Postwar, The Germans in Alabama

[MrBern]

a little article on 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II... moving to Alabama in 1950.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/us/31huntsville.html

“People said, ‘If you had just been at war with these people, how can you be so accepting of them?’ ” recalled Loretta Spencer, the 70-year-old mayor of Huntsville, offering a visitor a homemade pecan cookie. “But I think we were just in awe.”

“We knew that the people here run around without shoes,” Dr. Dannenberg said, in a tone of deadpan gravity. “They make their money moonshining and that’s what they drink for breakfast, and supper. And so we, in a way, were a little bit disappointed that it was really not that bad.”

 

[BC_Box]

one of many who settled on Monte Sano, the mountain overlooking the town, which reminded the Germans of home.

Marshall Space Flight Center Director Dr. Wernher von Braun presents Lady Bird Johnson with an inscribed hard hat during the First Lady's March 24, 1964, visit. While at the Marshall Center, Mrs. Johnson addressed the center' employees, toured facilities and witnessed test firings of a Saturn I first stage and an F-1 engine. Dr. von Braun is wearing a cowboy hat presented to him months earlier by Lyndon Johnson during a visit to the Johnson ranch in Texas

 

[Twitch]

Von Braun and his collegues were theorizing the legitimate aspects of space travel in the early 30s and long before the Apollos had calculated what it would take to reach the moon.

His vision got us to the moon, not Kennedy's. After von Braun was gone we lost our way and now will have to re-invent everything at great cost to get back to where we were in 1975! This will allegedly happen by 2020!

It's a good part of the problem NASA has no singular personality with a indomitable will to achieve a goal, just a bunch of committies and work groups.lol

 

[kokopelli]

Quite sad really..

It is a shame isn't it... The engineering advances made by the Germans in such a short period are unbelievable. Recently released footage, in the last couple of years, of German weapons tests say quite a lot.. Ron

Von Braun and his collegues were theorizing the legitimate aspects of space travel in the early 30s and long before the Apollos had calculated what it would take to reach the moon.

His vision got us to the moon, not Kennedy's. After von Braun was gone we lost our way and now will have to re-invent everything at great cost to get back to where we were in 1975! This will allegedly happen by 2020!

It's a good part of the problem NASA has no singular personality with a indomitable will to achieve a goal, just a bunch of committies and work groups.lol

 

[Dr Doran]

"And the Germans tried hard to assimilate. Von Braun insisted that the scientists speak English if there was so much as a single American, even a janitor, within earshot, said Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, another surviving member of the team."

A highly intelligent move.


Good article about Von Braun in current issue of New York Review of Books, too.

 

[Diamondback]

It doesn't help that NASA set out to get rid of Von B and his entire team as soon as Armstrong's boot hit lunar-surface, either.

And this hyped "return to the Moon"? Boondoggle--all it is is a warmed-over Apollo, with the added waste of having to reinvent the wheel because that frickin' moron Senator Proxmire railroaded the destruction of all Saturn technology, and the only reason we have the ones we do is WvonB started playing a shell-game to "hide" them...

Mind you, I'm all for going back, and on to Mars--but we need to be doing something new, something bold, something innovative to do it--like, say putting the crew up in a capsule, linking up with a larger spacecraft built in orbit for the trip, then returning by capsule for the reentry, leaving the "space taxi" parked in orbit for the next trip--lest people just say "same as last time, so why bother?" and flip back to Amurrican I-Dull... Heck, that effect had already set in by Apollo 13's time less than a year after Armstrong!

Having all that manufacturing and raw-materials reenter and burn up from disposable stages is just plain wasteful, and while we couldn't do orbital-assembly in the '60s and thus had to use huge, one-shot rockets, we could use such construction technologies now...

WWWD--What Would Wernher Do?

 

[Diamondback]

BTW, Stuhlinger and Frederick Ordway's Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space, while a huge book, is well worth the read for anyone interested in the Apollo era or spaceflight history. Bought my copy at KSC last time I was in Florida, and now wish I could find it again...

 

[Dr Doran]

Mind you, I'm all for going back, and on to Mars--but we need to be doing something new, something bold, something innovative to do it--like, say putting the crew up in a capsule, linking up with a larger spacecraft built in orbit for the trip, then returning by capsule for the reentry, leaving the "space taxi" parked in orbit for the next trip--lest people just say "same as last time, so why bother?" and flip back to Amurrican I-Dull...

Dome colonies. Big ones. Offworld. Mining. Fission.

 

[Lincsong]

I remember reading a similar article in the Wall Street Journal a couple years back. I'm just glad we got to them before the Commies.

 

[Dr Doran]

I remember reading a similar article in the Wall Street Journal a couple years back. I'm just glad we got to them before the Commies.

Agreed fully. Excellent point. No matter how much anyone hates any American president ... compared to Stalin, they were lovely folks.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

Mind you, I'm all for going back, and on to Mars--but we need to be doing something new, something bold, something innovative to do it--like, say putting the crew up in a capsule, linking up with a larger spacecraft built in orbit for the trip, then returning by capsule for the reentry, leaving the "space taxi" parked in orbit for the next trip--lest people just say "same as last time, so why bother?" and flip back to Amurrican I-Dull...

With the exception of the a few details.....what you just stated is not the plan....

erm is the plan...

Just because -you- can't yet read the whole plan.....

 

[Dr Doran]

With the exception of the a few details.....what you just stated is not the plan....

erm is the plan...

Just because -you- can't yet read the whole plan.....

Je ne comprends pas. Peut-etre vouz voudriez dire plus de ca.

 

[Diamondback]

Usually, if something's not for public release, it's best not to allude to it at all... anyway, I see that somebody has it in for me here.

 

[Chas]

This happened in Canada, too. Life in Bowmanville POW camp (Ontario) was so agreeable that a number of Germans returned to Canada; some were somewhat annoyed that they had to be repatriated to Germany and apply for immigration like everybody else.

Many studied and completed University degrees there. Somewhat different than what allied POW's received.[huh]

 

[scotrace]

Here's a good read on German POW's who were held in the US interior for the duration.

 

[Twitch]

rljsrubicon You are correct in assessing the late war German weapons and air vehicles as superior and innovative.

Believe me I have done extensive research on the most esoteric vehicles that were either built or conceived by the German engineers. I even have produced a book-length manuscript covering it. There is nothing that came from the Allies for decades after the war that was not originally conceived by the German aero engineers!

But what I sincerely believe is what von Braun and his peers like Eugen Sanger knew in the early 1940s- what is needed is a craft that can alight under its own power, leave the atmosphere and return under power.

We are still duncing around creaky old shuttles conceived in the 70s and we have no alternative vehicle. Read that again- we have no alternative vehicle. So when the shuttles begin to crack and crumble we're outta luck. There is no successor!

During the war von Braun , Willy Ley, Klaus Reidel and even Hitler's favorite aviatrix, Hannah Reisch, chatted with such easy familiarity about outer space, the moon, the planets and what forms extraterrestrial life might take. They theorized a space station too.

30+ years after the end of the Apollo program and all we have to show is a crackhouse, unfinished space station and a fleet of antique flying taxi cabs that have done their duty and should be sent to museums.

Had we kept on the original NASA/von Braun schedule Mars would have been visited before the turn of the century, a permanent moon base and space station would have been realities.

They just let is slip away on purpose.

 

[Dr Doran]

Twitch, you and I see eye to eye on this failure. And your frustration and disappointment is echoed in my soul.

This happened in Canada, too. Life in Bowmanville POW camp (Ontario) was so agreeable that a number of Germans returned to Canada; some were somewhat annoyed that they had to be repatriated to Germany and apply for immigration like everybody else.

Many studied and completed University degrees there. Somewhat different than what allied POW's received.[huh]

That's quite interesting, and not surprising.

 

["Doc" Devereux]

Usually, if something's not for public release, it's best not to allude to it at all...

Is my information out of date, or is NASA still running to Project Constellation? Constellation's overview has been in the public domain for some time now, surely?

 

[Twitch]

Yeah, Doc, that's the general basis for the next moon dealy-o. It's so vague of course that whatever happens no one has to be held for responsibity. But basically it's the technology as 1962- chemically fuelled rockets blowing huge wads of fire and boom-boom launches and near uncontrolled landings.

Originally it was supposed to be combined with private enterprise for mining and expoliting the moon for minerals and anything of potential commercial value. If NASA was planning to build a little igloo there as a "permanent base" forget it. Funding that would be just silly.

It's so futile that they are considering this endeavour with the same old motive power frought with the same problems. How far are they from a vehicle with magnetic engines? How much serious R & D have they spent on that or ion powered engines? On any motive power other than rocket?

To me it's just the same old boondoggle.:eusa_doh:

 

[scotrace]

I remember touring the Space & Rocket Center in Hunstville when I was a kid. There was a whole section there devoted to the innovations and new technologies and products that came as a direct result of the needs of NASA.

It does seem kind of odd, now that you point it out, to keep putting their eggs into a fossil fuel basket. If they are. One has to hope that, since the private firms involved in developing future flight technologies are so secretive, that they have something worth keeping to themselves for the time being.