A Thiel comment on the last page of Dornberger’s memorandum reveals another serious difficulty: No complete “assembly drawings” for the first flight vehicle existed. The design bureau was responsible for producing blueprints of all parts of the A-4, except for the guidance and electrical equipment (only Steinhoff’s division had the requisite knowledge for those). Yet a complete set of drawings had not yet appeared, and indeed two years later still had not, in spite of innumerable promises by the Peenemünde leadership. The question is: What blame does Riedel deserve for this mess? Decades after the fact, this is difficult to determine, but the old hand from Heylandt and Kummersdorf was stubborn and, as an engineer with only a two-year technical-school education, was in over his head with the A-4 project. He resented criticism from the increasingly dominant diploma and doctor engineers at Peenemünde. Riedel’s difficult personality, combined with the drawings fiasco, would lead to his being shunted into another job by the end of the summer. Yet there is little doubt that the endless changes on the test stands, which were often done without any formal documentation, made “Papa” Riedel’s job extremely difficult, and the confusion imposed by the elimination of scarce materials only exacerbated matters further. In addition, the entire organization was dominated by development engineers with little or no manufacturing experience. For all his real shortcomings, Riedel ultimately was the scapegoat for the difficulties experienced in trying to transfer an exotic technology into production on a very short time scale.52
A final revealing insight is provided by Dornberger’s angry memorandum about the Launch Aggregate 1 accident. Apparently von Braun had asked him the day before (February 4) to close down the Pilot Production Plant and transfer its personnel to the Development Works, if priority problems imposed any new personnel cutbacks. Dornberger’s response was only to go into a rather silly harangue about how it was not the number of bodies that counted for a successful design, but rather the “deliberations of a single superior mind.” Thiel’s marginal comment was: “The VW [the Pilot Production Plant] will once again be the death of us. It eats up people and produces nothing!” Ironically, it was the factory that had suffered most, since skilled workers were constantly being taken away to other projects, such as finishing Test Stand VII. But, in the sense that the plant was an ill-conceived, unproductive project, Thiel and von Braun were right. By June 1943 relations deteriorated to the point that Schubert complained to Dornberger about “the hitherto existing rivalry” between the two sides of the Army center and about the factory’s alleged role as the “milch cow for the EW [the Development Works].”53
Clearly, the situation at Peenemünde in the winter of 1942 was tense, nor was it eased by the fate of the first flight vehicle. After repairs, the now renamed A-4/V1 was returned to Test Stand VII. On March 18 Thiel drew up the organization of the launch crew for an attempt in the next five to ten days. The vehicle would have a unique trajectory: it would have a pitch program of only 10 degrees plus half-full propellant tanks, so that it could be recovered by parachute, presumably to salvage recording instruments. But fifteen minutes before midnight that evening, while Thiel was observing the first burn test with the guidance system running, a reddish flame exploded from the side of the missile just over the engine. The steam generator and many lines were wrecked, and the engine shut itself off automatically. The propulsion chief soon concluded that leaks in the fuel and oxidizer lines, caused by vibration and structural stress, allowed an explosive mixture to build up over the head of the motor. Fortunately the test stand was undamaged, because the tanks did not rupture, but this time the vehicle was junked for spare parts. The first launch of an A-4 would have to be put off a couple of months longer.54
No new outburst from Dornberger is to be found in the records; perhaps he accepted that this accident was unavoidable. In any case, planning continued for a very optimistic launch schedule. One document from April 20 predicted A-4/V2 on May 12, A-4/V3 on June 9, A-4/V7 on July 4, and four more by September 29. The out-of-sequence launch of the seventh flight vehicle was a specific request of Dornberger, who wanted the earliest possible attempt with a missile light enough to reach the promised range of 270 kilometers. (The V2 to V6 vehicles could go only 180–190 km because of excessive weight.) The manipulation of the schedule, von Braun admitted in July, was done “for propagandistic reasons.”55
Notwithstanding the best hopes of the rocket group, endless problems plagued the second flight vehicle too. In late April A-4/V2’s fuselage was damaged while it was being erected on Test Stand VII because of a mismatch in the dimensions of the rocket and its Meillerwagen transporter-trailer. Further weeks were lost, and the vehicle was not finally ready for launch until June 13.56
Attending that day was a powerful delegation of observers: Speer, Milch, General Fromm, General Leeb, and his Navy counterpart, Admiral Witzell, along with many others. Tension and excitement ran high, as the Nazi armaments elite, Dornberger, and the center leadership waited for the first launch from Peenemünde itself. The visitors, who were perched on the roofs of the main buildings, must also have been stunned by the mere sight of the world’s first large rocket, just as Dieter Huzel would be in the summer of 1943. Finally it lifted off, but it disappeared into low-hanging clouds only 80 meters above the ground. (It is possible that the launch was rushed because the presence of the VIPs.) The vehicle made it through Mach 1, but soon thereafter its battery failed and the engine quit because of the missile’s rapid rolling, which began immediately after launch. The A-4/V2 was next sighted falling through the clouds tumbling, with no visible fins. It crashed into the sea only 600 meters (less than half a mile) from the shore.57
That disappointing result seems not to have discouraged those in attendance. In the high-level meeting that took place afterward, Albert Speer announced his intention to give the A-4 the newly created superpriority rating of “DE” (the German initials for “urgent development”). The Armaments Minister also promised Dornberger help in acquiring more manpower, as did Erhard Milch, who said he would provide some designers and production planners from the aircraft industry. But Milch was being somewhat two-faced, for he announced in the same breath the Luftwaffe’s “Cherry Stone” missile based on the Argus pulsejet.58
At the meeting Dornberger also requested Speer’s help in finding a director for a Production Planning Directorate, which von Braun had suggested as a way to get the problem-plagued transition to manufacturing moving again. Almost a month later the Armaments Ministry nominated Detmar Stahlknecht, an engineering manager with experience in the quantity production of aircraft. The task of Stahlknecht’s Directorate was to produce a new set of production drawings and to organize the manufacture of parts and subassemblies. At the end of the summer Walter “Papa” Riedel was placed under Stahlknecht’s command to supervise the creation of the drawings. The design bureau chief was replaced in his former job by an energetic diploma engineer who, by an odd coincidence, had a virtually identical name. Walther Riedel had worked on alternate 25-ton engine designs at the Technical Universities of Dresden and Berlin.59
Speer’s support made him an indispensable ally in the Führer’s personal entourage, but Dornberger continued to view the Minister’s role as one of giving advice and setting overall priorities, while the details of A-4 production remained in the hands of Army Ordnance. Following the Führer’s request to Speer to study the manufacture of 3,000 missiles a month, Dornberger had concluded, in April discussions with Ministry officials, that 1,000 per month might be feasible, if more liquid oxygen plants were built and if the ethanol fuel, which was produced by fermenting potatoes, was diluted with methanol, at the cost of a slight loss of performance. Under pressure to produce a launch success, however, he and the Peenemünders pushed that rather optimistic manufacturing goal into the background as the responsibility of the Production Planning Directorate and the Ordnance A-4 Working Committee. Speer himself did not intervene during the spring and summer of 1942, presumably because he saw that the time was not yet ripe. What was needed to secure Hitler’s go-ahead was a demonstration that the rocket actually worked. As a way of pushing the rocket group, in August Speer formally approved a “DE” rating, but for the completion of twenty test missiles only.60