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Finally, all that changed. On March 16, 1926, Goddard finished building a spindly, 10-ft. rocket he dubbed Nell, loaded it into an open car and trundled it out to his aunt Effie's nearby farm. He set up the missile in a field, then summoned an assistant, who lit its fuse with a blowtorch attached to a long stick. For an instant the rocket did nothing at all, then suddenly it leaped from the ground and screamed into the sky at 60 m.p.h. Climbing to an altitude of 41 ft., it arced over, plummeted earthward and slammed into a frozen cabbage patch 184 ft. away. The entire flight lasted just 2 1/2 sec.--but that was 2 1/2 sec. longer than any liquid-fueled rocket had ever managed to fly before.
Goddard was thrilled with his triumph but resolved to say little about it. If people thought him daft when he was merely designing rockets, who knew what they'd say when the things actually started to fly? When word nonetheless leaked out about the launch and inquiries poured into Clark, Goddard answered each with a pinched, "Work is in progress; there is nothing to report." When he finished each new round of research, he'd file it under a deliberately misleading title--"Formulae for Silvering Mirrors," for example--lest it fall into the wrong hands.
But rockets are hard to hide, and as Goddard's Nells grew steadily bigger, the town of Worcester caught on. In 1929, an 11-ft. missile caused such a stir the police were called. Where there are police there is inevitably the press, and next day the local paper ran the horse-laughing headline: MOON ROCKET MISSES TARGET BY 238,799 1/2 MILES. For Goddard, the East Coast was clearly becoming a cramped place to be. In 1930, with the promise of a $100,000 grant from financier Harry Guggenheim, Goddard and his wife Esther headed west to Roswell, N.Mex., where the land was vast and the launch weather good, and where the locals, they were told, minded their business.
In the open, roasted stretches of the Western scrub, the fiercely private Goddard thrived. Over the next nine years, his Nells grew from 12 ft. to 16 ft. to 18 ft., and their altitude climbed from 2,000 ft. to 7,500 ft. to 9,000 ft. He built a rocket that exceeded the speed of sound and another with fin-stabilized steering, and he filed dozens of patents for everything from gyroscopic guidance systems to multistage rockets.
By the late 1930s, however, Goddard grew troubled. He had noticed long before that of all the countries that showed an interest in rocketry, Germany showed the most. Now and then, German engineers would contact Goddard with a technical question or two, and he would casually respond. But in 1939 the Germans suddenly fell silent. With a growing concern over what might be afoot in the Reich, Goddard paid a call on Army officials in Washington and brought along some films of his various Nells. He let the generals watch a few of the launches in silence, then turned to them. "We could slant it a little," he said simply, "and do some damage." The officers smiled benignly at the missile man, thanked him for his time and sent him on his way. The missile man, however, apparently knew what he was talking about. Five years later, the first of Germany's murderous V-2 rockets blasted off for London. By 1945, more than 1,100 of them had rained down on the ruined city.