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What Is Peenemünde?
extraordinary, new ideas regardless of who proposed them. In a half-whisper so that
no one could overhear, he confided, “Blow my brains out! What have they
invented here?! It’s an airplane, but not our pitiful BI, with a 1.5 metric ton bottle.
This one had 100 metric tons of sheer fire! That damned engine hurls the airplane
to a frightful altitude—300 or 400 kilometers! It comes down at supersonic speed,
but doesn’t break up in the atmosphere—it glances off it, like when you throw a
flat stone across the water at an acute angle. It strikes, skips, and flies farther! And
it does this two or three times! Ricocheting! Remember how we used to compete
at Serdolikovaya Bay in Koktebel? The one who got the most skips won. That’s
how these aircraft skip along the atmosphere; they dive down only after they have
flown across the ocean in order to slice their way into New York! What an impressive
idea!”
The newly discovered report was immediately “classified” a second time. In the
presence of witnesses, Isayev slipped the report under the shirt of his most reliable
collaborator, then instructed this person to return to Moscow in their B-25 Boston
without reporting to General Sokolov.
As far as I was able to understand later, this was not the design of the A-9/
A-10 missile, which was designed for a range of 800 kilometers. The report
discussed the ranges required to strike New York. From today’s standpoint, we can
say that the layout of the vehicle described in the report—found in the woodpile
in Peenemünde in May 1945—anticipated the structure of the American Space
Shuttle and our Energiya-Buran system.
Let’s interrupt the narrative about Peenemünde and take a closer look at what
they had found in the “woodpile.” After the report arrived in Moscow via the
special flight of the Boston bomber, it was personally delivered to our patron,
General Bolkhovitinov. Together with engineer Gollender, who had a good
command of German, Bolkhovitinov studied the sensational contents.
The report had been issued in Germany in 1944. Its authors were the Austrian
rocket engine researcher E. Sänger, who was already well known before the war,
and I. Bredt, who was unknown to us and was later identified as Irene Bredt, a gas
aerodynamics specialist.
Eugen Sänger was known for his book Raketen-flugtechnik (The Technology of
Rockets and Aviation), which he published in 1933. It had been translated and
published in the Soviet Union. Back when he was a 25-year-old engineer, Sänger
was captivated by the problems of rocket technology. He was one of the first serious
researchers of gas dynamic and thermodynamic processes in rocket engines.
You can imagine how Bolkhovitinov and other NII-1 specialists felt as they
leafed through the top-secret report, one of 100 printed copies. Judging by the
distribution list, it had been sent to the leaders of the Wehrmacht main command,
the ministry of aviation, to all institutes and organizations working in military aviation,
and to all German specialists and leaders who were involved in rocket technology,
including General Dornberger in the army department of armaments, who
also served as chief of the Peenemünde center.
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