Dieter Grau

Dieter Grau (1913-2014) was a German engineer who worked on guided missiles during the Second World War and then spent the rest of his career with the rocket team of Wernher von Braun in the United States. He was among the more than one hundred German scientists and technicians brought to America under Operation Paperclip, worked at Fort Bliss in Texas and later at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and helped design the electrical systems of the team's early rockets. At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center he became Director of Quality and Reliability Assurance, and a colleague recalled that he had overseen quality work on thirty-three Saturn rockets, none of which failed. He retired in 1973, remained in Huntsville and died there at the age of 101.