Dieter Huzel
Dieter Huzel (born June 3, 1912 in Essen , † November 2, 1994 in Woodland Hills , California ) was a German-American aerospace engineer.
Life
Huzel graduated from the Essen-Bredeney grammar school . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, he joined the NSDAP . In 1937, Huzel completed his studies in electrical engineering at the Technical University of Stuttgart . After working at Siemens-Schuckert in Berlin and being drafted to the Eastern Front in 1942, Huzel came to the Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1943 . At the end of 1944, Huzel was appointed head of the Peenemünde test rig VII , from which the A4 rocket was launched for test purposes. In the same year, Huzel was appointed Wernher von Braun's assistant.
Shortly before the end of the war, Huzel and Bernhard Tessmann von Wernher von Braun were commissioned to hide all documents relating to the A4 in the Georg-Friedrich iron ore mine in Dörnten from the invasion of the Allies. On May 2, 1945, two days after Adolf Hitler's suicide, Huzel surrendered to the US armed forces in Oberjoch together with Wernher von Braun and other developers of the A4 . The Americans found out the location of the hiding place through clever questioning and at the end of May 1945 they collected 14 tons of documents from the then British zone of occupation.
In November 1945 Huzel married his wife Irmgard "Irmel" (1916–2000) in Pfronten . As part of Operation Paperclip , he was brought to the Fort Bliss base in Texas together with other rocket researchers . In 1950, Huzel moved into business and was involved in the engine development of the Redstone rocket at North American Aviation . In 1954, Huzel received American citizenship .
Huzel died on November 2, 1994 in Woodland Hills, California.
literature
- Peenemunde to Canaveral (German: From Peenemünde to Canaveral ), 1962
- together with David Huang: Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines , Washington, DC 1992
- Methods to Extend Mechanical Component Life , 1993
Web links
- Literature by and about Dieter Huzel in the catalog of the German National Library
- YouTube: Hitler's Secret Weapon (Documentation of the development of the unit 4 with contributions from Dieter Huzel, English)
supporting documents
- ^ Michael J. Neufeld: Wernher von Braun. Visionary of space, engineer of war. Translated from the English by Ilse Strasmann. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-912-7
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Huzel, Dieter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American aerospace engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 3, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | eat |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 2, 1994 |
| Place of death | Woodland Hills , California |