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Biography • Part 3
CONTINUED FROM PART 2
Marriage in Germany
On 14 February 1947 Wernher von Braun boarded a ship in New York to sail to Germany in order to marry a woman he knew only casually since the two had met in Peenemünde. He also intended to bring back his parents, who were now in Landshut, Germany.
Maria von Quistorp was von Braun’s first cousin and not yet 19 years old. She and the 34-year-old von Braun had only exchanged letters since he had gone to America, but she immediately accepted the proposal of marriage he had sent via his parents. On 1 March, the two were married in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Bavaria. Constantly shadowed by American MPs, the couple had no real honeymoon, not even on the ship back to the US. (Only women had cabins; the men had to sleep in bunk halls with returning GIs on the troop ship.)
At the end of March 1947 the von Brauns arrived by train in El Paso. With them were Wernher’s parents, Emmy and Magnus von Braun. For the next three years, von Braun would continue to work on the army’s experimental Hermes II ramjet cruise missile, a project that would later be cancelled for being too impractical. During this time and later, von Braun was critical of the US government’s failure to give rocket development a higher priority. In the end, this lost time would cost the US dearly in the space race with the Soviet Union (which also had German scientists). Had the US been more foresighted, perhaps the first orbiting satellite in 1957 would have been American and not the Russian Sputnik.
The Move to Huntsville, Alabama
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On 1 July 1960, Dr. Wernher von Braun was appointed director of the newly created Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He first came to Huntsville to develop rockets for the Redstone Arsenal there in 1950. This photo was probably taken in May 1964. PHOTO: NASA |
But the German V2s had never achieved a target accuracy better than ten to twenty miles, while the US Army was now demanding a rocket with similar range (182 miles) to be accurate within 150 yards (137 m)! The biggest hurdle now faced by the rocket engineers in Huntsville was developing a guidance system that could achieve this much higher accuracy rate.
Von Braun was now in charge of the Guided Missile Development Division of the Ordnance Missile Laboratories (later known as the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, ABMA). By 1954, he had 950 employees. Just four years later he would be in charge of 3,925 people. As he had earlier demonstrated in Peenmünde, one of von Braun’s main strengths was his ability to lead people and manage large, complex projects. In January 1958 a modified Jupiter-C rocket developed by von Braun’s engineers launched America’s first satellite (Explorer 1), just months after the Soviets had put Sputnik 1, the world’s first man-made satellite, into orbit.
The Space Spokesman: Collier’s and Walt Disney
In the mid-1950s Wernher von Braun’s name became known to all Americans, following a series of articles by Cornelius Ryan and von Braun in Collier’s magazine (circulation: 4 million) and several television shows on Walt Disney’s popular Disneyland TV series. Ryan’s first beautifully illustrated feature in Collier’s (with artwork of von Braun’s rocket design on the cover) appeared on newsstands in March 1952. It explained the complexities of future space travel and allowed von Braun to expound on his favorite topic: man in space. The now famous rocket scientist also did PR work for Collier’s, making numerous TV and personal appearances. In June 1953, another Collier’s piece written by von Braun himself described what he called a “Baby Space Station” carrying monkeys in low earth orbit as a first step in conquering space. The series ended in April 1953 with another von Braun article: “Can We Get to Mars?” The Collier’s articles and related books had a huge impact on American public opinion at a time when the print media were much more important than they are today.
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Dr. Wernher von Braun in the “Man in Space” episode of Walt Disney’s Disneyland TV series, first broadcast in March 1955. PHOTO: Walt Disney Studios (See links for video and DVD of the Disney TV shows with von Braun in Part 4.) |
The Collier’s publicity also caught the attention of Walt Disney, who was then searching for something to fill the “Tomorrowland” segment of his new Disneyland TV series for ABC, based on his new California theme park (which would open in July 1955). When an earlier TV deal fell through in 1954, von Braun accepted Disney’s offer for him to participate in a series of space-travel shows, along with Willy Ley, another noted German aerospace engineer.
For his Disney deal, von Braun was paid $6,500 as a consultant and for his TV appearances (about $70,000 in current dollars). The first show in the series, “Man in Space,” was broadcast on 9 March 1955. A month later von Braun and over 100 of his fellow Germans became American citizens in ceremonies in Huntsville. To the press that day von Braun said: “This is the happiest and most significant day in my life. I must say we all became American citizens in our hearts long ago...”
NEXT > Sputnik - von Braun Bio Part 4
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Wernher von Braun Bio: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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