Notes

               Chapter 1. That Accursed Blessing

  1.      Edward G. Uhl, talk given at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, Alabama, September 21, 1993.

  2.      Frederick I. Ordway III, interview with the author, Huntsville, November 12, 1998. All interviews are by the author unless specified otherwise. When a phone interview gives a location, the person being interviewed is at that location. Although the great bulk of the Huntsville interviews were in person, a few people preferred phone interviews.

  3.      Careers in Astronautics and Rocketry, coauthored by Wernher von Braun, Carsbie C. Adams, and Frederick I. Ordway III (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962); von Braun earlier wrote the foreword to Adams’s Space Flight (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958), which was written “with the collaboration of” Ordway, Heyward E. Canney Jr., and Ronald C. Wakeford.

  4.      Carsbie C. Adams, trip journal and telephone interview, Spotsylvania, Virginia, December 16, 1998.

  5.      Stuhlinger recounted this story to me, which is also in a book he coauthored with Frederick I. Ordway III: Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space (Melbourne, Fla.: Krieger Publishing, 1994), 278.

  6.      Frederick I. Ordway III, interview, Huntsville, November 12, 1998.

  7.      Ibid.

  8.      Francis L. “Frank” Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

  9.      Cover story on von Braun, “The Seer of Space,” Life (November 18, 1957), 136.

10.      This quote and the following quoted letters are from the Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama.

11.      The matter of “pressure” on von Braun to accept Nazi Party membership and an SS officer’s commission is treated fully, with citations, in chapter 5; Linda Hunt in Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), tries to connect him to the Holocaust; Christopher Simpson in Blowback: America’ s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988), 30, notes that famous photographs by U.S. liberators of slave laborers at the Mittelwerk factory’s Dora concentration camp were later misconstrued to be of Jewish victims of the Holocaust; Chris Kraft in Flight: My Life in Mission Control (New York: Dutton, 2001), 83, quotes Robert Gilruth on the subject of shifting allegiances.

12.      Tom Lehrer song “Wernher von Braun” from the live album That Was the Year That Was, released July 1, 1965, by Warner Brothers.

13.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

14.      Frederick I. Ordway III, interview, Huntsville, November 12, 1998. Such episodes evidently didn’t harm the Brucker–von Braun relationship. In 1972, when Wernher von Braun turned sixty, Brucker’s widow, Clara, wrote the scientist a warm letter. She recalled the “countless times” her husband had spoken of seeing the Explorer launched as the thrill of his life. She also wrote: “His great faith in your ability prompted him to battle the skeptics” in high places trying to stop early work on the Saturn boosters. “We both loved and admired you for your great contribution to our Country’s Space Program.”

15.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

16.      “Movie to Hit Red Tape in Space Delay,” New York Herald Tribune, November 22, 1959.

17.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

18.      Israel M. Levitt, telephone interview, Philadelphia, June 22, 1999.

19.      Aviation Week & Space Technology, top one hundred aerospace figures, ranked overall and by category, June 23, 2003. Von Braun friend and associate Fred Ordway accepted the award in Paris for the von Braun family.

               Chapter 2. To the Manor Born

  1.      Wernher downplayed his noble birth with the rocket team he came to lead in Germany, although he did include his title of baron (Freiherr) on his official letterhead. There, and later in the democratic United States, where he dropped the title, his team included several other barons. It was not until the post-World War II years in the United States that a German count joined the Wernher von Braun team. Friedrich von Saurma, who had been an aeronautical engineer and test pilot on the Luftwaffe side at the Peenemünde R and D center, stood one aristocratic notch higher. Friends said von Braun delighted in introducing Count von Saurma and quickly adding, “He outranks me.”

  2.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

  3.      Cover story on Wernher von Braun, “Reach for the Stars,” Time, February 17, 1958.

  4.      Magnus von Braun, Von Ostpreussen bis Texas [From East Prussia to Texas] (Stollhamm, Germany: Helmut Rauschenbusch-Verlag, 1955); quoted by Bob Ward, “Von Braun: Dead Set on Going Somewhere,” Huntsville Times, March 9, 1975, CC-45.

  5.      Ibid.

  6.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 22.

  7.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 10.

  8.      Bob Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch (Esslingen, Germany: Bechtle Verlag, 1972). Translated by Kurt Wagenseil.

  9.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 10.

10.      Decades later and an ocean away, the Hindemith connection would arise again. The Boston Pops Orchestra and its famed conductor, Arthur Fiedler, gave a concert in Huntsville in the 1960s. Arrangements were made for the orchestra to tour the Marshall Space Flight Center and for the maestro and Mrs. Fiedler to visit with von Braun. In preparation the Fiedlers had read up on rocketry and space. “At a reception that night Fiedler told me that the conversation never got around to space,” recalled Walter Weisman, a Wernher von Braun team member, in a paper presented at the March 26, 1992, meeting of the Alabama chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Von Braun had mentioned his semester of piano studies with Hindemith to the Fiedlers. “Well,” related Wiesman, “Hindemith happened to be the maestro’s favorite composer, and the half hour passed with space never coming up!”

11.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 117.

12.      Wernher von Braun, “Space Man—The Story of My Life,” American Weekly, July 20, 1958 (part one of a three-part series), 8.

13.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

14.      Heather M. David, Wernher von Braun (New York: Putnam, 1967), 23.

15.      Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, “Wernher von Braun: Columbus of Space,” True magazine, February 1959, 22.

16.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 22.

17.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 1, 8.

18.      Daniel Lang, “A Romantic Urge,” New Yorker, April 21, 1951, 75–93.

19.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 22.

20.      Ernst Stuhlinger, “Wernher von Braun,” eulogy written for the Huntsville Times, June 17, 1977.

21.      It marked the start of a prolific, lifelong writing output by von Braun that included hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, essays, technical papers, and several books. One was an imaginative nonfiction account of a manned mission to his most-favorite destination in space, the planet Mars.

22.      Ward, “Dead Set on Going Somewhere,” CC-45.

               Chapter 3. Pioneering Rocketry

  1.      Helen B. Walters, Wernher von Braun: Rocket Engineer (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 20.

  2.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

  3.      Ernst Stuhlinger, “How It All Began—Memories of an Old-timer,” July 20, 1999, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  4.      Werner C. Krug, article in the Birmingham (Ala.) News, November 18, 1951.

  5.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 1, 26.

  6.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

  7.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 1, 9.

  8.      Wernher von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 15, no. 3 (May–June 1956): 127; also Current Biography (1952): 607.

  9.      Constantine D. J. Generales Jr., “Recollections of Early Biomedical Moon-Mice Investigations,” proceedings of first and second History Symposia of the International Academy of Astronautics, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, September 26, 1967, published in Frederick C. Durant III and George S. James, eds., First Steps toward Space (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979; reprinted by Univelt, San Diego, 1985).

10.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 128.

11.      Von Braun and Generales met again, in the United States, at a 1950s scientific symposium on the subject of space medicine. The rocket scientist autographed a copy of the program for his old friend, with the inscription: “To the ‘World’s First Space Doctor’ (remember Zurich, 1931?).” And in 1960, von Braun further honored his first friend from America by naming his son Peter Constantine von Braun.

12.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 128; also Current Biography (1952): 607.

13.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

14.      Walter Dornberger, V-2 (New York: Viking, 1954), 27.

15.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 131.

16.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

17.      Wernher von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” American Magazine, July 1952.

18.      Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun (Washington, D.C.: National Space Institute, 1976), 550–51.

19.      Patrick Moore, Space: The Story of Man’s Greatest Feat of Exploration (Garden City, N.Y.: The Natural History Press [for The American Museum of Natural History], 1969), 75.

20.      It would be a decade before the two would reconnect as colleagues and coauthors in America.

21.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 134.

22.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 23.

23.      Ernst Stuhlinger, “Wernher von Braun,” paper given at International Space Hall of Fame, Alamagordo, New Mexico, October 1976.

24.      Arthur Rudolph was among the few rocket men who became Nazi Party members before Hitler came to power. He later contended he did so mainly because of his vehement opposition to the Communists and also in hope of advancing his own career. But then Rudolph “left the party two or three years later because he was in strong disagreement with its ethnic [Jewish] policies,” Ernst Stuhlinger told me in a memo dated September 28, 2001. Later, however, as Rudolph rose within the rocket team, he rejoined the party at the same time as most of the other top members of the team signed up with the Nazis.

25.      William J. Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” Shreveport (La.) Journal, p. 10-D, and other newspapers, October 27, 1967.

26.      Arthur Rudolph, letter, March 23, 1972, Wernher von Braun sixtieth birthday album: “X + 60 and Counting.”

27.      Otto Kraehe, letter from Paris to Christel Ludewig McCanless, Huntsville, July 1999.

28.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

29.      Ibid.

               Chapter 4. Peenemünde Priority

  1.      Walters, Werner von Braun, 41.

  2.      Ernst Klauss, letter, March 1972, Wernher von Braun sixtieth birthday album: “X + 60 and Counting.”

  3.      Rudolf Hermann, quoted in Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 34–35.

  4.      Letter (German-born writer’s identity unclear), March 1972, included in “X + 60 and Counting.”

  5.      Dornberger, V-2, 53.

  6.      Helmut Horn, letter, February 25, 1972, “X +60 and Counting.”

  7.      Rudolf Hermann, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  8.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

  9.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 11.

10.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

11.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry.”

12.      Dennis Piszkiewicz, Werner von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), 1932.

13.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

14.      Ibid.

15.      Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1995) 81-82.

16.      Hermann Oberth, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

17.      Richard Lehnert, letter, February 12, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

18.      Klaus H. Scheufelen, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

19.      Fritz K. Mueller, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

20.      Bernhard R. Tessmann, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

21.      Ibid.

22.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt) interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

23.      Ibid.

24.      Ibid.

25.      Ibid. Rumors persisted for years of a wartime marriage. They stemmed from the fact that in April 1943 von Braun had filed a request with the appropriate SS office for permission to marry a Berlin woman. Michael J. Neufeld wrote of the filing in “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility,” German Studies Review 25, no. 1 (January 25, 2002): 59. Evidently this was the same woman von Braun was visiting on his weekend flights. She was a physical therapist or exercise instructor, Dorette Kersten (Schlidt) told me in a December 18, 2003, interview. But von Braun’s mother eventually “put an end” to the romance. “The Baroness had better things in mind for him.” In a November 30, 2003, interview, his close associate Stuhlinger told me that to his knowledge von Braun did not marry the Berlin woman or anyone else during the war. Neufeld likewise concluded in his previously cited paper that “the proposed marriage to a Berlin woman never took place.”

26.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

27.      Frederick I. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team: From the V-2 to the Saturn Moon Rocket—The Inside Story of How a Small Group of Engineers Changed World History (New York: Crowell, 1979), 40–41, citing a June 18, 1971, interview with Hoelzer.

28.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

29.      George Barrett, “Visit with a Prophet of the Space Age,” New York Times Sunday Magazine (October 20, 1957), 87.

30.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 140.

31.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry.”

32.      Englishman Arthur C. Clarke noted in his prophetic 1951 book, The Exploration of Space, that it was a matter of record that von Braun had remarked in the early 1940s, “Oh, yes, we shall get to the Moon—but of course I daren’t tell Hitler yet.”

33.      Ernst Stuhlinger, prepared remarks at American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics panel discussion, Huntsville, December 14, 1998.

34.      Walter W. Jacobi, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

35.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 144.

               Chapter 5. Encounters with Hitler

  1.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 28.

  2.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 130.

  3.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 111.

  4.      Barrett, “Visit with a Prophet of the Space Age,” 88; also Pearson and Anderson, “Wernher von Braun,” 24–25.

  5.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

  6.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 55–56.

  7.      Ibid., 60.

  8.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

  9.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 28, 30.

10.      Hans Hueter, “Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles,” historical report for U.S. Army missile agency, April 21, 1960.

11.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

12.      Ibid.

13.      After the war, however, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, would state that if the A-4/V-2 had been deployed earlier it would have disrupted and probably prevented the Normandy invasion.

14.      Joseph C. Moquin, interview, Huntsville, October 10, 1990.

15.      Pearson and Anderson, “Wernher von Braun,” 25; also Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch, 27; as for Himmler’s death, he killed himself after capture by biting into a vial of poison on May 23, 1945.

16.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, University of Alabama in Huntsville, November 17, 1998.

17.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 178.

18.      Gerhard H. R. Reisig, interview, Huntsville, December 8, 1998.

19.      Charles Hewitt, telephone interview, Alexandria, Virginia, February 9, 1999.

20.      Israel M. Levitt, telephone interview, Philadelphia, June 22, 1999.

21.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

22.      Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor.”

23.      Ibid.

24.      Frederick I. Ordway III, telephone interview, Huntsville, November 11, 1998.

25.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, University of Alabama in Huntsville, November 17, 1998.

26.      Ibid.

27.      Charles Hewitt, telephone interview, Alexandria, Virginia, February 9, 1999.

28.      Ibid.

29.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

30.      Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich—Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1970), cited in Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 30.

31.      Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962).

32.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 47.

33.      Ibid., 184–85; also, Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 38–39.

34.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, University of Alabama in Huntsville, November 17, 1998.

35.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

36.      Ibid.

37.      Hermann Oberth, preface to Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

38.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

39.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 333.

40.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 142.

41.      Ibid.

42.      Ibid.

43.      Wernher von Braun speech, National Military-Industrial Conference, Chicago, February 17, 1958, reprinted in Chemical & Engineering News (March 3, 1958), 54.

44.      Gerhard H. R. Reisig, letter to editor (unpublished), Huntsville Times, December 4, 1998.

45.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 1, 28.

46.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry.”

47.      Life, “Seer of Space,” 139.

48.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of Germany Rocketry.”

49.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 112 (italics in original).

50.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, University of Alabama in Huntsville, November 17, 1998.

51.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 143.

52.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

53.      Pearson and Anderson, “Wernher von Braun,” 26.

               Chapter 6. Comes Now the V-2

  1.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 143.

  2.      David L. Christensen, interview, Huntsville, September 7, 2003.

  3.      Authors differ as to the exact dates (within September 6–8) as well as the geography of launch sites. The most detailed source on this point is Dennis Piszkiewicz, The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995), 173–74. No author has specified from where in “western Germany” the mobile V-2 battery fired on those dates.

  4.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 333.

  5.      Manchester Guardian, quoting Wernher von Braun’s earlier comments on the occasion of his death, June 1977.

  6.      Wernher von Braun letter to L. J. Carter of the British Interplanetary Society, September 29, 1949, in the correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville. There is no evidence any of the von Braun boys ever lived in England, however.

  7.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 144.

  8.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

  9.      Bergaust, quoting unnamed von Braun associate in Wernher von Braun, 95.

10.      A. V. “Val” Cleaver, letter, February 16, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

11.      Walter Dornberger, epilogue to Astronautical Engineering and Science: From Peenemünde to Planetary Space—Honoring the Fiftieth Birthday of Wernher von Braun, edited by Ernst Stuhlinger et al. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).

12.      In the United States von Braun received a number of patents for his technical inventions. They ranged from a means of lengthening a rocket’s propellant tanks (and thus increasing its thrust and range) within the same outside dimensions to a maneuverable “bottle suit” system for astronauts’ extravehicular activities. As one of several examples of von Braun’s personally interceding with technical fixes of engineering problems, NASA engineer-manager Bob Schwinghamer recalled the time he briefed von Braun on a vacuum pump planned for a space flight hardware subsystem. “You’re taking a vacuum pump into the vacuum of space?!” von Braun exploded. He suggested a different kind of pump, which Schwinghamer’s group went on to use successfully.

13.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun letter to inquiring West Point cadet reprinted in Wernher von Braun.

14.      Most of the reclusive Goddard’s voluminous patents and papers were kept under wraps, for personal and government security reasons, until after the war and the American physicist’s death in 1945, before he and von Braun could meet. In 1950, in connection with a claim of patent infringement filed with the U.S. government by Goddard’s widow, estate, and the Guggenheim Foundation, von Braun was asked by officials to assess the matter. See appendix A for details.

15.      Georg von Tiesenhausen, telephone interviews, Huntsville, June 21 and 24, 2004; and Hans Hueter, “Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles,” an historical report to U.S. Army missile agency, April 20, 1960. See also Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York: Crowell, 1979), 255; and Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 55. Interviewee von Tiesenhausen told me that a postwar friend commented to him that “it was just as well” that the Prüfstand XII project was cut short and no V-2s were fired from sea at New York, “considering your future and that you came to the United States!”

16.      Thomas Franklin [Hugh McInnish], An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph (Huntsville, Ala.: Christopher Kaylor Publishers, 1987).

17.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 213, 226–27.

18.      Ibid., 207.

19.      Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor.”

20.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 44. Information on Gerhard H. R. Reisig from December 2003 interview by Ernst Stuhlinger.

21.      Ibid.

22.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 202.

23.      Gerhard H. R. Reisig, letter to editor (unpublished), Huntsville Times, December 4, 1998.

24.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 227-28.

25.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 44.

26.      Ernst Stuhlinger, written response to queries by author, March 13, 2000.

27.      Von Braun letter to Albin Sawatski, director of Mittelwerk, August 15, 1944. Text of letter included in Ernst Stuhlinger, “Wernher von Braun and Concentration Camp Labor: An Exchange,” German Studies Review, January 26, 2003, 121-24.

28.      Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor, 69.

29.      André Sellier, a Mittelbau-Dora survivor, member of Sadron’s work unit, and author of a 1998 history of the camp (Sellier, Historie du camp de Dora, 117-18), cited in Neufeld’s “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor,” 68.

30.      Charles Sadron, “Ála Usine de Dora,” in Témoignages Strasbourgeois: De l’Université aux Camps de Concentration (Paris, 1947), 198-99, cited in Neufeld’s “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor,” 68.

31.      Ernst Stuhlinger, interview, Huntsville, August 16, 2003.

32.      Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor,” 69.

33.      V H. Bilet and J. D. McPhilimy, “Production and Disposition of German A-4 (V-2) Rockets,” staff study no. A-55-2167-N1, DDC no. ATI-18315, March 1948, Headquarters Air Material Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, as cited in Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 42.

34.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 40, 42.

35.      Ernst Stuhlinger, memorial essay on Wernher von Braun on what would have been his ninetieth birthday, for the Huntsville Times, March 23, 2002.

36.      Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, 117.

37.      Wernher von Braun, letter to Paris Match editors, April 26, 1966. The contents of the letter were disclosed, in large part, by Stuhlinger and Ordway in Crusader for Space, 51.

38.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 53.

39.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), November 17, 1998.

40.      Michael J. Neufeld, guest lecture, Athens (Ala.) State University, October 11, 2000.

41.      Gerhard H. R. Reisig, letter to editor (unpublished), Huntsville Times, December 3, 1998, in response to Neufeld UAH lecture and resultant news coverage.

42.      Ernst Stuhlinger et al. (unnamed), “Memorandum,” October 10, 1998, in advance of Neufeld’s scheduled UAH lecture.

43.      Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 251, 406.

44.      Ibid., 79.

45.      Ibid., 245.

46.      Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 264.

47.      Hans Dollinger, The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (New York: Bonanza Books/Crown, 1967), 275.

48.      Financial Times (London), quoting in June 1977, on Wernher von Braun’s death.

49.      Ibid.

50.      “Film on von Braun Has a Stormy Bow,” New York Times, August 20, 1960; see also “Von Braun Gets Boos, Cheers,” Huntsville Times, August 21, 1960.

51.      von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 144–45.

52.      Bob Ward, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (New York: Fawcett, 1969), 50; A-9/10 “Amerika rocket” referred to also by von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” 144–45, and by Ernst Stuhlinger, “The ‘America Rocket’: It Was Just a Name,” Huntsville Times, March 26, 2000.

53.      Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 254.

54.      James L. Daniels Jr., “A Biography of Wernher von Braun,” appendix 1 in Stuhlinger et al., Aeronautical Engineering and Science, 369.

55.      Walters, Wernher von Braun, 79–80.

56.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

57.      Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 118–19.

58.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 112.

59.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

               Chapter 7. Bound for America

  1.      Wernher and Maria have been referred to in print variously as second and first cousins. Von Braun wrote on at least one occasion that they were second cousins. But the couple shared the same von Quistorp grandparents, making them first cousins.

  2.      Wernher von Braun, “Space Man—The Story of My Life,” American Weekly, July 27, 1958 (part two of a three-part series), 11–12.

  3.      Hannes Luehrsen, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  4.      Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team, 256–63.

  5.      Willy Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, rev. ed. (New York: Viking, 1957), 244.

  6.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 112.

  7.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

  8.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 92.

  9.      Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953).

10.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

11.      Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team, 2.

12.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

13.      Bill O’Hallaren, letter to the editor, New Yorker (May 26, 1951), 106.

14.      Walters, Wernher von Braun, 91.

15.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

16.      John G. Zierdt, interview, Huntsville, October 21, 1998.

17.      Johann J. Klein, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

18.      Sometimes “Ludi.”

19.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 63.

20.      Ibid.

21.      John Barbour and The Associated Press, Footprints on the Moon (New York: Associated Press, 1969), 17.

22.      von Braun mini-biography, in Shirley Thomas, Men of Space: Profiles of the Leaders in Space Research, Development, and Exploration, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1960). 142.

23.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

24.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 65.

25.      Ibid., 245.

26.      Wilhelm Angele, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

27.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 66.

28.      Ibid.

29.      The Huntsville Times and other press accounts of the April 14, 1955, naturalization ceremonies for Wernher von Braun, some forty other German rocketeers, and their families.

30.      Thomas, Men of Space, 142.

31.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 227.

32.      Long after what Toftoy’s widow, Hazel, called those “tough years” in immediate postwar Germany had passed, she reminded von Braun of his appearance on the 1950s episode of the popular Ralph Edwards’s This Is Your Life! network television show that honored the then-major general. Even then, she wrote von Braun in a February 20, 1972, congratulatory letter, “You emphasized his [Toftoy’s] humanitarian efforts.”

33.      “If people only knew the screening von Braun and the V-2 team members went through,” retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John G. Zierdt told me in a 1999 interview. “Believe me, they were checked out thoroughly” before being invited individually to America. Character checks went so far as to include interviews with early teachers about possible playground bullying tendencies and youthful fascist leanings, Zierdt recalled. The general, whose career included World War II service in Europe, said he had access to the Peenemünders’ security records. Zierdt said he had no knowledge that the dossiers of some were sanitized to make them more palatable for import by America. Assigned to Redstone Arsenal for ten of the eleven years during the period from 1956 to 1967, he worked with von Braun and the team at various army missile agencies there early in that period and later was commanding general.

34.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 66.

35.      All told, some 140 German missile experts eventually came to the United States, a few as late as the mid-1950s. It took that long for some to slip out through the Soviet bloc’s Iron Curtain and reach the West.

36.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

37.      Mike Marshall, “Launching a Dream,” Huntsville Times, September 24, 1995.

38.      Howard Benedict, Associated Press, “The Rocketeers of Peenemünde,” in the Buffalo (N.Y.) News (p. F-6) and other newspapers, January 20, 1985.

39.      Among the more notable German missile men who ended up in Russian hands was Helmut Gröttrup, eventually repatriated to Germany. He was one of the two Peenemünde rocketeers that Himmler had the Gestapo arrest with von Braun in March 1944.

40.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

41.      Thomas, Men of Space, 135.

42.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

43.      Ibid.

44.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 260.

45.      Dornberger, after his release by the British, emigrated to the United States. He worked first as a consultant to the Air Force and then joined Bell Aircraft as a vice president. He retired from the company in 1960 and moved to Mexico, where he maintained contact with von Braun and other V-2 associates. Walter Dornberger died in 1980, during a visit to Germany.

46.      Erich W. Neubert, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.” Thirteen years would pass before Neubert laid eyes again on his homeland, when he visited family and old friends.

47.      Thomas, Men of Space, 143.

48.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 124.

49.      Walters, Wernher von Braun, 96.

50.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 114.

               Chapter 8. A Fort Called Bliss

  1.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 112.

  2.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 227.

  3.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

  4.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 76.

  5.      Lt. Col. William E. Winterstein, retired, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  6.      Ernst Stuhlinger, “German Rocketeers Find a New Home,” talk at Burritt Museum, Huntsville, September 21, 1995.

  7.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 73.

  8.      Pam Rogers, “A Member of the Old Team Looks Back,” Redstone Rocket, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, (February 5, 1986), 9.

  9.      Konrad Dannenberg, interview, Huntsville, September 10, 1998.

10.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

11.      Stuhlinger, “German Rocketeers Find a New Home.”

12.      Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, February 28, 2001. See also Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 130-31.

13.      Johann J. Klein, letter, February 29, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.” The motto comes from an old European cavalry saying that jump-masters would use to exhort raw trainees having trouble getting their mounts to leap ditches in open terrain. Adopted by von Braun in urging young rocketeers to tackle tough tasks with gusto, the full maxim goes: “Throw your heart over the ditch, and your horse will follow!”

14.      Werner K. Gengelbach, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

15.      Wolfgang Steurer, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

16.      Ibid.

17.      Arthur C. Clarke, letter to editor of Wireless World, February 1945, cited by Stuhlinger and Ordway in Crusader for Space.

18.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

19.      Bob Ward, quoting Wernher von Braun in “United States Almost Lost Its ‘Mr. Space’ 25 Years Ago, von Braun Letter Reveals,” Huntsville Times, June 30, 1972.

20.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 10-D.

21.      In November 2002 Magnus von Braun, who was in ill health in a nursing home in Phoenix, Arizona, sent word through his daughter in response to my queries that he had no recollection of the platinum episode. It may have occurred, it may not have; he simply could not remember, he said. He died in June 2003.

22.      Conversations with Ernst Stuhlinger, Konrad Dannenberg, et al., in the fall of 2002.

23.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 77.

24.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

25.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 82–83.

26.      El Paso Times, July 1, 1947.

27.      von Braun, “Space Man—The Story of My Life,” American Weekly, August 3, 1958 (part three of a three-part series), 14.

28.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

29.      Pearson and Anderson, Wernher von Braun, 25.

30.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 3, 14.

31.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

32.      Thomas, Men of Space, 144.

33.      Werner Dahm, interview, Huntsville, December 6, 1998.

34.      Thomas, Men of Space, 145.

35.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 151.

36.      William C. Fortune, letter, February 22, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

37.      Ward, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, 49–50; see also Daniel Lang, “A Reporter at Large: What’s Up There,” New Yorker, (July 31, 1948), 44-45.

38.      Wernher von Braun letter to L. J. Carter of the British Interplanetary Society, September 29, 1949, correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville.

39.      Hubertus Strughold, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

40.      Mike Marshall, “Launching a Dream,” Huntsville Times. September 24, 1995.

41.      Life, “Seer of Space.”

42.      Interviews with Wernher von Braun rocket team old-timers, Huntsville, late 1990s.

43.      Wernher von Braun letter to then-Maj. James Hamill, January 12, 1948, correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville.

44.      Wernher von Braun, interview, Huntsville, mid-June 1972.

45.      James P. Hamill, telephone interview, Washington, D.C., area, mid-June 1972.

46.      Wernher von Braun, interview, Huntsville, mid-June 1972. Von Braun requested that I kill a proposed newspaper article about his newly discovered old letter. “But this is a piece of history,” I protested. “But history that never happened,” von Braun countered. The article, with mitigating comments by him and Jim Hamill, ran in the Huntsville Times on June 30, 1972.

47.      Hannes Luehrsen, interview, Huntsville, March 1965, for Bob Ward’s, “Signal for Germans’ Move Here Came 15 Years Ago,” Huntsville Times (April 1, 1965), 2.

48.      Wernher von Braun speech, Georgia state convention of the American Legion, Savannah, July 25, 1959.

49.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, September 21, 1998.

50.      Mike Wright, NASA-MSFC historian, “Huntsville and the Space Program,” Alabama Heritage magazine (parts 1 and 2, spring and summer 1998), part 1, p. 42.

               Chapter 9. New Home Alabama

  1.      David G. Harris, interview, Huntsville, January 1967.

  2.      Weldon Payne, Web to the Stars: A History of the University of Tennessee Space Institute (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1992), 10.

  3.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

  4.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 186.

  5.      von Braun, “Why I Chose America,” 111.

  6.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” D-11.

  7.      Paul O’Neil, “The Splendid Anachronism of Huntsville,” Fortune, June 1962, 238.

  8.      Hannes Luehrsen, interview for Ward, “Signal for Germans’ Move Here,” 2.

  9.      Werner Dahm, interview, Huntsville, December 6, 1998.

10.      Jimmy Walker, letter, February 14, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

11.      Louis Salmon, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

12.      M. Beirne Spragins, letter, February 18, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

13.      Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

14.      Author’s recollection of Mr. O’Neal’s account, quoted in Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 170.

15.      M. Beirne Spragins, letter, February 18, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

16.      In his spare lifestyle on modest army civilian pay in the early 1950s, associates noted, von Braun drove a used Chevrolet and owned a cheap low-fi set for playing his cherished classical records. He was a hunter who owned no shotgun. There was no television set in the von Braun household, by his decree.

17.      Hans F. Gruene, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

18.      Frances Gates Moore, interview, Huntsville, May 24, 1999.

19.      Wernher von Braun letter to British Interplanetary Society’s A. V. “Val” Cleaver, London, July 30, 1951, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

20.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

21.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

22.      Ibid., and letters from Patrick Richardson, February 28, 1972, and Martha H. Richardson Simms [Rambo], February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

23.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

24.      Barrett, “Visit with a Prophet of the Space Age,” 87.

25.      Wernher von Braun, “Teamwork: Key to Success in Guided Missiles,” Missiles and Rockets (October 1956): 41.

26.      James K. Hoey, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

27.      George C. Bucher, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

28.      Donald Bowden, telephone interview, Huntsville, June 1, 2000.

29.      Larkin Davis, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

30.      Bonnie Holmes, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

31.      Ibid.

32.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 256.

33.      Dale James, “Behind the Scenes with von Braun,” Huntsville Times, September 8, 1994.

34.      Bob Ward, The Light Stuff (Huntsville, Ala.: Jester Books, 1982), 106.

35.      Sam K. Hoffman, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

36.      Arlie R. Trahern Jr., letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

37.      John C. Goodrum Sr., interview, Huntsville, January 28, 2003.

38.      James M. Gavin, letter, February 14, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

39.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

40.      William R. Lucas, letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

41.      Wernher von Braun’s father would die in 1972 at age ninety-four; his mother would die earlier, in 1959, of colon cancer. Their oldest son, career German diplomat Sigismund, would live to age eighty-seven, dying in 1998.

42.      Tom Carney, “FBI Files of Wernher von Braun,” Old Huntsville magazine, 105 (2001).

43.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 227.

               Chapter 10. Early Media Trail

  1.      Rick Chappell, remarks at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

  2.      Fred L. Whipple, letter, March 2, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  3.      Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III, The Art of Chesley Bonestell (London: Paper Tiger/Collins and Brown, 2001).

  4.      Chesley Bonestell, letter, February 16, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  5.      Cornelius Ryan, letter, February 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.” Cornelius Ryan gained further renown as author of a trilogy of best-selling wartime histories, beginning with The Longest Day, about the Allies’ D-Day invasion at Normandy.

  6.      Ibid.

  7.      A. V. Cleaver, letter, April 6, 1952, Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  8.      Milton W. Rosen, letter, February 16, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  9.      Ibid.

10.      Ibid.

11.      For full accounts of the Collier’s series, see Fred L. Whipple’s article, “Recollections of Pre-Sputnik Days,” in Blueprint for Space (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), edited by Frederick I. Ordway III, and the chapter following Whipple’s, “The Collier’s and Disney Series,” by Randy Liebermann.

12.      Jonathan Norton Leonard, Flight into Space: The Facts, Fancies, and Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1953), 79-80.

13.      Ibid., 80.

14.      Ibid., 101.

15.      President Ronald Reagan came close to matching it, however, with his 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative concept, disparaged as the “Star Wars” plan by many on the political left and in the news media. Never taken much beyond research and early developmental phases, the SDI challenge still was credited as part of the U.S. military buildup that helped force the breakup of the Soviet Union.

16.      Adolf K. Thiel, [1972] letter undated, “X + 60 and Counting.”

17.      Ibid.

18.      Von Braun’s super-salesmanship was acknowledged by author Dennis Piszkiewicz in the title of his acerbic 1998 biography, Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon. Piszkiewicz’s jaundiced slant on the whole von Braun saga had surfaced in his 1995 book, The Nazi Rocketeers.

19.      Adolf K. Thiel, telephone interview, Palos Verdes Estates, California, October 1, 1998.

20.      Werner Dahm, interview, Huntsville, December 6, 1998.

21.      William R. Bosche, letter, February 10, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

22.      Wernher von Braun letter to L. R. Shepherd of BIS, Chilton, England, March 3, 1951, Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

23.      Wernher von Braun letter to Kenneth Gatland of BIS and IAF, London, April 24, 1951, Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

24.      Wernher von Braun letter to Val Cleaver of BIS and IAF, London, May 12, 1951, Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

25.      Frederick C. Durant III, telephone interview, Chevy Chase, Maryland, November 2, 1998.

26.      Wernher von Braun letter to L. J. Carter of BIS, September 29, 1949, Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

27.      Compendium of Wernher von Braun quotations, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

               Chapter 11. Toward the Cosmos

  1.      David G. Harris, chief of Redstone Public Information Office, interview, Huntsville, January 1967.

  2.      Charles A. Lundquist, interview, Huntsville, November 19, 1998.

  3.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 229.

  4.      Ibid.

  5.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch, 51.

  6.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

  7.      Wernher von Braun interview, “Space Travel: Sooner Than You Think,” U.S. News & World Report, September 9, 1955, 68; reprinted by magazine as “Space Travel: When It Is Coming . . . What It Will Be Like,” October 18, 1957, 41.

  8.      Thomas, Men of Space, 150.

  9.      Ibid.

10.      Ernst Stuhlinger, letter to Michael J. Neufeld of Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, December 4, 1998.

11.      Gerhard B. Heller, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

12.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

13.      Ernst Stuhlinger, confidential government memorandum, October 1957 (see footnote 23 at chapter’s end).

14.      James M. Gavin, letter, February 14, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

15.      Ibid.

16.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

17.      Ernst Stuhlinger, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

18.      R. P. Hazzard, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

19.      The “C” in Jupiter-C stood for “Composite,” referring to the solid-rocket upper stages added to the elongated, liquid-fueled Redstone missile; the “Jupiter” designation was a bureaucratic name game to use funds from the budget of the real Jupiter IRBM.

20.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

21.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 128.

22.      Mike Gray, Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 15–16.

23.      Wernher von Braun’s chief scientist, Ernst Stuhlinger, and top Soviet space scientist Leonid Sedov met a few days after the Sputnik shocker. This was on October 7-8 in Barcelona, Spain, at the eighth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation. As Stuhlinger wrote in a five-page “For Official Use Only” memo dated October 29, 1957, Sedov asked him why the United States was pinning its satellite hopes on the untried, sharply weight-limited Vanguard concept when it possessed proven, powerful boosters, and why did Dr. von Braun go along with this? Sedov was incredulous when told von Braun had nothing to do with the decision and was not being consulted on Project Vanguard, Stuhlinger wrote. (Copy in author’s files.)

               Chapter 12. Nobody’s Perfect

  1.      Foster A. Haley, interview, Huntsville, March 29, 1999.

  2.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

  3.      Evelyn Spearman, “Lacey’s Spring Native Remembers Her Boss,” Huntsville News, April 9, 1970.

  4.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

  5.      Ibid.

  6.      David Hinkle, interview, Huntsville, December 2, 1998.

  7.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 223; Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

  8.      Arthur C. Clarke, letter, February 21, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  9.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

10.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

11.      Jonathan Eberhart, “The House That Space Built,” Science News 93, no. 13 (April 1968): 363.

12.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

13.      J. N. Foster, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

14.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

15.      Ibid.

16.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

17.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 253. He excluded from that generalization the launch of the first manned lunar landing mission, at 9:32 AM on July 16, 1969, from Cape Canaveral.

18.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

19.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 278.

20.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

21.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 276.

22.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

23.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

24.      Lee B. James, letter, February 9, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

25.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

26.      Iris von Braun, “Wernher von Braun: As His Daughter Sees Him,” Huntsville Times, May 26, 1963.

27.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interview, Eva, Alabama, October 26, 1998.

28.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

29.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 8, 1998.

30.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 246.

31.      Wernher von Braun paper, “Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application,” presented in absentia at Lutheran Church of America synod, Philadelphia, October 29, 1976.

32.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

33.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

34.      Leland F. Belew, interview, Huntsville, October 28, 1998.

35.      Correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

36.      Rudolf H. Schlidt, interview, Huntsville, January 18, 2001.

37.      Ibid.

38.      Ernst Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, February 28, 2001.

39.      Robert Lindstrom, interview, Huntsville, October 6, 1998.

40.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

41.      Peter Cobun, “Catalyst, Inspirer, Promoter—von Braun Forged the Way,” Huntsville Times, June 17, 1977.

42.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998. Lucas became a favorite of von Braun’s, however. The space center director tapped him as an eventual successor.

43.      James L. Kingsbury, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 24, 2001.

44.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

45.      Ibid.

46.      Harry Atkins, interview, Huntsville, May 27, 1999.

47.      Spearman, “Lacey’s Spring Native Remembers Her Boss.”

48.      I. M. Levitt, telephone interview, Philadelphia, June 22, 1999.

49.      John G. Zierdt, interview, Huntsville, October 21, 1998.

50.      David Newby, telephone interview, Guntersville, Alabama, December 22, 1998.

51.      Frederick I. Ordway III, telephone interview, Arlington, Virginia, November 13, 1998.

52.      Wernher von Braun associate, anonymity requested, 1999 interview.

53.      Robert Lindstrom, interview, Huntsville, October 6, 1998.

               Chapter 13. New Age of Space

  1.      W. L. Halsey Jr., interview, Huntsville, June 19, 2004.

  2.      Gordon L. Harris, $elling Uncle Sam (Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1976), 81.

  3.      Ernst Stuhlinger, “Sputnik 1957: Memories of an Old-timer,” talk given in Washington, D.C., October 4, 1997.

  4.      John B. Medaris, with Arthur Gordon, Countdown for Decision (New York: Putnam, 1960), 155.

  5.      Ibid.

  6.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 24.

  7.      Ibid.

  8.      I. M. Levitt, Associated Press news story, October 7, 1957, Huntsville Times and elsewhere.

  9.      John Barbour and The Associated Press, Footprints on the Moon, 1969), 20–21.

10.      News report of Senator Lyndon Johnson’s statement to the press, week of October 5, 1957. See Brian Trumbone, “Sputnik, 1957,” StocksandNews.com, 2000.

11.      Truman F. Cook, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

12.      Life, “Seer of Space,” 136.

13.      Wernher von Braun article for The Associated Press, “Manned Flight to Moon in Five Years Possible—von Braun,” in the Birmingham (Ala.) News and elsewhere, November 10, 1957.

14.      Life, “Seer of Space,” 136.

15.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 132, 133.

16.      Medaris with Gordon, Countdown for Decision, 168.

17.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 25.

18.      Ernst Stuhlinger, correspondence with author, from Huntsville, March 28, 1999; see also Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space.

19.      James A. Van Allen, correspondence with author, from Iowa City, Iowa, March 16, 1999; see also Van Allen, Origins of Magnetospheric Physics (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983).

20.      John G. Zierdt, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting,” retold in interview, Huntsville, October 21, 1998.

21.      As events rapidly unfolded, Joachim Kuettner did not have a hand in sending the first man into space. The Russians beat him there with a young pilot named Yuri Gagarin. But he did help the von Braun team rocket the first American into space. Navy Commander (later Admiral) Alan Shepard always maintained he would have been the first man in space if von Braun had not added one more test flight with yet another chimpanzee.

22.      Joachim Kuettner, “Und Familie,” letter, March 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

23.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 25.

24.      Wernher von Braun, “My Most Exciting Moment,” Popular Mechanics (September 1960), 86.

25.      Ibid., 87.

26.      Explorer 1 stayed aloft for thirteen years, far beyond expectations, and discovered the Van Allen radiation belts encircling the Earth.

27.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 25.

28.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 140.

29.      Wernher von Braun speech before National Military-Industrial Conference, Chicago, February 17, 1958; reprinted in Chemical & Engineering News (March 3, 1958): 56.

30.      Time, “Reach for the Stars,” 25.

31.      William H. Pickering, telephone interview, Altadena, California, September 16, 1998.

32.      In a 1972 letter wishing von Braun a happy sixtieth birthday, Bill Pickering alluded to the borrowed presidential white tie, and asked: “By the way, did you ever return it?” He did indeed, longtime von Braun secretary Bonnie Holmes confirmed to me decades later.

33.      William H. Pickering, telephone interview, Altadena, California, September 16, 1998.

34.      Correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

35.      Hans Hueter, “Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles,” historical report to U.S. Army missile agency, April 21, 1960.

36.      Ibid.

37.      von Braun, “Space Man,” part 1, 7.

38.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 165.

39.      Hermann Oberth, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

40.      Donald R. Bowden, telephone interview, Huntsville, June 1, 2000.

41.      Ibid.

42.      Rankin A. Clinton Jr., interview, Huntsville, January 16, 2001.

43.      During the dramatic “thirteen days” of the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, Clinton and the then-head of his unit at Redstone, Carl Duckett, essentially set up camp in Washington and regularly briefed President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and senior security officials. The army unit’s aerial photo analysis of the secret Soviet missile sites in Cuba figured prominently in the tense episode. Duckett later was recruited to be a deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and create similar foreign missile intelligence capabilities within that agency. The Huntsville “spook” unit evolved into the expanded Department of Defense Missile and Space Intelligence Center, still based at Redstone, with von Braun’s foreign-intelligence coach—“Randy” Clinton—as its director.

44.      Rankin A. Clinton Jr., interview, Huntsville, January 16, 2001.

45.      T. Keith Glennan, letter February 10, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

46.      Charles A. Lundquist, interview, Huntsville, November 19, 1998.

47.      Kraft, Flight, 83, 127; Charles A. Lundquist, interview, Huntsville, November 19, 1998; Frank Williams, telephone interview, Birmingham, Alabama, January 31, 2004; Maxime Faget, telephone interview, Apollo, Texas, July 12, 2003.

48.      Ernst Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, April 22, 2003.

49.      James T. Shepherd, telephone interview, Huntsville, November 6, 2001.

50.      Josef Boehm, letter, February 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

51.      Howard Benedict, correspondence with author, from Titusville, Florida, December 15, 1998.

52.      Ibid.

53.      Ibid.

54.      Vachel Stapler, interview, Huntsville, November 29, 2000.

55.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 231, 241–42.

               Chapter 14. Challenge of the Moon

  1.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

  2.      Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990 (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Series, 1999), 1.

  3.      Harris, $elling Uncle Sam, 199.

  4.      Ibid.

  5.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

  6.      Bill Easterling, “‘Rocket City’ Celebrates: Missile Gap Cut, von Braun Elated,” Huntsville Times, May 6, 1961.

  7.      President Kennedy memo to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, April 20, 1961, NASA Historical Archives.

  8.      Wernher von Braun letter to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, April 29, 1961, NASA Historical Archives; also in Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  9.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 11-D.

10.      The Wernher von Braun lab chiefs: Kurt H. Debus, launch (until he became director of what evolved into NASA-Kennedy Space Center); Ernst D. Geissler, aeroballistics; Walter Haeussermann, guidance and control; Karl L. Heimburg, field test; Hans H. Hueter, systems support equipment; Helmut Hoelzer, computation; Hans H. Maus, fabrication and assembly; W. A. “Willy” Mrazek, structures and mechanics; Erich W. Neubert, checkout and reliability; and Ernst Stuhlinger, research projects. Other Peenemünde veterans in high posts at MSFC included Arthur Rudolph, Werner Kuers, and Hermann Weidner.

11.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 11-D.

12.      Hugh Downs, letter to author from ABC News 20/20 offices, New York, December 11, 1998.

13.      Lang, “A Romantic Urge.”

14.      Walter Haeussermann, paper presented to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Huntsville chapter 1989 meeting; text shared with author November 17, 1998.

15.      Ibid.

16.      Kraft, Flight, 83.

17.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 250.

18.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

19.      Original Glenn postcard and translation in Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

20.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interview, Eva, Alabama, October 26, 1998.

21.      Cobun, “Catalyst, Inspirer, Promoter.”

22.      Dale James, “Behind the Scenes with von Braun,” Huntsville Times, September 8, 1994.

23.      Copies of both the Wernher von Braun and Jacqueline Kennedy letters are in the Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

24.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

25.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

26.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

27.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

28.      Ibid.

29.      Ibid.

30.      Wernher von Braun in an unpublished interview by then-NASA contract writer Robert Sherrod at NASA headquarters, August 25, 1970; unedited file copy of interview transcript provided to author in 1999.

31.      Hugh Downs, letter to author from ABC News 20/20 offices, New York, December 11, 1998.

32.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 11-D.

33.      Mike Wright, “Huntsville and the Space Program,” parts 1 and 2, Alabama Heritage magazine (spring and summer 1998): part 1, p. 27.

34.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 10-D.

35.      Ibid.

36.      Gene Bylinski, “Dr. von Braun’s All-Purpose Space Machine,” Fortune (May 1967), 142–49, 214, 218–19.

37.      Peter Cobun, “A Footnote Is Enough,” Huntsville Times, August 8, 1976.

38.      Bernhard R. Tessman, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

39.      Leland F. Belew, interview, Huntsville, October 28, 1998.

40.      Cobun, “Catalyst, Inspirer, Promoter.”

41.      David Newby, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

42.      Ruth von Saurma, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

43.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

44.      Wernher von Braun, “Why Space Exploration Is Vital to Man’s Future,” Space World (September 1969): 31.

45.      J. T. Shepherd, MSFC memorandum to Wernher von Braun, “Subject: Huntsville Times,” December 15, 1965. Copy of memo was leaked years later to the author.

46.      Ward, The Light Stuff, 143.

47.      Paul Haney, telephone interview, St. Petersburg, Florida, April 2, 1981.

               Chapter 15. En Route to Victory

  1.      Life, “Seers of Space,” 138.

  2.      James S. Farrior, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  3.      Ernst Stuhlinger, letter, February 25, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.” This trip was in 1956.

  4.      Walter Cronkite, letter from CBS News offices, New York, February 14, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  5.      Cronkite, telephone interview, New York, August 19, 1999.

  6.      A. Emile Joffrion, interview, Huntsville, December 15, 1998.

  7.      Ibid.

  8.      Harry M. Rhett Jr., interview, Huntsville, December 1996.

  9.      Edward G. Uhl, talk given at annual Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

10.      Leland F. Belew, interview, Huntsville, October 28, 1998.

11.      David H. Newby, correspondence with author, Guntersville, Alabama, September 14, 1998.

12.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

13.      Edward T. Grubbs, interview, Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

14.      George A. Fehler, interview, Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

15.      Marshall’s Gulfstream, the first of four purchased by NASA in the early 1960s, with von Braun’s endorsement, was outfitted with a dozen passenger seats plus work tables, a bar, and a TV set or two. One seat was designated as von Braun’s. Through the years, the plane carried all seven of the original Mercury astronauts, the Apollo 11 flight crew, most of the other moon-walking astronauts, and a lengthy roster of other big names in space. Four decades later, “G1” was still going strong at MSFC, having logged well over twenty-five thousand flight hours. It continued to be called “Dr. von Braun’s plane.”

16.      George A. Fehler, interview, Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

17.      Edward T. Grubbs, interview (jointly with George A. Fehler), Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

18.      Avid aviator and aerospace pioneer Wernher von Braun was enshrined posthumously in the early 1980s in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, in Dayton, Ohio, the home of a couple of other pioneers, name of Wright.

19.      Donald I. Graham Jr., letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

20.      John C. Goodrum Sr., interview, Huntsville, December 16, 1998.

21.      Edward T. Grubbs, interview (jointly with George A. Fehler), Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

22.      Ibid.

23.      Carsbie C. Adams, telephone interview, Spotsylvania, Virginia, December 16, 1998; and Adams’s privately published (1999) expanded trip journal, “Wernher von Braun in Troposphere Orbit with C. C. Adams.”

24.      Their plight so moved von Braun that later he sought more substantial, organized aid for Tibetan refugees. According to Bonnie Holmes, he worked through the famed travel adventurer of the day, Lowell Thomas, who was attracted to the cause.

25.      Carsbie C. Adams, telephone interview, Spotsylvania, Virginia, December 16, 1998; and Adams’s journal, “Wernher von Braun in Troposphere Orbit with C. C. Adams.”

26.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

27.      Alexander von Quistorp headed a major Berlin banking house. Alive until 1974, he was well aware of his famous son-in-law’s ascendancy in the world of banking.

28.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

29.      Sarah Sanders Preston, telephone interview, Huntsville, March 5, 1999.

30.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

31.      Olin E. Teague, letter to Wernher von Braun from Washington, D.C., March 8, 1971.

32.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

33.      Harry Atkins, interview, Huntsville, May 27, 1999.

34.      Homer Hickam Jr. was another coal-mining West Virginia youth influenced by von Braun toward a career with NASA. Inspired by Sputnik I to learn model rocketry, the teenager in Coalwood, West Virginia, received encouragement in correspondence with the space scientist. After his thirty years as a NASA engineer, lastly at Marshall Center after von Braun had departed for Washington, Hickam captured his experiences as a young rocketeer in the best-selling 1998 book The Rocket Boys. The book was soon made into the hit movie October Sky.

35.      William H. Pickering, telephone interview, Altadena, California, September 16, 1998.

36.      Senator Stennis remained a supporter that NASA could always count on. The sprawling Mississippi Test Facility was later named for him. A nine-story observation tower there, for space officials and VIP guests to view static-rocket test firings, was named in 1998 in memory of von Braun.

37.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 5, 1998.

38.      James B. Odom, interview, Huntsville, September 23, 1998.

39.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

40.      Wernher von Braun, “Rundown on Jupiter-C,” Astronautics magazine (October 1958): 32.

41.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

42.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 8, 1998.

43.      Charles Lundquist, interview, Huntsville, November 19, 1998.

44.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 5, 1998.

45.      Ibid.

46.      James Splawn, interview, Huntsville, October 15, 2002.

47.      As engineers’ and astronauts’ use of the tank increased over the years, NASA’s Houston center decided the facility wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It had let Marshall Center sneak one over on it, but no more, both Shepherd and Splawn said a Houston official vowed in a meeting at MSFC. The Texas center won approval to build its own water tank—bigger and better than Huntsville’s. Later, in the continuing arch-rivalry between the two centers, Marshall was forced to shut down and mothball its tank—after von Braun was gone.

48.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

49.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 5, 1998.

50.      Gray, Angle of Attack, 254–55.

51.      Harrison B. “Stormy” Storms Jr. died on July 11, 1992.

               Chapter 16. Lunar Triumph

  1.      Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch.

  2.      Martin Caidin, Rendezvous in Space (New York: Dutton, New York, 1962), 311.

  3.      James T. Shepherd, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting”; also J. T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 8, 1998; and Walton G. Clarke, interview, Huntsville, September 4, 1998.

  4.      George E. Mueller was the NASA chief of Manned Space Flight during Project Apollo.

  5.      Eugene G. Cowart, interview, Huntsville, August 17, 2003.

  6.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

  7.      Thomas Franklin [Hugh McInnish], An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph (Huntsville: Christopher Kaylor, 1987), 143.

  8.      Ibid., 146–149; William E. Winterstein Sr., Gestapo USA: When Justice Was Blindfolded (San Francisco: Robert D. Reed, 2002), 51, 140.

  9.      Franklin, An American in Exile, 156–58; Winterstein, Gestapo USA, 115–29.

10.      Wernher von Braun, review for The Associated Press of the first ten years of the Space Age, in the New York Times (p. 80) and elsewhere, September 24, 1967.

11.      Wernher von Braun interview, “Has U.S. Settled for No. 2 in Space?” U.S. News & World Report (October 14, 1968), 74.

12.      Ibid., 75.

13.      Pat R. Odom, interview and correspondence, Huntsville, January 14, 2003.

14.      Although the Galileo project first won congressional approval in 1977, the spacecraft was not launched until 1989. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, circled the planet, and proceeded to send back loads of new information including dramatic photographs of the surface of the giant planet and its moons. Wernher von Braun did not live to see Galileo’s success.

15.      Ruth G. von Saurma, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

16.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

17.      William Greenburg, “Von Braun Certain of Flight’s Success,” Nashville Tennessean, July 11, 1969, and elsewhere.

18.      Ibid.

19.      Harold Kennedy, “Von Braun Looks Beyond the Moon as Flight Nears,” Birmingham (Ala.) News, July 11, 1969, p. 4, and elsewhere.

20.      Ibid.

21.      Moscow’s intended Moon-rocket, known as Type G or G Class, clustered several engines from advanced ICBMs and multiple combustion chambers to generate its designed millions of pounds of thrust. In summer 1969, after booster rollout for a static test at the Soviets’ Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan, an upper-stage leak caused a fire that destroyed the vehicle and devastated the launch facility, according to sources, including Roger E. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980), 388. In midsummer 1970, the Soviets tried again. Reports stated that the super-rocket was launched but broke apart before reaching Earth orbit. In November 1972 disaster struck again, with failure of the first stage. Moscow gave up on Type G after that. In the mid-1970s, however, the Soviets began development of the heavy-lift Energia booster for their Buran space shuttle. Buran made a successful unmanned flight in Earth orbit and a safe return; it never flew with cosmonauts aboard, and the program was canceled.

22.      Anthony R. Curtis, editor, Space Almanac (Second Edition) (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1992), 19–20.

23.      Kennedy, “Von Braun Looks Beyond the Moon.”

24.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

25.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 420.

26.      Ibid.

27.      “Prayer is the most important work of man,” von Braun was quoted as saying in a 1977 feature obituary by George W. Cornell, longtime religion writer for The Associated Press.

28.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 269.

29.      Wernher von Braun speech to a joint session of the Alabama legislature, Montgomery, July 29, 1969; he made similar remarks before the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

30.      William C. Fortune, letter, February 22, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

31.      George A. Fehler and Edward T. Grubbs, joint interview, Decatur, Alabama, October 21, 1998.

32.      Wright, “Huntsville and the Space Program,” part 2, 31.

33.      Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

34.      Wernher von Braun speech to a joint session of the Alabama legislature, Montgomery, July 29, 1969; he made similar remarks before the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

35.      Bernard Weinraub, “Huntsville’s Joy Has a German Flavor,” New York Times (July 25, 1969), 29.

36.      Howard Benedict, correspondence with the author, from Titusville, Florida, December 15, 1998.

37.      Including Hollywood giants James Stewart, Ray Milland, Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne, and Fred MacMurray; a former actor, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California; former cowboy actors Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, and Andy Devine; comedians Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Red Skelton; singers Tony Martin, Pat Boone, and Connie Francis; other entertainers Lionel Hampton, Art Linkletter, Les Brown, and Cesar Romero; Apollo 11 television commentators Walter Cronkite of CBS, Hugh Downs of NBC, and Jules Bergman of ABC; labor leaders George Meany and Walter Reuther; the Reverend Billy Graham, Generals Omar Bradley and James Doolittle, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, industrialist James S. McDonnell of McDonnell-Douglas Corporation, presidential advisers Henry Kissinger and Daniel Moynihan, assorted presidential family members, space officials, major newspaper publishers, ambassadors, and the like, according to the New York Times (August 14, 1969), 22.

38.      Lee B. and Kathleen James, joint interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

39.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interview, Eva, Alabama, October 26, 1998.

40.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun.

41.      Cromie, “Wernher von Braun—Dean of Rocketry,” 10-D.

42.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 197.

43.      Walter Cronkite, telephone interview, New York, August 19, 1999.

44.      Cronkite, quoted in Ralph Petroff, “Apollo Program Laid High-Tech Groundwork,” USA Today (June 22, 1999), 3-E.

45.      Cronkite, telephone interview, New York, August 19, 1999.

46.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 234.

               Chapter 17. Rocket City Legacy

  1.      William Joseph Stubno Jr., educational data in master’s thesis, “The Impact of the von Braun Board of Directors on the American Space Program,” University of Alabama in Huntsville, 1980.

  2.      John L. McDaniel, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  3.      Wernher von Braun would continue to be memorialized in brick and mortar in Huntsville. In 1975 the city named its new cultural and conference center for him. NASA in 1994 designated Marshall Center’s three-building headquarters grouping the Wernher von Braun Office Complex. In May 2000, during a year-long community “celebration” honoring von Braun, his old rocket team, and their fifty years of achievements in Alabama, UAH named its refurbished Research Institute the Wernher von Braun Research Hall. And, in January 2004, a $39-million building complex bearing the name of Wernher von Braun opened at Redstone to house the Army Space and Missile Defense Command; an announced $23-million addition was to follow.

  4.      Foster A. Haley, interview, Huntsville, June 30, 1997.

  5.      Ibid.

  6.      Vernon Pizer, “Alabama’s Adopted Spacemen,” American Legion magazine (January 1960), 38.

  7.      Harry L. Pennington, interview, Huntsville, October 27, 1998.

  8.      The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum holds title to the Saturn V on display in Huntsville.

  9.      Edward O. Buckbee, interview, Huntsville, August 4, 1998.

10.      U.S. Space Camp opened as a five-day camp of fun and learning for boys and girls, climaxing with a simulated space mission—just as von Braun had suggested. Camp experiences for teenagers, adults, and aviation enthusiasts were added later. By 2003, Space Camp had attracted 375,000 attendees (mostly children, including the offspring of politicians and celebrities) from every state and many foreign lands. It was the location for much of the filming of the 1986 feature motion picture, Space Camp.

11.      Foster A. Haley, interview, Huntsville, June 30, 1997.

12.      Wernher von Braun speech, Rotary International District Governors Conference, Huntsville, April 12, 1965.

13.      Fred S. Schultz, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

14.      Wernher von Braun speech to Alabama Chamber of Commerce board of directors’ quarterly meeting, Huntsville, May 26, 1965; Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U. S. Space & Rocket Center.

15.      Cobun, “Catalyst, Inspirer, Promoter.”

16.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 8, 1998.

17.      Rankin A. Clinton Jr., interview, Huntsville, January 16, 2001, and correspondence with author, February 14, 2001.

               Chapter 18. After Apollo, What?

  1.      James T. Shepherd, telephone interview, Huntsville, November 6, 2001.

  2.      Ernst Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, April 22, 2003.

  3.      Maxime Faget, telephone interview, Apollo, Texas, July 12, 2003.

  4.      Eugene G. Cowart, interview, Huntsville, August 17, 2003.

  5.      Leland F. Belew, interview, Huntsville, October 28, 1998.

  6.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 290.

  7.      Ibid., 291.

  8.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

  9.      Konrad Dannenberg, interview, Huntsville, September 10, 1998.

10.      Werner Dahm, interview, Huntsville, December 6, 1998.

11.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

12.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

13.      Dorette Kersten (Schlidt), interview, Huntsville, Alabama, September 21, 1998.

14.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

15.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 291.

16.      Patrick W. Richardson, interview, Huntsville, August 14, 1998.

17.      Jack Hartsfield, “Von Braun’s Feelings Are Mixed,” Huntsville Times February 3, 1970.

18.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

19.      Dale James, “Behind the Scenes with von Braun: Bonnie Holmes Was His Trusted Secretary,” Huntsville Times, September 8, 1994.

20.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

21.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

22.      A Huntsville Times reporter was present at von Braun’s first talk to MSFC employees after word broke that he was leaving. Hartsfield, “Von Braun’s Feelings Are Mixed,” Huntsville Times.

23.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interview, Eva, Alabama, December 16, 2000.

24.      Huntsville News, coverage of VBCC opening, February 25, 1970.

25.      Author’s notes from the scene and Huntsville newspaper accounts, February 25, 1970. Other celebrations of space feats did follow at the Courthouse Square, as von Braun hoped. One was the first Space Shuttle flight of a homegrown astronaut, Jan Davis. Another came after once and future astronaut-hero John Glenn’s return to space in November 1998 aboard the shuttle as a fit seventy-seven-year-old. Early the next month he and his crewmates visited Marshall Center to brief and thank employees. Then they gave a public report at the renamed Von Braun Center, enjoyed a downtown parade past cheering crowds and finally a lively program on the old square. Glenn was the center of admiring attention, despite his best efforts to just blend in.

26.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, February 29, 1998.

27.      John D. Hilchey, letter, February 28, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

               Chapter 19. D.C. and the Gods

  1.      Peter Petroff, interview, Huntsville, June 4, 1999.

  2.      Ibid.

  3.      Beginning in the 1950s, German auto-maker Daimler-Benz presented von Braun with a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes model every few years. The deal had major promotional value to the company. Before transferring to Washington, the scientist made a gift of an older-model Mercedes to the mechanic, Wolfgang Fricke, who had tended his cars for years in Huntsville. In 1975 von Braun traveled to Germany to accept an invitation to join the Daimler-Benz board of directors.

  4.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 30, 1998.

  5.      Ibid.

  6.      Julia E. Kertes, follow-up correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, February 13, 2001.

  7.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

  8.      Ibid.

  9.      George E. and Pamela Huxford Philyaw, joint interview, Huntsville, April 12, 2000.

10.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998; and letter to von Braun, February 24, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

11.      Various interviews with von Braun family friends, Huntsville, 1998–99.

12.      Ernst Stuhlinger, bylined editorial-page article, “Wernher von Braun: ‘I Am an Evolutionary, Not a Revolutionary,’” Huntsville Times, June 17, 1977.

13.      Betty Beale society column in the Washington Star, March–April 1970; see also Ward, Wernher von Braun Anekdotisch, 85.

14.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

15.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

16.      Julia E. Kertes, telephone interview, Louisville, Ohio, December 10, 1998.

17.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 294–95.

18.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

19.      Ibid.

20.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 30, 1998.

21.      Ibid.

22.      Ibid.

23.      Ibid.

24.      Ibid.

25.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

26.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, December 16, 1998; and letter, February 24, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

27.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 30, 1998.

28.      Ibid.

29.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 15, 2000.

30.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 30, 1998.

31.      Ibid.

32.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

33.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 30, 1998.

34.      Julia E. Kertes, telephone interview, Louisville, Ohio, January 20, 2003.

35.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

36.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

37.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

38.      Early in his planning stint at NASA headquarters, von Braun had floated a dramatic idea to ignite Richard Nixon’s imagination, assuming he had one. The concept presupposed that the 1970s would see a U.S. space shuttle flying, a space station in orbit, and plans laid for a manned Mars mission in the 1980s. It was Wernher von Braun’s suggestion, according to Washington associates, that the president, in the last year of his presumed second term, would fly aboard the shuttle to the space station in July 1976 in a spectacular highlight of America’s bicentennial celebration. But Nixon didn’t bite. By 1976 it was all moot: There was no shuttle, no station, and no Nixon—he had departed the White House in mid-term disgrace.

39.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999; J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

40.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

41.      Julia E. Kertes, telephone interview, Louisville, Ohio, January 20, 2003.

               Chapter 20. Perigee in Washington

  1.      Peter Cobun, cited in “A Footnote Is Enough,” Huntsville Times, August 8, 1976.

  2.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

  3.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Birmingham, Alabama, November 21, 2000.

  4.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 301–3.

  5.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

  6.      Lee B. James, interview, Huntsville, August 28, 1998.

  7.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, April 29, 2003.

  8.      Thomas L. Shaner, interview, Huntsville, March 4, 1999.

  9.      Ward, The Light Stuff, 70.

10.      Hermann Weidner, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

11.      Edward D. Mohlere, interview, Huntsville, September 20, 1998.

12.      Joseph J. Trento, interview with Thomas Paine, July 18, 1986, in Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory of Apollo to the Betrayal of the Shuttle (New York: Crown, 1987), 89–90.

13.      Ibid.

14.      John C. Goodrum Sr., interview, Huntsville, December 18, 1998.

15.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 303–4.

16.      Ernst Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 21, 2001.

17.      Robert Sherrod, unpublished interview with Wernher von Braun, August 25, 1970, at NASA headquarters; copy of unedited transcript from Washington files shared with author in 1999.

18.      Kathleen (Mrs. Lee B.) James, telephone interview, Huntsville, October 18, 2000.

19.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

20.      James L. Daniels Jr., interview, Huntsville, August 19, 1998.

21.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

22.      Ibid.

23.      Walter R. Dornberger, letter from Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, February 26, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

24.      Frank Williams, first, second, and third telephone interviews, Slidell, Louisiana, September 13, November 7, and November 11, 1998; and copy of the ship’s log of Josephine III.

25.      Frank Williams, first, second, and third telephone interviews, Slidell, Louisiana, September 13, November 7, and November 11, 1998.

26.      Ibid.

27.      Julia E. Kertes, telephone interview, Louisville, Ohio, January 6, 1999.

28.      The album “X + 60 and Counting,” a photocopy of which was given to each letter writer, was presented to von Braun in a leather-bound volume of the original letters. The album project harked back to a volume of space-related essays and other papers done in honor of his fiftieth birthday and published a year later by McGraw-Hill.

29.      Frank Williams, telephone interview, Slidell, Louisiana, November 11, 1998.

30.      J. N. Foster, interview, Huntsville, September 2, 1998.

31.      Philip W. Smith, Newhouse News Service, “Von Braun Will Retire, Take Job with Fairchild,” published in the Huntsville Times and elsewhere, May 26, 1972.

32.      Bob Ward, editorial page article, “Von Braun’s Departure—Why?” Huntsville Times May 28, 1972.

33.      Ibid.

34.      Julia E. Kertes, correspondence with author, from Louisville, Ohio, December 6 and 30, 1998.

35.      Julia E. Kertes, telephone interview, Louisville, Ohio, January 6, 1999.

36.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 307.

37.      George Michael (né George Wilhelm) Low died in 1984, Fletcher in 1991, and Jim Webb and Tom Paine in 1992. In a touch of irony, Paine had been chosen in 1985 by the Reagan White House to chair a National Commission on Space and produce a report on the future of space exploration. The Paine Commission’s 1986 report called for “a pioneering mission for 21st-Century America” of supporting a broad-based effort on the “space frontier” from Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars. Incoming President George H. W. Bush announced that the aggressive plan deserved a high national priority. It went nowhere after Congress did not fund the increased space budgets needed to accomplish it. It came some fifteen years after von Braun and Paine had put forward their similarly ambitious twenty-year space plan for the nation.

38.      Adolf K. Thiel, telephone interview, Palos Verdes Estates, California, October 1, 1998.

               Chapter 21. On the Private Side

  1.      Edward G. Uhl, talk given at annual Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

  2.      Ibid.

  3.      Edward G. Uhl, telephone interview, Trappe, Maryland, December 14, 1998.

  4.      Ibid., and talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

  5.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

  6.      Thomas Turner, correspondence with author, from San Antonio, December 11, 1998.

  7.      Charles C. Hewitt, telephone interview, Alexandria, Virginia, February 3, 1999.

  8.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 311.

  9.      Charles Mitchelmore, Chicago Daily News Service, news article on the twenty-third Congress of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) in Vienna, Huntsville Times and elsewhere, October 15, 1972.

10.      Wernher von Braun, preface to L. B. Taylor, For All Mankind (New York: Dutton, 1975).

11.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993; and telephone interview, Trappe, Maryland, December 14, 1998.

12.      Ibid.

13.      Robert Schwinghamer, telephone interview, Huntsville, September 29, 1998.

14.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993; and telephone interview, Trappe, Maryland, December 14, 1998.

15.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 310; also, Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 440.

16.      Ernst Stuhlinger, telephone interview, Huntsville, January 4, 2004.

17.      Joseph M. Jones, interview, Huntsville, October 6, 1998.

18.      James T. Shepherd, interview, Huntsville, October 8, 1998.

19.      Ernst Stuhlinger, interview, Huntsville, September 29, 2001; Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 316-17.

20.      A sole member of the original rocket team remained at Marshall Center as late as 2004. German-born Werner Dahm, in his eighties, determinedly stayed put as chief aerodynamicist.

21.      Cobun, “A Footnote Is Enough.”

22.      Actually, NSI began life as the National Space Association. In April 1975, less than a year after its founding, the name was changed to the National Space Institute. In 1987 NSI merged with the L-5 Society, and they became the National Space Society.

23.      Hugh Downs, correspondence with author, from ABC News’s 20/20 offices in New York, December 11, 1998.

24.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 265, 325.

               Chapter 22. Too Soon Dying

  1.      John Bruce Medaris, letter, March 23, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

  2.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interviews, Eva, Alabama, December 16, 2000, and January 3, 2001.

  3.      Ibid.

  4.      Von Braun’s counterpart in the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolyov, had earlier contracted colon cancer. Independently the two space leaders had expressed a desire to meet. They never did. Korolyov, the chief designer of the Soviets’ space program, died in January 1966 from complications of colon surgery.

  5.      Bonnie Holmes, telephone interviews, Eva, Alabama, December 16, 2000, and January 3, 2001.

  6.      Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, 469-70.

  7.      Ibid., 362.

  8.      C. E. Monroe Jr., telephone interview, Guntersville, Alabama, February 7, 1999.

  9.      Erik Bergaust, National Space Institute 12-page memorial publication in tribute to Wernher von Braun, 1977.

10.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993; and telephone interview, Trappe, Maryland, December 14, 1998.

11.      Ibid.

12.      William R. Lucas, interview, Huntsville, November 3, 1998.

13.      David L. Christensen, interview, Huntsville, May 21, 1999.

14.      Ibid.

15.      William H. Pickering, telephone interview, Altadena, California, September 16, 1998.

16.      Frederick I. Ordway III, memorandum to author, from Arlington, Virginia, June 29, 1999.

17.      Ibid.

18.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 1993.

19.      Frederick I. Ordway III, memorandum to author, from Arlington, Virginia, June 29, 1999.

20.      The book was published after Wernher von Braun’s death as New Worlds: Discoveries from Our Solar System (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979). In autumn 1976, the cancer-ravaged scientist had also managed to review most of the manuscript for the history, The Rocket Team, by Ordway and Mitchell R. Sharpe, and to write a foreword for it. That book also was published in 1979.

21.      Wernher von Braun paper presented at the Lutheran Church of America synod, Philadelphia, October 29, 1976; reprinted in The Nature of a Humane Society, edited by H. Ober Hess (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).

22.      Ibid.

23.      Transcript, NBC’s Today program, New York, November 11, 1998.

24.      Edward G. Uhl, talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

25.      Edward G. Uhl, telephone interview, Trappe, Maryland, December 14, 1998.

26.      Ibid., and talk at Wernher von Braun Exploration Forum, Huntsville, September 21, 1993.

27.      Ibid.

28.      Arthur C. Clarke, letter, February 21, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

29.      Walter Wiesman, letter, March 1, 1972, “X + 60 and Counting.”

30.      Ernst Stuhlinger, interview, Huntsville, September 29, 2001.

31.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 329.

32.      This quotation from Leon Bloy was cited in a February 13, 1963, letter by von Braun’s Marshall Center chief of information, Bart J. Slattery Jr., in response to a citizen’s inquiry.

33.      Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space.

               Epilogue

  1.      Howard Benedict, correspondence with the author, from Titusville, Florida, December 15, 1998.

  2.      Peter Cobun, “Man of Space, Earth, Spirit—von Braun Is Bid Farewell,” Huntsville Times, June 20, 1977.

  3.      Eugene Emme, preface to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Wernher von Braun obituary, June 1977.

  4.      Frederick C. Durant III, AIAA’s Wernher von Braun obituary, June 1977.

  5.      Francis B. Sayre Jr., Wernher von Braun memorial service program, Washington National Cathedral, June 22, 1977.

  6.      Printed here with permission from Michael Collins; excerpts appeared in Stuhlinger and Ordway, Crusader for Space, 329–30.

               Appendix A: Letter on Goddard Patents

  1.      Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  2.      In March 1999, Time magazine included Goddard in its special issue on the twentieth-century’s “100 Greatest Minds.” Von Braun and his team received parenthetical mention. Repeated was the worn anecdote about a captured German missile men who, when asked the origin of the V-2, supposedly replied, “Why don’t you ask your own Dr. Goddard? He knows better than any of us.” The anonymous quotation is apocryphal, prominent team member Ernst Stuhlinger told me in 2002. He said he had no idea who might have made the oft-repeated remark, and doubted it was ever made.

  3.      Wernher von Braun correspondence files, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

  4.      Erik Bergaust, Reaching for the Stars: A Biography of the Great Pioneer in Space Exploration, Wernher von Braun (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 24–25.