Willy

1953 · ref. 140947434 — New York: The Viking Press 1953. First Edition. Very Good/Very Good. First edition first printing. Signed by Wernher von Braun on the title page. viii 126 pp. Bound in publisher's green cloth stamped in silver. Very Good with moderate wear and soiling to covers 1-3/4 inch tear to lower edge of contents page. Gift inscription dated 1984 to half-title page. Offsetting from two newspaper clippings taped to facing page likely indicating occasion of book's signing. In a Very Good unclipped dust jacket with moderate edgewear and toning. Dr. Wernher von Braun was a brilliant and visionary German engineer and onetime SS Stormbahnfuerer who led the V-2 ballistic missile program during the Second World War. He convinced his colleagues to surrender themselves and their materials to the Americans after the war ignoring orders to kill themselves rather than fall into enemy hands. The Americans knew a good thing when they saw it and smuggled 118 German scientists one hundred V-2s and tons of related components and documents out of the country. To Stalin's fury the Soviets were left only with lower-level rocket scientists to press into service hindering their performance in the Space Race years later. Once in the United States von Braun spent fifteen years working for the United States Army on ballistic weapons but his true passion was space travel. He once told a group of British journalists: "The V-2 was a fine rocket. The only thing wrong with it was that it landed on the wrong planet." Frustrated with being sidelined von Braun convinced Collier's associate editor Cornelius Ryan whom he met at a symposium on space medicine in San Antonio to run a series on space travel. The magazine series provided the material for The Conquest of the Moon published in 1953 by Viking. Neil Armstrong read the book when he returned from his tour of duty in Korea and it influenced his decision to become an astronaut. Von Braun's work co-written with popular science writers and beautifully illustrated by Chesley Bonestell inspired the U.S. government as well. In 1960 President Eisenhower transferred von Braun's rocket development group from the Army to the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA separating space science from military science for the first time. Von Braun became the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and was in charge of developing the Saturn space boosters used as the launch vehicles for the Apollo Moon program. His work was essential in the competition with the Soviet Union and the former Nazi was lauded as a national hero. The Viking Press unknown