The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

in retreat before the advancing Allied armies. When it
became obvious that Germany was facing collapse,
von Braun agreed to surrender to the American army
as part of Operation Paperclip. Soon, he and his
group, together with hundreds of V-2s and rocket
components taken from the Mittelwerk, were on their
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way to the United States.
V-3
A German super-cannon designed by Saar Roechling
during World War II; also known as the Hochdruck-
Van Allen, James Alfred (1914–)
(continued from page 456)
weapons used in World War II, especially for torpedoes
used by the U.S. Navy. By the fall of 1942, he had been
commissioned as an officer in the Navy and sent to the
Pacific to field test and complete operational requirements
for the proximity fuses. After the war, Van Allen
returned to civilian life and began working in highaltitude
research, first for the Applied Physics Laboratory
and, after 1950, at the University of Iowa. Van Allen’s
career took an important turn in 1955, when he and several
other American scientists developed proposals for
the launch of a scientific satellite as part of the research
program conducted during the International Geophysical
Year (IGY) of 1957–1958. After the success of the
Soviet Union with Sputnik 1, Van Allen’s Explorer spacecraft
was approved for launch on a Redstone rocket. It
flew on January 31, 1958, and returned enormously
important scientific data about the radiation belts circling
the Earth. Van Allen became a celebrity because of
the success of that mission, and he went on to other
important scientific projects in space. In various ways, he
was involved in the first four Explorer probes, a number
of the early Pioneers as well as Pioneer 10 and 11, several
Mariner projects, and the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory.
Van Allen retired from the University of Iowa in
1985 to become Carver Professor of Physics, Emeritus,
after having served as the head of the Department of
219, 297
Physics and Astronomy from 1951.
Van Allen Belts
Two doughnut-shaped belts of high-energy charged particles
trapped in Earth’s magnetic field; they were discovered
in 1958 by James Van Allen, based on measurements
made by Explorer 1. The inner Van Allen Belt lies about
9,400 km (1.5 Earth radii) above the equator and con-
Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) 459
pumpe (HDP), “Fleissiges Lieschen,” and “Tausend
Fussler.” The 140-m V-3 was capable of sending a
140-kg shell over a 165-km range. Construction of a
bunker for the cannons began in September 1943 at
Mimoyecques, France. However, the site was damaged
by Allied bombing before it could be put into
operation, and it was finally occupied by the British at
the end of August 1944. Two short-length (45-m long)
V-3s were built at Antwerp and Luxembourg in support
of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944.
These were found to be unreliable and only a few
shots were fired, without known effect.
tains protons and electrons from both the solar wind
and the Earth’s ionosphere. The outer belt is about three
times farther away and contains mainly electrons from
the solar wind. Most manned missions take place in low
Earth orbit, well below the inner Van Allen belt, and also
avoid a region over the South Atlantic where a local
weakness in Earth’s magnetic field allows the lower belt
to penetrate to a much lower altitude. The Apollo flight
paths were chosen so as to only nick the (more energetic)
inner belt; no special shielding was considered necessary
to cope with the outer belt.
Vandenberg, Hoyt S. (1899–1954)
A career military aviator who served as chief of staff of
the U.S. Air Force (1948 to 1953). He was educated at the
Military Academy at West Point and entered the Army
Air Corps after graduation, becoming a pilot and an air
commander. After numerous command positions in
World War II, most significantly as commander of Ninth
Air Force, which provided fighter support in Europe during
the invasion and march to Berlin, he returned to
Washington and helped with the formation of the
Department of Defense (DoD) in 1947. As Air Force chief
of staff, he was a senior official in the DoD during the
formative period of rocketry development and the work
on intercontinental ballistic missiles. 203
Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB)
The home of the Western Space and Missile Center,
America’s second major spaceport after Cape Canaveral.
Vandenberg AFB lies about 240 km northwest of Los
Angeles and is operated by the Air Force Space Command’s
30th Space Wing. The base was established in the
late 1950s as a site from which ballistic missiles could be
launched under simulated operational conditions. A
Thor intermediate range ballistic missile was first test