WERNHER VON BRAUN
Wernher was lobbying hard for the go-ahead to launch a small satellite, even if it could do nothing other than be tracked from the ground. His justification was that the Soviets would probably put one up in the near future, and if they were first it would be bad for American prestige. Four launching dates were projected over August-September 1957 as part of Project Orbiter. But inter-service rivalry was making life difficult. The Air Force was busy with the Atlas ICBM and had little interest, if not outright hostility, for the rocket proposals of the Army or Navy. They also failed to see the point of helping either of them launch a satellite for scientific purposes. Wernher thought that the rivalry was like those in the Third Reich. Then he had had to deal with the SS obstructing the plans of the Army and Luftwaffe, and now he had to deal with the Air Force obstructing plans of the Army and Navy. It was all about political power and influence rather than the job to be done.
The tag team of Toftoy and von Braun kept the pressure on, and even without the support of the Air Force, a satellite launch became a priority for 1957, the International Geophysical Year. President Eisenhower made the announcement about a pending launch to the press in late July 1955. But the decision about who would oversee the production and the launching was given to a “select committee.” The candidates to run the satellite program were the Air Force, which had a rough plan based on their Atlas ICBM, the Navy, which had an untested design they called Vanguard, and the Army, with a proposal based on the Redstone program. It became a political cat fight that ended with the committee members voting according to their military service affiliations. The final decision was that the Navy would launch the satellite.
Wernher was terribly disappointed, but all was not lost. There was also a decision pending on who would build an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) that could strike targets 1,500 miles away. The committee reviewed the Air Force, Army, and Navy proposals and offered a compromise. The Air Force would get the funds to build an Air Force IRBM, while the Army and Navy would develop a shared design that would have land based and sea based versions. This would guarantee continued funding for the Redstone facility, and the IRBM would be very similar to the rocket von Braun had planned to use to launch a satellite.
With the IRBM program underway, the Redstone Arsenal was reorganized, becoming the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). Wernher was promoted again, to head the Development Operations Division. This placed him at an administrative level that brought a salary of $16,530-$17,570 per year ($143,742-$152,786 today) plus a 16% bonus for the high cost of living in the Huntsville metropolitan area. This salary, added to his income from popular articles, lectures, and additional Disney specials (the second would air in 1956 and the third in 1957), made him wealthy by the standards of the day.
Von Braun now had over 3,000 people working for him. He went with time honored tradition, appointing former Peenemünde/Bleicherode employees to key positions. The goal of the program was to deliver a nuclear warhead weighing 1,500 pounds over a distance of 1,500 miles to a specified location. There were many obstacles to overcome — not just with regard to rocket thrust, and thus range, but also to guidance systems.
Meanwhile, another Paperclip recruit, Dr. Paul Schröder, who was working for the Air Force at the time, started writing a detailed article about the origins and development of the V-2. In it, he claimed that von Braun had not invented anything about the V-2 but that he had taken credit for everything. He said that von Braun was domineering and that any Peenemünders objecting were forced to leave. He related stories of von Braun’s technical incompetence and the arguments over von Braun’s decisions regarding the guidance system of the V-2. Schröder felt that his career in the US had been sabotaged as a result of Wernher’s animosity. He submitted the completed article for review by Air Force Security. They determined that it did not contain any classified information and told him he could publish it. His attorney, however, subsequently called him to say that the Pentagon did not want the article published and that if it were published, it would jeopardize Schröder’s citizenship application. Schröder took the hint and, for the moment at least, suspended attempts to publish the article.
The Soviets had their first successful ICBM launch on 21 August 1957, and in October, they succeeded in putting a satellite named Sputnik (“fellow traveler”) into orbit. As it happily zoomed around the planet, periodically crossing over North America, the US population reacted with shock, anger, and dismay. How had the Soviets beaten America into space? What was all that rubbish about our German scientists being better than their German scientists? There were no answers to those questions that were not embarrassing for the US military and the Eisenhower administration. The ABMA hoped that this would open the door to their launch plans — they promised a satellite aloft in 90 days or less — but instead, President Eisenhower downplayed the Soviet achievement.
The position changed when on 3 November, the Soviets launched a much larger payload containing the poor dog Laika, the first (and so far the only) orbiting fatality, since there were no recovery plans. The US public went into paroxysms of paranoia. Predictions were made that Americans had better learn to speak Russian. President Eisenhower promised a satellite by March 1958, but that promise did little to calm anxieties. When the third Disney show aired, von Braun was put on the cover of Life Magazine. In the Life article he predicted that unless the country changed direction, in seven years, the US would be part of the USSR. The New York Times called him a prophet of the coming space age, but Eisenhower called him a publicity hound.166
The Navy announced that the first Vanguard ICBM launch would be televised live on 6 December 1957. For the day, it was “must-see TV.” After great anticipation, the imposing rocket climbed to an altitude of around six inches before the engine quit, it fell back on the launch pad, and the whole thing disappeared in a tremendous fireball.
While Wernher’s team scrambled to get a backup rocket ready, Wernher was lobbying Congress for $1.5 billion to develop a national space program. Every week or so, the Vanguard project tried gain, and after four unsuccessful launch attempts and four spectacularly embarrassing explosions on live TV, the ABMA team got the green light. On January 31, 1958, a Jupiter-C167 lifted into the air. Fearing another debacle that would further humiliate the Eisenhower administration, the launch wasn’t televised live. The rocket stages performed as intended, and the satellite, Explorer 1, reached orbit to the delight and relief of all concerned.
Wernher was now a national hero. Two weeks later he was on the cover of Time Magazine, where he was called Missileman Von Braun. This article, like a similar one published in Germany at the time, presented a carefully sanitized version of his activities during the war. Wernher’s Nazi party membership was not mentioned, and there was no mention of the SS, the Mittelwerk, slave labor, or other unpleasant details. Biographies were written based on his previous heavily censored accounts. The Mars Project was updated and serialized, and a second book, dealing with a moon mission, found a publisher. He found he could make $2,500 ($20,000 today) for a single lecture. A studio deal for a biographical movie with Columbia Pictures promised $25,000 plus 7% of the profits. He got a bigger house and a white Mercedes, all the while complaining about the pressures of celebrity.
But in March 1958, the Schröder affair resurfaced courtesy of Drew Pearson, whose earlier investigations into the Fort Bliss team had been quashed. Drew had Jack Anderson, an investigative reporter working with him, call the ABMA and ask to talk to Dr. von Braun. The security chief who took the message called Anderson back to tell him that Dr. von Braun was unavailable. Anderson replied that he and Pearson were about to publish a book, tentatively called The Missile Mess, and that it had a chapter on von Braun. He went on to say that they had received a lengthy report from Dr. Schröder and wanted to get Dr. von Braun’s response.
The news hit Wernher like a bolt from the blue, and he hardly knew what to say. Any response could backfire. In the end, W
ernher said that he had never met the man, despite the fact that Shröder had played an important role in the A-4 project at Peenemünde and it had been friction with Wernher that led to his transfer. When questioned, Arthur Rudolph and Konrad Dannenberg had nothing very nice to say about Schröder. So when Pearson and Anderson published USA: second class power? later that year, it included little about Schröder, and von Braun’s history remained obscure.
This didn’t mean that the Shröder problem had been solved, however. In July 1958, George McLanahan, the Chief of Army Ordnance, sent a memo to General Toftoy advising him that the FBI was investigating a letter from Schröder that contained explicit allegations about Wernher von Braun. Schröder claimed that after one of his meetings with officials about his grievances, someone had tried to kill him by cutting the brake lines in his car. The damage had reportedly been verified by the local police. Schröder was terrified and Senator Stuart Symington was involved. Once again, the Army somehow buried the letter and muzzled Schröder without generating any negative publicity.
Times were changing, though, and it was getting harder to control the news media. Claims similar to Schröder’s concerning von Braun’s management style in the ABMA program appeared in the press. The implication that Wernher was more concerned with self-aggrandizement and the control of a closely knit subordinate group than with scientific advancement could seriously impact his lobbying efforts and the support for his programs. Wernher, who expected loyalty from his subordinates, was disturbed to find that members of his team were making negative comments to the press.
His subordinates weren’t the only ones breaking ranks. The unified “German front” was starting to crack. Walter Dornberger, who knew von Braun as well as anyone, was unusually candid with Delmar Fahrney, a retired rear admiral formerly in charge of the Navy’s guided missile program. Dornberger said that von Braun had published no papers, made no breakthroughs, and personally designed none of the V-2 details. He felt that von Braun’s true genius was in team building and staff motivation, and presenting a vision for a project that would resonate with his audience and secure funding. Albert Speer, in his memoirs, had said much the same thing — that Wernher had mesmerized him, the Führer, and many others with his grandiose visions of rocket weapons.168 Regardless of the truth of the other assertions, Wernher had certainly demonstrated his talents for showmanship repeatedly since his surrender to the US in 1945. He was in many ways the Pied Piper of Rocketry for generations of Americans.
Later in the year, the amount of money Wernher was making was so incredible, and the time he was devoting to lectures and appearances so extensive, that he was asked to cut back to a level that would not impact his work so severely. But they could hardly threaten to fire him, especially when progress at ABMA continued. Wernher’s group was now working on the Pershing rocket, a replacement for the Redstone. The Pershing used the solid-fuel rocket motors used in the second and third stages of the Jupiter-C. The von Braun team also continued to enhance the Redstone and a version of the Jupiter-C for the Air Force. Wernher put Arthur Rudolph in charge of the Pershing and Redstone projects and gave the Jupiter program to Konrad Dannenberg. Soon, another program was added: a jumbo super-rocket that could provide thrust comparable to what the Soviet rockets were generating. The design, called the Saturn, was based on interlocking eight modified versions of the Redstone rocket engine. President Eisenhower awarded Wernher the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service Award in April 1959. Despite his personal dislike of Wernher’s charismatic showmanship, Eisenhower understood his value and that he thrived on attention and accolades.
Big things were happening in the rocket world, and the biggest was the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The fledgeling agency soon became embroiled in political intrigues — now there was a fourth agency that was seen as competing for funding and prestige with the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Turf battles erupted over just what personnel and responsibilities NASA would have going forward. In a compromise solution, NASA took over the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, and the ABMA was contracted to complete work as needed for NASA. That solution didn’t last long, though, and soon the entire von Braun team at ABMA, almost 4,000 people, were transferred from the Army to NASA. However, when the Army transferred the personnel, they did not transfer the still-classified information regarding their backgrounds in Germany. All the NASA administration knew was what they were told by the German specialists themselves.169 Now that NASA had a full staff complement, construction got underway for new headquarters. Still at the former Redstone base, the new complex was called the Marshall Space Flight Center, with Dr. Wernher von Braun as Director.
In 1959, Wernher found the time to travel to Germany with an escort to receive the Commanders Cross (the Grosse Bundesverdienstkreuz) from the West German government. It was his third German cross, but his first peacetime one and the only one the American public would hear about. While in Europe, he also worked on the movie about his life, which was called I Aim at the Stars. This “biography” took many liberties with the truth, although Wernher had personally reviewed the script during development and had approved the variations. In the film version of his life during the war years, he was an anti-Nazi activist, Maria was his girlfriend rather than an eight-year-old child, Nazi SS villains stomped around looking evil, there was no mention of slave labor or the Mittelwerk, and next to nothing was said about his rockets bombarding Allied cities. When it was released in Europe, the movie was a commercial disappointment, and there was negative publicity due to protests by Dora and Peenemünde survivors’ groups at many theaters. Wernher’s response at the premiere in Munich included, “A war is a war, and when my country is at war, my duty is to help with that war.” The statement was not taken as a sign of contrition.
The protests in Europe were largely ignored by the US press. Things were more settled when the movie was released in the US, where von Braun brazenly defended the accuracy of the portrayal. Time Magazine, however, felt that von Braun was depicted as a cheerful accomplice to mass murder, who cared only about rockets, not people. They thought he could sue for libel, an interesting concept given that he had a financial stake in the movie and had approved the script. Neither his stalwart defense of the film nor their critique made any real difference — the film was as great a flop in the US as it was in Europe. It was often referred to as “I Aim at the Stars but Sometimes I Hit London.”
Wernher’s busy schedule continued through late 1960, when the pace and pressure increased further. In November 1960, President Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. NASA would have to start gearing up in earnest.
1961-1970
FRED MARTINI
Daven Electronics had two facilities, one in New Jersey, where Fred was based, and another in Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1963, Ed Allman moved to New Hampshire to become the plant manager for the facility, which produced resistors. He and Fred remained friends, as Fred bounced back and forth between New Jersey and New Hampshire. Fred was given the option to move to Manchester as well, but he decided to postpone a shift until their son graduated from high school in mid-1965.
In 1965, Daven Electronics was purchased by McGraw-Edison, a corporate conglomerate based in Chicago. The company name was changed to “Edison Electronics, a division of McGraw-Edison.” The New Jersey facility was closed, and the company consolidated at a new complex built at Grenier Field outside of Manchester, New Hampshire.170 Ed Allman was named President of the reconfigured company.
In the fall of that year, Fred and Betty put their house on the market and bought a place in Bedford, NH. When they moved in, Fred was the new Director of Operations for Edison Electronics. In that role, he was responsible for all standard products — attenuators, switches, laboratory and test equipment — and for related product engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, production, and quality control.
He was considered to be a valuable as
set for the company, so they covered him with “Key Man Insurance,” which would pay the company in the event something dire happened to Fred. As a policy requirement, Fred had to have annual physicals, with the results forwarded to Ed Allman. The exams were conducted by Dr. Paul M. Harkinson. In 1966, at his first physical, it was noted that his blood pressure was 130/80, and that it had been higher a few years earlier but had responded to medication.
In July 1967, an uncontrollable fire inside the Apollo capsule during a testing session killed three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The entire NASA program was suspended for a month while an internal investigation was conducted. It was clear that a spark had ignited the pure-oxygen atmosphere inside the capsule, and it was also clear that the safety features inside and outside the capsule were poorly designed and woefully inadequate, especially regarding a potential fire. But just what had caused the spark that turned the inside of the capsule into a crematorium remained a mystery.
Edison Electronics manufactured rotary switches for the Apollo capsules. These switches were completely sealed, and thus theoretically incapable of producing a spark when operated. But nevertheless, Edison representatives, as well as representatives of other contractors providing electrical components for the Apollo capsules, were ordered to NASA Headquarters in Huntsville and told to bring their spec sheets and test results for review.
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 36
