Vijayabvharathi C
Today if India and Pakistan beat their chest and say they
have nuclear tipped missiles to protect themselves from each other, they should
thank the Germans who laid the base for modern rockets in 20th Century. If the
Americans feel they are first to place a human being in moon, they also should acknowledge
the base of the Apollo mission. Today PSLV,Ariane,Atlas,Shenzhou can trace
their roots back to "Peenemunde", a village in North Germany. In mid
of 1938, When Hitler was searching for a weapon that will devastate enemy in
the battlefield, an young scientist namely "Wernher von Braun"
approached and proposed the idea of using long range rockets in the battle.
Hitler initially was not impressed by V2 design saying "It’s another long
range artillery weapon with very high cost of production". Even though with German higher command
showing no interest, confident Braun proceeded with his V2 research and further
honed the capabilities of the V2.Seeing the enthusiasm of the engineers who
involved in V2 as well to create some psychological fear among the enemies,
Hitler finally approved the V2 into the production phase in 1942. With Hitler’s
army already started to taste the bitterness of defeat in the theatre of Eastern
Europe, they started their propaganda warfare of saying that they had an X
weapon which will scorch the enemy. Germans started to attack the allied forces
with their newly invented weapon creating enormous property destruction and
loss of lives. Nations that bore the brunt of V2 were Belgium, United Kingdom, France,
Netherlands and few others.
Peenemünde Museum replica of V-2
In 1945, with Germans routed out in the World War II, US and
Soviet establishment were searching for the scientists of this deadly weapon.
As Nazi establishment already ordered the scientists of V2 to destroy all
precious documents to ashes maintaining confidentiality of their innovation.U.S
and Soviet spy agents were searching for one man largely behind this innovation
ie Braun. Braun already feeling the heat of defeat of Nazis, made backup of all
important research papers of V2, started moving from Peenemunde, a village where
factory used for production of V2 lied. Knowing the cruelty of soviet for the
captured prisoners, braun made his mind to surrender to U.S, the nation he felt
which runs under the policy of holy bible. American establishment captured
Braun and few other bright german scientists under name of “Operation Paperclip”.
The first photo from space was taken from a V-2 launched by
US scientists on 24 October 1946.
They planned to use the services of braun to create their
own V2. Initially braun and his team were kept in refugee camp in Texas. Even under
these circumstances, braun calmly lectured young researchers in U.S about space
travel, space vehicles. Even booed few times by racist researchers, braun
continued his passion. Braun and his team made V2, American copy in 1948.He made further
milestone in missile history by making Jupiter rocket. His ultimate innovation
was invention of Saturn space vehicle, which launched the Apollo vehicle and it
landed man in the moon.Soviet also built their own copy of V2 with few captured
engineers of V2, naming it as R-1. Their Luna program is from base of V2.
Though devastating V2 resulted in huge human losses during
world war II, it laid the foundation stone for innovation in modern rocket history.
Another sad thing is nearly 12000 people perished when Nazi regime used
refugees in concentration camps as slave laborers for V2 production. Current
innovations in rocket science were made from the V2 and its researcher braun
& team. He is now rightly called as “Father of modern rocket science”
Sources:Wikipedia, Other science magazines
