Placing Von Braun in Historical Perspective

* Once again The Times shows a lack of historical perspective. The photo of Werner von Braun on B1 (May 6) purporting to be taken at Rocketdyne in the late 1940s is obviously a photo of Von Braun made within days of his surrender to American forces at the end of the war. He surrendered with his shoulder in that fancy brace. It should have been obvious with the helmeted GIs in the background that this was not at Santa Susana.

After the surrender, Von Braun and his associates were shipped to Fort Bliss, Tex., where they were put to work as Department of the Army special employees. Their initial mission was to assemble and launch captured V-2 missiles from the White Sands range just north of Fort Bliss. A second mission was the development of the Hermes delivery system, which was the precursor of the Navajo ICBM that was to be developed by North American. The Hermes was a ramjet-powered upper stage launched by the A-4 system, which was the advanced V-2 that had started development in Germany before the war ended. General Electric was the American company assigned to follow this development for the U.S.

North American Aviation was early on awarded a contract to develop a U.S. version of the A-4 engine, and that was the original intent of the VTS-1 stand. This program turned into the Redstone system shortly after Von Braun and the Fort Bliss team was moved to Huntsville, Ala., in late 1950.

The Redstone engine was fully developed on VTS-1 and at White Sands during the early to mid-1950s. The fuel was ethyl alcohol, not a hydrocarbon as stated in your article. This was the fuel of the V-2. Activity on this stand was followed by Navaho engine testing, which ultimately became the Atlas engine.

These facts come from a guy who started work at Fort Bliss in 1948, moved to Rocketdyne in 1950 and retired from Rocketdyne in 1984.

D. S. JENKINS

Tarzana