Walter Thiel (3 March 1910,
Breslau – 17 August 1943,
Karlshagen
Karlshagen is a Baltic Sea resort in Western Pomerania in the north of the island Usedom. Karlshagen has 3400 inhabitants and lies between Zinnowitz and Peenemünde.
In 1885, a pier was developed in Karlshagen. Today it is the most important yac ...
, near
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
) was a German
rocket scientist
Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...
.
Thiel provided the decisive ideas for the A4 (
V-2
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 develope ...
) rocket engine and his research enabled rockets to head towards space.
Life
Walter Erich Oskar Thiel was born on 3 March 1910 in the Silesian city of Breslau, as second son of Oskar Thiel (civil servant at the German Post) and Elsa (Prinz) Thiel.
In 1929 he passed all his school graduation exams (''Abitur'') with the highest possible grade A. After graduation he studied chemistry at the Technische Hochschule zu Breslau (now Wrocław University of Technology). Due to his excellent work he was exempt from study fees as of the third semester.
In summer semester of 1931 he passed the preliminary examination with excellence. In winter semester 1933 he passed all 7 diploma exams with the highest possible grade A and he became Dipl.-Ing. (chem.). In 1934 his thesis "Über die Addition von Verbindungen mit stark polarer Kohlenstoff-Halogenbindung an ungesättigte Kohlen-Wasserstoffe"
[About the addition of compounds with highly polar carbon-halogen bonds to unsaturated hydrocarbons] received the highest possible honor (summa cum laude). He became Dr.-Ing. (chem.). His doctorate was confirmed on 8 November 1934 in Breslau (source: Walter Thiel's doctorate).
Thiel's Professor in Breslau recommended Thiel to the Research Institute of the German army ordnance office of under-secretary Prof. Karl Erich Schumann at the University of Berlin. Thiel's previous findings had technological applicability and therefore he was able to continue his fundamental research in a leading position. Late 1934 or early 1935 Thiel became research instructor at Reichswehrministerium. Schumann accompanied many diploma theses and dissertations, including that of
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...
, who completed his dissertation in 1934. The contacts between the testing ground in
Kummersdorf
Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde, around 25 km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as ...
and Schumann's Institute was close, the eastern part of the site in
Kummersdorf
Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde, around 25 km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as ...
served as an experimental base for Schumann's institutes, in the west a group of scientists around Major
Walter Dornberger
Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects a ...
carried out their experiments. Here Thiel got to know
Walter Dornberger
Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects a ...
and
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...
.
In autumn of 1936 Dornberger asked Thiel to move from fundamental research to Wa Prüf 11 at Kummersdorf's western testing ground. All topics regarding the engine were assigned to Thiel, and he had to further advance the propulsion, which he managed in a very short time. In his paper "Empirische und theoretische Grundlagen zur Neuberechnung von Öfen und Versuchsdaten, Schießplatz Kummersdorf Vers. West",
[Empirical and theoretical fundamentals for the recalculation of furnace and experimental data, Kummersdorf Range West Test Station] that he presented on 27 April 1937, Thiel introduces developments that lead to decisive changes, including a shortening of the oven and an optimization of the injection nozzle. Furthermore, Thiel continued to research different fuel mixtures for the rocket engines.
In 1937 the first scientists moved from
Kummersdorf
Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde, around 25 km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as ...
to
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
. As the test stations were not ready yet, Thiel and his team stayed in
Kummersdorf
Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde, around 25 km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as ...
until 1940. After transferring from Kummersdorf to the
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
Army Research Center in the summer of 1940, Thiel became deputy director of the
Peenemünde HVP Organization under von Braun. In 1940 many new scientists were recruited to speed up the R&D of the A4. Chemist Gerhard Heller became a very important co-worker of Thiel. They also established private contacts. Other colleagues of Thiel at the development unit included: Hermann M. Bedürftig,
Konrad Dannenberg
Konrad Dannenberg (August 5, 1912 – February 16, 2009) was a German-American rocket pioneer and member of the German rocket team brought to the United States after World War II.
Early years
Dannenberg was born in Weißenfels, Province o ...
, Werner Dobrick,
Hans Fichtner, Werner Gengelbach, Hans J. Lindenmayr, Dr.
William Mrazek, Kurt E. Patt,
Gerhard Reisig
Gerhard Herbert Richard Reisig (March 3, 1910 - March 9, 2005) was a German-American engineer and rocket scientist. He worked at the Peenemünde Army Research Center during World War II and later, through Operation Paperclip, at the Marshall Spa ...
, Walther J. Riedel (Riedel III),
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 ...
, Helmut Zoike. After the war, these scientists and others were recruited into United States-government service as part of
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 ...
.
In the A4 project, the first successful launch occurred from test station VII on 3 October 1942. The rocket flew 190 km in the targeted direction and it reached a height of 85 km. The top-speed was 1,322 m/s. As the A4 was now showing military qualities, the NS leadership was demanding immediate implementation in war. Mass production replaced science, although the whole unit was still immature. There were many launch failures after 3 October 1942. In 1943 Thiel and many fellow scientists and researchers were very exhausted and unhappy in
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
. Work overload, pressure to succeed and the changeover from a research unit to a production facility started to take its toll on the scientists. Thiel refused to declare the rocket engine ready for mass production. In a letter to von Braun, sent during a trip to a health farm, Thiel described the
Aggregat 4: "…where it is more of a complicated lab product than a mass item….". Thiel formulated his protest by handing in his resignation orally on 17 August 1943.
He planned to get his professorship at a university. Dornberger rejected his resignation.
During the following night (17–18 August 1943) the Royal Air Force launched a bombing raid of Peenemünde,
Operation ''Hydra''. The Thiel family died in a slit trench in front of their home in Karlshagen.
Thiel and his family (wife Martha, daughter Sigrid and son Siegfried) were buried at the war cemetery in Karlshagen. Martin Schilling replaced Thiel.
[
]
Legacy
On 29 October 1944, Thiel was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords.
Thiel's accomplishments were not forgotten. In 1970 a moon crater is named after him. It is located on the far side of the moon and thus not visible from earth. (Coordinates: 40° 42’ N / 134° 30’ W, mean diameter: 32.0 km). In addition, Thiel was one of the first pioneers to be inducted in the “International Space Hall of Fame
The New Mexico Museum of Space History is a museum and planetarium complex in Alamogordo, New Mexico dedicated to artifacts and displays related to space flight and the Space Age. It includes the International Space Hall of Fame. The Museum of S ...
” in Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA in 1976.
Aggregate series Development
Based on the film cooling ('veil cooling') solution identified by colleague Moritz Pöhlmann at Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
, Thiel designed annular rings of tiny perforations to inject unburnt fuel through the chamber walls at the throat for evaporative cooling to prevent 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 ...
nozzle erosion.
By 15 September 1941 Thiel officially declared the basic eighteen-pot design of the A-4 motor finished.[
Earlier in the Spring of 1941, Thiel began investigating nitric acid and diesel oil to be used as the fuel for the 30-ton-thrust A-8 .][
Then, on 18 December 1941, Thiel documented the initial A-9/A-10 motor design of six combustion chambers into one common nozzle in Secret Command Document 1496/41.]
By the middle of August 1943, Dr Thiel declared that the A-4 developmental problems preclude mass production, recommended the project be abandoned.
Thiel also designed the motor for the Wasserfall
The ''Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete'' (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) was a German guided supersonic surface-to-air missile project of World War II. Development was not completed before the end of the war and it was not used operati ...
anti-aircraft missile.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thiel, Walter
1910 births
1943 deaths
Engineers from Wrocław
German aerospace engineers
Early spaceflight scientists
German rocket scientists
German spaceflight pioneers
Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross
Deaths by airstrike during World War II
German civilians killed in World War II