Konrad Dannenberg one of the last of the German rocket men who put Americans on the moon RIP

Konrad Dannenberg who died this week aged 95 was one of last of the 118 German rocket scientists, many ideological Nazis, who arrived on "Operation Paperclip" in Huntsville Alabama (visit the Von Braun Astronomy Facility, The Von Braun Civic Center) in a case of post war "special rendition" of prisoners.... and rocket parts , equipment etc.,

Trained at Hanover and fascinated by rocketry he ended up helping on the German WW II V-2 missile – built using slave labour – which the Germans used (with devastating success) to indiscriminately kill several thousand people in Europe.

About 1000 of these missiles were fired at the cities of London (see map of sites hit) and Norwich, while about 2000 more were fired at targets on the European continent.

Given top-secret clearance by the US Government , he worked with Wernher von Braun on US military weapons systems. When NASA was established in 1958, Dannenberg became a key agency leader: the deputy manager of the program that produced the Saturn V, the first rocket to send humans to the moon. The engine he helped design in the 1960s Marshall Space Flight Centerat remains the foundation for NASA's rockets. "His fingerprints are all over it," NASA exploration official Steve Cook told Forbes in 2007.

Dannenberg never publicly expressed remorse for the people killed by the V-2 he helped create, assigning sole moral responsibility to the Nazi officials who ordered its use.

The Huntsville Times report,family, friends and admirers filled the theater of the Davidson Center for Space Exploration Friday afternoon for a memorial to Dannenberg which, in the words of Ralph Petroff, was definitely not a funeral service - "This is a celebration of the life of this extraordinary man,".... "If there ever was a rocket scientist, he was a rocket scientist," Klaus Dannenberg said of his father.

Previous posts on Operation Paperclip - Reidel , Steinhoff , Braun etc.,

See FROM PEENEMÜNDE TO THE MOON By Konrad K. Dannenberg ... afascinating read . "This presentation will briefly describe the activities in the German Rocket Development Center in Peenemünde, and summarize the key factors that made the V-2 rocket an effective weapon. The Allied Forces showed, after the war, great interest in learning more about this new weapon and its military applications."