| THIS HIGH MAN Milton Lehman Charles A. Lindbergh (Preface) New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1963 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| LibCong 63-15815 | 430p. | HC/BWI | $? | |
Milton Lehman was a war correspondent in the European theatre during World War II, and for a time edited regional editions of Stars and Stripes, the armed services newspaper. The Army awarded him the Legion of Merit for distinguished reporting from the beachhead at Anzio, and for editing and publishing the first edition of the Army newspaper in Rome on the day that city was liberated. This High Man is his first book.
In it Lehman recounts the life and work of the scientist and inventor who, more than any other man, paved the way for the space age. Robert Hutchings Goddard was born in Massachusetts in 1882. Always interested in science, he had a vision at the age of 17 of mechanical travel to other planets, and devoted his life to making it happen. Working largely with a small crew of technicians, and with meager and intermittent funding, he almost singlehandedly developed the science of astronautics. He was flying rockets in the New Mexico desert for twenty years before the U.S. government took his ideas seriously. Finally, near the end of his life, he began to get the recognition he deserved. Goddard died in August 1945, just as the Army inaugurated its White Sands proving ground and started building the multi-stage rockets he had so long advocated.
Lehman mentions no specific connection with Goddard, so I assume he was motivated solely by a desire to see the neglected pioneer get the recognition he so richly deserved. The author spent seven years researching this biography, and he has produced a thorough and compassionate volume. Its chief failing is in the technical area — but Lehman is not a technical man, after all. I feel he could have used some expert advice in writing up the descriptions of Goddard's field tests. The way Lehman presents them, they seem haphazard — a perception at odds with everything else he tells us about Goddard. Part of this may be due to the fact that he did not have access to all of the inventor's notes; but I find that hard to credit also, for he clearly had the full cooperation of Goddard's widow Esther. And there are important things that are never mentioned at all. For example, did Goddard have to contend with pogo oscillation? This is a dangerous phenomenon that has plagued rocket designers right up to the present. Lehman never mentions the term. However, in the main the technical details come through clearly enough to incontrovertibly establish Goddard's preeminence in rocket development. And Lehman's portrayal of the human side of the scientist is compassionate without descending into mawkish sentimentality.
There is a clear dividing line in the book. It comes when Goddard starts his second tenure at the New Mexico test site. The narrative seems more focused, more compelling from this point forward. It is a subtle difference, but I believe it is real.
I consulted other sources on Goddard while I was reading this one, and I found some puzzling discrepancies between them. Yost cites a Miss Hill as the mathematics teacher who helped young Goddard master his studies at South High. Lehman doesn't mention Miss Hill, nor does he indicate that Goddard ever had trouble mastering technical subjects. However, he credits a South High physics teacher named Calvin H. Andrews as inspiring Goddard.
Another discrepancy exists in the date for Goddard's first static tests of liquid-fuel rockets. Lehman says 1925, other sources say 1923. And some of the dates Lehman gives for the test series in the 1934-1941 period do not match those in von Braun & Ordway. On page 191, Lehman seems to imply that Dr. Merriam, President of the Carnegie Foundation, is instead associated with the Guggenheim Foundation. At the top of page 279 is a curious typo: " When his handyman, Calistro Sanchez, was dispatched in the Fork {sic} truck to the office of the truck line from El Paso..." It's been established that there is a black Ford truck used at Goddard's site for hauling equipment and other cargo; they call it "the hearse". So I assume that this is what the quoted phrase refers to. However, it is conceivable that the word "fork" might be correct.
On page 333, another typo: "...until Goddard finally took on three novices — Lowell Rand and Glenn Loughner ... Randall's friend George Boole ... and A. P. Freund..." I count four names, although the fact that Freund is described as experienced may save this one. It's a matter of interpretation.
Page 407 has another curious sentence: "The [Goddard] center, established by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as the electronic focus for America's space venture..." It's not clear what "electronic focus" means in this context. Perhaps a communications nexus?
I cannot say This High Man is the definitive biography of Robert Goddard. The technical shortcomings preclude that. But it is a worthwhile book and, to my knowledge, the best single source currently available. It was republished in 1988 by Da Capo Press as ISBN 0306803313 (pbk.)
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