SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology (8 page)

(1) It was the first to launch and orbit an artificial satellite, the famous Sputnik;

(2) It was the first to launch an animal – the little dog Laika – into space;

(3) It was the first to orbit and successfully return a man into space, Colonel Yuri Gagarin;

(4) It was the first to orbit and successfully return a woman into space;

(5) It was the first to land unmanned probes successfully on the Moon;

(6) It was the first to conduct successfully “extra-vehicular activity,” i.e., a space walk, by humans in orbit; and last but not least,

(7) It was the first to place nuclear and thermonuclear warheads on an ICBM, the SS-6 and SS-7 “Sapwood.”

Then, suddenly and quite inexplicably, the Soviet Union seemed to have “lost its drive” when the Apollo 8 mission successfully orbited, and the Apollo 11 mission successfully landed, humans on the Moon and returned them safely to the Earth. Inexplicably, the Soviet Union seemed to “just give up” and, as far as we know, never launched its own manned Moon mission, even though it was well within Russian capabilities. And perhaps equally inexplicably, the U.S.A., sighting “budget cuts” and public disinterest, discontinued its own Moon program, abandoning the scheduled Apollo 18 through 21 missions, and breaking up its remaining Saturn V boosters. The U.S.A. would not return to the Moon until the 1990s, with the Pentagon’s unmanned “Clementine” orbiter. Then suddenly China orbited a human, and declared its intention to go to the Moon. Suddenly American interest seemed to change again, and the Bush Administration decided it would be a good idea for America to go back while on our ultimate way to Mars.

From World War Two to the present, space represents a strange cast of characters and a strange plot indeed: Hitler, the Soviets led by Korolëv and his team of German engineers, the Americans and
their
team of German engineers, the French-dominated European space agency and
their
team of German engineers, the Japanese, the Indians, and now the Chinese. China is significant for it underscores the actual Soviet achievement, for China’s space technology is but re-worked Soviet technology updated with the latest American..

All this implies that the Soviet Union developed very early on boosters with enormous thrust and lift capabilities, as the following comparative chart of American and Russian rockets from the 1950s and 1960s illustrates:

American Boosters:

Russian Boosters

As even a simple physical comparison demonstrates, in terms of raw boosting power, the Russians were consistently ahead of America throughout the earliest years of the Cold War, right down to the Apollo landings themselves.

Of course this is in part explained by the fact that the Russians
had
to develop rockets with greater thrust than America for two important reasons. First, they were less successful in miniaturizing components than the Americans, and consequently, pound for functional pound, their rockets tended to be heavier. But there is a much more important and obvious reason. Given its relatively more northern latitude, the Russians could not take advantage of the greater angular velocity of the earth as could the Americans, situated as they were at more southern latitudes. At the latitude of Cape Canaveral, the angular velocity of the earth is greater than at the Soviet Baikonur Kosmodrome, and hence, American rockets were not required to generate as much thrust to lift similar payloads.

But all this really only serves to underscore the Russian achievement all the more. Working under more restrictive conditions, they overcame them. How then was Korolëv and his design team able to achieve such early and stunning success with their boosters, especially since the U.S.A. was supposed to have gained the “crème de la crème” of German rocket scientists and engineers?

The First ICBM: The Russian “Sapwood”;
The Same Booster was used to Launch Mankind’s First Artificial
Satellite, the Sputnik

2. The First ICBMs and the Characteristic Russian “Bundle” Rocket

A closer glance at the first Russian ICBM, the same rocket used to launch and orbit Sputnik, with their typical “shape” distinctive of Russian boosters all the way up to the massive Proton booster, shows how. As the close-ups of the “Sapwood” show, the typical Russian booster is not so much a
single
rocket but a “bundle” of rockets fastened around a central shaft which is itself another engine.

C. What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Clearly, something is wrong with this picture. The U.S.A.
did
get the best and brightest of Nazi rocket scientists and technology, yet, the Russians made away with scores of “middle” echelon scientists and engineers. How then did Korolëv hit upon the brilliant and simple expedient of the “bundle” rocket?

The standard explanation is that Korolëv while on a walk in the woods around his dacha in Moscow was inspired by the root systems of enormous trees. They suggested to him the distinctive shape and concept of the Soviet “bundle rocket” boosters.
⁷
In the light of the now known state of German wartime rocketry, however, this cannot be anything other than an attempt to deflect attention away from the real origin of the concept, for as a simple expedient to achieve quick heavy lift capability, it is a characteristic more of a nation at war – and in a hurry – straining to achieve a swift entry to space and long-range rocket bombardment capabilities. It is an expedient that – like the Nazi decision to pursue only a uranium-fueled atom bomb –
fits
the practical requirements of Nazi Germany.

D. The Real Origin of the Bundle Rocket: “Projekt Zossen”

Not surprisingly, then, the real origin of the “bundle rocket” booster concept was in wartime Nazi Germany, where the idea was born – in 1942! – to “bundle together” five V-2 rocket engines, and fire them simultaneously, to achieve greater lift and range capability. The plan was called “Project Zossen,” a clue, perhaps, that the origin of the idea came from within the OKW’s super secret underground communications and command bunker in Zossen, a suburb of Berlin. In any case, the project was more than just a “paper project” for two designs were actually modeled and wind tunnel tests were performed on them, as indicated by the following pictures of German wind tunnel test models:

The Bundle Rocket Design Test Model:
The Rocket Model is in Front of a Larger Rocket inside the circle

Close-up of the German “Bundle Rocket”

This expedient had the advantage over designing, testing and building an entirely new rocket in that the V-2’s components and performance capabilities were known quantities, already tested, and in production. And clearly Korolëv’s boosters are but a streamlined second generation version of the earlier Nazi prototype. But was a full scale version of the rocket, or for that matter, any of the other intercontinental rocket designs the Nazis had proposed, ever tested? To answer that question, we return to Peenemünde, at the end of the war, and notice yet another “problem.”

E. SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammlers “Evacuation” of
Peenemünde and the Russian Arrival

Is there any indication that these early German ICBM “bundle rockets” or any other long-range strategic rockets went to actual construction and testing? If so, then the logical choice was Peenemünde, for in spite of the heavy attention of Allied bombers, it was the only place presumably with facilities large enough to achieve the task.

1. Strange Events at an “Empty” Site

General Walter Dornberger made it clear that as early as 1939 the ultimate goal of the Peenemünde center was to create a long range rocket capable of striking New York City and other targets on the east coast of the United States. Of course, this implies a capability to strike all of European Russia as well.
⁸
By July 29, 1940, at Peenemünde the engineer Graupe had already produced the first designs for a trans-Atlantic 2 stage rocket. Hermann Oberth began his own formal studies for the fuel and lift requirements for such a rocket in October of 1941,
⁹
as the Wehrmacht continued to liquidate the Red Army in Operation Barbarossa.

But more to the point is a letter from the Reich’s emerging “plenipotentiary for secret weapons development,” SS
Obergruppenführer
Hans Kammler, dated October 1943, and stating that the development of the
Amerikaraket
continued apace.
¹⁰
Moreover, there exist estimates for cost, labor, and material for the “America Rocket” that strongly suggest that it had become more than a mere “paper project.” As with anything else in Kammler’s black empire of black projects, anything suggesting “labor” meant the slave labor of concentration camps, and to suggest that the project was merely a “paper project” is to diminish the human suffering that was involved in its very real flesh and blood actualization.