Another one bites the dust: Ex-Nazi dead in Huntsville, AL

I have nothing good to say about Nazis, ex-Nazis, or dead Nazis.

Remember Operation Paperclip – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip –

It was because of the mercy of God, and good American people that he lived, while millions of others died in ovens, or in dark, cold, wet subterranean chambers making the V2 – Vergeltungswaffe 2, e.g. “Vengeance” weapon.

The V2 rocket was Hitler’s Nazi terror weapon of mass destruction.

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Rocket pioneer, von Braun team member Walter Haeussermann dead at 96

Published: Saturday, December 11, 2010, 6:00 AM

HUNTSVILLE, AL – Dr. Walter Haeussermann, a key member of Dr. Wernher von Braun‘s German rocket team and pioneer of the American space program, died Wednesday in Huntsville.

Haeussermann, 96, died at Huntsville Hospital of complications from a fall. He is survived by his wife, Ruth.

Haeussermann’s death leaves five surviving members in Huntsville of the team that took man to the moon and put Huntsville on the international map. A sixth survives on the West Coast.

Haeussermann was with von Braun at Peenemunde, Germany in World War II and helped develop the V-2 rockets that were launched against London and later formed the basis of the American rocket program.

Haeussermann was born in Kuenzelsau, Germany, in 1914 and was always drawn to astronomy and science, he told The Times in a 2008 interview. His interests led him to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Institute of Technology in Darmstadt in 1938.

While working on his doctoral dissertation there a year later, Germany invaded Poland, World War II began and he was drafted into the army.

Pvt. Haeussermann was on his way to Poland but was taken from the train at Darmstadt and sent to a secret location.

“That was Peenemunde,” he said in 2008. “I was flabbergasted, because on the first day I was shown a rocket test … I was astonished that something like this was already existing.”

Haeussermann spent the next few years working with gyroscopes and accelerometers and developing simulators and analog computers to test and design rocket guidance and control systems – the same fields in which he would later help American soldiers and astronauts.

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) center director Wernher von Braun, center, and a group of his key associates in 1961. From left, Wernher Kuers, Walter Haeussermann, W.A. Mrazek, von Braun, Dieter Grau, Oswald Lange and E.W. Neubert.

When the war ended, Haeussermann’s wife was ill and they were unable to join his Peenemunde colleagues who accepted the U.S. Army‘s invitation to work on rockets at Fort Bliss, Texas. He stayed in contact with the group and came with his wife to America in 1947 and became a citizen in 1954.

In Huntsville, Haeussermann was in charge of the guidance and control systems for the Redstone rocket, the Army’s first ballistic missile; the Jupiter rocket, America’s first intercontinental ballistic missile; and Explorer I, the country’s first satellite.

He was a charter member of the Marshall Space Flight Center when NASA was formed in 1960 and was in charge of guidance, navigation, electrical and computer systems for the Saturn rockets including the Saturn V that launched Americans to the moon in 1969.

Haeussermann was in the blockhouse during all the lunar-bound Saturn launches at Cape Canaveral, including the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that first landed men on the moon.

“I refused any congratulation before they were safely back,” he said. “Of course, we were very proud.”

The five remaining von Braun team members in Huntsville are Hans Fichtner, Dieter Grau, Rudolph Schlitt, Georg von Tiesenhausen and Oscar Holderer.

(Times staff writer Kenneth Kesner contributed to this report.)

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http://blog.al.com/space-news/2010/12/rocket_pioneer_von_braun_team.html