THE FLIGHT OF THE LUCKY LINDA
JUNE 1, 1943 (CONTINUED)
Within minutes, Frieda Koenig’s radio message made its way around the world.
First it reached MI-6 headquarters in London, where a duty officer decoded the signal and, realizing its importance, alerted his superior. The Naval Intelligence officer instructed the duty officer to relay the signal to Washington, D.C., as a priority flash message.
In a Pentagon basement, a radio operator alerted a U.S. Army intelligence officer. This captain had been briefed on Silver Bird; he ordered alert messages sent to both McChord Field in Washington State and Alamogordo Army Air Field in New Mexico.
Silver Bird had just completed its first atmospheric skip when the Hollywood Babe took off from McChord. From his seat in the back of the B-29’s cockpit, Lloyd Kapman spotted the German spacecraft as it approached the American coast. The bomber’s radio operator sent a confirmation message to Alamogordo, which was already scrambling to prepare Lucky Linda for immediate launch.
And then…
“Six… five…”
Henry Morse’s voice reverberated through loudspeakers as Robert Goddard, standing at the periscope, watched the distant launchpad with the growing realization that he was too far away. He shouldn’t be in this concrete igloo, protected from the noise and the blast, but outside, where he could see the rocket lift off with his naked eyes.
“Four… three…”
“Primary ignition!” Goddard shouted. He didn’t stick around to see Harry Chung push a large red button on his console. Instead, he bolted away from the periscope and rushed toward the door. Startled, Omar Bliss tried to stop him, but Goddard impatiently shoved him out of the way.
“Two… one…”
“Coming through!” he snapped at the MP guarding the door. The sergeant shoved it open, and Goddard charged outside just in time to see a distant flash across the desert sands.
“Zero… launch!”
Brighter than the rising sun, white-hot flame poured from Lucky Linda’s main engine, followed an instant later by the simultaneous ignition of its six solid-fuel boosters. Dense grey smoke billowed out of the blast pit beneath the launch ring, a massive rooster tail of spent rocket fuel. For a moment, it seemed as if the spacecraft weren’t going anywhere, and Goddard felt his heart stop.
Please, no, he thought, unable to breathe. Please, God, no, not after all this…
Then, slowly at first, the spaceship rose from its pad, perched atop a blazing shaft that looked like nothing less than a column of hellfire.
“Go!” someone in the nearby trench shouted, and his cry was picked up by others around him. “Go! Go! Go…!” Goddard found himself joining the chant. “Go! Go! Go…!”
As Lucky Linda cleared the tower, a thunderball rolled across the desert, shaking the TV platform and causing the onlookers to clamp their hands over their ears, followed a moment later by a hot wind against their faces.
Goddard watched the craft as it hurtled upward. The thunder became a steady, crackling roar, louder than anything he’d ever heard before; it sounded as if the sky itself were being torn open. Shielding his eyes with an upraised hand, he suddenly found himself speechless. Here was his life’s ambition, born in a childhood moment of epiphany, made real; he was no longer looking at a weapon of war but the opening of the road to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. He was seeing the future.
Within seconds, the rocket became a brilliant circlet of lights moving swiftly away, leaving behind it a dense white trail as it veered to the northeast. The noise was just beginning to subside when Goddard remembered where he needed to be. Ears ringing, he turned and rushed back to the blockhouse.
Inside, he found his team no less excited than anyone who’d watched the launch from the trenches. They were all was on their feet, yelling at the images on the television screens, clapping each other on the back, tears streaming from their eyes. Only Jack Cube remained calm. Bent over his microphone, hands clasped against his headphones, he sought to hear something from the man in the spacecraft’s cockpit:
“Lucky Linda, this is Desert Bravo, do you copy?”
From the speakers, a voice filtered through the crackling static: “Desert… Lucky Linda. All systems…”
“Lucky Linda, can you repeat…?”
“Everyone, be quiet!” Goddard shouted. “Back to your stations!”
Silence fell across the blockhouse as everyone remembered what he was supposed to be doing. They sat down at once, returning their attention to their consoles. “Trajectory nominal,” Gerry Mander reported from the radar screen. “Range thirty-two miles, altitude forty-five thousand feet, velocity five thousand feet per second and rising. She’s…”
“Wa-hooo!”
Skid Sloman’s yell burst from the ceiling speakers, startling everyone in the room. Goddard jerked, his eyes widening behind his glasses. “Oh my God, is he…?”
“This thing’s climbing like a bat out of hell!” Sloman shouted. “Oh, yeah, Linda… bring it to me, baby!”
“He’s fine, Bob.” Jack smiled. “Just having the ride of his life.” He touched his mike again. “We copy loud and clear, Lucky Linda. Keep talking to us, Skid.”
“Perhaps he shouldn’t.” Bliss moved up beside Goddard. “May I remind you that he’s broadcasting in the clear?”
The colonel had a point. Lucky Linda was transmitting on a shortwave frequency of thirty thousand kilohertz, with sufficient power and range for Sloman’s voice to be picked up by ham operators from Southern California to the Maine coast.
“Little late to think of that now, isn’t it?” Henry asked.
Goddard simply smiled and shook his head. “Colonel, whatever happens next, if you think you’re going to be able to keep this secret any longer…”
He didn’t finish the thought. Now wasn’t the time to argue about military secrecy. Lucky Linda had gotten off the pad, but their work was only beginning.
Never letting his gaze leave the instrument panel, Skid Sloman clutched the attitude controller within his left hand and the main engine throttle with his right. Acceleration shoved him back in his couch; vibration constantly shook his body, rocking him back and forth. Skid hung on, though, consciously taking deep breaths as he peered through eyelids being squeezed shut by mounting g-force.
“Lucky Linda… still go,” he managed to gasp. “Altitude… ninety thousand feet. Velocity… seven thousand feet per second.” He checked the chronometer and fuel-pressure gauge. Yes, everything was going according to the mission flight plan. “Time to booster jettison… five… four… three…” He reached between his legs, found the yellow ring next to the attitude-control stick. “Two… one…”
He yanked the bar upward and heard a series of sharp, muffled bangs as explosive bolts fired along Lucky Linda’s stern. He couldn’t look back, but the sudden kick he got in the back told him that the six strap-on boosters had been successfully jettisoned. They would be falling away behind him now, leaving the spacecraft to continue its ascent on main-engine thrust alone.
The boosters were no longer needed. Lucky Linda was at the edge of space. Looking up from the instrument panel, Skid saw that the sky was rapidly changing from dark blue to black, the sun a merciless spotlight that threatened to blind him the instant he looked in that direction. The vibration was easing off, the ride becoming smoother. He could barely hear the engine.