Soviets Make Own Rocket Grab

IN THE CLOSING WEEKS OF WORLD WAR II, AS ALLIED TROOPS RUMBLED INTO GERMAN TOWNS and the victors jockeyed to divide the spoils, one prize stood out: the people and machinery that had produced the V-2 rocket, one of the warâ??s most exotic weapons. To the delight of U.S. intelligence, Wernher von Braun and most of his top associates on the V-2 development team chose to surrender to the Americans, shrewdly calculating where they might be allowed to continue their pioneering research after the war. One German rocket engineer, quoted by historians Frederick Ordway and Mitchell R. Sharpe in their book The Rocket Team, sized up his options in April 1945: â??We despise the French, we are mortally afraid of the Soviets, we do not believe the British can afford us. So that leaves the Americans.â?