Page 59 - All About History - Issue 08-14

Hitler’s astronauts

facility called the Heeresversuchsanstalt
Peenemünde (HVP), or ‘Peenemünde Army Von Braun 1912-1977
Research Centre.’ Wernher von Braun is the man often credited with
Peenemünde is regarded as the birthplace of being the ‘father of rocket science’. As a student he
modern rocket science. Here, Hitler assembled was fascinated by space travel, and read Hermann
as many rocket scientists and engineers as he Oberth’s work on the subject extensively. In 1930 he
could and banned civilian rocket tests – only joined the VfR where he had the opportunity to work
with and learn from Oberth.
military deployments of rockets were allowed. In 1934 von Braun was awarded his doctorate in
The apprehension of these scientists to produce physics, specialising in aerospace engineering, from
weapons of war, however, is well documented. the University of Berlin. Publicly, his thesis was called
Many of them still retained a hope that such About Combustion Tests. However, this turned out to
developments were just a precursor to more be but a small part of a larger thesis he had written,
scientific and peaceful endeavours, characterised titled Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental
by another quote from von Braun: “We always Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket,
which was kept classified and not published until
considered the development of rockets for military Eugen Sänger 1960. His thesis had a profound effect on the army
purposes as a roundabout way to get into space.” which, realising his potential, gave him his own team
Spaceflight historian Amy Teitel, however, thinks 1905-1964 of engineers and scientists to direct at Kummersdorf.
the Nazis didn’t ever have such ambitions: “I think Eugen Sänger was an Austrian aerospace engineer He was later put in charge of the rocket scientists at
we can safely say that their use of space would who studied civil engineering and aeronautics. He the Peenemünde research station.
After the war, von Braun surrendered to the US
have been military. The A-10 and the hypersonic was a member of the German amateur rocket society and became the director of NASA in the Sixties,
glider, had either been built, would have used Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) and was inspired by where he oversaw the successful manned missions
space as a sort of obstacle-free path to bombing the works of Hermann Oberth. to space and ultimately the Moon. His story is a
In the early Thirties he attempted to publish his
their enemies.” thesis on rocket-powered flight but it was rejected somewhat controversial one, as his involvement

Von Braun and his team carried on the work for being too fanciful. Instead, he published a more with the Nazi regime saw him develop a rocket that
they had already begun on the Aggregate rocket reserved paper describing the physics of wing trusses. terrorised Allied countries. But his contributions to
family and set about building the A-3 rocket, In 1935, however, he did publish his initial thesis, peaceful space exploration were plain to see.
which would be a marked improvement on von which garnered the attention of the Reich Aviation
Ministry. He was given a research institute near
Braun’s earlier A-2 rocket. Despite multiple failures, Braunschweig in Germany, where he could work on
they were ultimately able to build a rocket that
a design he had formulated for a winged bomber
could reach a height of 18 kilometres (11 miles). that could strike the United States with deadly force.
The true breakthrough, however, came with the This would later be known as the Amerika Bomber,
next in the series: the devastating A-4. although at the time it was called the Silbervogel.
The A-4, which would become known as the V-2 Sänger led the team that researched the possibility
rocket, Vergeltungswaffe 2 (Vengeance Weapon of the Silbervogel being used to skim along the
atmosphere in a series of sub-orbital hops before
2), featured a redesigned engine that allowed for descending and dropping a bomb on its target. He
a payload of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) to designed revolutionary rocket engines for the plane,
be carried on board. Up until 1941 the team at which used the circulation of fuel to cool the engines.
Peenemünde carried out extensive testing of the His work was not completed by the end of World War
V-2 until they successfully launched the first in II, however, and the plane never took flight.
March 1942. It worked by launching to the edge
of space, to an altitude of over 80 kilometres (50
miles), higher than any rocket that preceded it. In
1943, full-scale production began on the rocket,
and by 1944 it was being used against Germany’s
enemies to devastating effect.
Despite its terrifying potential, the V-2 would
become the cornerstone on which almost all
future space programmes were built after the
war. At the time, no other nation had been able
to emulate the success of von Braun’s team at
Peenemünde. By the end of the war they would
become one of the most sought-after commodities
of both the United States and the Soviet Union.
The V-2, however, was just the first in a series of
planned rockets. While research and production of
the rocket was ramped up in the early Forties, von
Braun and his team had already been investigating
the possibility of further improving the series,
building rockets that reached further into space
and thus had a much longer range, giving Hitler
the rocket he wanted to strike around the globe.
Von Braun and his team realised that by adding
wings to the rockets they could greatly increase
their range. Thus they devised the A-9, a modified
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