Interesting people; Adrian Carton de Wiart

Heres a little light reading for Rememberance Day. Sometimes, its tempting to believe ridiculous stereotypes are based on something other than simple prejudice, and if that happens its good to have an example that blows the stereotype clean out of the water. If for example, you ever found yourself believing Belgians were a sort of peaceful people, averse to the idea of war, or just plain 'yellow', then meet Adrian Carton de Wiart.

Born in 1880, de Wiart came into being, at just the right time to participate in the most bloody and brutal wars of all time, get wounded and maimed in all of them, and thoroughly enjoy himself in the process. Its not a stretch of any one's imagination to suppose, de Wiart may actually have been a right nutter, or perhaps he was a reincarnation of an ancient war god, but what ever the reason, history records how Adrian Carton de Wiart, supposed illigimate son of King Leopold II (the bad king of the Congo), joined the British army (underaged of course) and went to the Boer War in 1899 where he was duly shot in the stomach and groin.

This kind of wound would put most modern soldiers into therapy for the next few years, but for de Wiart it was merely a taste of what was to come, and he was hungry. He quickly swore allegience to King Edward VII of Great Britain and as a career officer in the British Army was ready for action when the Great War kicked off. Actually, de Wiart was already at war before the Great War kicked off as he was in British Somaliland fighting the Mad Mullah (they had them in those days too) where, on an attack at Shimber Berris, he lost his left eye. Not thwarted by the difficulties of monocular vision, de Wiart made it back to Europe and got stuck in to the western front. Over the course of the next few years he was wounded seven times, eventually losing his left hand and taking a bullet to the skull (and one to the ankle) at the Battle of the Somme, another through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, another through the leg at Cambrai, and another through the ear at Arras. When he published his memoirs, and disregarding the fact that he'd won the VC during the conflict, de Wiart wrote frankly that he'd enjoyed the Great War.

De Wiart was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on the 2nd and 3rd July 1916, at La Boiselle, France. The citation reads;

For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature. It was owing in a great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring example that a serious reverse was averted. He displayed the utmost energy and courage in forcing our attack home. After three other battalion Commanders had become casualties, he controlled their commands, and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organisation of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrage of the most intense nature. His gallantry was inspiring to all.

The mid-war period was a bit slow for de Wiart but he found time to amuse himself  in Poland in 1920. When the Red Army was at Warsaw, de Wiart was acting as an observor for the British government and in July of that year found himself on a train being chased by Red Army cavalry. Undaunted by the communists he took to shooting at them from the running board with his revolver.

As we all remember, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and you can probably guess who was still in Poland at the time. Still an observor, de Wiart offered his advice to the Polish commander but was largely ignored, and as Poland fell, he was obliged to flee the country with the Luftwaffe shooting up his car as he left. He arrived in Rumania but again, was forced to get out by the skin of his teeth as the Rumanian fascists assassinated the pro-Allied prime minister.

Still a Colonel in the British army de Wiart went to Namsos in Norway with the Anglo-French forces, but on his arrival his plane was shot up by a Luftwaffe fighter. De Wiart survived but his aide was wounded and had to be taken back to the UK. The French decided to stay in Namsos, which was being bombed by the Luftwaffe, but de Wiart took his British unit to Trondheim Fjord, where they were shelled by German destroyers. With no air support, artillery or reinforcements, the British were being out flanked by the Germans. De Wiart knew the game was up in Norway but despite constant air attacks, held on to the last moment.

After the disaster of Norway, de Wiart was appointed as head of the British Military Mission to Yugoslavia. He flew there in a Wellington bomber but was shot down off the coast of Libya by the Luftwaffe. Captured by the Italians de Wiart was eventually sent to a special prison for senior officers at Castello di Vincigliata. After five escape attempts (including a seven month tunnelling effort) de Wiart was released as Italy tried to get in bed with the Allies. On one escape attempt de Wiart evaded capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant, which as Wikipedia notes, was surprising since he was in northern Italy, did not speak Italian, and was 61 years old, with an eye patch, one empty sleeve and multiple injuries.

Next, Winston Churchill sent de Wiart to China, but before he got there he attended the Cairo Conference (see image above where de Wiart is easily recognisable). On his arrival in China, de Wiart worked at the headquarters of the Nationalist Chinese Government until his 'retirement', returning home in December 1944 to report to the War Cabinet on the Chinese situation. After that he returned to Asia and (as a spectator, on the bridge of the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth) he observed the bombardment of Sabang in the Netherlands East Indies. I'm guessing a naval bombardment by a dreadnought battleship with 15inch guns wasn't just another day in the office, even for de Wiart. 

After the war, de Wiart retired, but before he could get back to Europe, he slipped and fell down a flight of stairs in Rangoon, and broke his back. This put him out for a while, but he eventually recovered and in 1951, at 71 years old, he married a woman 23 years younger than himself (apparently he had a life long reputation for being something of a fox), moved to Ireland and lived the rest of his days in peace. He died of plain old age in 1963. Aged 83.

After a life time of loyal and active service, his will left £3,496.

Interesting people: Roy Chapman Andrews

Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer who lead several expeditions into northern China, Mongolia and the so called 'back of the beyond'. He was supposedly the role model for Indiana Jones and his career may indicate why...

1906: Took a job as a janitor at the American Museum of Natural History. Collected specimens for the museum whilst earning a Master of Arts degree in mammalogy.

1909: Sailed aboard the USS Albatross on a trip to the East Indies collecting snakes and lizards and observing marine mammals.

1913: Sailed aboard the schooner Adventuress to the Arctic to film seals and whales.

1916: Together with his wife, led the Asiatic Zoological Expedition to China.

1920: Lead expeditions to Mongolia and drove a fleet of Dodge cars westward from Peking.

1922 - 1925: lead four expeditions to the Gobi desert and discovered the first dinosaur eggs which were later revealed to belong to the Oviraptor species and a fossil of Indricotherium (then named "Baluchitherium").

1925 - 1930: Expeditions continued when local politics allowed. In 1930 Chapman Andrews led his last expedition and discovered mastadon fossils.

1931 - 1934: Served as President of the Explorers Club in New York.

1935: Wrote the book 'The Business of Exploring'.

1942: Retired to write his memoirs.

Despite the lack of Nazi antagonists, it seems Chapman Andrews led a very active life and may have had a few run in s with bandits in his time. Dinosaur eggs and old bones might not be as exciting as golden idols, alien skulls and the arc of the Covenant, but according to Wikipedia, real life for Chapman Andrews might have been thrilling enough, if it wasn't really all just another example of a man who understood how to promote himself. Personally, I choose to believe the former because I cherish the idea that life can be an adventure! There is something appealling in the idea of finding purpose in life through the active pursuit of curiosity. Something which I think may be linked to the notion of glory, but without the lust for killing people that the word glory usually conjures up.

Douglas Preston of the American Museum of Natural History wrote:

Andrews is allegedly the real person that the movie character of Indiana Jones was patterned after. Andrews was an accomplished stage master. He created an image and lived it out impeccably—there was no chink in his armor. Roy Chapman Andrews: famous explorer, dinosaur hunter, exemplar of Anglo-Saxon virtues, crack shot, fighter of Mongolian brigands, the man who created the metaphor of 'Outer Mongolia' as denoting any exceedingly remote place

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Interesting people: Sergey Korolyov

Gagarin and Korolyov

Today is the one hundred and second anniversary of Sergey Korolyov's birth, so its as good a reason as any to salute one of the absolute greatest engineers of the twentieth century. The irony is, Korolyov's fame is eclipsed by his achievements because as chief designer for the Soviet Union's space programme, his identity was a closely guarded state secret during his life time and subsequently most people have no idea who he was. Basically he was the Soviet equivalent of Wernher Von Braun.

Korolyov was born in Ukraine, in 1907 and had a lonely childhood in what we would today call a broken family. His parents separated and he never met his father ever again, being lied to by his mother that his father was dead. he attended school like any other child and showed an aptitude for aviation, eventually studying flight theory and in 1923 he joined the Society of Aviation and Aerial Navigation of Ukraine and the Crimea. Gliders were all the range back then (lots of future rocket engineers were big on gliders as young men) and Korolyov was no exception designing his own glider and training as an aviator. In 1930 he graduated and joined the Tupolev design bureau and became the lead engineer on the TB-3 bomber project.

Korolyov didn't stand out during these early years. The Soviets were churning out engineers to catch up with the other industrial nations and Russia had a great many accomplished engineers already. Things only really began to change when Korolyov joined the Russian Group of Study of Reactive Motion, known by the acronym GIRD, this was Russia's version of Germany's VfR. GIRD (and the VfR) are the hatching grounds for virtually all the great rocket designs of the twentieth century and in close competition these two organisations became a fast moving internal community where idea's and new thinking radically expanded from theory to design.

A modern R7 (green) fitted to a Soyuz space craft (white). 2003.

GIRD eventually became the Jet Propulsion Research Institute, and Korolyov was made Deputy Chief, in charge of cruise missile and rocket assisted glider designs. The latter gives a good indication of how young these fields of engineering were. No one at the time was able to see clearly which idea's would resolve themselves into practical designs, so a lot of effort was spent looking into any unusual idea that came along, such as rocket assisted gliders. This is the reason why I like the 1930's so much. Technology was still an adventure, naive perhaps, but still untainted by pollution, industrial murder and the atomic bomb. The stains of history had yet to appear on the spotless white lab coats. I wonder if any of the engineers of that time had any inkling of the future they were building. Many of the men at GIRD (for I've never yet heard of a female rocket engineer) were idealists who saw the future as bright and wonderful. Like Tsiolkovsy and Zander they dreamed of space flight even whilst Stalin purged the country and sent many of them, including Korolyov, to labour camps in Siberia.

Tortured at the Lubyanka prison, Korolyov (who seems to me to have been something of a workaholic) confessed to slowing the work of the research institute, in return for which he was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp. One of the men who had denounced Korolyov was Valentin Glushko who would go on to become one of Korolyov's main rivals, and for the rest of his life, Korolyov bore Glushko a grudge (who can blame him?). Korolyov was convinced at the time that his arrest had been a mistake and he wrote many letters trying to persuade the authorities of his innocence. Eventually this bore fruit for the dreaded NKVD head Lavrenti Beria ordered a retrial and Korolyov received a reduced sentence which allowed him to serve his time in a special science and research camp. Such are the joys of communism.

Korolyov had suffered greatly in Sibera. He'd lost his teeth and his health would never fully recovered. Furthermore, almost every one he'd worked with in the Jet Propulsion Research Institute had been executed or disappeared in Siberia. He returned to work though, designing and building bombers for the war which had broken out after Adolf Hitler invaded Germany. Its another great irony of Korolyov's life that he worked so hard for the people who caused him so much suffering, whilst the people he laboured against would be the catalyst for his greatest triumph, for when the Second World War was winding down, Korolyov was suddenly given the rank of a Colonel and sent to Germany to loot the German V2 rocket programme. Russia had had parity with Germany in rocketry until Stalin had started murdering any people he deemed a threat, and now the Soviet Union was at pains to regain lost ground

Korolyov and his companions recovered a lot of the work undertaken at Pennemünde by Von Braun, but they failed to get the main German scientists, most of whom had prudently surrendered to the USA and been quickly removed from harm, and off to comfortably work for NASA and the US aerospace industry. The Soviets were left with the infrastructure and a lot of second line engineers, but this was more than enough for Korolyov who was finally given the chance to fulfil the GIRD dream and build a genuine space rocket. This he did and an R7 'Semyorka' rocket successfully lifted the tiny Sputnik-1 satellite into orbit on 4th October, 1957.

A lot of historians like to describe Sputnik as beginning the arms race which would characterize the Cold War, but in truth it was Korolyov and the R7 that began the arms race. Whilst the R7 was able to lift Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, its massive payload, far in excess of any previous, or contemporary design meant it was able to carry the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads 8,800 kilometers.

Its a sad legacy for Korolyov. The Soviets used his work for triumphal propaganda whilst denying him any credit. The R7 remains one of the most durable rocket design in history with a number of modern variations, but its use as an ICBM forever taints Korolyov's amazing engineering success.

Sergei Korolyov died on 5th January, 1966 whilst working on the Soviet lunar programme. In 1972, Korolyov's position as chief designer was given to Valentin Glushko, but by then the USA had beaten the Soviets to the moon and the space race was more or less over.

Interesting people: Eugen Sänger

Eugen Sänger was one of the pioneers of the VfR. Born in Bohemia in 1905, he graduated from the Technical Universities of Graz and Vienna and in 1936 he agreed to lead a rocket development team for the Third Reich with the goal of creating a sub-orbital bomber capable of attacking the United States.

In these days of technological marvels, its easy to forget just how advanced the concepts proposed by the VfR were, and its even easier to dismiss the achievements of the group due to their connection to the Nazi's. Its important when considering the merits of Germany's scientists in the 1930's to consider just how acceptable nationalism was and to ask one self whether we are able to better identify that which threatens our essential freedoms.

Whilst working for the Reich Aviation Ministry, Sänger and his wife, the mathematician Irene Bredt designed the Silbervogel (silver bird) which with its lifting body design, is undoubtably one of the fore runners to the space shuttles designs the 1970's. The Silbervogel never flew, cancelled by the cash strapped Reich Aviation Ministry in 1942, and even if it had it was flawed and would most probably have suffered a catastrophic failure on re-entry. The Silbervogel was designed to rocket up to altitude and then skip across the atmosphere in a series of undulating hops towards its destination. The Nazi's wanted to use it as a bomber against America of course, but that was never going to happen. The costs versus the advantages were against the idea of a military vehicle from the start. The aeronatutical principles of the design however were ground breaking, even if the math needed to be adjusted by several decades of subsequent research, and were enough to secure Sängers place in history.

After the war, he went to work for the French where he founded the Fédération Astronautique, narrowly avoided being lured/snatched to the Soviet Union by the agents of Josef Stalin and eventually was made the first President of the International Astronautical Federation. Through out his life, Sänger remained at the fore front of conceptual propulsion and space craft design, but none of his own idea's were ever carried through to actual prototypes. Instead he became a sort of tecnological guru for others, a font of creativity from which some of the greatest engineers of the twentieth century could draw forth inspiration.