. Von Braun and his colleagues were invigorated by the relocation itself as well as by a renewed sense of mission. Their new home was a quiet rural town of 16,000 in the Appalachian foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Huntsville called itsel
f “The Watercress Capital of the World”—later it would be known as “The Rocket City”—and the new residents received a friendly welcome, the only exceptions being a few locals who had lost relatives or friends in the war.36

  In the 1950s von Braun worked on the Redstone rocket, becoming a creative contributor to the Army’s rocket program. While working at Huntsville, he would also emerge as the pivotal figure who gave voice to the American space program.

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  WHEN GOOD ROCKETS GO BAD

  The more complex a device, the more ways it can fail. Rockets concentrate high complexity with extreme forces, making them very dangerous when they fail—whether it is a burst seam, a shorted control circuit, or a foreign particle trapped in a valve, most “failure modes” lead to catastrophic results.

  Rockets do sometimes “fizzle out” and simply fail to launch, as in the first launch attempt from Cape Canaveral in 1950, when “Bumper 7” simply sat immobile on the pad at the launch command due to a valve corroded by the salty coastal air. But with all their complexity, the tremendous pressures and temperatures involved, and the energy of their propellants, a great many rocket failure modes result in devastating explosions, which not only destroy the vehicle, but can reduce a launch complex to scrap as well.

  Early launch pads at Cape Canaveral were built in pairs since planners took it for granted that an explosion would eventually wreck at least one of the pads. The Thor missiles at Launch Complex (LC) 18 lived up to these expectations and then some, blowing up at both the A and B pads in a series of launch failures. The Navaho ramjet cruise missile detonations blew parts and equipment all over LC-9. Pad 18A was refurbished for the first Vanguard launch, carried on live television, but the rocket rose for only two seconds before falling back on the stand and bursting into a fireball. The Atlas missile series, intended for eventual use by the astronauts, racked up an alarming explosion rate on the pad and in the sky until design issues were solved.