Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s (3 page)

With the problems of fuel and combustion in process of being solved, at least experimentally, those of guiding the rocket once it had taken off became equally pressing, until von Braun discovered in the Gyroscope Company at Brietz near Berlin a former Austrian naval officer ‘full of ideas and far ahead of his time in all questions relating to gyroscopes’. The development of this system of keeping the rocket stable and on course was another major breakthrough, for, Dornberger learned, ‘according to the standard
Textbook of Ballistics
experiments had proved it impossible to impart a steady flight to bodies with arrow-stability at supersonic speed, but supersonic speed was needed to obtain access to space’. Eventually it became clear that no single gyroscope would suffice, but one working simultaneously ‘on three axes’.

Gradually the Kummersdorf experimenters discovered that most of the existing data about the behaviour of projectiles in flight was invalid when applied to rockets and that the evidence of small-scale experiments was no guide to what happened when the quantities were scaled up. In October 1934 Dornberger was briefly posted away to take command of the first ever German artillery battery armed with rockets – of the conventional, solid-fuel variety – but the work continued in his absence and he kept in touch with it.

By now the main outlines of the first rocket had been agreed. the A-1 – the ‘A’ stood for ‘aggregate’ or ’prototype – marked a tremendous advanced on any missile so far constructed. It was to be 4ft 6½ in (1.395 metres) long, 11⅞ in (0.3 m) wide, and was to weigh 329 lb (149 kg). The propellant, a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol, would produce a thrust of 660 lb (300 kg) for 16 seconds, and the missile was to be steered by self-contained gyroscopes and held steady by tail fins, after being ‘fired vertically from a slipway several yards high’. In fact, although its motor worked perfectly during a static test on the ground, it was never built, for the designers had moved on to a more ambitious model, the A-2, and early in December 1934 the first two A-2s were successfully launched over the North Sea from a test range on the island of Borkum. They behaved perfectly, reaching a height of one and a half miles (8100 ft, or 2500 m), a remarkable achievement for a totally new piece of technology, developed from scratch in a mere two years. Dornberger himself was more conscious of the distance still to be travelled, before the rocket became the supersonic, stratospheric, heavy-load-bearing projectile surpassing all known cannon of which he dreamed. ‘We had’, he summed up modestly, ‘made a beginning.’

So long as the war lasts, our most urgent task can only be the rapid perfection of the rocket as a weapon.

Major-General Dornberger, following the first successful test of the A-4, 3 October 1942

By early 1933 the trend of German foreign policy was plain for all to see. In January the Saar, taken from Germany in 1919, was reunited with what was soon to be called the Third Reich. In March Hitler proclaimed the creation of a German Air Force and the return of conscription, in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile at Kummersdorf the rocket experiments were visibly outgrowing the existing facilities, and on safety grounds alone a move was overdue to a far larger, more remotely sited, establishment. While Dornberger concentrated on finding the money needed for equipment, ‘an impossible sum running into seven figures’, von Braun searched for a location on the coast, both to secure secrecy and because ‘on safety grounds we must be able to fire out to sea and to observe the entire trajectory from land’. While spending the Christmas holiday with relations near the Baltic coast, he was reminded that his father had once hunted duck on the remote island of Usedom, near a fishing village called Peenemünde. The young scientist’s report brought Dornberger hurrying to inspect it – and he was highly impressed:

The place was far away from any large town or traffic of any kind, and consisted of dunes and marshland overgrown with ancient oaks and pines, nestling in untroubled solitude behind a reedy foreland reaching far out into smooth water. Big Pomeranian deer with dark antlers roamed through the heather and among the bilberry bushes of the woods right to the sands of the lowlying coast. Swarms of duck, crested grebes, coots and swans inhabited this beautiful spot undisturbed for years by the report of the huntsman’s shotgun. The bustle of the watering-places strung along the coast like a necklace of pearls never invaded the lonely islet of Peenemünde. I thought there would be no difficulty in building a railway and roads and concealing the really important installations in the woods. . . . A small island. . . . faced the Peene estuary, the Greifswalder Oie. There we could carry out our experiments unnoticed throughout the year. We had a range of over 250 miles eastwards along the Pomeranian coast.

Now to raise the money. Dornberger had always believed in ‘demonstrating our wares in front of the prominent people who sat on the money bags’, and he now arranged a demonstration for General Wernher von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German army. Von Fritsch listened patiently to ‘a short lecture illustrated with coloured drawings and many diagrams’ and was then shown three static rocket engines at full thrust. ‘Hardly had the echo of the motors died away in the pine woods’, recorded Dornberger, ‘than the general assured us of his full support provided we used the funds to turn our rocket-drive into a serviceable weapon of war. Bluntly and dispassionately he put the all-important question: “How much do you want?”

By a master-stroke of military diplomacy, Dornberger next managed to interest the head of the Development Branch of the Air Ministry in rocket propulsion, describing ‘in glowing terms the possibilities of using rocket motors for launching heavy bombers’, and the latter next infected General Kesselring, Director of Aircraft Construction, with his own enthusiasm. In April 1936, a decisive date in the rocket story, both Luftwaffe men, plus Dornberger, von Braun and their own chief, General Karl Becker of the Army Weapons Office, met to agree terms for cooperation between the two services. The Luftwaffe Works Department, it was agreed, would build the station, but the army would administer it, and though there would be separate army and Luftwaffe divisions the running expenses would be shared. An Air Ministry official was immediately dispatched to negotiate with the owners of the site, the city corporation of the nearby town of Wolgast, and he telephoned that evening to say the deal was clinched at a price of 750,000 marks, £66,250 at the then rate of exchange.
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For Germany and the world 1936 was the year Hitler occupied the demilitarized Rhineland – and the Western democracies, by doing nothing to stop him, ensured him the wholehearted support of the hitherto hesitant German general staff. For the rocket team it was the year they planned the layout of Peenemünde, saw construction started, and mapped out the future pattern of their research. Already they had realized that to build a projectile large enough to accommodate the complicated motor, fuel and guidance systems they must ‘think big’ and, just as the A-1 had been replaced by the A-2 before the former had ever flown, so now they decided to press on to a more ambitious design still, the A-3, designed purely to give experience and information. This ‘research’ rocket was none the less an impressive sight, standing almost 25 ft (7.6m) high, 2 ft 5 in (0.75 m) in diameter, and weighing 1654 lb (750 kg). The motor developed a thrust of 3300 lb (1500 kg) burning the same fuel as the A-1, a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol, as here the research team were sure that they were working on the right lines.

Military and public relations considerations, too, argued in favour of omitting the usual small-scale stages of development, as Dornberger later recalled:

As we kept on pestering the army chiefs for money for continued development, we were told that we should only get it for rockets that would be capable of throwing big loads over long ranges with a good prospect of hitting the target. In our youthful zeal we promised all that was asked, never suspecting what difficulties would arise in consequence.

For professional reasons, too, Dornberger was eager to produce a missile of sensational range and power:

I had been a heavy gunner. Gunnery’s highest achievement to date had been the huge Paris Gun during the First World War. It could fire a 21 cm [8.2 in] shell with about 25 lb [11.5 kg] of explosive about 80 miles. My idea of a first big rocket was something that would send a ton of high explosive over 160 miles . . . double the range of the Paris Gun.

Already by the spring of 1936 the main features of the real objective of the research team, an operational rocket soon to be known as the A-4, were emerging. Dornberger constantly reminded his colleagues that they were not engaged in a search for knowledge for its own sake, pioneering though their work was, but in producing a practical weapon in the foreseeable future. One essential was accuracy:

I stipulated a number of military requirements, among others that . . . for every 1000 feet of range a deviation of only 2 or 3 feet was acceptable, either too far or too short, and the same for lateral deviation . . . stricter than is customary for artillery.

Another need was mobility:

I limited the size of the rocket by insisting that we must be able to transport it intact by road and that it must not exceed the maximum width laid down for road vehicles. If carried by rail the rocket must be able to pass through any tunnel. These points determined the main dimensions, although we were all certain from the start that a slender body would involve less air resistance and give us greater range. It would be for the engineers to find the ideal flying shape.

Because of the lack of knowledge about how such a large object would behave at supersonic speeds, Dornberger and von Braun decided that they needed their own wind tunnel, and a far larger one than any so far built; up to now they had made do by borrowing the tunnel belonging to the Technical High School at Aachen. Even their most loyal supporter, Karl Becker of the Army Weapons Office, ‘looked grave’ when asked to find an estimated 300,000 additional marks (£26,500) but eventually agreed provided another of the twelve departments within the Army Research and Development Branch would share the cost. Dornberger tried them all and struck lucky with the very last. Soon the huge wind tunnel, ‘expected to be the most efficient in the world’, was adding its shape to the hitherto unspoiled skyline of Usedom.

The team now needed a wind-tunnel specialist and successfully ‘poached’ the academic who had helped them at Aachen. They also recruited the leading authority on rocket motors, Dr Walter Thiel, who had formerly had a desk job at Research Branch headquarters and now moved to a test bench at Kummersdorf. Thiel, although ‘extremely hard-working, conscientious and systematic . . . was’, admitted Dornberger, ‘tremendously ambitious and aware of his own worth. He took a superior attitude and demanded equal devotion from his colleagues. I had to smooth over a good deal of friction’. However, this proved a price worth paying, for this prima donna of the laboratories soon began to make a major contribution, including one immediate advance, ‘the use of welded sheet-steel chambers’ for the rocket motor instead of the light alloys previously considered indispensable.

Another valuable recruit, Dr Steinhoff, was spotted by von Braun at a conference and invited to visit Peenemünde, where, von Braun correctly anticipated, he would be captivated ‘by the big-scale modern plant, the freedom to work, and the prospects of the rocket’. Dornberger found him wandering about Test Stand I, and was astonished when this ‘young man, apparently in his late twenties . . . seized my hands with every appearance of genuine enthusiasm and exclaimed “Sir, you must take me! I’m all yours! I want to stay!” ’ Stay he did, not merely abandoning the academic post he was about to take up but drawing ‘a whole train of skilled scientists after him’.

By May 1937 work on Peenemünde was sufficiently far advanced for most of Dornberger’s team, now totalling nearly a hundred, to move there, though Dr Thiel and five of his assistants did not follow them until the summer of 1940. Ultimately Peenemünde was to cost the German taxpayer between £25 and £40 million, but little of this had yet been spent and conditions were still primitive when it was decided to test the first completed A-3 at the new test centre on Greifswalder Oie, the tiny island, five miles from Usedom and seven and a half from the nearest town, Rügen, which Dornberger had identified on his first visit as ideal for the purpose. A mere 1100 yards long by 300 wide, ‘with a steep, loamy coast, lashed by storm and surf in winter’, and standing only 60 feet above the surrounding waves, Greifswalder Oie in 1937 contained only a handful of houses, a lighthouse, linked to the main settlement by a single rough road, and an inn, presided over by an innkeeper of ‘inexhaustible good humour’, which doubtless increased still further as the island became ‘like a swarming anthill’, producing a sensational increase in his trade.

Dornberger was fully conscious of the drama which surrounded the successive tests of the rockets. For none were preparations more elaborate than for this first trial of the A-3 for all the facilities had to be brought by sea to this remote islet and the test stand had to be constructed under conditions more appropriate to the front line than to a sophisticated scientific research project. Dornberger’s sharp eye noted, and recorded in loving detail, each new arrival in the ‘tiny fishing harbour on the south-west coast’ of Greifswalder Oie:

One day a number of small motor launches filled with building personnel and surveyors . . . arrived in the little harbour. Next came a large vessel of unusual appearance, such as had never been seen before in that part of the Baltic. She carried building materials and . . . had been a car and passenger ferry. . . . A typical example of mid-nineteenth-century shipbuilding, she possessed large cabins with decrepit furniture upholstered in red plush, a quantity of gleaming brass fittings and mountings, towering upper works and a high funnel. . . . The next to arrive were the harbour dredgers and barges.

All this was only the start of months of frenzied activity:

A bustle now began with which the island was wholly unfamiliar. The harbour was dredged. Berths and landing facilities had to be created for big vessels and heavy cargoes. The cart track to the uplands was given a firm surface of planks. In front of the storm-topped coppice that stood to the east of the track a square concrete platform went up. A pit was excavated opposite to it, at the edge of the forest, and a dug-out was built.

The builders and builders’ labourers departed. Engineers and craftsmen took their place. Then came more builders. Lines and cable after cable were laid between the shelter and the central point of the platform. Dug-out, lighthouse and inn were connected by telephone. The dug-out was transformed into an observation post with lookout slits and gauges of all descriptions on the walls. . . . In the coppice immediately behind the shelter two big open clearings were made and levelled off. . . . Generators were unloaded at the harbour and brought to the coppice. Wiring was laid for electric light. Petrol, materials and tools arrived by sea. Weeks passed in a whirl of activity.

It was a red-letter day when the rockets themselves arrived:

One day at the end of November the ferry-boat delivered two large boxes painted dark grey. They were 21 feet long and 4½ feet in depth and breadth. These giants’ coffins were unloaded with great care and cautiously conveyed in a heavy lorry to the tent. There they were guarded day and night. Shortly afterwards two further chests of this type were unloaded and taken into the tent.

Word of the forthcoming test had spread, and it had become a matter of prestige to be present, as well as one of genuine scientific curiosity:

In the end about one hundred and twenty men of science and engineers had assembled. Anyone connected in any way with our rocket wanted to be there. We had had to set a limit to the number, but . . . when I finally came to check the list I found that the telephone operators were doctors of physics and mathematics, the M. T. drivers qualified engineers, and the kitchen staff made up of designers and experts in aerodynamics. Even the humblest posts were occupied by technicians or enthusiastic executives. . . . Then it started raining. The rain poured down and the wind rose. It whistled over the island from the north, whipped the bare branches of the stunted trees and blew through the window crevices of the houses. It tore up the tent. It hurled gigantic waves against the island and thunderous breakers dashed over the stone walls of the harbour. The cold became intense. The bad weather forced us to postpone operations. But it went as quickly as it had come. The sky grew clear and the wind blew steadily from the east. The weather forecast sounded favourable. We made final preparations. . . . We now had to work fast. The rocket would have to be launched before winter storms set in and the Baltic froze between the islet and the mainland. We baptized our missiles with liquid oxygen. Then at last we were ready for them. One of the chests was carefully hauled out of the tent and on to the platform. After the top and bottom had been removed the box was pushed against the overturned four-legged firing table and set upon it by means of a block and tackle. . . . Scaffolding protected by awnings gave access to the parts of the rocket which had to be serviced before launching. The checking began, but we were held up again and again by short circuits, insulating difficulties, trouble with the control gear, the reducing valve and the fuel valves. . . . The specialist engineers toiled, fetched missing spare parts from the mainland and checked over connections. . . . At last we were able to fix a time for the first launching. The ferry-boat delivered liquid oxygen. The rocket was tanked up and the control gear given current. The working scaffolding was taken down. . . . The rocket now stood in the vertical position on the firing table. Its slender, gleaming body in its aluminium skin was some 21 feet long, with a diameter of nearly 3 feet.