Reviews for The Peenemunde Wind Tunnels: A Memoir

The average rating for The Peenemunde Wind Tunnels: A Memoir based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-02-05 00:00:00 Joel Lalonde Peter Wegener was born in Berlin in 1917. As a nephew of the discoverer of continental drift, he studied geophysics at a university. In 1938 he was drafted into the Luftwaffe as an antiaircraft artilleryman, and when World War II broke out, fought in France and Russia. In November 1941 he learned that German soldiers who had served for at least three years and studied science and engineering for at least four semesters could apply for a semester-long academic leave, and so he did, and returned to the front after the semester was over. He did the same next year; however, in February 1943 he received orders to return to the front, saying that the academic leave had been a mistake. Fortunately for Wegener, one of his uncles was a crew-mate of Hermann Göring during World War I, and the Reich Minister of Aviation seems to have interceded on his behalf. So Wegener was interviewed by a lieutenant colonel who asked him, what he knew of antiaircraft artillery, declared his knowledge "old stuff", said that soon aircraft would be shot down by entirely different means, and told Wegener that from now on, he would work on supersonic wind tunnels. Wegener didn't know what "supersonic" means, but didn't let the lieutenant colonel on to that, and just answered, "Jawohl!" So for the next two years Wegener did work on the Wasserfall surface-to-air missile in a supersonic wind tunnel first at the Peenemünde Army Research Center, and next, after the British raid in August 1943 damaged much of the research facility, in a small town in Bavaria next to a large hydroelectric plant, which supplied electricity to the wind tunnel. Unlike its big sister the V-2, the Wasserfall was not operationally ready when Germany lost the war. After the war was over, the Americans showed great interest in the weapons of the future, so the wind tunnel was disassembled and reassembled at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland, the United States. Many researchers followed, including Wegener, like his more famous Peenemünde colleagues Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger. When asked, whether he had ever been a member of an organization whose aim was the overthrow of the U.S. government, Wegener answered truthfully, yes, the Luftwaffe; fortunately, the interviewer didn't take this answer seriously. Eventually Wegener legalized himself in the U.S. properly, went to work at the JPL, and later became a professor at Yale University; he worked on supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels through the rest of his professional life. Other than the autobiographical narrative, the short book also has the author's thoughts on the Holocaust, on Wernher von Braun, on Operation Paperclip, and on the merits and flaws of different books on Peenemünde; they are not that interesting.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-27 00:00:00 Sherry Weaver Interesting account of a soldier who worked on scientific research for the Nazis during the WWII. He also describes firsthand his experiences in Operation Paperclip.