Eberhard Rees

Eberhard Rees (1970)

Eberhard Friedrich Michael Rees (born April 28, 1908 in Trossingen , † April 2, 1998 in DeLand , Florida ) was a German-American rocket specialist and from March 1970 to January 1973 director of the Marshall Space Flight Center .

Education and career in Germany

After graduating from high school in 1927, Eberhard Rees studied mechanical engineering at the Zeppelingymnasium in Stuttgart at the TH Stuttgart and at the TH Dresden where he received his diploma in 1934.

From 1935 to 1940 he worked at Meier & Weichelt iron and steel works in Leipzig on the development of production methods for steel production and in the planning of new plants. As assistant to the deputy director, he was responsible for improvements in the plant area and in human resources, and he was also responsible for setting up a branch.

Peenemünde

On the mediation of Prof. Dr. Enno Heidebroek came to Rees in 1940 as Wernher von Braun's deputy and operations director at the Peenemünde Army Research Center , where he was responsible for management, deployment strategy, technical issues and the manufacture of the test rockets, including unit 4 (later V2 ), unit 5 , waterfall and unit 9 . In 1943 he became head of the operations management of the Peenemünde development plant under Wernher von Braun and, after the Allied air raid on Peenemünde in August 1943, played a key role in the planning for the relocation of rocket production to the tunnel in Kohnstein near Nordhausen . From July 1944 he was responsible for the production area (EW 3) of the electromechanical works in Karlshagen under General Director Paul Storch and Technical Director Wernher von Braun. After the occupation of Nordhausen by the US Army on April 11, 1945, he was captured and interrogated along with other directors who had stayed behind in the central area.

Rees' work in the United States

After the end of the war, Rees belonged to the group of specialists around von Braun who, after internment by the Americans and questioning by the British, were the first rocket specialists to arrive in the USA in October 1945 as part of Operation Overcast , later called Paperclip. As Braun's right-hand man, Rees was responsible for the technical and organizational implementation of important rocket and space projects. From 1945 to 1950 he was involved in the task of the German team in Fort Bliss (Texas) to advise the Americans on scientific and military V2 launches and the planning of a new missile factory. The group, led by Brauns and his deputy Rees, also worked on the US Hermes missile project . In 1950, a modern rocket test complex was built in Huntsville (Alabama) within a short time, the technical director of which was von Braun and his deputy Rees. On November 11, 1954, Rees became an American citizen. 1956-1960 Rees was the assistant director of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. He was also responsible for all phases of missile development from research, development, construction, design, production and testing; With the Jupiter and Redstone rockets developed there , the first US satellite Explorer 1 and the first US spaceman went into space . In 1960 Rees was transferred to the newly inaugurated Marshall Space Flight Center of the NASA space agency in Huntsville, where he was entrusted with the same responsibility as deputy director of Braun. As Apollo Special Task Team Director, Rees contributed significantly to the 1969 Apollo moon landing and the development of the Saturn V rockets. Rees most important achievement was the clarification of the reasons of the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967 and the subsequent improvement of the Apollo capsule as well as all safety systems. From Apollo 13 in 1970, Rees was solely responsible for the Saturn rockets for all further lunar missions.

After Brauns' departure, Rees was director of the Marshall Space Flight Center from 1970 until his retirement in 1973. Despite the NASA space program reduced by President Richard Nixon , Rees expanded the MSFC program. Among other things, he initiated the High Energy Astrophysical Observatories (HEAO) and the space telescope, later the Hubble space telescope , the engines of the still flying space shuttle, the first space station of the Americans Skylab , the lunar car LRV and the conversion of the Huntsville rocket forge, known to date, into a science center . After his retirement, Rees took on advisory tasks at Friedr. Krupp in Essen and ERNO Raumfahrttechnik in Bremen .

Awards

Rees has received numerous awards, including a PhD from Rollings College in Winter Park, Florida and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. appointed hc. He was a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics since 1959 , he was a member of the American Astronautical Society since 1969; Member of the National Academy of Engineering of the USA and since 1970 honorary member of the Hermann Oberth Society , today the German Society for Aviation and Space Travel - Lilienthal-Oberth . In 1978 he received the Wernher von Braun Award from the German Aerospace Society. On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Eberhard Rees, his hometown Trossingen erected a memorial stone in front of his long-standing house in Hangenstrasse, which commemorates Rees' decisive role in the US space program. On June 26, 2009 , a large-scale musical about Rees and the history of the moon landings was premiered in Trossingen , the birthplace of Eberhard Rees. The musical with the title " Mission Apollo - with screws and bolts on the moon " was created by the composer and author Frank Golischewski .

literature

• Volker Neipp : With screws and bolts to the moon - The incredible life's work of Dr. Eberhard FM Rees. Springerverlag, Trossingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-9802675-7-1
• Katharina Hein-Weingarten:  Rees, Eberhard Friedrich Michael. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 255 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Dipl.-Ing. Eberhard Rees 85 years old, in communications 2/93 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt Lilienthal-Oberth e. V., Bonn, 1993, p. 1f (P).
• Eisfeld, Rainer : Moonstruck. Wernher von Braun and the birth of space travel out of the spirit of barbarism, Reinbek, 1996.
• Neufeld, Michael J .: The rocket and the Reich. Wernher von Braun, Peenemünde and the beginning of the rocket age, Berlin, 1997.
• Stuhlinger, Ernst ; Ordway, Frederick: Wernher von Braun. Departure into space. The biography, 1992 (P).
• Braun, Wernher von; Ordway, Frederick I .; Lange, Harry H.-K .: History of Rocketry & Space Travel, 1966 (P).

Web links

Commons : Eberhard Rees  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• NASA MSFC Biography (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Peter Hall: Organigramm development plant (January 1943). Retrieved October 21, 2019 . 
2. ^ Peter Hall: Organigram Elektromechanische Werke Karlshagen 1944. Retrieved on October 21, 2019 . 
3. ^ Manfred Bornemann : Secret Project Mittelbau. From the central oil depot of the German Reich to the largest rocket factory in World War II . Bernard & Graefe, 1994, ISBN 978-3-7637-5927-9 (240 pages).