Helmut Gröttrup

Helmut Gröttrup was a German rocket engineer, born in 1916 and died in 1981, who specialised in rocket guidance and control. He worked at the Peenemünde rocket centre during the Second World War and, after 1945, headed the German rocket team that the Soviet Union took to Russia, where it worked until 1953. In 1946 his group fired V-2 rockets at Kapustin Yar. His team was set to design missiles of its own: the G-1, an improved 600 kilometre version of the V-2, which a Soviet state commission judged superior to Sergei Korolev R-2 concept in December 1948, though the R-2 was the design put into production; the G-2, intended as the first intermediate range ballistic missile with a 2,500 kilometre range and designated R-12 by the Russians; and the G-4, evaluated against Korolev R-3 in December 1949 and found superior, though neither went into production. Encyclopedia Astronautica says the G-4 concepts led directly to Korolev R-7 intercontinental missile.