Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [8]
When the Russians first fire-tested one of those engines on September 7, 1945, the results stretched the limits of Soviet scientific imagination. The V-2 generated twenty-seven tons of thrust. The biggest Soviet rockets, by comparison, could not even manage a ton of lift. The difference amounted to a quantum technological leap. Every detail of German engine design seemed to reveal a minor engineering miracle. The Germans used alcohol as propellant, instead of kerosene mixed with liquid oxygen. The alcohol ingeniously did double-duty as a coolant for the combustion chamber to prevent meltdowns, snaking around its outer walls in coils, like a refrigeration unit. At the bottom end of the chamber the exhaust nozzles had been counterintuitively shortened and flared, creating a larger opening for the hot jet gases to exit. Such a configuration had long been rejected by Soviet designers on the theoretical principle that a larger outlet would dissipate the intensity of the escaping gases and thus reduce power. In fact, the simple and yet radical alteration increased output by 20 percent. “Pure genius,” whistled Soviet propulsion specialists in evident admiration.
With several combustion chambers fully assembled, the Russians had solved part of the reverse-engineering puzzle. But twenty thousand separate parts went into each V-2, and correctly putting the remaining pieces together into an operational guided missile was another matter. Even the scattered component parts initially had to be disassembled “down to the last screw,” Chertok recalled, so that detailed drawings could be made to glean a basic understanding of how they worked.
Maddeningly, for the Russians, more than one thousand qualified German engineers were just beyond reach in the American zone, across the Werra River. To make matters worse, the engineers had hidden all the assembly instructions—six truckloads of assorted owner’s manuals, including more than sixty thousand blueprint modification drawings—at the bottom of a mine, to be used as a bargaining chip with Toftoy, their new American benefactor. “These documents were of inestimable value,” recalled Dieter Huzel, one of the German scientists entrusted with concealing the trove. “Whoever inherited them would be able to start in rocketry at the point where we had left off, with the benefit of not only our accomplishments but of our mistakes as well.”
The B-team that Chertok was left with had neither the benefit of experience nor documentary guidance. It might have been numerically superior—by 1946 some six thousand Germans were on the Soviet payroll, resurrecting the V-2 program—but it consisted mostly of technicians, draftsmen, and lower-grade engineers whose knowledge rarely exceeded subassembly levels. What was missing from the Soviet effort were German scientists with knowledge of the big picture. And no amount of extra egg rations, tax-free salaries, bonuses, and bribes could entice stars of von Braun’s caliber from the American side. The one exception was Helmut Grottrup, von Braun’s deputy for electric systems and guidance control. Unfortunately for the Russians, he came in a package deal with the imperious Frau Grottrup, who viewed the Red Army as her personal catering service, right down to the show horses she demanded for the stables of the sprawling villa she had selected for her residence. Frau Grottrup fired cooks and assistants on a weekly basis, and the never-ending shopping list she presented to her husband’s astonished Soviet employers required the full-time attendance of a colonel. “My sister goes to university wearing men’s boots,” wrote one of Frau Grottrup