page_title: Wernher von Braun
section_title: U.S. Army career
hierarchical_section_title: Wernher von Braun / American career / U.S. Army career
caption_attribution_description: NACA's Special Committee on Space Technology, called the Stever Committee after its chairman, Guyford Stever, meets at Lewis, May 26, 1958. Left to right, Edward R. Sharp, Director of Lewis Laboratory; Colonel Norman C Appold, US Air Force, Assistant to the Deputy Commander for Weapons Systems, Air Research and Development Command: Abraham Hyatt, Research and Analysis Officer, Bureau of Aeronautics, Department of the Navy; Hendrik W Bode, Director of Research Physical Sciences, Bell Telephone Laboratories; W Randolph Lovelace II, Lovelace Foundation for Medication Education and Research, S. K Hoffman, General Manager, Rocketdyne Division, North American Aviation; Milton U Clauser, Director, Aeronautical Research Laboratory, The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, H. Julian Allen, Chief, High Speed Flight Research, NACA Ames, Robert R. Gilruth, Assistant Director, NACA Langley, J. R. Dempsey, Manager. Convair-Astronautics; Carl B. Palmer, Secretary to Committee, NACA Headquarters, H. Guyford Stever, Chairman, Associate Dean of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hugh L. Dryden (ex officio), Director, NACA; Dale R. Corson, Department of Physics, Cornell University; Abe Silverstein, Associate Director, NACA Lewis; Wernher von Braun, Director, Development Operations Division, Army Ballistic Missile Agency.
context_page_description: Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German–born American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.
  While in his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and develop the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II. Following the war he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1.
  In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In 1967, von Braun was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science.
context_section_description: On June 20, 1945, the U.S. Secretary of State approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to the United States; however, this was not announced to the public until October 1, 1945.
  The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They were then flown to Boston and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents, enabling the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.
  Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff (see List of German rocket scientists in the United States) were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, a large Army installation just north of El Paso. Von Braun would later write he found it hard to develop a "genuine emotional attachment" to his new surroundings. His chief design engineer Walther Reidel became the subject of a December 1946 article "German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken", exposing the presence of von Braun's team in the country and drawing criticism from Albert Einstein and John Dingell. Requests to improve their living conditions such as laying linoleum over their cracked wood flooring were rejected. Von Braun remarked, "at Peenemünde we had been coddled, here you were counting pennies". Whereas von Braun had thousands of engineers who answered to him at Peenemünde, he was now subordinate to "pimply" 26-year-old Jim Hamill, an Army major who possessed only an undergraduate degree in engineering. His loyal Germans still addressed him as "Herr Professor," but Hamill addressed him as "Wernher" and never responded to von Braun's request for more materials. Every proposal for new rocket ideas was dismissed.
  While at Fort Bliss, they trained military, industrial, and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. As part of the Hermes project, they helped refurbish, assemble, and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs" – "Prisoners of Peace".
  In 1950, at the start of the Korean War, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, his home for the next 20 years. Between 1952 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States. He personally witnessed this historic launch and detonation. Work on the Redstone led to development of the first high-precision inertial guidance system on the Redstone rocket.
  As director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, von Braun, with his team, then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.
  Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the 12 years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and his team of scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and embarked only on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labor used to build his V-2 rockets.
caption: Wernher von Braun at a meeting of NACA's Special Committee on Space Technology, 1958
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