NASA CONNECTION p1 Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency O.S.S
recruitment of scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after Victory in Europe Day

In May 1945, the U.S. Navy acquired Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, a highly regarded expert in aerodynamics, controls and guidance. The inventor of the Hs 293 missile, Wagner worked for the first two years at the Special Devices Center located at the Castle Gould and Hempstead House in Long Island. In 1947, Wagner moved his operation to the Naval Air Station Point Mugu.

In early August 1945, Colonel Holger Toftoy, chief of the Rocket Branch in the Research and Development Division of Army Ordnance, offered initial one-year contracts to the rocket scientists. After Toftoy agreed to take care of their families, 127 scientists accepted the offer. In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists arrived from Germany at Fort Strong in the US: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky. In November, December, and February, three subsequent groups of rocket scientists arrived in the US for duty at Fort Bliss and White Sands Proving Grounds as "War Department Special Employees."

In early 1950, U.S. legal residence for some "Paperclip Specialists" was effected through the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez; from which the scientists legally entered the U.S. In later decades, the World War II activities of some scientists were investigated — Arthur Rudolph was exiled in 1984 and then exonerated by Germany, Georg Rickhey was acquitted of war crimes, and Hubertus Strughold was implicated in Nazi human experimentation.

Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field, which had acquired Luftwaffe aircraft and equipment under Operation Lusty (Luftwaffe Secret Technology).

The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists — including physicists Drs. Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass, Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Levovec; physical chemists Professor Rudolf Brill and Drs. Ernst Baars and Eberhard Both; geophysicist Dr. Helmut Weickmann; technical optician Dr. Gerhard Schwesinger; and electronics engineers Drs. Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther and Hans Ziegler.

The United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.

In 1959, ninety-four Operation Paperclip men went to the U.S., including Friedwardt Winterberg, Hans Dolezalek, and Friedrich Wigand. Through 1990, the operation immigrated 1,600 personnel,with the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the U.K. (patents and industrial processes) valued at some $10 billion dollars.