The Seventh Angel (13 page)

Those were Russian torpedoes, air launched. They had to have come from
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
. Why was their own aircraft shooting at them?

“
Emergency dive!” Kharitonov said. “Full down bubble on all planes!”

Before the Diving Officer could acknowledge the order, the intercom speaker crackled again. “Control—Sonar, no takers on the countermeasures. Both torpedoes have acquired.

Outside the hull, the howl of approaching torpedo screws rose to a deafening shriek.

Kharitonov opened his mouth to order an emergency rudder change, but his voice was drowned out by the explosion of the first torpedo. He couldn’t tell where it hit, but the shock of the impact slammed into him like a speeding car, lifting him off the deck and throwing him sideways against the housing for #2 periscope. He felt several of his ribs break.

The submarine heeled well over to port in response to the explosion. Kharitonov tumbled to the deck where he lay in a haze of shock and confusion, his body too stunned to even draw breath.

His left wrist was turned at such an angle that his old watch, the Vostok Komandirskie, was positioned just a few centimeters from his face. He stared stupidly at the heavy stainless steel timepiece, his addled mind not really registering its presence. Slowly his eyes slid back into focus and his brain began to process information again. Somewhere beyond the numbing silence of his damaged eardrums, he thought he could hear the thunder of rushing water.

He blinked, and his body began to think about moving again. He could dimly perceive the first ghostly twinges of pain, and he realized that he had been temporarily shielded from the reality of his injuries by shock. It would all come back to him; he knew that. His body’s defense mechanisms could delay the inevitable for a little while, but they could not prevent it.

He couldn’t stay down here any longer. He needed to get to his feet, get his brain working, regain command of the situation. He had to save his boat.

But something caught his attention. It was his wristwatch. The second hand was frozen in place. The watch had stopped. The all-powerful bulletproof masterpiece of Soviet craftsmanship had given up the fight. It was almost funny if one only knew when to laugh.

Then the second torpedo struck, and the world disappeared in a fury of fire and water.

ICBM: A COLD WAR SAILOR’S MUSINGS ON THE ULTIMATE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

(Reprinted by permission of the author, Retired Master Chief Sonar Technician David M. Hardy, USN)

The 14th and 15th centuries were periods of great experimentation in the field of rocketry, and several major advances came about as a result. An English monk named Roger Bacon developed improved formulas for gunpowder, greatly increasing rocket flight ranges. In France, poet, historian, and inventor Jean Froissart discovered that the accuracy of a rocket’s trajectory could be improved by launching it through a straight length of pipe, or tube. His idea became the precursor of the modern bazooka.

Meanwhile, rockets continued to become more common on the battlefield. French troops led by Joan of Arc used rockets in the defense of the city of Orleans in the year 1429. The French also used rockets during the siege of Pont-Andemer in 1449, and at the assault on the city of Ghent in 1453.

By the 1500s, rocket warfare began to fall into disfavor. Advances in artillery made the smoothbore cannon an increasingly attractive alternative for the armies of Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, the 16th century brought a new development to rocketry: one that would ultimately open the door to both space travel, and nuclear warfare.

In 1591, a German fireworks maker named Johann Schmidlap began building ‘
step rockets
’ in order to lift his fireworks to greater altitudes. Schmidlap’s earliest step rockets had two
stages
, consisting of a large sky rocket (first stage), which carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). The larger first stage would propel the rocket as high as it could go before its engine burned out. The engine of the smaller rocket would then ignite, and the second stage would separate from the husk of the first, and continue to climb to higher altitude.

Schmidlap’s goal was simply to build more impressive fireworks, but his multi-stage rockets would become the foundation for manned spacecraft, and nuclear missiles.

It should be noted that the idea of multi-stage rockets may have originated with Conrad Haas, an Austrian artillery officer who described the concept in a manuscript written between 1529 and 1569. Johann Schmidlap may or may not have been aware of the works of Conrad Haas, but—regardless of his possible influences—Schmidlap was the first to put the concept into practical use.

The next great breakthrough in rocketry occurred in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published ‘
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
’ (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Although the text was not geared specifically toward rockets,
Principia Mathematica
outlined ‘Newton’s Laws of Motion,’ and described the natural principles that allow rockets to function. This work has been credited with elevating rocketry from blind trial and error into the realm of science.

Thanks in part to the work of Sir Isaac Newton, rocket warfare experienced a revival in the 18th and 19th centuries.

After a series of successful Indian rocket attacks against the British Army in the late 1700s, artillery expert Colonel William Congreve began designing rockets for the British military. Congreve’s rockets proved to be highly effective weapons. British ships used Congreve rockets to bombard Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.

Francis Scott Key, who witnessed the assault from the deck of a British warship, was inspired to write the poem that became America’s national anthem:
The Star Spangled Banner
. When he penned the famous line about
the rockets’ red glare
, Francis Scott Key was referring to the British Congreve rockets that were pounding the besieged American fort.

In 1903, a Russian schoolteacher by the name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a report in which he suggested the switch from traditional solid rocket fuel to liquid rocket propellants. Tsiolkovsky theorized that the range and speed of a rocket are controlled by the velocity of its exhaust gasses, and he calculated that liquid rocket fuels would provide higher gas velocities than solid rocket fuels.

Tsiolkovsky’s writings influenced the research of Robert Goddard, who began building liquid fuel rockets in the early 20th century.

Unlike solid fuel rockets, which require few (if any) moving parts, a liquid fuel rocket is a highly-complex machine. In place of a simple combustion cylinder and exhaust nozzle, a liquid fuel rocket requires feed-pumps, turbines, oxygen tanks, and an intricate network of piping to connect them all. And where a solid fuel rocket needs only an ignition source, a liquid fuel rocket requires precise control mechanisms.

The task before Goddard was daunting, but he believed that the potential benefit was worth the difficulty and risk.

On March 16, 1926, after a long string of failed attempts, Robert Goddard managed to successfully launch a liquid fuel rocket. Powered by gasoline and liquid oxygen, his rocket flew for about two and a half seconds, reaching an altitude of 41 feet before landing in a cabbage patch about 180 feet from the launch pad.

By current standards, it was not much of a flight. It didn’t even approach the performance of the least successful solid fuel rockets in history. But a liquid fuel rocket had flown. Like the Wright Brothers, with their first faltering airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, Robert Goddard had proven that his strange machine could fly.

While Goddard was still struggling to get a liquid fuel rocket into the air, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, another great rocket pioneer was making his own mark upon the face of history. In 1922, a German/Romanian physicist named Hermann Oberth submitted a 92-page doctoral dissertation on rocket science. His dissertation was rejected as ‘utopian,’ and his doctoral degree was withheld.

Oberth responded by publishing his dissertation in 1923, under the title ‘
Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen
’ (“By Rocket into Planetary Space”). Oberth went on to expand the work to 429 pages, re-publishing it as ‘
Wege zur Raumschiffahrt
’ (“Ways to Spaceflight”) in 1929.

Oberth’s writings inspired scientifically-minded people of many nations. Rocket clubs and associations began springing up all over the world.

Of particular note was a German rocket association, called ‘
Verein fur Raumschiffahrt
,’ the Society for Space Travel. The club’s membership included Wernher von Braun, Hermann Oberth, and Arthur Rudolph, and many others who would go on to play major roles in the field of rocket science.

After purchasing a plot of land near the city of Berlin, the club members built a ‘
Raketenflugplatz
’ (rocket airfield), and began launching rockets of their own design. The earliest of these, the
Mirak
series, were largely failures. But the club’s
Repulsor
series was highly-successful. Some of the Repulsor rockets reached altitudes of over 3,000 feet.

In 1932, the club approached the German army for funding. Club officers arranged a demonstration launch for the army. The rocket failed, but Captain Walter Dornberger—who was in charge of the German army’s rocket program—was impressed with the knowledge, skill, and dedication of the club members. He offered to fund the club’s experiments if the members would agree to operate under conditions of secrecy, and focus their efforts toward developing military rockets.

Some of the members voted to accept Dornberger’s offer, and others voted to reject it. The ensuing argument, coupled with a continued lack of funding, caused the club to dissolve in 1933. Even so, the impact of Verein fur Raumschiffahrt was far from over.

Following the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Chancellor Adolf Hitler combined his office with the office of President, and declared himself to be the
Führer
. Under his command, the National Socialist German Workers Party (better known to history as the
Nazi Party
) began a massive campaign to build up the German military. Hitler’s goal was nothing less than the conquest of Europe, and—ultimately—the subjugation of every nation on earth.

To achieve the Führer’s objectives, the German military began a number of aggressive research programs, all aimed at creating the kind of super-weapons needed to conquer an entire planet. Among these secret projects was the German rocket program, and several members of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt rocket club, including Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, were seduced or coerced into joining the Nazi quest to build super rockets.

One of the most successful developments of the Nazi rocket program was the
Vergeltungswaffe 1
, or V-1 rocket. Also known as the
buzz bomb
or
doodlebug
, the V-1 was powered by a pulse jet engine, and guided by a gyro-magnetic autopilot system. The first test flights occurred in late 1941 or early 1942. After some initial guidance problems were ironed out, the V-1 proved to be an incredibly powerful weapon. Many military historians classify it as the first cruise missile.

By 1944, Germany was launching V-1 rockets at England, literally by the thousands. According to a report written by American General Clayton Bissell in December of 1944, about 8,025 self-guided V-1 rockets were launched at targets in England during a nine-week period of that year. As a result of this unrelenting barrage of rockets, more than a million houses and other buildings were destroyed or damaged, and tens of thousands of people were killed.

The rocket, which had been a formidable engine of war almost from the outset, was becoming the first weapon of mass destruction.

The V-2 rocket program (
Vergeltungswaffe 2
) ran concurrently with the V-1 project, but the V-2s were much more technologically advanced. Under the engineering expertise of Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, the V-2 rocket became the first true ballistic missile, and the first man-made object to reach sub-orbital space.

After climbing to the fringes of outer space, a V-2 rocket would tip over and drop back down into the atmosphere, diving toward its target at four times the speed of sound with a 2,150 pound warhead of highly-explosive Amatol. The combination of extreme altitude and supersonic speed made the rockets invulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes, and the enormous warheads made the rockets exceptionally powerful. A single V-2 rocket could reduce an entire city block to ankle-high rubble.

In terms of technological achievement, the V-2 was a quantum leap forward. In terms of tactical effectiveness, it was somewhat less impressive. Despite its speed, range, and warhead capacity, the V-2 was not very accurate. Also, the V-2 became operational too late in the war to have much impact on the outcome of the fighting. Of the more than 6,000 V-2 rockets built, only about half were ever launched as weapons. The remainder were destroyed, expended by testing, or captured by the Allies at the end of World War II.

The war in Europe came to an end on May 7, 1945, when Generaloberst Alfred Jodl signed the documents of unconditional surrender on behalf of the German High Command. Adolf Hitler lay dead by his own hand, and his beloved Berlin was in flames. Hitler’s dream of world domination had fallen to ashes, along with much of his erstwhile Nazi empire.