Walter Jacobi (January 13, 1918 – August 19, 2009) was a rocket scientist and member of the " von Braun rocket group", 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 commu ...

(1939–1945) working on the

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 ...

rockets in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. He was among the scientists to surrender and travel to the United States to provide rocketry expertise via

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 War ...

. He came to the United States on the first boat, November 16, 1945 with

and

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 LTC William Bliss (1815–1853), a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President Zachary Taylor, Ft. Bliss h ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

(1945–49). He continued his work with the team when they moved to Redstone Arsenal, and he joined Marshall Space Flight Center to work for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

. He worked on rocket "structure and components." He continued to support the space program and appear at public events until his death.

References

External links

Walter W. Jacobi Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
German rocket scientists 1918 births 2009 deaths American aerospace engineers Early spaceflight scientists German spaceflight pioneers Engineers from Thuringia V-weapons people Marshall Space Flight Center NASA people Operation Paperclip 20th-century American engineers People from Saalfeld {{germany-engineer-stub