A Shot into Space

In the early afternoon of 3 October 1942, the accelerating missile. It was the fifth launch sky above Peenemünde was bright blue with attempt they had observed in eight months. light cloud cover. A moderate breeze blew Following two failed attempts in March and in from the nearby coast. One might almost June, the third projectile had achieved ver- have thought it was a place of untouched tical flight for 25 seconds in August before se­clusion and peace – a strange idyll far re- crashing down to earth, as the oxygen-alco- moved from the war. But the appearance was hol fuel mixture had extinguished too early. deceptive. It was the calm before the storm at As the rocket had reached a height of almost Test Stand 7. twelve kilometres, the launch was considered Anyone who could find a space at a win- a success. It had accelerated to the planned dow or on a roof in the densely forested en- 1.9 times the speed of sound. closure of the Army Research Centre had The Aggregat 4 (A 4) was the German been looking out impatiently towards the Wehr­­macht’s first long-range missile, re­ sea since midday. Despite the highest secrecy garded as “suitable for war use” since 1940. classification and strictly observed security Wernher von Braun, his team of design en- zones, rumours had spread quickly among gineers and 1,300 scientists had been work- the 10,000 employees in the Third Reich’s ing towards a rocket capable of bearing a largest high-technology centre: the fourth 750‑kilo­gramme explosive charge over a test version of the A 4 ballistic missile was minimum distance of 200 to 300 kilometres just about to be launched from Test Stand 7. and hitting the enemy target with the great- At 15:58, the rocket sped up above the est possible accuracy. By 1942, the third year trees, with a roar of sound. Flames and of the war, there was a great deal at stake smoke shot into the sky. Colonel Dornberger for Colonel Dornberger, head of the Peene- had given the test stand engineers the launch münde Army Research Centre since 1936 order via microphone, with the leading of- and the prime mover behind German rocket ficers and scientists watching the events on a production. television screen. Peenemünde was equipped Back in the summer of 1941, after the with the very latest technology. Axis powers had lost the Battle of Britain, In a camouflaged bunker in the pine for- Dornberger had awakened Hitler’s and his est, physicists, engineers and soldiers oper- commanding officers’ hopes for revenge in ated switches and control instruments – an the near future. Alongside the “material ef- experienced team, following the trajectory fect”, he had also promised “major moral suc- of the liquid-fuelled rocket with trained eyes cess”. The primary purpose of the Aggregat 4, and registering every signal from the fast- which was theoretically capable of a range of

A Shot into Space 9  After six years of development work, the first successful launch of a long-range rocket took place in Peenemünde in October 1942. Nazi propaganda later dubbed the rocket the V 2 “miracle weapon”. over 300 kilometres, was to terrorise the Brit- that opened up access to space, paving the ish, for example reducing London to rubble way to new dimensions in the war. through constant bombardment. Yet to date, That evening, Colonel Dornberger held at least as far as the disappointed military and a “speech for his closest colleagues” in the top-ranking Nazis were concerned, all this Peenemünde officers’ mess. According to had remained a utopian theory postulated by his memoirs, he claims to have said: “This “rocketry buffs”. 3 October 1942 is the first day of an era of That was to change on 3 October 1942. new transport technology, the era of space When the 14-tonne rocket not only lifted t r av e l .” 1 off effortlessly from the Peenemünde launch And in fact, the vision of a liquid-fuelled pad, but also quickly shot into supersonic rocket really did become reality as a long- speed and flew stably, the Peenemünde army range weapon “suitable for war use” on that officers and development engineers really day in October, to be used mainly against felt a step closer to the stars. And when the London and bringing death and destruction rocket landed in the Baltic Sea 192 kilo­metres from September 1944. The more intensively East of Peenemünde after a five-minute flight, the scientists and engineers in Peenemünde they were certain: the Wehrmacht could attempted to complete their technical sys- count on a new weapon for which there were tems in the years to come, the deeper and no defences at the time – a long-range rocket more inescapably they plunged into moral

10 A Shot into Space Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of the High Command of the Armed Forces (front left) expected the Peenemünde rocket makers (Major General Walter Dornberger, front right) to build a weapon for bombing England. guilt. Whether they regarded themselves as Research Centre in the luxury “Schwabes convinced Nazis or apolitical engineers, there ­H o t e l ” in Zinnowitz on the evening of that could be no doubt as to the purpose of their 3 October 1942 to drink a toast to their suc- rockets, since the outbreak of World War II cess, there was one thing they could never at the very latest – nor as to their voluntary have guessed. Not even three years later, integration into the ideology and criminal ­officers would be talking about the starting system of the Third Reich. The Peenemünde and landing speeds of the A4 in the same rockets left a clear trail from the hell of the hotel – possibly even at the same table – but concentration camps where they were built they would be Russian officers from Mos­ to the rubble of the cities they destroyed. cow. One of them, Major Sergey Korolyov, When von Braun and Dornberger met up would later be called the “father of the Soviet with other officers and directors of the Army Vostok spacecraft”.

A Shot into Space 11