THE ROCKET POST DAREDEVIL
His crackpot vision? To deliver the mail with missiles. But a first test ended in disaster as more than 1,200 letters exploded over the Hebrides ...and even greater tragedy followed
THE well-dressed foreigner must have cut an incongruous figure as he strutted about the machair in a crisp white shirt, well-polished shoes and neatlyknotted tie. Yet the huddle of spectators gathered on the far-flung island of Scarp in late July 1934 were less amazed by Gerhard Zucker’s sharp suiting than the experimental technology he cradled carefully in his arms.
Senior postal officials, dignitaries and curious crofters had all gathered under rainfilled skies on this distant Hebridean speck to see if Scarp could fulfil Zucker’s grand plan and go down in history as the birthplace of a new telecommunications age.
Zucker had become obsessed with the notion of sending letters to remote regions via a literal mailshot – specifically, stuffing them inside a 4ft aluminium rocket and firing it half a mile across the water to Hushinish Point on nearby Harris.
Under the close observation of the local MP, Sir Wilson Ramsay, representatives of the General Post Office, Government observer Sir Philip Sassoon, and an eager Press pack, the dashing 26-year-old Zucker prepared to launch the maiden flight of the island-to-island Rocket Post.
He sealed 1,200 letters, some addressed to King George V and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald – all bearing the special postmark ‘Western Isles Rocket Post’ – into the rocket, signalled the crowd to stand back and, crouching as close to the device as he dared, pushed the ignition button.
There was a blinding flash. Sparks flew in every direction. But instead of the reassuring rush of a highvelocity projectile, there was a dull thud and a billowing cloud of smoke. As the air began to clear, the islanders were showered with charred envelopes fluttering from the sky like confetti. ‘The rocket was split open and twisted out of all recognition,’ reported the Glasgow Herald.
Reports that Zucker was nearly killed were doubtless exaggerated, but it is easy to envisage the young inventor standing next to the launch site, tie askew, hair on end, his blackened face contemplating the scene of devastation before him. The MP and GPO men looked at one another and left for the mainland. Zucker would try again three days later with no more success.
The concept of a rocket-based mail service was finished, but Zucker’s story lingered in the imagination. A 2001 film, The Rocket Post, starring Kevin McKidd and Ulrich Thomsen, suffered a similar fate to Zucker’s own experiments by taking a nose-dive at the box office.
Now new life has been breathed into the story with a light-hearted stage reinterpretation of this intriguing tale of miscommunication and vaulting ambition.
LEWIS Hetherington, the play’s co-creator, said his interest in Zucker was first piqued after a guide book dismissed him in a side note. He said: ‘I thought for Zucker it was not a side note: it was his life, his whole vision, and I started to look into the man who had been written off as a silly, eccentric scientist.’
The National Theatre of Scotland production of Rocket Post opens tonight at An Lanntair, in Stornoway. Mr Hetherington added: ‘I wanted to explore what impact did he make, and what did people make of him? Did they believe him or did they think he was ridiculous?
‘It just felt like an interesting way to explore lots of big questions about globalisation and communication, but done in a way that feels really fun and playful, because you’ve got rockets, and that was his vision.’
The thought of such a crackpot scheme ever receiving official sanction may seem absurd in our modern digital age, but rocket technology was in its infancy in the 1930s and the possibilities seemed tantalising. And yet, Zucker might never have got a look-in were it not for a very different, but equally unconventional, delivery that began on Scarp seven months earlier.
On January 13, 1934, islander Christina Maclennan was giving birth to twin girls in her croft aided only by an untrained 85-year-old midwife. After the arrival of the first daughter, Mary, Christina’s condition deteriorated drastically but the tiny island had no doctor and no telephones to contact the outside world for help.
After a perilous journey – across the rough sea by ferry while tied to a stretcher, on the floor of a bus and over an unfinished road by private car – to hospital in Stornoway, on Lewis, she finally delivered the second infant, Jessie, two days later and 50 miles from home.
Headline writers were delighted by twins being born on different islands in different weeks. Mary and Jessie became affectionately known locally as Miss Harris and Miss Lewis. But the incident caused questions to be asked in Parliament. MPs demanded to know how lives could be put at stake by shoddy communications.
WHEN news of the mother’s challenging labour reached the rest of the world, Zucker’s ears pricked up. He quickly came calling with the idea of carrying post – and perhaps eventually medicine – over water by rocket. The GPO was already looking into ways to improve mail deliveries to remote islands, where weekly postal boats were often disrupted by bad weather. Perhaps Zucker was the man to help out?
With Government support, it was hoped the service would provide both post and medical supplies for isolated communities. There was even talk of a one-minute postal service between Dover and Calais.
The willingness of the British authorities to back him stood in contrast to his experience in Germany.
Zucker was born in Austria in 1908 and grew up in the Harz mountains of Germany. By his mid-20s, he had achieved some fame for his work on solid-fuel rockets and, in 1933, he gave a presentation in Berlin to Nazi officials to try to convince them his rocket model could be used to launch bombs. Instead, they locked him up for several hours for psychological testing before letting him go.
That same year he attempted a launch, which failed and resulted in a ban from the German authorities on any further attempts.
In 1934, he visited the London International Air Post Exhibition, where he met stamp dealer Heinz Dombrowski. Together, they hatched a plan to produce commemorative stamps for each rocket launch as a lucrative money spinner.
By now, Zucker was ready for his first test flight over land on the Sussex Downs. The rocket rose sharply, then crashed less than half a mile away. But the cargo of letters was intact and Zucker had made history. First Mail Rocket Soars Into The Air With Letters To The King, roared the Daily Express – overlooking the fact that the letters were finally delivered via Brighton Post Office.
A successful sea trial was next and the circus travelled north to Scarp. The 12-square-mile crofting community was then home to slightly fewer than 100 islanders. The plan was to launch a rocket over the half-mile stretch of sea to Harris, where its contents would be retrieved and delivered to the closest post office.
The date was set: July 28, 1934, or Latha na Rocait – the Day of the Rocket. The metre-long cylinder weighed 30lb and could travel as fast as 1,000mph. Special stamps were printed for the occasion, no doubt increasing the value of the envelopes.
After the smoke settled on the disastrous test-firing, Zucker blamed the 22in solid fuel cartridge, claiming: ‘The powder wasn’t properly packed and air pockets caused the
explosion.’ The propellant he needed was available only in Germany, he explained, and the Nazi regime had vetoed it for export.
German scientists had been devoting a lot of effort to working on rockets because they were one of the few types of military hardware Germany had not been banned from developing after the First World War, and Hitler did not want the British to know what they were up to. He had his own plans for how rockets could be used and the type of message he had in mind for the King would not be written on a letter.
Undaunted by his initial failure, Zucker arranged a second trial three days later – this time from Amhuinnsuidhe Castle, on Harris, to Scarp. It met with mixed results. The Scotsman reported: ‘There was a flash of fire, a cloud of smoke and when the air cleared the letters were seen strewn about the wreckage of the firing apparatus.’ Only a piece of the rocket was found at its intended target.
Following his failed attempts on Scarp and at Amhuinnsuidhe, Zucker tried another rocket launch on Lymington Golf Course in Hampshire, claiming it would cross the sea to the Isle of Wight. Instead, a gust of wind caught it and it veered off course, landing in a bog a few miles away.
The Home Office, which had lost faith in Zucker, tried to ban the launch and the Postmaster General was reprimanded for sending staff to attend the demonstration as it conferred an air of legitimacy on activities which were now considered a danger to the public and poorly planned.
Zucker was later arrested after leaving a dangerous load of gunpowder in a railway station cloakroom. He was deported, accused of defrauding the Post Office with his bogus stamps and of being a danger to national security.
There are conflicting reports of what happened to Zucker on his return to Germany. Some claim he was imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the Nazis in developing V1 missiles, while the Hamburg Fremdenblatt even reported his execution ‘for an attempt to sell an invention important for Germany to a foreign power’.
Richard Gollin, a B&B owner on Lewis with a long interest in rocketry, has researched much of Zucker’s life and tracked down his widow and daughter in the Harz mountains.
He says the Gestapo did throw Zucker in jail for supposedly colluding with the British, but he was freed 15 months later after proving his innocence.
Zucker later joined the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, until he was badly wounded in August 1944 and invalided out. He settled in West Germany as a furniture dealer, but his obsession with rockets continued – until disaster struck.
A demonstration of his launcher in May 1964 ended in tragedy when the rocket exploded, scattering shrapnel over a crowd of spectators and killing two schoolboys.
Zucker served a six-month prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter, while the West German government subsequently banned all civil rocket experiments.
Mr Gollin added that Zucker was never pressed into working on the Nazis’ deadly V1 and V2 bomb programme because, by 1934, research into liquid fuel rockets far outstripped Zucker’s work on solid fuel.
He said: ‘There were other specialists better qualified than he. Zucker wrote, “I had to see the seed I’d sown be germinated by others”. He died in his sleep in 1985, thwarted in his ambitions, but happy with his memories.’
FAR from helping Hitler’s war effort, Zucker may have unwittingly aided the British. Mr Gollin discovered that copies of his distinctive three-finned rocket design were used as ‘tank-busters’ in the war.
The digital age and displacement have lessened the need for any kind of postal service to places such as Scarp, which has been uninhabited since the last family moved to Harris in 1971.
As for the correspondence that was scattered along the Hebridean coastline that blustery July day, some letters were salvaged and delivered and now command astronomical sums among collectors.
Zucker’s Rocket Post, it seems, has made a lasting mark after all.
Rocket Post opens at An Lanntair, Stornoway, tonight, then tours Scotland until October 21. For full details, visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com