Karl Ludwig Heimburg (January 29, 1910 - January 26, 1997) was a German-American engineer and

Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World Wa ...

hire. Heimburg was a member of the " von Braun rocket team" and served as the initial director of the Test Division at the

Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first ...

Biography

Heimburg was born January 29, 1910, in

Lindenfels Lindenfels is a town in the Bergstraße district in Hesse, Germany. Geography Location The climatic spa, also known as the “Pearl of the Odenwald”, lies in the Odenwald in southern Hesse and is nestled in a mountain landscape with a gre ...

, Germany. In the fall of 1928, after seven months of required practical work at a steel plant in

Krefeld Krefeld ( , ; li, Krieëvel ), also spelled Crefeld until 1925 (though the spelling was still being used in British papers throughout the Second World War), is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, i ...

, he entered the

Technische Universität Darmstadt The Technische Universität Darmstadt (official English name Technical University of Darmstadt, sometimes also referred to as Darmstadt University of Technology), commonly known as TU Darmstadt, is a research university in the city of Darmstadt ...

, where he graduated in 1935 with a engineering degree. Heimburg worked briefly that year at a coal mine, but in 1936, while intoxicated, he made comments in public on his critical regard for

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

. Facing investigation by the German police, he traveled through the Soviet Union in 1937 to reach Japan and began work in Tokyo. Heimburg returned to Germany in 1941, where he was promptly drafted by the army and assigned to the

Peenemünde Army Research Center The Peenemünde Army Research Center (german: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (''Heereswaffenamt''). Several German guided missiles and ...

. There he worked under

Ludwig Roth Ludwig Roth (June 10, 1909 – November 1, 1967) was the Aerospace engineer who was the head of the Peenemünde Future Projects Office which designed the Wasserfall and created advanced rockets designs such as the A9/A10 ICBM. Roth ar ...

on the A7 rocket; after the project's cancellation, he worked on a series of test stands including

Test Stand VII , partof = Army Research Center Peenemünde,Nazi Germany , location = Usedom island , coordinates = , image = Peenemunde-165515.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = 23 June 1943 RAF reconnaissance ...

, the main test facility for the

V-2 rocket The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed ...

. Following bombings on Peenemünde in 1943, he moved to

Lehesten Lehesten is a town in the Thuringian Forest, 20 km southeast of Saalfeld. World War II V-2 facility After an August 194explosion at the Redl-Zipf V-2 liquid oxygen plant at Schlier stopped production, the third V-2 liquid oxygen plant (5000 ...

, where he worked on testing production V-2 engines. After World War II, Heimburg was scouted through Operation Paperclip. He joined the initial group of scientists and engineers to travel to the U.S., arriving December 6, 1945. After first working with the rocket team at

Fort Bliss Fort Bliss is a United States Army post in New Mexico and Texas, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas. Named in honor of William Wallace Smith Bliss, LTC William Bliss (1815–1853), a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President ...

and White Sands, in 1960 he became one of the charter members of the new

. Wernher von Braun selected Heimburg as the director of the center's Test Division. In January 1969, Heimburg was awarded the

NASA Exceptional Service Medal The NASA Exceptional Service Medal is an award granted to U.S. government employees for significant sustained performance characterized by unusual initiative or creative ability that clearly demonstrates substantial improvement in engineering, ae ...

for his work on the

Apollo 8 Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These ...

mission.

References

External links

Karl Heimburg Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heimburg, Karl American aerospace engineers German aerospace engineers German rocket scientists German spaceflight pioneers 1910 births 1997 deaths People from Bergstraße (district) People from Huntsville, Alabama Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Early spaceflight scientists Peenemünde Army Research Center and Airfield Marshall Space Flight Center NASA people Operation Paperclip German emigrants to the United States