Posted on 10/02/2006 6:00:15 AM PDT by Condor 63
While cobbling together captured V-2 rockets in the Texas desert shortly after World War II, German rocket scientists called themselves POPs - "prisoners of peace" - to alleviate the sometimes tedious work of America's infant rocket program, a key member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's German rocket team said Sunday.
Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, who was close to von Braun during World War II and at Redstone, said the German team is significant in history not only for the advances in rocketry and science but also because of their role as volunteers.In modern history, Stuhlinger told a group of about 200 people, the German team and its work with the U.S. Army in the late 1940s "marks the first time after a major war that technically minded people were transferred from the vanquished to the victors by invitation."
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
"Once ze rockets go up, who cares where ze come down? That's not my department," says Verner von Braun.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
The grays speak a higher form of Humgarian
In the early 1970's, I had a highschool German teacher who had been a CIC operative in post-wat Berlin. He liked to say that the reason we got to the moon first was because we nabbed the right German scientists before the Russians could get them.
I know these scientists worked very diligently for the US after the war but it probably isn't a good idea to look too closely into how they actually built those rockets when they worked for Hitler or your opinion of them might change.
W.v.B. used to tool around Huntsville in a pick-up truck with the Alabama tags, NASA-1.
Germans turned to rocketry because their artillery was constrained by the Treaty of Versailles.
After the war, the biggest question for the Allied leaders about the V-2 wasn't "How did they do it?", rather "Why did they do it?" The V-weapons were militarily insignificant but politically potent. They consumed massive amounts of man power and money, but were vastly cost ineffective. The Germans spent an amount on the V-weapons that was about equal to the amount spent by the Americans on the A-Bomb. The Germans had a developmental eight engine jet bomber that could reach New York. (The big question in the 1950's was "Could the AEC make ballistic missiles practical?") If the money spent on V-2s had been put into long range bombers and atomic weapons the outcome of the war might have been very different.
The Germans had a working nuclear reactor in Berlin in 1945, not as part of any weapons program, purely for research.
This leads to some very scary "what-ifs".
There was a tangential discussion about the German scientists a couple weeks ago when some old woman who'd served as a guard at a concentration camp was deported this year.
The Germans were working on weapons and shelling cities with missiles.
And using slaves to build these weapons.
ping
Our Germans are better then their Germans.
It's my understanding that Von Braun's team was made up of mostly "guidance and control" engineers. The Russians got a team composed of mainly "propulsion" engineers.
This may explain why the Russians were able to put heavier payloads into orbit during the early years.
Makes sense. Thanks.
The "V" stood for the German equivalent of "vengeance." They were purely terror weapons from an evilmind. The V1 and V2 did manage to kill 8000 or so Brits. Had they completed the V3's, it would have been worse.
Thanks for the ping. Gerhard Eber designed the V-2 airframe. He stayed at Holloman AFB with about half of the German rocket scientists when the other half went to Redstone with Von Braun. In the 1960s he was the Technical Director of the Air Force Office of Research Analyses. I was assigned there in 1966, and Dr. Eber soon earned my respect.
At a beer party one night, I said to him, "Excuse me if I'm out of line, but I don't see how you were ever a Nazi."
He replied, " Vell, I vas never a member of the party, but I vas known in Germany as an aerodynamicist. The men from the party, they came to me, and they gave me a choice. It vas Penemunde or Auschwitz."
We always need more Tom Lehrer in our day. Thanks.
And we all need some New Horizons in ours. Good going.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.