Wernher von Braun, What Is Your Secret?

This article is a Historical Essay Written and submitted by [[Grady Woodard]].

Grady’s Space Chronicles

Wernher von Braun, What Is Your Secret?

The German Rocket Team came to the Redstone Army Missile Ballistic Missile Command (ABMA), Huntsville, Alabama, in 1950 . They came from Peenemunde, Germany, via England and Ft. Bliss, Texas to Redstone Arsenal, to develop War rockets for the Army and America.

In their past, the Germans were faced with life and death actions, but survived by learning and depending upon each other to keep secrets. Each of the 118 Germans at ABMA and later at MSFC, were a tight group and had learned how to manage as a team by developing some of their own tools - all of it was kept secret to protect themselves. All this were built into the way they worked and managed. The Germans put themselves in key positions in Laboratories and on Boards to control and protect themselves. This system was very successful until interests in Washington and Congress took control.

Boeing got the Saturn V contract in December 1961, to build the Saturn V, beginning with Boosters for Vehicle SA-503 through SA-517. By the summer of 1962, Boeing had almost 500 engineers and technicians working at MSFC and another 600 established in a hastily reconditioned and converted cotton mill in downtown Huntsville known as the “HIC Building” (Huntsville Industrial Center). Boeing had another 450 people at the Michoud Plant, an old tank cylinder heads at the Michoud Ordnance Plant near New Orleans, Louisiana and hundreds more the Twin Towers Office Building in the City.

In the summer of 1963 at MSFC, Boeing had people working “elbow to elbow” for six months, with MSFC’s people to learn the “ropes” of building and testing the huge Saturn 5 Rocket. Boeing people were everywhere, those who didn’t have a desk next to you, sat in chairs and the leftovers were placed in office trailers in the parking lot beside the buildings. They kept asking, “What are you doing now, can you show me what to do?“ They had a problem with me, I had multiple assignments and working on them all at the same time and they couldn’t follow that, as they were assigned to just one single item on the project. It was common to have more that one Boeing engineer trying to follow our multiple tasks and just waited for his subject to come up.

After the training period, they returned in 1964 to Michoud to start production on their own. Another six months things were falling behind for Boeing at Michoud. Boeing couldn’t get it done! What were they doing wrong from what they had learned? What was the German’s secret? A Boeing request came to MSFC through Mr. Walt Compton’s Program Office, asking MSFC to write a “White Paper” report describing the things the Germans did and in particularly “How did the Germans do it?” Mr. Compton was my Branch Head under ABMA.

This was given by Mr. Compton to his staff member, Joe Misenhelder, which I worked with later at the Navy‘s Polaris Missile Facility in Charleston, SC. Misenhelder was looking for a person who was close to the Germans to find out their management secrets. To get the needed information, the assignment was given to me, in the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory. I had worked close with the Germans and knew a lot of them well. I once formed a German bowling team, worked on a telescope project on the mountain with them and was invited to their weddings and affairs. I found out such things as some of the Germans were atheists but all were very technical in nature.

I was very shocked to be assigned this task! I started to interview the Germans one by one and ask, “How do you run your desk, what’s your secret?” They were very reluctant but in a nice way, they said very little and looked puzzled why I would ask them. After my third interview, I was returning to my office and realized what a trap I was in. I thought about the problem and about what I had learned from them and felt I really may know their secrets. I was not about to give away my friends secrets because I knew they had been through a lot and their secrets saved their lives, keeping themselves in demand was a the big secret.

Misenhelder was seeking the report as he called every day. I had to provide a ”White Paper” report on the German secrets. I went to work and wrote a report about teamwork. Knowing that only the Germans could have such a team, led by Wernher von Braun, that could not be duplicated anywhere by anyone. The report was flowing with buzz words, fashioned in an rhythmic manner. Words so harmoniously coordinated they appear in a masterful artistic display of governmental “double talk” or “gobble gook” confusion. The report appeared to say everything yet, it said nothing! The report sailed through the reviewers to the Program Office. The report got good reviews and I was given a “Job well done, just what the Program Office needed!” To my surprise, Boeing liked it and recovered it’s production schedule.