American Moonshot

by Douglas Brinkley

  Zaloga, Steven J. German V-Weapon Sites, 1943–1945. London: Osprey Publishing, 2008.

  Notes

  PREFACE: KENNEDY’S NEW OCEAN

  The trophy had been established: “Seven Mercury Astronauts Winners of Collier Trophy,” New York Times, October 8, 1963, p. 24. Starting in 1957, Look magazine had taken over the annual trophy award.

  “Some of us”: “Kennedy Presents the Collier Trophy to Astronauts,” New York Times, October 11, 1963, p. 19.

  Writing the president’s obituary: Robert Hotz, “An Indelible Mark,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 79, no. 23 (December 3, 1963), p. 1.

  “Oh, I think it’s predominantly the responsibility”: Douglas Brinkley interview with Neil Armstrong, September 14, 2001, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Transcript, https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/6228/main_armstrong_oralhistory.pdf. Also with me to interview Neil Armstrong was the historian Stephen E. Ambrose.

  “As the clock was ticking”: Ibid.

  “I believe”: Public Papers of the President of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 403–5.

  “You don’t run for President”: William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 329.

  “talked of the heavens”: James Preston quoted in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of Congress April 13, 1959, Vol. 105, Pt. 19, Appendix A-2960, 86th Congress, 1st Session. See also Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever, For Spacious Skies (New York: New American Library, 2004), p. 197.

  The technology: Stacey Bredhoff, Moonshot: JFK and Space Exploration (Washington, DC: Foundation for the National Archives, 2009), p. 38.

  “Each invested enormous resources”: Neil Armstrong, “Introduction,” in Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, with Jay Barbree, Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Apollo Moon Landings (Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing, 1994), pp. 8–9.

  “the lack of effort”: John M. Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 8.

  “I think he became convinced”: Quoted in ibid., p. 225.

  Because NASA worked in tandem: Shelby G. Spires, “The Teflon Myth and Other Inventions from NASA,” Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2007.

  “Why, some say, the moon”: “Address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September 1962,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA (hereafter “Kennedy Library”).

  “he wasn’t a technical man”: Wernher von Braun, recorded interview by Walter D. Sohier and Eugene M. Emme, March 31, 1964, p. 9, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, Kennedy Library.

  “moon shots”: Steve Marble, “Former Dodger’s Slugger Helped Wally Moon, Whose ‘Moon Shots’ Helped Team Reach Three World Series Dies at 87,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-wally-moon-20180210-html.story.html.

  As early as Kennedy’s Rice: “JFK and NASA” Houston Press, September 12, 1962, p. 10; NASA 1960s Vertical Files, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston, TX.

  “from my earliest boyhood”: “News Release: New Exhibition to Celebrate JFK’s Love of the Sea,” March 27, 2000, https://www.jfklibrary.org/about-us/news-and-press/press-releases/new-exhibit-to-celebrate-jfks-love-of-the-sea.

  “The eyes of the world”: “Address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September 1962,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, Kennedy Library.

  “crawling up on the land”: Valerie Neal, Cathleen S. Lewis, and Franklin Winter, Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide (New York: Macmillan, 1995), p. 132.

  “We rejoice”: John Noble Wilford, We Reach the Moon (New York: Bantam Press, 1969), p. xvii.

  “We needed the first man”: Buzz Aldrin with Ken Abraham, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010), p. 10.

  1. DR. ROBERT GODDARD MEETS BUCK ROGERS

  Jules Verne published: Burrows, This New Ocean, pp. 28–32.

  “certain narrow-minded people”: Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (France: Pierre-Jules Hetzel, 1865).

  “the restless erratic insight”: Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), pp. 4–5.

  In the wake of the Wright brothers’: Robert H. Goddard, “The Moon Rocket Proposition: Refutation of Some Popular Fallacies,” Scientific American, February 26, 1921.

  “supervise and direct”: James R. Hansen, First Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. 130.

  new technology’s military applications: https://history.nasa.gov/naca/overview.html.

  NACA established the Langley: Sylvia Doughty Fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo (Washington, DC: NASA, 1992).

  unveiled his astronautical ideas: Robert H. Goddard, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 71, no. 2 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1919).

  “It has often proved true”: Robert Goddard, “On Taking Things for Granted,” graduation oration, South High School, Worcester, MA, June 24, 1904, in “Frequently Asked Questions About Dr. Robert H. Goddard,” Clark University Archives and Special Collections, http://www2.clarku.edu/research/archives/goddard/faq.cfm.

  “Rocket for Moon”: Colorado Springs Gazette, January 12, 1920, p. 1.

  “on nothing that is really impossible”: Goddard, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, p. 57.

  media and public remained uncertain: Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker, 2001), p. 40.

  a front-page story: “Believes Rocket Can Reach Moon,” New York Times, January 12, 1920, p. 1.

  “need to have something better”: “A Severe Strain on Credulity,” New York Times, Topics of the Times segment, January 13, 1920, p. 12.

  compared the Worcester rocketeer’s: “All Aboard for the Moon,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 13, 1920, p. 10.

  “So much for”: Quoted in “Frequently Asked Questions About Dr. Robert H. Goddard.”

  estimate was one hundred thousand dollars: “Nine Want Moon Trip,” St. Albans Messenger, April 6, 1920, p. 1.

  “publicity is the worst possible disaster”: Paul G. Carter, “Rockets to the Moon 1919–1944,” American Studies 15, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 33.

  nine applications from brave men: “Nine Want Moon Trip,” p. 1.

  “the more practical objects”: “To Test Moon-Bound Rocket This Summer,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 1921, p. 2.

  Goddard’s solicitations: “Seeks ‘Rocket to Moon’ Fund,” Kansas City Times, June 28, 1921, p. 1.

  constructing a small replica: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 47.

  a description of Goddard’s work: Hermann Oberth, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen [The Rocket into Planetary Space] (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1923).

  “the American professor Dr. Goddard”: Quoted in Asif Siddiqi, “Deep Impact: Dr. Robert Goddard and the Soviet ‘Space Fad’ of the 1920s,” History and Technology 20, no. 2 (2004): 99.

  international team of space travelers: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Outside the Earth (Vne Zemli: Nauchno-fantasticheskaya povest) (Fairfield, CT: Athena Books, 2006); and Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 43.

  “mass fascination with space travel”: Siddiqi, “Deep Impact,” p. 99.

  “possibility of cosmic travel”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 43.

  “I didn’t get a watch”: Quoted in David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Ballantine, 1993), p. 609.

  “The wagon was wholly out of control”: Wernher von Braun, “Space Man: The Story of My Life,” American Weekly, July 20, 1958, p. 8.

  “Here was a task”: Quoted in Daniel Lang, “A Romantic Urge,” New Yorker, April 21, 1951, pp. 75–93.

  “Lunetta” (Little Moon): Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015), p. 13.

 
the world was fourfold: Ibid., p. 15.

  “the first man to walk on the moon”: Ernst Stuhlinger, “How It All Began: Memories of an Old-Timer,” July 20, 1999, Wernher von Braun Library of Archives, U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL.

  he did correspond: “Plans Hop to Moon in a Rocket-Plane,” New York Times, May 8, 1927, p. 19.

  ambulances, police cars: Associated Press, “Rocket Plows Skyward Alarming District,” Houston Chronicle, July 18, 1929, p. 26.

  residents of Auburn forbade: “Dr. Robert H. Goddard, World Rocket Pioneer,” typescript (Washington, DC: NASA), 1960, p. 6.

  a nervous breakdown: “Halts Moon Rocket Work,” New York Times, January 17, 1930, p. 3.

  enormous box-office hit: “Die Frau im Mond/Der Neue Lang-Film,” Vossische Zeitung (Berlin), October 16, 1929; Heike Langenberg, “Rocket Retrospective,” Nature, November 8, 2001, p. 152.

  nine thousand feet in just 22.3 seconds: “Frequently Asked Questions About Dr. Robert H. Goddard.”

  “Morning in the desert”: Robert Goddard diary entry (June 2, 1937), quoted in Dave A. Clary, Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age (New York: Hyperion, 2003), p. 169.

  2: KENNEDY, VON BRAUN, AND THE CRUCIBLE OF WORLD WAR II

  Once, when Jack was a boy: Yanek Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and the World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), p. 260.

  “the Literary Digest”: Quoted in Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 86.

  “accustomed to the idea”: John F. Kennedy to Christian Causs, October 21, 1935, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Personal Papers, Harvard: Harvard Records, Pre-enrollment material: 1935–1936, Kennedy Library.

  “Jack has rather superior mental ability”: Henry Raymont, “Kennedy Data: Years at Harvard,” New York Times, August 3, 1971, p. 26.

  accepting nearly every applicant: Harvard was accepting 98.6 percent of its applicants. See Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 205.

  the president of Harvard described his method: Karabel, The Chosen, p. 174.

  “I feel that Harvard”: John F. Kennedy, application, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Personal Papers, Harvard: Harvard Records, Pre-enrollment material: 1935–1936, Kennedy Library.

  “Oberth was the first”: Hermann Oberth Raumfahrt Museum, http://www.Oberth-museum.org, December 28, 1989.

  The rocketry concepts developed by Oberth: “Hermann Oberth,” NASA, For Educators, September 22, 2010, https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/rocketry/home/hermann-oberth.html.

  In 1937, Doolittle went to Germany: Winston Groom, The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2013), pp. 182–83.

  “with the moon only”: James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again (New York: Bantam, 1994), p. 515.

  “I naturally cannot turn over”: R. H. Goddard to Robert Milikin, September 1, 1936, in Esther Goddard and G. Edward Pendray, eds., The Papers of Robert H. Goddard, Including the Reports to the Smithsonian Institution and the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, vol. 3 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), pp. 1012–13.

  amazed by the quality: John F. Kennedy diary, August 18, 1937, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Personal Papers, Early Years, 1928–1940, Kennedy Library.

  “had the added attraction”: John F. Kennedy diary, August 20, 1937, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Personal Papers, Early Years, 1928–1940, Kennedy Library.

  “The Germans really are too good”: John F. Kennedy diary, August 21, 1937, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Personal Papers, Early Years, 1928–1940, Kennedy Library.

  broad new highways: Billings diary quoted in David Pitts, Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2009), pp. 52–67.

  “We were all struck”: Michael O’Brien, John F. Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), p. 94.

  “For a twenty-two-year-old American”: Whalen quoted in ibid., p. 93.

  “astonishing theoretical knowledge”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 18.

  “If you want more money”: Walter R. Dornberger, “The German V-2,” Technology and Culture 4, no. 4 (Autumn 1963): 397.

  “arrow stability”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 82. See also Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1995), pp. 23–71.

  Christened Peenemünde: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 52.

  seventy next-generation Aggregat rockets: Ibid., p. 52.

  “going to the moon”: Dornberger, “The German V-2,” p. 399.

  There is currently a debate: Jared S. Buss, Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017).

  “a liquid-propellant rocket can fly”: Quoted in Christopher Potter, The Earth Gazers: On Seeing Ourselves (New York: Pegasus, 2018), p. 82.

  “thousands of major problems”: Dornberger, “The German V-2,” p. 399.

  “The slim missile rose slowly”: Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007), p. 118.

  “The shocking German success”: O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, pp. 99–100.

  turning his attention away: Michael J. Neufeld, “Hitler, the V-2, and the Battle for Priority, 1939–1943,” The Journal for Military History 57, no. 3 (July 1993): 528.

  “revolutionary importance for the conduct of warfare”: Quoted in Neufeld, Von Braun, p. 128.

  3: SURVIVING A SAVAGE WAR

  his most authentic self: Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, in, on, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do (New York: Little, Brown, 2014), pp. 5–15.

  “cowards or defeatists”: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys: An American Drama (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 118.

  put his craft above: Frederick I. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York: William Heinemann, 1979), pp. 47–48.

  was fond of saying: Von Braun quoted in “Wernher von Braun,” International Space Hall of Fame at the New Mexico Museum of Space History (1976), http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=29.

  “was a true ancestor”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 52.

  “In the full glare of the sunlight”: Ibid., p. 49.

  “Europe and the world”: Quoted in Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 611.

  “Our big-ship navy”: William F. Liebenow, oral history, p. 3, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, Kennedy Library, https://jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer=archives/JFKOH/Liebenow%2C%20William%20F/JFKOH-WFL-01/JFKOH-WFL-01.

  “I’m not so crazy”: Quoted in Thurston Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), p. 14.

  Early on August 2, 1943: John Hersey, “Survival,” The New Yorker, June 17, 1944, p. 31.

  “People that haven’t been there”: Liebenow, oral history, p. 8.

  “Most of the courage shown”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 715.

  mission to find Peenemünde: Neufeld, Von Braun, p. 128.

  “After four weeks of cleanup work”: Dornberger, “The German V-2,” pp. 404–5.

  “endurance or death”: Leon Jaroff, “The Rocket Man’s Dark Side,” Time, March 26, 2002, content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,220201,00.html.

  Dora: Andre Sellier, A History of the Dora Camp: The Untold Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), p. 5.

  In later years, a disingenuous von Braun: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 53. See also Halberstam, The Fifties, pp. 611–12.

  a Life magazine story: John Hersey, “PT Squadron in the South Pacific,” Life, May 10, 1943, p. 74.

  He spent most of
late winter: John Hellmann, The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 43.

  “They all wait anxiously”: Quoted in Edward J. Renehan Jr., The Kennedys at War, 1937–1945 (New York: Doubleday, 2002), p. 280.

  Jack always loved being in Florida: Ibid., pp. 214–16.

  Jack decided to learn how to fly: John F. Kennedy, May 19–June 8, 1944, Flight Log, Shapell Foundation Archive, Herzilya, Israel. Thanks to Lavin Montgomery and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for bringing this to my attention.

  “accelerated schedule”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 608.

  “a concrete chamber”: Graham M. Simons, Operation LUSTY: The Race for Hitler’s Secret Technology (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2016), p. 71.

  “some kind of a gadget”: Jacob Neufeld, The Development of Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force, 1990), p. 35.

  appeared in The New Yorker: Hersey, “Survival.”

  “construction of John F. Kennedy”: Hellmann, The Kennedy Obsession, p. 43.

  “I firmly believe”: William Doyle, PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy (New York: William Morrow, 2015), p. xiii.

  Naval Air Corps pilots: Alan Axelrod, Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 160.

  incrementally pulling out: Simons, Operation LUSTY, p. 72.

  Third Infantry Division captured: Steven J. Zaloga, German V-Weapon Sites, 1943–45 (London: Osprey, 2008), p. 14.

  “an oasis of love”: Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass (New York: Twelve, 2009), p. 63.

  “While he’s singing”: Kate Thom Kelley, oral history, p. 14, National Archives and Records Administration, Office of Presidential Libraries, Kennedy Library.

  4: WHO’S AFRAID OF THE V-2?

  “Britons pondered the possibility”: “Ten-Ton Robots Called Possible as Flying Bombs Batter Britain,” New York Times, July 18, 1944, p. 6.

  missile test: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, pp. 158–90.