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Wernher von Braun

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Engineers and inventors

   Wernher von Braun stands at his desk in the Marshall Space Flight
   Center, Huntsville, Alabama in May 1964, with models of rockets
   developed and in progress.
   Enlarge
   Wernher von Braun stands at his desk in the Marshall Space Flight
   Centre, Huntsville, Alabama in May 1964, with models of rockets
   developed and in progress.

   Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr 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 Centre and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle,
   the superbooster that propelled the United States to the Moon. He is
   generally regarded as the father of the United States space program
   while also remembered as head of the team that designed the Nazi V-2
   rockets that killed more than 7,000 people in Britain in 1944 and 1945.

Early life

   Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, Province of Posen (now Poland),
   second of 3 sons with an impressive pedigree. His father, the
   conservative politician Lord Magnus von Braun (1877-1972), served as a
   Minister of Agriculture in the Federal Cabinet during the Weimar
   Republic. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp (1876?-1959) through both her
   parents could trace ancestry to medieval European royalty, including
   King Philip III of France, King Valdemar I of Denmark, King Robert III
   of Scotland and King Edward III of England. Upon Wernher von Braun's
   Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, and he
   discovered a passion for astronomy and the realm of 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. One anecdote from this period is
   the time the 12-year-old von Braun, when inspired by speed records
   established by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel, caused a major disruption
   by firing off a toy wagon to which he had attached a number of
   firecrackers. The young von Braun was taken into custody by the local
   police until his father came to collect him.

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

German career

The rocketeer

   While von Braun was working on his doctorate, 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 kilometres.

   At the time, Nazi Germany was highly interested in American physicist
   Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German scientists
   occasionally directly contacted Goddard with technical questions. After
   that, things got kind of tense. Wernher von Braun used Goddard's plans
   from various journals and incorporated them into building the A-4
   series of rockets--better known as the V-2.. 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" . 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 invented.

   There were no German rocket societies since the collapse of the VfR,
   and civilian rocket tests had been forbidden by the new Nazi regime.
   Only military development was possible 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 military commander at
   Peenemünde and von Braun was 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 (later renamed the V-2) and the
   supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.

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

   Amongst his comments about his Nazi 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
     Centre 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."

   That claim has been often disputed because in 1940 the 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, have been disputed. Braun claimed to have worn the SS uniform only
   once . 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.
   Enlarge
   A4 production in the Mittelwerk 1945.

   In November 1942 Adolf Hitler approved the production of the A-4 as a
   "vengeance weapon" and the group developed the A-4 to rain explosives
   on London. Twenty-two months after Hitler ordered it into production,
   the first combat A-4, now renamed the V-2 ("Vergeltungswaffe 2",
   "Retaliation/Vengeance Weapon 2"), was launched toward England, on
   September 7, 1944.

   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. 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 . 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)

Arrest by the Nazi regime

   There are three different versions of von Braun's arrest. André
   Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora
   concentration camp, offers as good an explanation as any. Himmler
   called von Braun, an SS officer, to 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 on him and his colleagues Riedel and Gröttrup was being
   prepared. In it von Braun and his colleagues 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 22 (or March 14 ) 1944
   and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland),
   where he was imprisoned for two weeks without knowing the charges
   leveled 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 release von Braun so that the V-2 program could
   continue.

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 the Soviet cruelty to
   prisoners of war, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender
   to the Americans. After using forged papers to steal a train, von Braun
   led 500 people through war-torn Germany toward the American lines. The
   SS had meanwhile been issued with orders to kill the German engineers
   and destroy their records. The engineers, however, had hidden these in
   a mineshaft and continued to evade their own troops. Upon finding an
   American private, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer,
   Magnus, greeted him with the words "My name is Magnus von Braun. My
   brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender." Following the
   surrender, the American command realized the importance of the
   engineers and immediately went 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. Much of von Braun's production team,
   however, was captured by the Russians. The V-2 rocket plans that had
   been hidden near Bad Sachsa in Germany were later recovered by members
   of the US 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment.

American career

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 as war criminals or security threats (like von Braun) by the
   U.S. Army
   Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, shown in this 1954 photo,
   collaborated on a series of three educational films.
   Enlarge
   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 Base, 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 Harbour. 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 be the documents that 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
   and 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 von Quistorp. 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. In December 1948, the
   von Brauns' first daughter, Iris, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital.
   In total, the von Brauns had three children: Iris, Margrit and Peter.

   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. 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.
   Enlarge
   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 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, American authorities
   recognized they needed von Braun and his team's experience, so quickly
   had them transferred to NASA.

NASA career

   Wernher von Braun, with the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage.
   Enlarge
   Wernher von Braun, with the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage.

   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 Centre 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 Centre's first Director.

   The Marshall Centre's first major program was development of the 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 at the start of 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.
   Enlarge
   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 Centre in Huntsville. The desk
   from which he enabled 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.

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. On one such visit to a small college in
   Pennsylvania in 1974, 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 cancer. Despite surgery, the cancer
   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. By the time his family convinced him to go to the
   hospital it was too late to stop the bleeding. 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 .

Honours

     * National Medal of Science in 1975

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 Centre (built 1975) is named in von Braun's
       honour.

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