From Peenemünde to USA.pdf

Acta Astronautica 60 (2007) 24–47

www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro

Amemoir: From peenemünde to USA:A classic

case of technology transfer

Frederick I. Ordway III a , b , ∗ , Werner K. Dahm c , Konrad Dannenberg c ,

Walter Haeussermann c , Gerhard Reisig c , Ernst Stuhlinger c ,

Georg von Tiesenhausen d , Irene Willhite e , f

a US Army Redstone Arsenal-NASA Marshall-University of Alabama in Huntsville Research Institute, USA

b Saturn V Restoration Committee, US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama, USA

c Peenemünde-US Army Fort Bliss/White Sands/Redstone Arsenal-NASA Marshall, USA

d Peenemünde-US Army Redstone Arsenal-NASA Marshall, USA

e US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL, USA

f One Tranquility Base, Huntsville, AL 35805, USA

Received 10 May 2004; received in revised form 30 March 2005; accepted 9 May 2006

Available online 20 September 2006

Abstract

This paper traces the development of rocket technology in Germany from the 1930s and 1940s that led to the massive, and

historically unprecedented, transfer of rocket, missile, launch-vehicle and related technologies to the post-World-War-II United

States. This achievement was made possible by an initial group of 118 German rocket specialists to which others were gradually

added. The contributions to rocketry, upper atmosphere and space research, and eventually manned space travel provided by

Germany’s Wernher von Braun and his team of engineers, scientists, technicians and support personnel is, in particular, described,

and the ongoing inﬂuence of the innovations they introduced is considered.

1. Introduction

upper atmosphere and space research, and eventually

manned space travel of von Braun [1–3] and his missile

development team of engineers, scientists, technicians

and support personnel backed up by copious documen-

tation and hardware.

Among the topics covered are the establishment of

static and launch test facilities in Germany for a series

of “Aggregate” rockets designated A1, A2, A3, A5 and

A4. During the pre-World War II and wartime periods,

impressive progress was made in the development of

rocket motors, guidance and control systems, supersonic

aerodynamics, surface-to-air guided missiles, and also

in studies of potential extensions of A4 technologies.

After the war, some 70 A4 (by then called V-2) rock-

ets that had been shipped to the US from Germany

A review is given of the massive, historic mid-1940s

transfer of rocket, missile, launch vehicle and related

technologies, and an initial group of 118 rocket special-

ists, from wartime Germany to postwar United States.

The paper examines the contributions to rocketry,

Presented at the 37th History of Astronautics Symposium, 54th

International Astronautical Congress, Bremen, Germany, October

2003.

∗ Corresponding author. 2401 N. Taylor St., Arlington, VA 22207,

USA. Tel.: +1 703 524 4487; fax: +1 703 524 5856.

E-mail addresses: ordmars@aol.com (F.I. Ordway III),

irenew@spacecamp.com (I. Willhite).

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2006.05.003

F.I. Ordway III et al. / Acta Astronautica 60 (2007) 24–47

were converted for upper atmosphere and other research

purposes, and were launched principally from the US

Army’s White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.

From 1950 to 1960, the von Braun team worked at

the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

There, Redstone, Jupiter, Pershing and a variety of bat-

tleﬁeld rockets were developed as well as adaptations

of the ﬁrst two as Juno I and Juno II multi-stage space

launch vehicles. In 1960, the team transferred to the new

NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center where the Saturn

series of launch vehicles was developed and placed into

service. The team later played a major role in the de-

velopment of three HEAO astronomical observatories,

the Skylab space station, the space shuttle, the Interna-

tional Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, and

the Chandra X-ray Telescope.

and a guidance and control system for target accuracy.

Each of the four pioneers offered a wealth of ideas,

working quietly with a small number of assistants.

None was prepared to try to build a team of technical

and scientiﬁc co-workers who could help transfer their

ideas and relatively modest experimental efforts into

realistic, large-scale engineering systems.

It was left to von Braun to take the next major step

in the history of rocketry: the systematic building of a

powerful, long-range, precision rocket.

2.1. Early rocket development in Germany

To trace how rocket technology got started in Ger-

many, we ﬁrst consider early development in the 1930s.

Of several early amateur rocket and spaceﬂight societies

in Germany and elsewhere, one at Reinickendorf near

Berlin was the most successful (Verein für Raumschif-

fahrt, VfR). Among its members were spaceﬂight pio-

neer Hermann Oberth and the very young von Braun,

who soon recognized that the development of large

rockets would require test and development facilities

well beyond the reach of amateur groups.

Around 1929, the German Army (Reichswehr at that

time) had started a small rocket development program

under Colonel (later General) Karl Becker and (later

General) Dornberger [4] . When they learned of Oberth’s

and von Braun’s rocket club, they paid a visit to the

rocketeers and promptly offered a contract to the lat-

ter. Recognizing that the development of a large pre-

cision rocket capable of ﬂight into outer space would

require development work and test facilities far beyond

the reach of an amateur group, von Braun accepted the

Army’s offer and began working for the Reichswehr at

Kummersdorf near Berlin in September 1932.

There, a series of A (for Aggregate) rockets were

designed: The A1, which was ground-tested but never

ﬂown; the A2 (two units were built and successfully

ﬂown in 1934, ‘Max and Moritz’, from the island of

Borkum in the North Sea); the larger A3, which had

major innovations (three-axis gyro control; jet vanes),

but suffered from severe stability and control problems

that called for a thorough re-design; and the begin-

ning of the A5 design (the designation A4 had already

been given to a larger rocket whose design speciﬁ-

cations—225 km distance, 1 metric ton warhead capabi-

lity—had been prescribed by the Army) ( Figs. 1–3 ).

Realizing that large rockets could not be built and

tested, and certainly not be launched, near the city

of Berlin, in 1936 the Army began construction of a

large rocket development center at a remote site on

the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea near the little

2. Technology development

Throughout the year 2003, the aerospace community

celebrated the 100th anniversary of theWright Brothers’

pioneering airplane ﬂight near the small village of Kitty

Hawk, North Carolina, USA. There began aviation as

we know it today.

In Germany, just over 60 years ago, the ﬁrst rocket to

reach the frontier of space took off near another historic

site, Peenemünde, initiating space ﬂight as we know it

today. The counterpart to the Wright Brothers “Flyer”

was the A4, developed by von Braun and his rocket

team.

In contrast to airplanes, rockets have been known and

used—mainly as military weapons—for almost 1000

years. Their basic technology is far simpler than that of

airplanes, as long as high efﬁciency, ﬂight control, and

target accuracy are not required. Since rockets do not

need an ambient atmosphere for lift forces and for oxy-

gen, they are able to ﬂy beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several

men began to study the detailed physics of rocket

propulsion, and to ponder its potential for space ﬂight.

Principal among them were Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in

Russia, Robert Esnault-Pelterie in France, Robert H.

Goddard in the United States, and Hermann Oberth in

Germany. The period witnessed the derivation of the

pertinent rocket equations and pointed the direction in

which a rocket development program might proceed.

Rockets of the future, these pioneers concluded, should

use liquid instead of solid propellants, perhaps liquid

hydrogen and liquid oxygen; high combustion temper-

atures and pressures; liquid cooling for chamber and

nozzle; tank pressurization with gas or turbo-pumps for

propellant feed; gyroscopes for attitude stabilization;

F.I. Ordway III et al. / Acta Astronautica 60 (2007) 24–47

Fig. 1. A2 on its test stand at Kummersdorf, December 1934.

ﬁshing village of Peenemünde; it would be called Peen-

emünde East. The Air Force also established a base

there, Peenemünde West, for the testing of Fi103 (V-1)

ﬂying bombs and rocket-powered airplanes.

At Peenemünde East, the Army built facilities for the

testing and manufacturing of pumps, turbines, turbo-

pump assemblies, and gas generators for rocket engines

of varying sizes, and also of entire propulsion sys-

tems and of complete rockets. Among the advances in

propulsion technologies made at Peenemünde were the

design, development, manufacturing, and testing of

several types of rocket motors, all leading to the A4

motor with its 25.4 metric tons of thrust, each with a

regenerative cooling system for combustion chamber

and nozzle, with proper injection heads for fuel and

oxidizer, with a hydrogen peroxide power source to

drive the turbine that in turn drove the two propellant

pumps, and with the provision of ‘ﬂexible’ connectors

in the oxygen and fuel lines to allow for changes in

length in response to temperature changes. Other inno-

vations developed and tested at that time included the

use of a heat exchanger to vaporize a small amount of

liquid oxygen to pressurize the oxygen tank; the use of

a central, high-pressure nitrogen system to pressurize

all propulsion system valves, and the use of carbon

vanes that protruded into the exhaust stream to control

the rocket during propelled ﬂight.

Several of these innovations were introduced in the

design of the A5 rocket, which was designed, built,

and ﬂight-tested at Peenemünde, mostly during 1938.

A number of successful ﬂights were conducted from

the Greifswalder Oie, a small island near Peenemünde.

These A5 ﬂights cleared the way for the ﬁnal design of

the A4 rocket; its layout had been started in 1936 and

1937, but systematic work did not get under way until

1939.

F.I. Ordway III et al. / Acta Astronautica 60 (2007) 24–47

Fig. 2. A3 on test stand 4, Kummersdorf, 1936.

Von Braun insisted that all rockets would undergo

full-duration static tests before launch, at that time the

only certain means to detect possible system shortcom-

ings. In those days, should problems occur during an

actual ﬂight, it was almost impossible to determine the

cause, telemetry being limited to only seven channels

through which to transmit data from the rocket to the

ground.

2.2. Guidance and control

Von Braun quickly and systematically identiﬁed the

most important activities for the team beyond the A4

rocket’s propulsion system. Among these were the

development of a system to maintain stability during

ﬂight; of a guidance and control system to make it

possible for the A4 to reach its target; the solving of

F.I. Ordway III et al. / Acta Astronautica 60 (2007) 24–47

Fig. 3. The forward compartment of an experimental A5 rocket with

call-outs of major elements.

building electro-mechanical systems, to be operated in

the laboratory, that could simulate all the varying forces

that act on a rocket during ﬂight.

External forces acting on the A4 were simulated by

controlled springs and electric actuators on systems

called “swing tables.” Forces caused by the inertia of

masses were represented by masses that were mounted

on shafts and connected with torque generators. Pen-

dulums with variable proper frequencies and angular

momentum generators showed whether a system ca-

pable of oscillations was properly damped. Such an

elaborateelectro-mechanical system, combined with a

considerable amount of mathematics, was at the time

called a “trajectory model” or “ﬂight simulator”—today,

we would refer to it as an “analog computer.” One

of the originators of that simulator system, Helmut

Hoelzer, decades later would receive an award “for hav-

ing developed and operated the ﬁrst analog computer.”

The angular motions of A4s were measured by gyro-

scopes. If mounted in a cardanic system that allows all

three axes to move freely, the spin axis of a gyro rotor

tends to keep its original direction constant irrespective

of the rotational movements of the system on which

the gyroscope is mounted. By measuring the angles be-

tween the stable spin axis and the rest of the rocket

with potentiometer pickups, the instantaneous direction

of the rocket can be determined.

A4s used two ‘position’ gyroscopes of that kind, each

with two degrees of freedom. Initially, the A4 also em-

ployed a ‘rate’ gyro that did not indicate directional

changes; but, rather, angular velocities, i.e. rocket turn-

ing rates. The rate gyro was later replaced by a resistor-

capacitor network for differentiation of the position gyro

signals (Fig. 4 ).

Besides attitude control, the measurement of velocity

and distance covered by the A4 rocket were of utmost

importance to insure controlled ﬂight and target accu-

racy. Two different means were developed for effecting

these measurements: a radio frequency link to the rocket

and an on-board accelerometer and integrator to contin-

uously measure acceleration, velocity and distance. The

radio method, also known as the Doppler system, was

simpler than the ‘inertial’ system; and, at Peenemünde,

was used mainly during ﬂight testing. Reisig [6] and

Otto Hoberg were responsible for the development of

radio guidance systems.

In parallel, the development of accelerometers and

integrators was started early and three different systems

were ﬁnally built and tested. One used an electrolytic

cell system for integration, one used a capacitor, while

the third, a gyroscope-type accelerometer, furnished

the integration of acceleration directly by gyroscopic

aerodynamic problems for subsonic, transonic, and

supersonic ﬂight; and providing a remote measuring

system for as many rocket ﬂight functions and move-

ments as possible. Also, elaborate test facilities had to

be designed and built to permit the simulation and test-

ing of all aspects of the ﬂight of a rocket from launch

through the atmosphere and into the very frontier of

space. Overall responsibility for the development of

the rocket guidance and control system was assigned

to Haeussermann [5] .

The rocket’s motions during ﬂight are governed by

a number of forces and factors: motor thrust, aerody-

namic forces, gravity, wind, wind shear, atmospheric

friction, decrease of the rocket’s mass resulting from

the consumption of propellants during ﬂight, the move-

ment of the center of gravity during that process, and

forces generated by air rudders and jet vanes. The group

charged with solving this complex guidance and con-

trol problem consisted of several professors of mathe-

matics as well as a number of young engineers from

technical universities who had specialized in electro-

mechanical control systems for earthbound machinery

and for airplanes. They soon came to the conclusion

that rocket control problems could only be solved by

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