Kummersdorf, Peenemunde, and the V-2

Because the German V-2 missile’s technology became available to U. S. missile and rocket programs after the end of World War II, it helped stimulate further development of American rocket technol­ogy. The V-2 was by no means the only contributor to that technol­ogy. More or less purely American rocket efforts also occurred be­tween the beginnings of the rocket development work by Germans working under von Braun and 1945 when some of those Germans and V-2s began to arrive in the United States. But in view of the im­portance of the V-2 to the development of American missiles and 14 launch vehicles after World War II, this section considers the work of Chapter 1 the Germans. A later section will trace the separate American efforts leading to U. S. ballistic missiles and, ultimately, launch vehicles.

Research leading to the V-2 began in 1932 when von Braun started working under Dornberger at the German army proving grounds in

Kummersdorf. The young man and his assistants experienced nu­merous failures, including burnthroughs of combustion chambers. They proceeded through test rockets labeled A-1, A-2, A-3, and A-5—the A standing for Aggregat (German for “assembly"). But as the size of their rockets (and the workforce) increased, they moved their operations to a much larger facility at Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. There, they could launch their test rockets eastward along the Pomeranian coast.16

All of the test rockets contributed in various ways to the A-4, as did considerable collaboration with German universities, technical institutes, and industrial firms, showing that, as later in the United States, multiple organizations and skills were needed to develop missiles and rockets. Despite a truly massive amount of research – and-development work both at Peenemunde and at such associated entities, the A-4 still required a lot of modifications after its initial launch on October 3, 1942, with many failed launches after that. Even when actually used in the German war effort, the V-2 was nei­ther accurate nor reliable. Nevertheless, at about 46 feet long, 5 feet 5 inches in diameter, an empty weight of 8,818 pounds, and a range of close to 200 miles, it was an impressive technological achieve­ment whose development contributed much data and experience to later American missile and rocket development.17

Von Braun himself was a key factor in the relative success of the V-2. Born in the east German town of Wirsitz (later, Wyrzysk, Po­land) to noble parents on March 23, 1912, Freiherr (Baron) Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun earned a prediploma (Vordiplom) in mechanical engineering at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Institute of Technology in 1932, followed by a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Berlin in 1934.18 Both his boss, Walter Dornberger, and von Braun played the role of heterogeneous engineers, meeting with key figures in the government and Nazi Party, from successive Armaments Ministers Fritz Todt and Albert Speer, on up to Adolf Hitler himself, to maintain support for the missile.19

Von Braun also excelled as a technical manager after overcom­ing some initial lapses attributable to his youth and inexperience. He played a key role in integrating the various systems for the V-2 so that they worked effectively together. He did this by fostering communication between different departments as well as within individual elements of the Peenemunde organization. He met indi­vidually with engineers and perceptively led meetings of technical personnel to resolve particular issues. According to Dieter Huzel, who held a variety of positions at Peenemunde in the last two years of the war, von Braun “knew most problems at first hand. . . . He

repeatedly demonstrated his ability to go coherently and directly to the core of a problem or situation, and usually when he got there and it was clarified to all present, he had the solution already in mind—a solution that almost invariably received the wholehearted support of those present."20 This described technical management of the first order and also a different kind of heterogeneous engi­neering from that discussed previously, the ability not only to envi­sion a solution but to get it willingly accepted.

As another Peenemunder, Ernst Stuhlinger, and several col­leagues wrote in 1962, “Predecessors and contemporaries of Dr. von Braun may have had a visionary genius equal or superior to his, but none of them had his gift of awakening in others such strong en­thusiasm, faith and devotion, those indispensable ingredients of a successful project team." They added, “It is his innate capability, as a great engineer, to make the transition from an idea, a dream, a dar­ing thought to a sound engineering plan and to carry this plan most forcefully through to its final accomplishment." Finally, Stuhlinger and Frederick Ordway, who knew von Braun in the United States, wrote in a memoir about him, “Regardless of what the subject was— combustion instability, pump failures, design problems, control theory, supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopes, accelerometers, bal­listic trajectories, thermal problems—von Braun was always fully knowledgeable of the basic subject and of the status of the work. He quickly grasped the problem and he formulated it so that everyone understood it clearly."21 These qualities plus the hiring of a number of able managers of key departments contributed greatly to the de­velopment of the V-2.