Wernher von Braun

German American aeronautical engineer

• Born: March 23, 1912; Wirsitz, Germany (now Wyrzysk, Poland)
• Died: June 16, 1977; Alexandria, Virginia

A pioneer in German rocketry and a visionary of spaceflight, Wernher von Braun dominated the early American space program by directing construction of the Saturn rocket that propelled the first astronauts to the moon.

Also known as: Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun; Baron von Braun

Primary field: Astronomy

Specialty: Astrophysics

Early Life

On the eve of World War I, Wernher von Braun (VAYR-ner fon BROWN) was born in Wirsitz, Germany (now Wyrzysk, Poland), to Baron Magnus von Braun and Baroness Emmy (von Quistorp) von Braun, members of the landowning aristocracy of Prussian Silesia. Because von Braun’s father rose to be minister of food and agriculture in the Weimar Republic, the family often moved between cities. Though his father expected von Braun to succeed him as a Prussian landholder, the baroness unwittingly sabotaged this goal by giving von Braun a telescope for his confirmation into the Lutheran church, thus sparking his interest in the universe.

In 1925, an article by Romanian Hermann Oberth on interplanetary spaceflight by rocket convinced von Braun to devote his life to spaceflight. Thus motivated, he worked hard to excel in mathematics, and in 1930 he began to study engineering at theTechnische Universität Berlin (Berlin Institute of Technology). That year, at the age of eighteen, von Braun and group of friends organized a club called Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) to build and fire small crude rockets outside Berlin. Inspired by the writings of the American rocket theorist Robert H. Goddard, von Braun assisted Oberth in early liquid-fuel rocket experiments that summer. He also learned to fly gliders and other aircraft.

Life’s Work

In 1932, the year von Braun earned his degree in mechanical engineering and entered the University of Berlin, the German army underwrote his experiments and appointed him to its rocket experiment station at Kummersdorf, near Berlin. His rockets had already flown a mile high; with military funding, he gradually refined and improved the army’s projectiles. In June 1934, von Braun received his PhD in physics.

The Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler began actively supporting the rocket program in 1936. The next year, it shifted to Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea, an isolated site recommended by von Braun’s mother, whose father had hunted ducks there. The result was a sprawling development center, equipped to produce large, long-range ballistic military rockets and other devices. By 1938, von Braun had completed the first model of the A-4, capable of hitting a target eleven miles away. After World War II began, Hitler downgraded the rocket program, but von Braun pressed ahead until October 1942, when his rocket was able to reach an altitude of sixty miles. In 1940, he became a nominal member of the Nazi Party.

Anxious for miracle weapons, Hitler resumed his plans for von Braun’s A-4 missile in 1943, by which time it could carry a one-ton warhead 190 miles downrange. It was renamed the V-2, a “vengeance weapon,” and Hitler gave von Braun the high distinction of full professor, charging him to mass-produce the V-2 for use against England. Allied intelligence enabled a massive night-bombing raid on Peenemünde in August 1943 that set back production by perhaps four months. The following February, Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler tried to take over the program; when von Braun refused, Himmler imprisoned him. Soon released as indispensable to the project, von Braun initiated the V-2 barrage on London in September, the first of some 3,255 to be successfully fired at England and selected targets on the Continent. Though V-2s killed or seriously wounded more than 9,200 people, inflicted much damage, and affected Allied morale, the missiles could not prevent the final Allied victory.

In February and March 1945, von Braun personally directed the movement of about four hundred personnel, with V-2 components and plans, from Peenemünde and the advancing Soviet army to Bavaria to surrender to the Americans. They did so in May, and three months later, von Braun and 118 of his rocket engineers signed contracts with the US Army to help produce improved V-2s for the United States as part of the highly secret Operation Paperclip. In September 1945, the team, which included von Braun’s Peenemünde military counterpart General Walter Dornberger and his younger brother Magnus von Braun, was flown to Fort Bliss, Texas, where von Braun became technical director for the tests conducted at the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. In 1950, the Army Ordnance Guided Missile Center was moved to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, with von Braun as civilian director and eventually chief of missile research and development. He became an American citizen in 1955.

During this time, von Braun wrote and coauthored numerous papers and books projecting interplanetary travel, beginning with a small Earth satellite but eventually including space stations and trips to the moon and Mars. His work during the 1950s centered on nuclear-armed long-range missiles, a second-generation V-2 rocket family called Redstone that included the Jupiter-C rocket, first launched in 1956. When the Soviets put Sputnik 1 into orbit the next year, von Braun was ready to use the Jupiter-C to place America’s first scientific satellite, the Explorer 1, into orbit, a feat accomplished early in 1958. The tiny spacecraft promptly discovered the Van Allen radiation belts girding the Earth.

Von Braun and his team were transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) upon its establishment later that year, and von Braun was appointed director of NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville. In the 1960s, his greatest rocket, the three-stage Saturn V, was used to deliver the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. Its success in thirteen perfect launches was largely a result of his effective leadership. In 1970, von Braun was appointed to be NASA’s deputy associate administrator for planning long-range American programs in space.

When the space effort was reduced, von Braun resigned from NASA in 1972 to join the aerospace firm Fairchild Industries as vice president for engineering and development. In this capacity, he participated in the company’s development of an applied technology satellite. Three years later, he helped found the private National Space Institute, dedicated to promoting public support of spaceflight, and became the institute’s president, continuing always to advocate his original interplanetary ideas. At the end of 1976, cancer forced him into complete retirement.

Impact

Von Braun’s name is inextricably linked with the first generation of spaceflight and exploration. Before he was twenty-five years old, the skills and achievements of his team had already surpassed the pioneering work of the earliest trio of theoretician-experimenters in rocketry: Goddard, Oberth, and the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Von Braun was also an articulate spokesperson, both in scientific and technological circles and in the public arena. He was repeatedly asked to account for his role in producing the V-2 strategic missile and lesser weapons of war for the Nazi regime. Von Braun’s answer was that of many thoughtful scientists: namely, that science needs no justification; that the use or misuse of scientific knowledge, and thus the moral responsibility for it, lies in the hands of political leaders. For in the industrialized world, virtually every tool has a potential military application.

No friend of dictatorships, von Braun and his colleagues opted to cast their lot with the postwar United States rather than the Soviet Union. In Huntsville and Washington, von Braun played a major role in the space program, utilizing his managerial talents to mastermind many of the nation’s accomplishments in the first golden age of spaceflight. Though public enthusiasm eventually waned, he carried on his crusade in the private sector as a beacon for future generations to follow.

Bibliography

Biddle, Wayne. Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race. New York: Norton, 2009. Print. Portrays von Braun and poses questions about the ethical responsibilities of scientists.

Braun, Wernher von. “Prelude to Space Travel.” Across the Space Frontier. Ed. Cornelius Ryan. New York: Viking, 1953. 12–70. Print. Forecasts the first Earth satellites, three-stage rockets, a space station, a moon ship, and a space telescope. Illustrated by Chesley Bonestell.

Buckbee, Ed, and Wally Schirra. The Real Space Cowboys. Burlington: Apogee, 2005. Print. The story of the US space program as told by Buckbee, a retired astronaut, focusing on the role played by von Braun and others in the nation’s moon landings. Includes a DVD interview with von Braun.

Ordway, Frederick I., III, and Mitchell R. Sharpe. The Rocket Team. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1982. Print. The definitive book on von Braun’s team, with an overview of the development of the Saturn V. Introduction by von Braun.

Ward, Bob. Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Annapolis: Naval Inst., 2005. Print. An uncritical but informative biography that depicts Braun’s intellect and personality.