WSJ Book Review: A Rocket Man's Surprising Trajectory (Wernher von Braun)

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 16, 2005 | DAVID A. PRICE

[OESY]

In... 1970, a Washington gossip columnist found herself seated at a dinner party next to rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. "One of the most fascinating men in the world has just moved to town," she gushed to her readers afterward. "The rocket genius is a brilliant conversationalist, extremely handsome and socially charming."

It might seem odd to judge the mastermind of the Apollo program's Saturn V launch vehicle -- and, earlier, the German V-2 -- by his savoir faire. Yet Dr. von Braun's gift for talk and salesmanship, together with his technical skill and managerial prowess, were indispensable to his pioneering accomplishments. And what accomplishments they were: A world-wide industry survey in 2003 by Aviation Week & Space Technology rated him the most influential figure in aerospace history after the Wright brothers. Bob Ward's "Dr. Space"... offers an admiring portrait of this still-controversial figure, capturing his charisma, optimism and manic energy.

His American career was eventful from the start. The head of the Germans' missile R&D lab in Peenemünde during World War II, he surrendered to the U.S. Army in the closing days of the war. Army officers quickly grasped the value of his organization and evacuated him and 117 other team members to America, while also moving trainloads of rocket equipment and plans out of the future Soviet sector just days ahead of the Russian advance.

The von Braun team soon became the centerpiece of the American rocket program under the Army's auspices. Frustrated that the Eisenhower administration assigned the task of launching the first man-made satellite to an inexperienced civilian team known as Project Vanguard, Dr. von Braun's group watched in dismay as their rivals got beaten to the punch by the Russians' Sputnik in 1957...; they put up the first American satellite a few months later....

[OESY]

From Germany's V-2 rockets to America's space program. Dr. von Braun wrote influential articles for then-popular Collier's magazine in the early 1950s and worked with Walt Disney to present a bracing vision of space travel in several television films. His sense of humor helped. During his years at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, he was known to open an out-of-town speech by saying, "I want first to apologize for my accent. I'm from Alabama."... He held onto his sense of humor until the end. As he neared death, ridden with cancer, he announced to a hospital visitor: "I've had so many transfusions, I can say truly that I'm a full-blooded American."

"Dr. Space" by Bob Ward (Naval Institute Press, 282 pages, $29.95)

[BlueDragon]

W.von Braun gets more credit than he perhaps deserves, since other scientists accomplished the actual heavy lifting.

My own father worked on the Titan program with a "Dr. Spratling", at Aerojet General, as one of the slide-rule 'boy wonder', and 'get me a cup of coffee' guys, to this Spratling.

It was Spratling, whom was a leading, if not THE leading science guy on that earlier program.

Saturn V's are basically five Titans wrapped together.

[Tallguy]

W.von Braun gets more credit than he perhaps deserves, since other scientists accomplished the actual heavy lifting.

Von Braun might actually agree with your assessment. He freely admitted lifting his early work from American rocket pioneer, Robert Goddard. Even Von Braun's ego had its limits.

[RicocheT]

The US Army showcased von Braun as he was young, handsome and had less Nazi baggage than some of the other German scientists.

The actual German rocket engineer who did most of the moon program design was another guy and he was a big-time Nazi. We had to deport him sometime in the 90's when a push was on to find the hidden Nazis who came to the US post WWII. I forget his name, but others on FR have better memories.

[Tallguy]

If it's the guy I'm thinking of, he was the SS General that ran the Nazi Rocket program. Everything from Von Braun's design team through the slave-labor camps reported to him. He was one guy who could not plausibly claim 'ignorance' of war crimes.