Secret Weapons (14 page)

Yet it was in India that the first metal rockets were designed and built. The British East India Company fought for decades to subdue the kingdom of Mysore and in 1792 rockets made of iron were designed and built for the rulers of Mysore, Haider Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. The metal casing was some 8in (20cm) long and gave these rockets a range of over half a mile (about 2km) and they so surprised the British that attempts were made to copy them. Examples were sent back to the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, London, where Sir William Congreve developed the design and introduced the (better-known) Congreve rocket which was successful in the Napoleonic wars. Although the Congreve rocket deserves a place in the history of rocketry, it was the Indian craftsmen who had produced the first successful iron rockets. They were launched in their thousands and deserve a conspicuous place in military history.

These rockets were stabilized by having a rod protruding from the rear, just like today’s firework rockets launched from a bottle. In 1844 a self-taught British inventor, William Hale, improved the design so that the thrust was slightly vectored to produce spin along the axis of travel like a rifle bullet. The flight path was stabilized by this design change and the stick was no longer needed. The largest Congreve rockets had weighed up to 32lb (15kg) and Hale’s design allowed this to be doubled to 60lb (about 28kg). These were used by the Americans during the Mexican–American War of 1846–48 and the British Army also used Hale rockets during the Crimean War of 1853–56.

It was in the early years of the twentieth century that matters began to develop in several countries. A Russian high school mathematics teacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a paper entitled
The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices
which was the first scientific work on rocketry. He proposed the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen as propellants and calculated the maximum exhaust velocity they could generate. The publication date of this far-sighted book was 1903.

Knowing nothing of his Russian predecessor, a French aviator named Robert Esnault-Pelterie delivered a lecture to the French Physics Society (Societé Française de Physique) in 1912 entitled ‘Consideration of the Results of the Unlimited Lightening of Motors’ in which he included similar calculations on the output of rocket engines, and even advocated nuclear power (from half a ton of radium) as an energy source for long-distance space travel. Esnault-Pelterie was later in contact with Romanian-born Hermann Oberth, who was destined to become one of Germany’s greatest authorities on military rockets.

It was also in 1912 that the American enthusiast Robert Goddard began his study of rockets. He proposed a small combustion chamber as the best source of power and even outlined the use of multi-stage rockets. Goddard was a highly enterprising visionary and ensured that his ideas were patented in 1914. He patented two inventions. The first was for a rocket using liquid fuel; the second was for a two- or even a three-stage rocket propelled by solid fuel. Two years later he compiled a paper on rocketry at Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1919 the Smithsonian Institution published this paper as a modest book entitled
A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes
. In the following year Goddard was published in the prestigious science journal
Nature
where he began with these propitious words:

Goddard spent time over the next few years perfecting his design for a rocket with liquid fuel and his first successful rocket flight took place on 16 March 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts. It flew from a 6ft (1.8m) gantry on a short, explosive flight that lasted no more than 3 or 4 seconds; but it proved that the concept worked. Within three years his improved specifications gave steadily improving results – his small rockets could now travel some 200ft (70m) at speeds of up to 60mph (about 95km/h). In 1930 he logged an altitude of 2,000ft (6,000m) and a velocity of 500mph (800km/h). This was truly astonishing progress.

Little general interest was shown in Goddard’s work at the time, and what comments were published had an unenthusiastic tone. Goddard never had the satisfaction of seeing his views take root. Those who knew of his work regarded him largely as a crank.

One of Goddard’s most influential inventions was a portable rocket-powered shell that could be launched by a soldier. With a colleague, Clarence Hickman, Goddard had given a successful demonstration of his invention at the United States Army Signal Corps at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, in November 1918. The demonstration was a complete success, but the war ended two days later and the proposal did not develop further. It was revived in World War II, and went on to evolve into the bazooka, which became one of the best-known rocket-powered devices in history.

Goddard had declared his private beliefs in the class oration which he gave on graduating back in 1904. ‘It has often proved true that the dream of yesterday is the hope of today,’ he said, ‘and the reality of tomorrow.’ The twentieth century, and the remarkable events of World War II, would prove how true those words would be.

Rockets had been used during World War I, first by the French. In April 1916, Le Prieur rockets fired from the struts of a Nieuport fighter had brought down the German Zeppelin LC-77 full of blazing hydrogen. Later in the conflict a Belgian flyer, Willy Coppens, and a British pilot, Albert Ball, used small experimental rockets against German balloons. Nothing came of either event, and incendiary shells were found to be more effective.

During the 1920s there were enthusiasts studying rocketry in Russia, France and the United States, but there was little sense of common purpose. In Germany, however, the burgeoning sense of nationalism began to catch the popular imagination. Hermann Oberth was one of the greatest visionaries. He was a medical student at Munich and in 1922 he wrote to Goddard in America to request reprints of his writings on rocketry. Oberth was writing a book which in 1923 was published as
Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen
(
The Rocket into Interplanetary Space
) in which he emphasized how much he had been impressed by Goddard’s writings, which he cited, but went on to write that his book had not in any way plagiarized his American forebear. But interest was suddenly growing in Germany. The very next year Max Valier published
Der Vorstross in Weltraum
(
The Drive to Outer Space
) and a year after that Walter Hohmann published his book entitled
Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskörper
(
The Attainability of Celestial Bodies
). This volume was so technically detailed that it was still being consulted decades later by NASA. In 1926 Willy Ley published his popular book
Die Fahrt ins Weltall
(
Journey into Space
) and in July 1927 a group of amateur rocketry enthusiasts – engineers, scientists, doctors, students – met at a restaurant in Breslau to launch the Society for Space Travel (Verein für Raumschiffahrt, known as the VfR), with Hermann Oberth at its heart. It is worth noting that this was an association, not a university department. Although rockets were suddenly fashionable, they remained a subject for amateurs.

Within a few weeks of its launch in June 1927, the Society for Space Travel recruited a new member: the young Wernher von Braun, who was destined to become the most influential rocket designer of all. Membership of the Society – mostly young scientists and engineers – soon rose to about 500 and they inaugurated a regular magazine,
Die Rakete
(
The Rocket
). Von Braun was among the group (others were Walter Hohmann, Klaus Riedel, Eugen Sänger, Rudolf Nebel and Max Valier as well as Hermann Oberth and Willy Ley) who were popularizing the science of rockets. Valier organized tests of rockets attached to cars, gliders, railway trucks and even sledges. The first tests took place at a former ammunition dump at Reinickendorf, which soon earned the nickname
Raketenflugplatz
(Rocket Airfield) and today is the site of Tegel Airport.

By 1930 the Society for Space Travel was so well established that its members set up a permanent office in Berlin and agreed a design for a rocket motor powered by gasoline and liquid oxygen. This was the Mirak-1. It had its combustion chamber surrounded by the liquid oxygen tank. The liquid fuel was supplied from a hollow tail stick acting as a storage reservoir. The ‘head’ of the rocket was 1ft (30cm) in length; the tail measured about 3ft (1m) long. The first experimental firing was successful, but the oxygen tank exploded on the second test.

Early in 1931, Karl Poggensee launched his design for a solid-fuel rocket near Berlin. He fitted it with cameras, a speedometer and an altimeter which showed that it reached 1,500ft (450m) before landing by parachute. The first German rocket with liquid fuel was launched in the same year by Johannes Winkler and Hugo Huckel who were independent enthusiasts and not members of the Society. Their choice of fuel was liquid oxygen and methane burned in a rocket some 2ft (60cm) long. Just as had happened with the Mirak-1, the first test near Dessau was successful (the rocket reached 1,000ft, about 300m) but the second test launch in East Prussia failed when fire burst from the rocket and it crashed after reaching an altitude of 10ft (just over 3m). In April 1931 Reinhold Tiling tested a series of four solid-fuel rockets at Osnabrück. One detonated at 500ft (about 150m) but the others were successfully fired – one reaching 6,600ft (2,000m) at a maximum speed of 700mph (1,100km/h). One of his later rockets was reckoned to have reached 11,500ft (3,505m).

Research by the Society for Space Travel was moving ahead. Their new design of rockets was proposed by Willy Ley who called them Repulsors. It is a revealing choice of name. Earlier rockets had been given neutral names, or (like the Huckel/Winkler rockets) were named after their inventors. ‘Repulsor’ sounds much more like a military device and perhaps Willy Ley was already thinking of using military money to further his research. Like the Mirak rockets, the Repulsor burned a combination of liquid oxygen and gasoline but the combustion chamber was cooled by water in a double-walled metal jacket, rather than being cooled by the liquid oxygen. This was an inherently safer design. In May 1931 two of the Repulsor rockets reached a height of 200ft (61m). With the development of the Repulsor-3, an altitude of 2,000ft (610m) was reached and later in 1931 Repulsor-4 rockets were reportedly reaching a mile into the sky. Although rocketry was internationally regarded with indifference – and was usually dismissed, even ridiculed, whenever it emerged – in Germany it was allowing fresh new minds to find satisfaction.

In 1932 the Society for Space Travel first came to the attention of the authorities. This was not because the enthusiasts were seen as brilliant young men, but because there had been complaints about the rocket tests from people living in the area due to the noise. The Society’s members had no specific authorization to carry out testing, and there was a growing fear about the increasing influence of Hitler. Hitler had begun to issue directives that restricted the activities of all organizations that had significant ties to the outside world as his influence began to grow. Members became increasingly nervous and began to drift away. In a period of economic collapse, the Society could not manage to meet its financial obligations without the membership income and later in 1933 the Society for Space Travel finally closed down. It is surprising to realize that world’s first ever rocketry organization – the results of which were to revolutionize warfare – was shut down largely because of pressure from the authorities.

Even after the demise of the Society for Space Travel, some members were able to continue their activities. Some of the senior staff within the German Army had been persuaded that rocketry might yet prove to be important and as early as 1931 they had allowed Society members to conduct a test launch at the army proving ground at Kummersdorf. The rocket they authorized for the launch was a Repulsor. Its name doubtless endeared it to the military Carl Becker. As soon as he saw that the Kummersdorf people were supporting rocket development, Wernher von Braun asked permission to continue his experiments as part of his doctoral thesis on rocket propulsion. His luck was in, and he was authorized to continue to use the Kummersdorf facility. Despite the collapse of the Society Von Braun’s private passion was saved.

Meanwhile an engineer named Franz Mengering, who worked for the City of Magdeburg, had become a devotee of the writings of Peter Bender. Bender propounded the
Hohlweltlehr
(hollow world doctrine) which held that – instead of being a globe – the world was a hollow sphere. Instead of flying the long way round to Australasia, Bender asserted that it would be quicker to fly straight up in the air. In this way a rocket could easily hit New Zealand. Mengering was convinced that it would be easy to prove, using a small rocket with a message from Germany. If Bender’s theory was correct, then the missile would land near the South Island of New Zealand. Franz Mengering even managed to persuade the authorities at Magdeburg to fund some trial experiments. Rudolf Nebel, one of the founders of the Society for Space Travel, successfully applied for a grant of 25,000 Reichsmarks to fund the design of the rocket. Nebel had joined the Nazi Party and ingratiated himself with the authorities and stated his ambition to fly a man in a rocket 1km (over half a mile) above the earth’s surface, from where he would descend by parachute. The rocket would be designed with his partner Herbert Schäfer. They proposed to launch their rocket in June 1933 as part of a major fair promoting the city of Magdeburg. The idea was to adapt the Repulsor design, with a volunteer secured inside in a torpedo-shaped fairing below the motor. The fuels would be stored in two long tubes trailing behind the rocket. It would be 25ft (7.6m) tall and a 14ft (4.6m) unmanned prototype would be used to prove that the idea worked.