Hellmuth Walter

Hellmuth Walter (26 August 1900 to 16 December 1980) was a German engineer who pioneered research into rocket engines and gas turbines. Working from the idea that a fuel rich in oxygen needs no outside air, he patented a hydrogen peroxide engine in 1925 and in 1934 founded his own firm, Hellmuth Walter Kommanditgesellschaft, known as Walter-Werke, in Kiel. His air-independent propulsion for submarines made a research boat reach 23 knots submerged in 1940, though only a handful of Type XVII boats were built. His rocket motors, which Wernher von Braun team at Peenemünde began installing in aircraft in 1936, powered the Heinkel He 176, the first aircraft to fly on liquid-fuelled rocket power alone in 1939, and the Messerschmitt Me 163 interceptor, and his jettisonable Starthilfe units helped heavily laden aircraft take off. After the war he worked in Britain, then in the United States, and in 1956 founded a company in Kiel again.