German Scientists Recall Era of Revolution in Space

Forty years ago they were launching V-2 rockets at London for Adolf Hitler. But they knew the war was already lost for Nazi Germany, and they sought to secure their futures.

The answer, they decided, was America, a country that Hitler had been warring against for more than three years. In America, they might be able to continue building rockets and perhaps use them to fulfill their dream of exploring space.

These were the rocketeers of Peenemunde, on the Baltic coast, and the most starry-eyed of all was their young technical director, 32-year-old Wernher von Braun. He spoke eloquently of rockets that would one day carry men to the moon and Mars.

Team of 5,000

To Von Braun, chances of surrendering to the U.S. Army seemed slim. The Soviet army was closing in on Peenemunde, and the German general commanding the area felt that the rocket workers should fight there to the end, in hand-to-hand combat, if necessary.

But the Armament Ministry in Berlin directed Von Braun in February, 1945, to move his team of 5,000 and his most important research equipment south to the town of Bleicherode near the Harz Mountains. Then there was hope, Von Braun said, because the move might put them in the path of the American Army.

“We didn’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians,” one of the team members, Konrad K. Dannenberg, recalled recently. “We had had enough of a totalitarian society. We generally felt better about America. Several of us were space enthusiasts, and we didn’t think Russia could do much in that field for technical reasons.”

After a month at Bleicherode, the rocket team was ordered to destroy all classified records to prevent their capture, but instead they were hidden in an abandoned salt mine, to be retrieved later. Von Braun and several of his top scientists and technicians were moved against their will to an area south of Munich, and they feared that they might be eliminated by their own country to prevent the Allies from obtaining their missile secrets.

But, as Germany collapsed, the rocketmen were able in the confusion to approach the U.S. Army near the Bavarian ski resort of Oberjoch in May. The messenger was Von Braun’s younger brother, Magnus, who could speak a little English.

The Americans were delighted to accept the invitation to capture Germany’s top rocketmen, and in a project known as Operation Paperclip, they selected Von Braun and 117 of his key team members to go to the United States under contract with the Army to build rockets.

For a generation, these men were the heart and soul of the U.S. missile and space programs. Without them, Americans would not have gone to the moon when they did.

The Germans went first to Ft. Bliss, Tex., and transferred in 1950 to the north Alabama cotton town of Huntsville, which quickly came alive as the newcomers pursued their dreams into space.

Slave Laborers

Most of the survivors from the original group of 118--about 70--still live in Huntsville. The majority are in their 70s and have retired. Some still do consulting work with aerospace firms or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their leader, Von Braun, died in 1977.

The group was shaken last October by the announcement that one of their group, Arthur Rudolph, had returned to Germany and renounced his American citizenship after the Justice Department alleged that he “literally worked thousands of slave laborers to death” while building V-2 rockets for the Nazis at an underground factory in central Germany.

Rudolph, who coordinated development of the Saturn 5 rocket, which carried U.S. astronauts to the moon, has denied the charges. His colleagues here support him.

Custody of SS

“It’s just not true,” says Eberhard Rees, former director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center here. He called Rudolph a “victim of circumstances to have been put in the underground manufacture of the V-2.”

Rees says that poor health and the urgings of his wife and daughter prompted Rudolph, 77, to leave the country rather than fight the allegations.

“He didn’t have the funds or the energy to fight,” Dannenberg says. He says that he does not believe the allegations and that there probably was little Rudolph could have done to improve conditions for the inmates.

“All of these forced-labor workers were really under the custody of the SS,” he says. “Rudolph had no influence with the SS to do better.”

Rees, Dannenberg and the other Germans would rather talk about their rocket accomplishments in America. It was a long, hard road.

“It was difficult to leave our families and our homeland, and we didn’t know if the Americans would milk us dry of our knowledge and send us back, as the Soviets did later with the German rocket people they got,” Dannenberg says.

Walter Wiesman’s wife, Erica, tells of the difficulties of families left behind in Germany: “We were quartered in Army barracks in Landsut, north of Munich. There were about 50 real young people there between 1 and 3 years of age. My daughter Monica had no shoes, so she had to be carried everywhere. But there was food, and we were not hungry.”

The salaries of the rocket team members were paid directly to their families in Germany.

“In Ft. Bliss we each received $6 per day,” Wiesman recalls. “From this, we deducted mess hall charges and $1.20 a day for officers’ quarters accommodations. That left us about $3.25 a day to spend.”

A year and a half later, after the rocketeers had signed long-term contracts with the Army, the families began arriving in Texas. A large military hospital annex was converted into apartments and into lab and office space for the team.

At Ft. Bliss, the Von Braun group tested and improved several V-2s shipped from Germany and instructed the Army on rocketry. In the early years, funds were meager. The world was at peace, and Congress was not of a mind to appropriate much money for missilery or for Von Braun’s dream of space exploration.

The Korean War changed that. In 1950, the Germans were rushed to Huntsville with orders to build the Army a long-range missile able to carry a nuclear warhead. They set up shop at Redstone Arsenal, an abandoned, run-down World War II shell-loading facility.

The finished product was the Redstone missile, successfully launched for the first time in 1953 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The next year, Von Braun and other space enthusiasts from industry and the services met in Washington to discuss launching a satellite as a U.S. contribution to International Geophysical Year, to be observed from July, 1957, to December, 1958. Von Braun said he could orbit a five-pound satellite with a souped-up Redstone. The Office of Naval Research put up $88,000, and Project Orbiter was born.

It had a short life. A panel of scientists decided that the satellite project should be launched with a non-military rocket and recommended development of the Vanguard, saying a rocket with a peaceful background would have “more dignity” for a scientific project like IGY. President Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed.

Von Braun said: “I’m all for dignity, but this is a Cold War tool. How dignified would our position really be if a man-made star of unknown origin suddenly appeared in our skies?”

Such a star appeared Oct. 4, 1957. It was called Sputnik, it was made in the Soviet Union, and it shocked the West.

‘Very Disappointed’

“We were very disappointed and frustrated over Sputnik,” says Karl Heimburg, once in charge of field testing for Von Braun. “Because we knew we had the capability of launching a satellite at least six months earlier than that.”

There was near-panic in official Washington. Von Braun was directed to prepare for launching a satellite with his jazzed-up Redstone in case the Vanguard should fail on a December launch attempt.

“We didn’t like the way the order was written,” recalls Ernst Stuhlinger, research chief for the German team. “If Vanguard worked, we would have to halt our effort. Medaris asked for an order to launch a satellite, not just prepare it. Otherwise, Medaris, Von Braun and Pickering all said they would resign. He got the order.”

Gen. John Medaris was commander of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone. William Pickering headed the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was developing the Explorer 1 satellite for the rocket.

Giant Fireball

The Army effort became urgent Dec. 6 when Vanguard rose two feet off its Cape Canaveral launch pad and fell back, exploding into a giant fireball. Its three-pound satellite broke free and beeped forlornly on the ground. It was one of America’s most embarrassing moments.

Von Braun reserved range time at Cape Canaveral for Jan. 29, 1958. Delayed two days by weather, his modified Redstone with three small upper stages blasted off on the 31st and hurled the 31-pound Explorer 1 satellite into orbit.

America was in a space race with the Soviets. To manage this effort, Eisenhower and Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“When NASA was formed, it needed a rocket-building capability, and it wanted the Von Braun team,” Stuhlinger says. “But Medaris and the Army didn’t want to lose the team because it would see its rocket program slip away.”

The team was developing the Pershing 1 missile at the time, and NASA and the Army worked out an agreement under which a group headed by Rudolph stayed with the Army until the Pershing flew successfully.

‘A Great Relief’

The rocketeers, which now included several hundred Americans, did not have to leave Huntsville. NASA established the Marshall Space Flight Center here, appointed Von Braun its first director and named Germans--most of them now American citizens--to all key positions. Their major task was to develop the Saturn rockets that would transport men into space.

“The establishment of NASA was a great relief,” Dannenberg says. “We wouldn’t be involved anymore in producing rockets that could kill people. We could aim at the peaceful exploration of space.”

In the early days of the space effort, the German-developed Redstone and Jupiter rockets boosted many of America’s first satellites into space. And a Redstone carried the nation’s first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space in 1961.

Shortly after Shepard’s brief suborbital flight, President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

“That decision recognized the capability and work of the team,” Dannenberg says. “Space exploration was on its way.”

The Marshall team, expanded to more than 3,000 persons, enjoyed an unprecedented series of successes in developing first the Saturn 1 and then the mammoth Saturn 5 moon rocket.

The years of work culminated July 20, 1969, when Americans Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walked on the moon.

“The first feeling was relaxation because it worked, then exhilaration,” Heimburg says.

“Our dream was fulfilled,” Dannenberg says.

In the early 1970s, with the Apollo moon program winding down, NASA began easing the former Germans out of their jobs. There was talk at the time of “Americanizing” the space program.

“Some of us were angry about that, and several retired at that time,” Dannenberg says. “The Americans were saying, in effect, we know enough now, so you can leave. There was also a tendency to get the Germans out of high positions. Some key lab directors were eased out. I felt a little arm-twisting myself.”

“I think it was a combination of getting rid of the older people and the Germans,” Heimburg adds.

Private Industry

Many went to work in Huntsville’s burgeoning technical community, which they helped create. Von Braun was transferred to NASA headquarters in Washington and quit after two years there to join private industry.

When the Army brought the Germans to Huntsville in 1950, “it had a population of 16,000, and we were a potbelly stove, wood products and cotton town,” says Guy B. Nerren, president and general manager of the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce.

“The space program came, and we went on a roll,” he says. The current population is more than 150,000. For a time, he says, 75% of the work here was aerospace-oriented. Today, it is only 25% as other diversified industries have moved in.

Edward O. Buckbee, director of the Alabama Space & Rocket Center, a tourist attraction promoted by Von Braun as a showcase for the missile and space programs, says:

“Von Braun and his people introduced technology to Huntsville. He became a leader. The community realized it had a significant and unusual person, and it let him lead the way. As a result, there are better schools, libraries, a university, a research center--a whole new beginning to Huntsville. He turned it in a whole new direction, and the people followed.”