Rocket Girl

by George D. Morgan

  That morning, Tom had filled two of the TPS positions—good men with excellent education and experience. But the candidate pool with the right qualifications was shrinking. Other supervisors in other departments had already gone through the same pile of applications, each one taking the best and leaving the rest. And the more supervisors who slogged through the application pool, the more it degraded into a slush pile. Even so, he had managed to hire a number of very good people. And he did it by looking for small details that other supervisors tended to overlook. A paper résumé, he knew, was a highly imperfect way to judge a flesh-and-blood human being.

  Ideally the job of a theoretical performance specialist required someone with superior skills in both math and chemistry. Hands-on experience with rocket propellants or exotic chemicals was a plus. But every application he looked at had the same problem: If someone had the right experience, they lacked the math skills; if they had the math skills, they lacked the chemistry; if they had the chemistry, they lacked the real-world experience.

  Then he came to an application from a young woman, Mary Sherman. Superb math skills. Excellent knowledge of chemistry. A great deal of real-world experience. Still, there were two major problems with the applicant: she did not have a college degree, and she was a she.

  Tap, tap, tap…

  An 8 × 10 family portrait adorned one wall of Tom's office. Ten years ago his wife had given up a promising career in order to become a full-time wife and mother. She tried to keep her feelings hidden, but Tom knew she secretly harbored regrets about giving up what could have been a lucrative and promising path. She was happy, yes, but even happy people have regrets. Theirs was a good marriage, and their children were a delight. They got along well, and there were few complaints. In fact, the primary complaint his family had was Tom's propensity to nervously tap, tap, tap his pencil on things when he was thinking. Which was often.

  Tap, tap, tap…

  Tom set Mary Sherman's application aside for a moment and looked out onto the engineering floor. Below him, hundreds of steel and wooden desks were stacked in ranks and files, with a starched-white-shirted man at each one. Tom smiled at the mental image: nine hundred white shirts and ties surrounding a single dress. The idea was delicious, and for a brief moment he thought about hiring the young woman just for the novelty. There were other women on the floor, of course: file clerks and typists. Still, for the engineering department it would be novelty.

  Tom considered for a few moments the new state of affairs that had begun to dominate people, politics, and policy. It was a war without bombs or battles—a war fought with philosophy and threats rather than guns and tanks. That's why they called it the Cold War. And the enemy was the Soviet Union. As the holder of a top secret government security clearance, Tom was privy to certain information most Americans had no access to. One such item was that the Soviet Union was well on its way to building its first atomic bomb. World War II may have ended, but the world was, in many respects, an even more dangerous place than ever. Both countries were designing large rocket systems. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out that placing an atomic warhead on an unstoppable missile was preferable to dropping it from a vulnerable bomber. This was a world so new and precarious that every morning brought another fear-engendering revelation and headline. But until interplanetary travel became a reality, everyone had to live in that world. And so this was no occasion for frivolous novelty. If he were to hire this woman, she would have to own the chops for the job.

  Tom could tell by the smudges, fingerprints, and dog-eared paper that several other managers had already looked at this application, and passed on it. One of them had even written a comment at the bottom: “No way!” Still, he decided to give it a closer look. Having to sift through hundreds of job apps and résumés was a mind-numbing experience, and important details were sometimes missed. Today was no exception, for though he had checked her prior work experience, somehow he had skipped over her prior employer. According to the application, Mary Sherman had spent the previous four years doing chemistry work at a place he was very familiar with: Plum Brook Ordnance.

  Tom Meyers stopped tapping his pencil.

  I saw a new life. There was nothing left for us in Germany.

  —WALTER WEISMAN, GERMAN ROCKET SCIENTIST1

  For almost two hundred years the United States had enjoyed its advantageous geographical position, set apart and isolated from humankind's traditional warring states of Europe and Asia. For all the detrimental arguments that could be made against the philosophical megalomania of Manifest Destiny, the push of the country westward had created a formidable country—one that was protected on both its east and west flanks by vast oceans. This isolation and separation was one of the key factors that made the American Revolution possible, as the British were forced to transport men and materials back and forth across thousands of miles of sea from England.

  This oceanic buffer zone has always been an enviable advantage for the United States. During World War II geographically contiguous countries such as France and Poland were easily picked off by Germany due to their close proximity and ease of access over established roadways. The geographical advantage the Americans enjoyed was a sore spot for Adolf Hitler, and his fantasies of world domination required him to spend a great deal of time considering ways to overcome it. It was for this reason that he began to envision a rocket that could fly a warhead across the Atlantic Ocean and hit America.2 He asked Wernher von Braun if it might be possible to build a rocket with such a range. Von Braun, who had spent his life dreaming of building rockets that could fly to the moon or Mars, was quick to say yes. No one who wanted to spend money building larger rockets ever got a “no” from Wernher von Braun. What military leaders saw in purely weaponry terms, however, he saw in terms of opportunity—an opportunity to use their money and manipulate their zeal in order to advance space-travel technology.3 And so, long before it had an official name, Adolf Hitler envisioned the invention of yet another new weapon—the intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. With such a weapon he could make moot America's geographical advantage. World domination would be within his grasp.

  Germany would never build such a weapon, since the Führer and his government died before any serious work could be done. But what Adolf Hitler could only imagine, others would soon create.

  From his window in the confines of the former enlisted men's barracks at Fort Bliss, Texas, Wernher von Braun watched a small dust devil swirl and dance. It traveled a short ways until reaching a cement walkway where it dissolved, its sandy particles made powerless by the lack of new fuel. This was his new world, the world of endless sand. Sand and rocks and gravel and more sand as far as one could see. The sands of southwestern Texas were so vast they made the beaches of Peenemünde look like a child's playground. And it got into everything: eyes, nostrils, mouth, numerous other bodily cavities, carburetors, air-conditioning, rugs, drinking water, food supplies, and, absolutely worst of all, the propellant tanks. The sun never set on a day that Wernher did not crunch kernels of grit between his teeth, wash granules from his eyes with great handfuls of water, or order his men to clean the propellant storage and feed systems one more time.

  Then there were his colleagues. The ever-declining morale amongst the German émigrés was causing dissension. Having left their homes, families, and the unspoiled German alpine forests for the sand-blasted military barracks of Fort Bliss, 104 immigrated rocket scientists were quietly questioning their newfound loyalty to America and its people. For these men, the Texas desert was not some isolated whistle-stop on a long rail line to somewhere better—according to the US Army it was the end of their line and they would do well to get used to it.

  And to make matters almost inhumane, the beer tasted like mouthwash.

  But the worst sand problem was yet to come. Too far ahead to see, the day was coming when a sibling rivalry–like competition between three branches of the US military would intentionally prevent von Braun from l
aunching the world's first man-made satellite years ahead of the Soviet Union. The US government would accomplish this by preventing von Braun from working on orbit-capable rockets, assigning him instead to ballistic-only designs. The absurdity of this waste of manpower would reach its farcical zenith with the United States eventually ordering von Braun to load the Redstone with two thousand pounds of sand as ballast to intentionally lower his rocket's performance. The reason? To make certain von Braun's Redstone did not “accidentally” get into orbit during test flights.

  But that was still almost a decade away.

  Having been coddled with gourmet food, luxurious conditions, and generous military funding at Peenemünde, many of the German scientists soon began pining for home—a home that no longer existed. Yet despite the wartime destruction of their country, a small number of the scientists turned their back on the United States and returned to Germany.

  For those who stayed, their Fort Bliss lifestyle consisted of tasteless US Army food and endless boredom. An exciting evening was defined as scorpion hunting in the bed sheets before turning in at night. If the hostile weather and inhospitable living conditions of Fort Bliss weren't bad enough, several times a week the scientists had to endure a lengthy bus ride over rutted, jaw-jarring earthen roads, crossing state borders to reach their new work environment at New Mexico's White Sands Proving Grounds—where more sand awaited. The German scientists began referring to themselves as “prisoners of peace.”4

  For all this, the Germans had the US government's Project Paperclip to thank.5 A technology transfer program designed to help America catch up to the Germans (and stay ahead of the Russians), Project Paperclip had quietly imported a select group of Germany's most elite rocket engineers to America. The operation was managed by the US Army and kept top secret for a very good reason—no one in the US government or the military wanted to suffer public censure for harboring or collaborating with Nazis. Of course, one could try explaining that the men were former Nazis, but the US Army was taking no chances—the last thing it wanted was a public-relations nightmare on its hands. In this regard, Project Paperclip had a second goal—to settle those scientists in a location so remote and inaccessible that over time their Nazi pasts could be effectively whitewashed.

  Thanks to von Braun's superior public-relations talent, that goal was not only achieved, but achieved beyond anyone's expectations.

  At first there was not much to do at White Sands. Traveling from their homeland, the Germans had been given high transportation priority, securing rides to the United States on returning Army Air Corps planes. This meant they preceded by weeks, even months, the delivery of the V-2 missile parts being shipped by boat, then rail, from Mittelwerk to White Sands. When the parts did finally begin trickling in—loaded into hundreds of boxcars strung out across the country—von Braun soon discovered the trans-Atlantic crossing had wreaked havoc with his precious rocket. During transit, much of the V-2 systems and components had become rusted and corroded in the salty ocean air. Many of the railroad boxcars, despite their top secret contents, became waylaid, sidelined for months on spur tracks—lost and forgotten in the mega-chaos of their transport. But the US government was salivating over the German technology and had little patience for nagging little details like lost shipments or the natural oxidation of metals. The army ordered von Braun and his men to begin assembling, fueling, and firing V-2’s without delay—no excuses. When von Braun explained that many of the shipped components were no longer usable, the army accused him of stalling. In the end, it took von Braun and his engineers eight months to cobble together enough parts to begin flying V-2’s on a semiregular basis.

  That eight-month lag time turned out to be more crucial than anyone suspected. For though the day was not far off when the sand-blasted rocket tests and studies performed at White Sands would assist in propelling America into an undeclared space race, few realized that the race had already begun. While the von Braun group was cooling their heels in Texas and New Mexico, the Soviets were busy. The Americans had picked much of the fruit from the German rocket-scientist tree, but not all of it. There were many German engineers and technicians who had been captured by the Soviets and taken to Moscow. Immediately upon arrival, Joseph Stalin put them to work. For the next five years, those scientists would be fiercely set to their labor by the Stalin Machine. They would design and build the largest and most powerful rockets ever conceived.

  Like Project Paperclip, the Russians kept their endeavors secluded and highly secret. That secrecy, however, would not last long. On an isolated patch of ground known as the 5th Tyuratam Range in a place called Kazakh, the Soviet Union was preparing a mammoth project that would spread fear to every man, woman, and child on planet Earth.

  “There is no such thing as an unsolvable problem.”

  —WIDELY ATTRIBUTED TO SERGEI KOROLEV

  Mary's attention went straight to the return address on the envelope: North American Aviation in Downey. She quickly ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter.

  We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted for the position of analyst at North American Aviation. This position is located at our company facility in Inglewood. Please call our office at your earliest convenience and let us know if you intend to accept this offer of employment.

  She chose to accept the offer in person, taking the bus the next morning to the Inglewood building. It was there she met Tom Meyers for the first time.

  “What is an analyst?” she asked after pleasantries had been exchanged.

  “They analyze.”

  “Analyze what?”

  “Data.”

  “Ah.”

  Only much later did she discover that the work of an analyst was not that much different from an engineer. Six months later, one of her coworkers let her in on the secret.

  “An analyst is an engineer without a college degree. They call them ‘analysts’ so they can put them in a lower pay scale.”

  After arranging to renew her top secret security clearance, Mary Sherman reported for work at NAA on July 15, 1947. She was assigned to Department 95, the Aerophysics Lab. A young female clerk escorted her through the massive maze of 400-pound, gray steel desks, all arranged in orderly ranks and files, in the largest room Mary had ever seen. Everywhere she looked, there were young white-shirted men with ties and crew cuts.

  Throughout the building, cigarette and pipe smoke had accumulated into a large cloud, hanging almost motionless in the air like an LA summer inversion layer. An avid smoker of Winstons and Kents, Mary had no objection.

  After a minute of walking, the clerk stopped and pointed to one of the steel desks.

  “This will be yours. That's your file cabinet. The employee lounge and bathrooms are over there. Slide rules, reference books, everything you need are in the drawers. Any questions?”

  Mary nodded. “I do have one question. What do I do next?”

  “Next, you sit down and wait for Mr. Meyers.”

  “Mr. Meyers. The man who hired me?”

  “One and the same. He's your boss.” The girl was about to leave, then turned back.

  “We wanted to congratulate you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “You're the first woman to be hired on the engineering floor. It's a big day around here for us girls. We have a special table in the lounge we have lunch at. I know you'll usually eat with the engineers, but I hope you can join us once in a while.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  Of course I'll join you—why wouldn't I?

  Mary executed a playful 360-degree swivel in the chair, making a mental note at how little office furniture had changed in the past ten years. The heavy-duty metal desk, the gray-leather swivel chair with four wheels, the drab gray file cabinet with the chrome handles—all of it identical to what she had worked with at Plum Brook. Due to wartime metal rationing, all new desks at Plum Brook had been made of wood, but there were still hundreds of the pre-war steel ones scatt
ered throughout the complex. Now that two years had passed since the armistice, everyone was moving back to the 400-pound, gray steel behemoths. Somewhere in the world there was someone in a major decision-making position whose concept of a proper office desk was too much steel and plenty of gray paint.

  “You must be Mary.”

  She swiveled around to face a man leaning against her file cabinet. He took a sip from a bone-white coffee mug, holding out his free hand to shake hers.

  “I'm Carl Amenhoff. That's my desk right over there.”

  He pointed to a desk across the aisle. Mary stood up and shook his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Amenhoff.”

  “No, no—we're all on a first name basis here. Just call me Carl.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “I'm a TPS.”

  “TPS? I'm sorry…”

  “Theoretical performance specialist—just like you.”

  Her eyes took a split second to dart back and forth from his left hand. He was married.

  “I'm a TPS?” Mary couldn't help but smile. She had never had a job that could be melted down to an abbreviation.

  “That's what you were hired for.”

  “I see. And what exactly is a theoretical performance specialist?”

  “Don't ask him—he doesn't know.”

  Carl and Mary turned to see the arrival of a man dressed in a dark suit and starched, white, long-sleeve shirt. He seemed to be dressed far too warmly for Southern California.

  He's married, too.

  “Don't listen to him,” said Carl. “This guy doesn't know squat.”

  “I know how to sign your paycheck.”

  “Okay fine—he knows one thing.”