| A THICK JET OF ORANGE-WHITE FLAME FURIOUSLY SPURTEDfrom the tail of the huge cigar-shaped rocket. The powerfulengine roared angrily as a mixture of liquid oxygen explodedin its combustion chamber. When the thrust of the motorreached 55,000 pounds, the missile shivered and slowly rosefrom its launching pad; up and up it soared, its tail blazingred, climbing beyond the evergreen tops of the slender Pom-eranian pines, heading for the low, gray sky. After four secondsof vertical flight, the thirteen-ton rocket slowly started tiltingto horizontal position. Within fifty seconds it attained an angleof 49 degrees and crossed the belt of sand dunes rising on thecoast; soon it was far away in the sky, gliding over the murkywaves of the Baltic. On the desolate beach, two men were following the rocket sflight through powerful binoculars. One of them looked like aproduct of the "pure German race" as depicted on the propa-ganda posters of the fanatic Reichsminister Dr. Alfred Rosen-berg. He was young, tall and fair-haired, and his handsomeface was illuminated by a pair of blue eyes and an easy, con-fident smile. He wore a tweed jacket, a white roll-neck pulloverand casual slacks made of expensive wool. But his easygoingoutward appearance was misleading: At the age of thirty-two,he was Germany s wonder boy, and her foremost rocket scien-tist-Dr. Wernher yon Braun, the master brain behind thehuge rocket research and development base of Peenemtinde. |
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