A lorry engine racketed to life as a technician stripped the shroud from the rocket’s nose and descended the ladder. The lorry drove towards the gap in the high concrete wall, leaving the launch area clear. Two minutes to launch.
The fuselage was captured in a sheath of glistening ice crystals as the minus-two-hundred-degree-centigrade liquid oxygen sucked moisture from the humid air. A thin plume of vapour shot from a vent half-way up the rocket’s side to signal that the oxidiser tank had reached full pressure. The red flare indicating an imminent launch arched up from the control bunker. At minus twenty seconds the merest wisp of vapour appeared beneath the rocket, and a collective sigh of relief went up from the technicians in the bunker. Bethwig heard Dornberger explaining to Goering that the vapour had been vented through the fuel feed system to make certain that everything was operating properly and that no valves were stuck.
At minus ten seconds sparks showered from the nozzle as the pyrotechnic igniter went off. A gout of reddish-black flame belched from the rocket’s base, steadied, faded to yellow, and a sound like a giant blowtorch gone mad swept the island. The flame turned an incandescent white impossible to watch without protective glasses, and clouds of smoke and dust sprang up to obscure the rocket. For a moment, only its nose was visible, and then, like some prehistoric monster rearing slowly above a primeval fog, the A-5 appeared. Bethwig could see it turn slowly on its axis as its fins cleared the smoke. It tilted slightly and was gone, a fast-dwindling dot of flame directly overhead.
Silence held the launch site for a moment, then cheers and shouts erupted. Bethwig turned to see the officers gathered about Goering pointing upwards, shading their eyes against the sun, all talking at once. His instrument panel was registering perfectly, and the whir of the cinecamera focused on the gauges surprised him. In the excitement he had not recalled having turned it on. The temperature gauge was holding steady at 2902° centigrade, five degrees below his prediction. Satisfied, he turned his glance upward and, after a moment of practised search, found the white dot now moving slightly to the east.
‘Thirty-five seconds,’ blared the loudspeaker.
Even through his powerful Zeiss binoculars Bethwig could not resolve the pencil-shaped A-5 completely. This was far better than they had hoped, and he glanced quickly at his instruments again. No change.
‘Forty-five seconds,’ and a moment later, ‘Brennschluss, end of combustion.’ The white dot disappeared.
‘Rocket motor burning time was forty-six seconds,’ the loudspeaker intoned, ‘and altitude at burnout was eight point one kilometres.’
Through the glasses Bethwig watched as the rocket continued to climb under the momentum imparted by the engine until the shape elongated and he knew it had reached its peak altitude. At any second von Braun would press the button that would send a radio signal to deploy the parachute. The rocket was tumbling now, and sunlight flashed from the alternating squares of red and yellow painted on the fuselage. Abruptly the tumbling stopped. He could make out a hazy stream behind and the main parachute deployed in a perfectly-shaped canopy.
The missile hung quiescent in the shrouds, and the air was so still, Bethwig could follow its descent until foreshortened trees appeared in his binoculars and the rocket splashed into the Baltic. There was a puff of yellow smoke as the explosive charge cut away the parachute, and the A-5 bobbed, stern up, like a child’s bath toy The patrol launch described a sharp turn and raced across the harbour.
For a moment Bethwig remained standing on the lip of the bunker, glasses pressed against his eyes, wanting to impress the picture on his mind: the colourful rocket, paint bright against the intense blue sea, gleaming wakes, the tiny Storch aircraft swooping low over the tilted gnomon surrounded by the creamy parachute. There had been dozens of launchings, and hundreds were yet to come, but none, he knew, would ever be as important, or as perfect, as this.
Colonel General Hermann Goering had departed as darkness crept in over the Baltic. The evening brought cooling breezes that were gratefully received, and Dornberger ordered supper served on the roof of the canteen, overlooking the tiny harbour.
Bethwig had noticed the man earlier, standing a bit apart from the officials and officers fawning about Goering. He was of medium height, balding, and he wore a simple but expensive summer suit. His eyes missed nothing, Bethwig thought. He arrived shortly after Goering’s plane had landed, and Dornberger hurriedly introduced him as Albert Speer, mentioning something about a post as Hitler’s personal architect. How did one go about becoming a personal architect? he wondered. Yet Dornberger had seated Speer on his left, a position that would have been given to Goering had he remained.
Bethwig and von Braun were seated further along the table, but several times during the meal Speer leaned forward to ask them questions. Each time, others engaged in conversations of their own stopped to listen.
‘Colonel Dornberger tells me,’ Speer said to Bethwig as the waiters removed the last course, ‘that today’s test flight of the A-Five rocket vindicated one of your developments.’
Bethwig coughed to hide his embarrassment and stole a glance at Tuchman. The old man was watching Speer and Dornberger in tight-lipped silence.
‘Come now, young man, no modesty please,’ Speer prompted.
‘Well, yes, the test flight did bear out a few of my thoughts.’
‘I would like to hear about them.’
Bethwig appealed silently to Dornberger, who chose to misinterpret the glance. ‘You may speak freely, Franz. Herr Speer has the highest clearances.’
‘Was it the graphite vanes?’ Speer asked.
‘Ah… no, sir. We knew they would work.’ Bethwig was surprised that Speer knew that much.
Speer laughed at his expression. ‘You were correct, Colonel. Herr Doktor Bethwig is a modest young man. He reduces the cost of the vanes from one hundred fifty to one point five marks and claims to have known it would work all along.’
Dornberger grinned at Bethwig who was now flaming red. Von Braun chuckled, nudging him with an elbow as Tuchman stalked away from the table without an apology. Under prompting by Domberger and von Braun, Bethwig explained the film cooling system, and Speer listened closely, asking occasional questions.
The military officers and civilian officials invited to watch the launching filtered to the far end of the table as the talk became increasingly technical, and the scientific staff gathered about the head. Bethwig thought it strange that Speer, who for all his interest seemed a lightweight in scientific matters, should prefer to indulge in what must have been a boring discussion of velocities, specific impulses, radio telemetry techniques, and a myriad other engineering concerns.
When he finished, Speer turned to Dornberger. ‘I understand, Colonel, that another purpose of today’s launching was to test a guidance system?’
Dornberger nodded and folded his napkin. ‘Our A-Three rocket was cursed with the problem of maintaining directional stability. The rocket would turn on its axis during powered flight, thus making it impossible to keep a proper course. At first we thought this a result of wind acting upon the fins, but wind-tunnel tests disproved that. It was due rather to fluctuations in the exhaust stream. To correct the problem, Wernher developed a gyroscope system that controls the movement of the vanes in the exhaust stream. Now, when the rocket begins to veer, the gyroscopically controlled vanes bring it right back by bending the exhaust in the opposite direction.’