Madaspace: Werner Von Braun

Werner Von Braun

Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr[1] von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. The German scientist, who led Germany's rocket development program (V-2) before and during World War II, entered the United States at the end of the war through the then-secret Operation Paperclip. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and worked on the American ICBM program before joining NASA, where he served as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the United States to the Moon[1]. He is generally regarded as the father of the United States space program. Wernher von Braun received the National Medal of Science in 1975. He was buried at the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.[2]

Early life

Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, Province of Posen in the German Kingdom of Prussia. He was born second of three sons with an impressive pedigree. His father, the conservative politician Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1877-1972), served as a Minister of Agriculture in the Federal Cabinet during the Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp (3.11.1886-1959) through both her parents could trace ancestry to medieval European royalty, including King Philip III of France, Robert III of Scotland and King Edward III of England through his father, and King Abel of Denmark through his mother, through the son of Nikolaus von Tecklenburg by Catharina Waterfoer, by whom he descended by seven lines of King Sancho I of Portugal and his wife Dulce Berenguer. He also had a younger brother, also named Magnus Freiherr von Braun, born in 1919. Upon Wernher von Braun's Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, and he discovered a passion for astronomy and the realm of outer space. When, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, Wirsitz became part of Poland in 1920, his family, like many other German families, moved. They settled in Berlin, where at first von Braun did not do well in physics and mathematics until he acquired a copy of the book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. From then on, he applied himself at school in order to understand physics and mathematics. During this period, the 12-year-old von Braun, inspired by speed records established by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel[3], caused a major disruption by firing off a toy wagon to which he had attached a number of fireworks. The youngster was taken into custody by the local police until his father came to collect him.

In 1930, von Braun attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, the "Spaceflight Society") and assisted Hermann Oberth in liquid-fueled rocket motor tests. After receiving his degree, he commenced postgraduate studies at the Technical University of Berlin, earning a doctorate in physics (aerospace engineering) on July 27, 1934.

The idea of space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and even as a boy he had experimented with a rocket-propelled wagon down a crowded street in Berlin, Germany, earning himself a stern lecture from police. Von Braun continued to pursue his interest in rocketry, however, and at the age of twenty was appointed chief of the German army's rocket corps. Although he worked mainly with military rockets for many years, space travel remained his primary goal.

[edit] German career

[edit] The Prussian rocketeer

Von Braun was working on his doctorate when an artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for him, and von Braun then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. He received his doctorate two years later and by the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and 3.5 kilometers.

At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. After that, things got rather tense. Wernher von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the A-4 series of rockets - better known as the V-2.[4] In 1963, von Braun reflected on the history of rocketry, and said of Goddard's work: "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles" [2]. Goddard confirmed his work was used by von Braun when, after the war ended, Goddard inspected captured German V-2s, and recognized many components which he had invented.[citation needed]

There were no German rocket societies after the collapse of the VfR, and civilian rocket tests had been forbidden by the new Nazi regime. Only military development was allowed and to this end, a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. This location was chosen partly on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who recalled her father's duck-hunting expeditions there. Dornberger became the military commander at Peenemünde, with von Braun as technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and jet-assisted takeoffs. They also developed the long-range A-4 ballistic missile and the supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.

In November 1937 (other sources: December 1, 1932), von Braun joined the NSDAP. An Office of Military Government, United States document dated April 23, 1947 states that von Braun joined the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in 1933, then the National Socialist Party on May 1, 1937 and became an officer in the Waffen-SS from May 1940 to the end of the war.

Amongst his comments about his NSDAP membership von Braun has said:

I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time (1937) I was already technical director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activities ... in Spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) Müller ... looked me up in my office at Peenemünde and told me that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I called immediately on my military superior ... Major-General W. Dornberger. He informed me that ... if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.[citation needed]

That claim has been often disputed because in 1940, the Waffen-SS had shown no interest in Peenemünde yet. Also, the assertion that persons in von Braun's position were pressured to join the Nazi party, let alone the SS, has been disputed. Braun claimed to have worn the SS uniform only once [3]. He began as an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Wehrmacht Major).

A4 production in the Mittelwerk 1945. This photo from Soviet made movie after war.

On December 22, 1942, Adolf Hitler signed the order approving the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" and the group developed it to target London. Following von Braun's July 7, 1943 presentation of a color movie showing an A-4 taking off, Hitler was so enthusiastic that he personally made him a professor shortly thereafter, which - in Germany and at this time - was absolutely unusual for an engineer who was only 31 years old. The first combat A-4, renamed the V-2 ("Vergeltungswaffe 2", "Retaliation/Vengeance Weapon 2"), was launched toward England on September 7, 1944, only 21 months after the project had been officially commissioned. Von Braun's interest in rockets was specifically for the application of space travel, which led him to say on hearing the news from London: 'The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet'. He described it as his 'darkest day'.

SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.[5] Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at Mittelwerk on many occasions, and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but claimed never to have witnessed firsthand any deaths or beatings, although it became clear to him that deaths had occurred by 1944 [4]. He denied ever visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp itself.

Adam Cabala reported:

[...] the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun also saw everything that went on every day. When they walked along the corridors, they saw the prisoners' drudgery, their exhausting work and their ordeal. During his frequent attendance in Dora, Prof. Wernher von Braun never once protested against this cruelty and brutality.

and

On a little area beside the clinic shack you could see piles of prisoners every day who had not survived the workload and had been tortured to death by the vindictive guards. [...] But Prof. Wernher von Braun just walked past them, so close that he almost touched the bodies. (Ref 6)

On August 15, 1944, von Braun wrote a letter (Ref 7) to Albin Sawatzki, manager of the V-2 production, admitting that he personally picked labor slaves from the Buchenwald concentration camp, who, he admitted 25 years later in an interview, had been in a "pitiful shape".

In Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space numerous quotes from von Braun show he was aware of the conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. From a visit to Mittelwerk, von Braun is quoted by a friend:

It is hellish. My spontaneous reaction was to talk to one of the SS guards, only to be told with unmistakable harshness that I should mind my own business, or find myself in the same striped fatigues!... I realized that any attempt of reasoning on humane grounds would be utterly futile. (Page 44)

[edit] Arrest by the Nazi regime

According to André Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, Himmler had von Braun come to his Hochwald HQ in East Prussia sometime in February 1944. To increase his power-base within the Nazi régime, Heinrich Himmler was conspiring to use Kammler to wrest control of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde. He therefore recommended that von Braun work more closely with Kammler to solve the problems of the V-2, but von Braun claimed to have replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance.

Apparently von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943 and a report stated that he and his colleagues Riedel and Gröttrup were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well (a "defeatist" attitude). A young female dentist later denounced them for their comments and, combined with Himmler's false charges that von Braun was a Communist sympathizer and had attempted to sabotage the V-2 program, this led to his arrest. Kammler, highly dedicated to Himmler, was also instrumental in von Braun's arrest by the Gestapo.

The unsuspecting von Braun was arrested on March 14 (or March 15[5]) 1944 and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), where he was imprisoned for two weeks without even knowing the charges against him. It was only through the Abwehr in Berlin that Dornberger was able to obtain von Braun's conditional release and Albert Speer, Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, convinced Hitler to reinstate von Braun so that the V-2 program could continue. Citing from the "Führerprotokoll" (the minutes of Hitler's meetings) dated May 13, 1944 in his memoirs, Speer later relayed what Hitler had finally conceded: "In the matter concerning B. I will guarantee you that he will be exempt from persecution as long as he is indispensible for you, in spite of the difficult general consequences this will have." Nevertheless, from this point onward fear ruled in Peenemünde.

[edit] Surrender to the Americans

The Soviet Army was about 160 km from Peenemünde in the spring of 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Afraid of Soviet cruelty to prisoners of war, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Forging a set of orders on SS stationery, von Braun authorized a convoy to move 5,000 personnel south through war-torn Germany toward the American lines. The SS had meanwhile been ordered to kill the German engineers and destroy their records. The engineers, however, had hidden these in a mineshaft close to their hiding place in the Tyrolean alps near the Oberjoch Pass and continued to evade their own troops. On May 2, 1945, upon finding an American private from the U.S. 44th Infantry Division, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, approached the soldier on a bicycle, calling out in broken English, "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender."[6] The American high command realized the importance of the engineers and immediately sent soldiers to Peenemünde and Nordhausen to capture the remaining V-2s and their parts before destroying both sites with explosives. Over 300 train-car loads of spare V-2 parts ultimately found their way to America. Many members of von Braun's production team, however, were captured by the Russians. The V-2 rocket plans that had been hidden near Bad Sachsa in Germany were later recovered by the US 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment.

[edit] American career

[edit] U.S. Army career

On June 20, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America. Since the paperwork of those Germans selected for transfer to the United States was indicated by paperclips, von Braun and his colleagues became part of the mission known as Operation Paperclip, an operation that resulted in the employment of many German scientists who were formerly considered war criminals or security threats (like von Braun) by the U.S. Army[citation needed]

Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, shown in this 1954 photo, collaborated on a series of three educational films.

The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They were then flown to Boston and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents. These would enable the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.

Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El Paso. While there, they trained military, industrial and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. They helped to refurbish, assemble and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs", "Prisoners of Peace".

During his stay at Fort Bliss, von Braun mailed a marriage proposal to 18-year-old Maria Luise von Quistorp, his cousin on his mother's side. On March 1, 1947, having received permission to go back to Germany and return with his bride, he married her in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Germany. He and his bride and his father and mother returned to New York on 26 March 1947. On 9 December 1948, the von Brauns' first daughter, Iris Careen, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital. The von Brauns eventually had two more children, Margrit Cécile on 8 May 1952 and Peter Constantine on 2 June 1960.

In 1950, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, his home for the next twenty years. Between 1950 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket. In 1955, von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Still dreaming of a world in which rockets would be used for space exploration, in 1952, von Braun published his concept of a space station in a Collier's Weekly magazine series of articles entitled Man Will Conquer Space Soon! These articles were illustrated by the space artist Chesley Bonestell and were influential in spreading his ideas. The space-station would have a diameter of 250 feet (76 m), orbit at a height of 1075 miles (1730 km), spin to provide artificial gravity and provide a platform for lunar expeditions. Von Braun envisaged these expeditions as large-scale undertakings, with 50 astronauts travelling in three huge spacecraft (two for crew, one primarily for cargo; each 49 m long and 33 m in diameter) who would establish a permanent base in the lunar Sinus Roris region and would explore the surroundings for eight weeks after their arrival. In the hope that its involvement would bring about greater public interest in the future of the space program, von Braun also began working with the Disney studios as a technical director, initially for three television films about space exploration.

Director Wernher von Braun shows President Kennedy around the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in 1963.

As Director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), von Braun's team then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.

Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the twelve years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and his team of German scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and only embarked on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labor used to build his V-2 rockets. It was not until 1957 and the launch of Sputnik 1 that America realized how far it lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. After the U.S. Navy's attempt at building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit resulted in the very unreliable Vanguard rocket, American authorities recognized they needed von Braun and his German team's experience, so they were quickly transferred to NASA.

[edit] NASA career

Wernher von Braun, with the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage at the US Space and Rocket Center.

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack. Two years later, NASA opened the new Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and transferred von Braun and his development team there from the ABMA at Redstone Arsenal. Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.

The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. Wernher von Braun's dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the Apollo program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon. At the time of the first moon-landing, von Braun publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn rocket would continue to be developed, advocating manned missions to Mars in the 1980s based on the Saturn V.

Still with his rocket models, von Braun is pictured in his new office at NASA headquarters in 1970.

During the late 1960s, von Braun played an instrumental role in the development of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the Space Race remains on display there.

In 1970, von Braun and his family relocated from Huntsville to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. However, with the truncation of the Apollo program, von Braun retired from NASA in June 1972, as it became evident that his and NASA's visions for future U.S. space flight projects were different.

[edit] Career after NASA

After leaving NASA, von Braun became a vice-president of Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Maryland, where he helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. He was frequently asked to speak at universities and colleges. Von Braun was eager to cultivate interest in human spaceflight and rocketry, particularly with students and a new generation of engineers. He was tall, articulate and spoke English with a distinctive German accent. On one such visit in the spring of 1974 to Allegheny College, a small liberal arts college in Meadville, Pennsylvania, von Braun revealed a more personal, down-to-earth side of himself as a man in his early 60's, beyond the public persona most saw, including an all-too-human allergy to feather pillows and a subtle, if not humorous disdain for some rock music of the era.

In 1976, von Braun learned he had a tumor in his intestines[citation needed] and the disease had already spread. Despite surgery, the disease progressed, forcing him to retire from Fairchild on December 31, 1976. Von Braun sustained an injury from a crash and unknown to him, started to bleed internally. On June 16, 1977, Wernher von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia at the age of 65. He is buried there in the Ivy Hill Cemetery[6].

[edit] Honors

* National Medal of Science in 1975

[edit] Posthumous recognition

* Apollo space program director Sam Phillips was quoted as saying that he did not think that America would have reached the moon as quickly as it did without von Braun's help. Later, after discussing it with colleagues, he amended this to say that he did not believe America would have reached the moon at all.

* The von Braun crater on the moon was so named by the IAU in recognition of von Braun's contribution to space exploration and technology.

* The Von Braun Civic Center (built 1975) is named in von Braun's honor.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_Von_Braun

www.nndb.com/people/686/000055521/

www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1720.html

appl.nasa.gov/ask/issues/23/23s_wernher_von_braun.php