On the first spring day of this year, at 17.49 UTC, an Atlas 5 booster roared off the launch pad from the SLC-3E launcher at United States Air Force Base Vandenberg in the roar of a Russian propulsion engine and solid propellant boosters. Under its nose fairing was the NROL-79 satellite belonging to the National Directorate of Military and Space Intelligence. The March launch was the 70th launch of Atlas 5, a true American workhorse for launching a military payload into orbit.
Meanwhile, a large family of these "horses" originates from the first American ICBM, "withdrawn" not by American "breeders", but by a team of Nazi missilemen led by SS Sturmbannfuehrer Werner von Braun, who received the "epaulettes" personally from the hands of SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler. Moreover, America owes its first MRBM, the launch of a satellite and, of course, the triumphant conquest of the moon to a former Nazi.
TO NEW BEACHES
This year can be called a jubilee for the American rocket industry. The first American Atlas ICBM with a firing range of 8,800 km, after two unsuccessful tests, successfully launched almost 60 years ago, in December 1957. By this time, the German team had already done a lot to strengthen the defense of its new customers.
Even in my youth, when I just started, as they say in Western films, "working for the government", a truth was revealed to me, which still feeds on an inexhaustible source of confirmation. For the most part, Americans come across as a well-known cute animal. The field of strategic arms planning is no exception. A striking example of this is the "colorful" life and work of the Germans to create nuclear missiles in the United States.
… On May 2, 1945, a group of seven people under the leadership of von Braun - the main developers of the Third Reich's rocket weapons - crossed the Bavarian Alps and surrendered to the Americans in Austria. I must say that the allies only in general terms imagined who fell into their hands. In the last war year, the US government approved the secret Overcast program (since March 1946, the Paperclip program), the goal of which was to bring the maximum number of German military specialists to the United States.
True, American intelligence knew about the "weapon of retaliation" - the V-2 rocket, developed entirely by von Braun. She also knew that in the last months before the German surrender, the personnel of the Peenemünde missile test site in northern Germany had been evacuated to southern Germany, to the alpine foothills, to a place with the beautiful name of Oberammergau. The military intelligence officers ransacked every corner of the Mittelwerk underground missile factory in Central Germany, which was captured by American tankers in mid-April. The military-political leadership of the United States did not know, or rather, did not understand one thing - the significance and role of missile weapons in future wars. Moreover, the "enlightenment" will come to them rather long ago. First of all, the American military at that time was interested in the "atomic project", which, according to numerous intelligence reports, was successfully carried out by the Germans, as well as new models of aviation technology, communications equipment, etc. The missile component was far from the first in this list.
We will talk about the successes of the Reich in the field of ballistic weapons a little later. Now let's see what the German rocket specialists were doing in their “new homeland”.
- Do you think you can become a citizen of the United States?
- I will try … (from the interrogation of Wernher von Braun by the Americans in May 1945).
In the late summer of 1945, von Braun, Ph. D. in physics, a graduate of the Swiss Higher Technical School and the Berlin University of Technology, and six of his companions with the same educational qualifications arrived on American soil. They were assigned as a curator … one soldier with an incomplete technical education, 26-year-old Major Hammill, who represented the Office of Artillery and Technical Supply of the Ground Forces (US Army). The command even tasked the Major: to think (!) How the Germans can help in the assembly and subsequent testing of the V-missiles exported from Germany, and most importantly, to deal with 14 tons of missile documentation on them, taken from the Mittelwerk.
I must say that unlike his command, which, as we can see, overextended itself, inventing tasks for the Germans, Hammell himself was clearly lucky. After all, he "commanded" the color of German rocketry thought. In addition to von Braun, the "magnificent seven" included rocket pioneers Walter Riedel and Arthur Rudolph, head of production at the Mittelwerk plant. The main developer of the guidance system, in particular, the gyroscopes for the "V" - the key components of the rocket - was engaged in the group by von Braun's brother, Magnus. If anyone in the world could help the Americans create their own rocketry, it was only this team.
The work was in full swing. In early October 1945, the group was brought in and stationed in a desert area near the town of El Paso, Texas. The launch pad for future launches was decided to be deployed 80 km away at the old White Sands artillery range in the state of New Mexico. By that time, the Americans also formulated a more specific task. The Germans had to inform the military command, big business and the scientific community about the technology for the production of ballistic missiles, as well as carry out test launches of captured "V" - about 100 pieces.
Meanwhile, the American command was very cool about promising missile weapons - most likely because of their novelty, unclear lethality, and deployment difficulties. This apparently explains the carte blanche that the Americans gave to von Braun's team in the work on the components of German missiles.
On March 15, 1946, the first launch of a rocket assembled in America took place - unsuccessful. An emergency radio signal detonated the rocket 19 seconds after the launch. The first success came on May 10 of the same year, when the rocket reached an altitude of 170 km and flew over 48 km. By the middle of 1946, there was no longer any doubt about the combat capabilities of the German ballistic weapon. In addition, the von Braun group was able to disassemble and issue tons of documentation, and also compiled and sent out to the authorities (through Hammill, of course) a lot of informational material on rocketry.
By that time, sensing the success of the rocket venture, the Americans shared the go-ahead for the entry into the United States of 118 German specialists selected by von Braun, as well as their family members. By the way, one cannot fail to mention one most curious episode, which, among other things, demonstrates how, to put it mildly, the Americans were not serious at that time towards missile weapons and their main creator.
On February 14, 1947, Wernher von Braun, accompanied by one (!) American officer, departs … to Germany! The reason is simple: he yearned for his bride - the 18-year-old Baroness, the beautiful Marie-Louise von Quistorp. The Americans, without blinking, released their future missile triumphant across the ocean. The wedding ceremony took place on March 1 in the Lutheran church in the Bavarian town of Landshut, and at the end of March 1946, after spending more than a month in Germany, von Braun returned safely to Texas with his young wife and his parents.
Where our station looked - I can't imagine. After all, they were able to skillfully "squeeze" from the Americans in April 1945, already practically useless from a military point of view, General Andrei Vlasov, and the future creator of Atlases, Jupiters, Saturns and Pershing was ignored …
FIRST ROCKETS
In April 1950, the von Braun group, which now includes, in addition to German specialists, 500 American military personnel, 120 civilian civil servants and several hundred employees of General Electric Corporation, the main missile contractor of the army, moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to the newly created Center for Guided Artillery Shells. -technical service. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the group was tasked with developing a surface-to-surface ballistic missile with a range of 800 km.
Here we must dwell on a very interesting and still mysterious moment. Despite the requirements of the Army's Artillery and Technical Directorate, von Braun, by that time the head of the guided missiles department, in other words, the main developer of the army's missile technology, dramatically changes the terms of reference and presents a missile with a firing range of only 320 km, but with a throwable mass of 3 tons., which made it possible to equip this weapon with a nuclear warhead.
What was von Braun guided by when he went against his customers? Maybe he had his own ideas about which missiles are more important in future local military conflicts? Or was the experience of the recent past taken into account?
Nevertheless, the new rocket, which was first dubbed "V-2", then "Ursa Major" ("Big Dipper"), and ultimately - "Redstone" ("Red Stone") successfully launched as part of flight design tests with Cape Canaveral on August 20, 1953 and became the first American operational-tactical missile with a nuclear warhead. In the mid-1960s, on the basis of Redstone, von Braun develops a line of operational-tactical missiles Pershing - Pershing-1 and Pershing-1A. And in 1975, already terminally ill, he prepares the groundwork for the famous Pershing-2 MRBM, which the Americans marked in Europe in the early 80s. Incidentally, it was the presence of this missile that largely predetermined the successful conclusion in 1987 of the current Treaty on Short-Range and Medium-Range Missiles.
In the summer of 1955, von Braun's group came up with a project to create a full-scale MRBM with a firing range of 2,400 km and a throwable mass of 1 ton. The three-stage rocket created by the Germans, called the Jupiter-Sea, showed a range of 3,200 km during tests. Moreover, the combat control of the missile was provided both from the ground positioning area and from the board of surface ships. Adopted in the late 1950s, the Jupiter was briefly deployed at US Air Force bases in southern Italy and Turkey in 1961.
WITH A DREAM OF SPACE
The end of 1955 and the beginning of the next were a very happy time for von Braun. In September 1955, he became a full-fledged citizen of the United States, and in February 1956, he was appointed to the prestigious position of director of the design department at the finally created Ballistic Missile Directorate of the Ground Forces. However, further the fortune changed its trajectory.
It has long been known the manner of Americans to profess the principle of "both yours and ours," when they do not want to make a certain decision. We see something similar in the rocket and space program of those years, which is closely related to the von Braun group.
Back in early 1947, while in El Paso, the former SS Sturmbannfuehrer openly declared that he had a program for the development of space technology and interplanetary expeditions. This is what von Braun suggested in particular. A spacecraft based on the modernized V-2, a three-stage liquid-propellant rocket for launching a satellite into space (the launch vehicle Juno based on Jupiter and the legendary lunar Saturn will also be made); a returnable cruise missile with an airplane landing (in the early 70s, the United States, in the shortest possible time, safely developed and built the reusable Space Shuttle spacecraft).
But the official America did not react … Moreover, from the very beginning of the work of the Germans in the United States, the authorities "flirted" both with the former, promising freedom of action, and with numerous opponents of the "German trace" in the domestic cosmonautics. Moreover, the Ministry of Defense, in every possible way indulging the work of von Braun, who represented the interests of the army, nevertheless all the time looked back at the command of the Air Force and Navy, which saw the Germans (and quite rightly) as their direct competitors in the creation of missile weapons and carriers for orbital useful load.
As a result, at the beginning of 1957, after the success with the Jupiter rocket and its transfer for deployment to the Air Force, the then Defense Minister Charles Wilson nevertheless made a choice - he limited the army to operational tactical missiles, and gave the development of ICBMs and IRBMs, as well as carrier rockets under the jurisdiction of "pilots and sailors". At the same time, the Ground Forces and Wernher von Braun himself were officially barred from space research.
“I suppose that when we finally get to the moon, we will have to go through Russian customs,” Wernher von Braun once said.
The result is world famous. The American rocket and space coquetry ended ingloriously on October 4, 1957, when the whole world heard the callsigns of the world's first artificial Earth satellite (AES) launched into orbit by the R-7 rocket by Sergei Korolev. While Washington was bickering over whether to allow von Braun to get down to business, the USSR on November 3 launched a 508-kilogram second satellite with the dog Laika on board. It became clear that everything in Moscow was ready for the world's first human space flight.
Five days later, the authorities gave von Braun formal permission to take part in the launch of the first American satellite. A special press release from the Ministry of Defense stated: “The Minister of Defense has instructed the Ministry of Ground Forces to start launching an Earth satellite using a modified Jupiter-Sea missile.
However, the desire to sit on two chairs turned out to be stronger than common sense for the administration of President Harry Truman and the military. On December 6, 1957, ignoring von Braun's warnings, the Americans launched a highly publicized attempt to launch a satellite using an Avangard rocket, commissioned by the Navy by Glenn L. Martin. With a huge confluence of writing and filming journalistic fraternity, the rocket rose 1, 2 m, then capsized and exploded. The one and a half kilogram satellite was thrown into the bushes, from where the plaintive squeak of its radio signal began to be heard. Some overly exalted lady-journalist could not resist: “Go somebody, find and finish him off!” - says in his book “Wernher von Braun. The Man Who Sold the Moon American space explorer Dennis Pishkevich.
On January 31, 1958, a four-stage version of Jupiter, which was named Juno, built by von Braun in record time, launches the first American satellite, the Explorer-1, into space.
More Germans did not get. On May 5, 1961, three weeks after the flight of Yuri Gagarin, von Braun on the Redstone-3 launch vehicle sends the first American, Alan Shepard, into space under the Mercury program. And finally - the finest hour of the German rocketman. On July 16, 1969, the Saturn-5, which is still the only heavy launch vehicle of its kind, capable of launching 140 tons of cargo into space, carried the first earthlings to the Moon. And on July 21, the first traces of a person appear on the lunar surface - American astronaut Neil Armstrong.
… Now he can do anything. He controls half of NASA's budget, easily meets with presidents and … dreams of a Martian expedition. But questions remain. Why did he cut the Redstone's firing range so sharply? How did you manage, as if on the beaten track, to develop space carriers? Why did the first thoughts about the Space Shuttle, sounded at the end of October 1968, incarnate in the Columbia orbital stage, which was transferred to NASA on March 24, 1979, and before that had been safely tested for a little less than four years? And finally, why did von Braun, very far from projection, speak so confidently about his cosmic capabilities? Or maybe there really was something in the storeroom?
"PASSION" FOR "ROCKET FOR AMERICA"
In America, Wernher von Braun did not tire of repeating in numerous interviews that, of course, in Germany he had plans to create much more powerful missiles than the Vau, but the matter did not advance beyond his dreams. Is it so?
But first, let's deal with Redstone. Recall that this missile was being prepared for deployment in the south of Korea as a weapon against the communist North, that is, it would perform tasks similar to the non-nuclear V-2 missile in 1944-1945. And what, in fact, were the results of using the "weapon of retaliation"?
As you know, the Germans began shelling the Allies with missiles on September 8, 1944, with a raid on London and Paris. Then the British had several wooden buildings demolished, but there was no more serious destruction at all. One rocket flew to Paris without causing any harm. Over the next seven months, the Germans fired over 1,300 V-2 missiles at targets in England. A number of city blocks were destroyed, with 1,055 deaths. Antwerp was hit by 1,265 rockets in the same period; slightly more on Paris and other large European cities. It is estimated that 2,724 people were killed and 6,467 seriously injured in Fau strikes in Europe. 99% are civilians. The military infrastructure of the allies was not damaged. In other words, the military-economic as well as the political effect of the bombing with V-2 missiles is zero.
Was von Braun aware of this? Naturally. It became obvious that the effective use of ballistic missiles of that time is possible only with an incredibly powerful warhead, namely a nuclear one. The era of high-precision weapons was still far away, and the Korean War was flaring up more and more violently, so von Braun's decision to equip the Redstone with a nuclear warhead at the expense of firing range was a decision of the cold mind of a pragmatist.
Then, by 1944, let us turn another question. Was the leadership of the Reich aware of this? If so, then seriously talking about the prospect of "retribution" with the help of "Fau" is, to put it mildly, stupid. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the main German military-technical personnel involved in the development of missile weapons counted on a military turning point precisely due to ballistic missiles. Maybe they were mistaken, having fallen under the zombie influence of the closest Nazi leadership and the maniac himself, the Fuhrer? The further fate of these people in the service of the United States showed that Nazi hysteria at the last stage of the war did not bother them much. In such a case, it is reasonable to assume that the German arsenal of advanced weapons could be replenished with something completely unexpected.
On January 4, 1945, General George Patton - the hero of the American blitzkrieg in Normandy - writes in his battle diary: "We can still lose this war." Why? After all, the last major German offensive in the Ardennes had clearly failed; euphoria reigned in the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. However, the general was not in the mood for fun.
The fact is that the general, by the nature of his service, knew that after a long time it remained under the highest classification of secrecy and became public knowledge in our days. We are talking about the American intelligence program "Passion", which provides for a comprehensive study of materials related to German developments in the field of aviation and nuclear missile weapons.
According to American intelligence, the German leadership, including Hitler, really considered the V-2 missile as a real weapon of retaliation, but only with a nuclear warhead. In a book by the American researcher Joseph Farrell, The Brotherhood of the Bell, published several years ago in Russian. SS Secret Weapon "quotes the words of the deputy commander of the US Air Force, Lieutenant General Donal Pat, which he said in 1946, addressing the Society of Aeronautical Engineers:" The Germans were preparing missile surprises for the whole world and for England in particular, which is believed would have changed the course of the war if the invasion of Germany had been postponed by only six months."
Participants in the Passion program found evidence that the Nazis at least twice successfully tested a small nuclear device on the Baltic island of Rügen in the fall of 1944.
In this case, the task of the seemingly senseless German offensive in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944-1945 becomes clear. After all, it was precisely the breakthrough into the western part of Belgium, from where the Germans were driven out by December 1944, that was the main goal of the offensive, since in this case there was an opportunity to resume rocket attacks on Great Britain with V-2 missiles, the firing range of which was only 320 km. The nuclear bombing of London would allow the Fuhrer to complete the creation and use of his main superweapon - ballistic nuclear missiles with an intercontinental range of fire, that is, ICBMs.
After the war, General Walter Dornberger, the chief administrator of the German missile center at Peenemünde, admitted that as early as 1939, the goal of the center was to produce ICBMs capable of hitting New York and other targets on the east coast of the United States, as well as any targets in the European part of the Soviet Union. Moreover, by the middle of the summer of 1940, the first two-stage samples of such missiles were manufactured. The question of fuel remained. Apparently, the Germans almost did not have enough time to solve this problem …
At one of the factories for the production of V-2 missiles, American experts found blueprints for missiles with an estimated range of 5,000 km. Also noteworthy is the confession of one of the German rocket engineers during interrogation: "We planned to destroy New York and other American cities, starting the operation in November 1944".
In addition, US intelligence has discovered in the former salt mines almost fully assembled jet heavy bombers capable of bombing industrial targets in the eastern United States and returning to Europe across the Atlantic. In this regard, the trophy photographs of the high-altitude space suits of German pilots are impressive. Apparently, the plans of the Reich were at least a manned suborbital space flight.
In 140 tons of German documents collected under the Passion program, the Americans found confirmation that work on the "rocket for America" was in full swing. A number of options for the guidance system were considered, from a manned vehicle with a pilot drop on a parachute to the installation of a radio beacon on the Empire State Building.
Blueprints were also found for a rocket using a so-called packet scheme, in which a common fuel tank is used for all cruising stages and launch boosters, which are launched and operated simultaneously. Boosters are reset upon completion of work.
In other words, we see the classic layout of the future American Space Shuttle reusable transport spacecraft. It is obvious that both the future "shuttle" and powerful combat missiles and launch vehicles existed in the Reich not only in the form of our hero's thought forms. The war lasted a little longer, and it is not known what other insignia would have adorned the black SS uniform of an American citizen, Baron Wernher von Braun.
