William Mrazek

Willi Mrazek (1911-1992) was a German-American loads engineer who worked at Peenemuende from the early days of the German rocket programme, though he was also sent to the Russian Front before being returned. In 1945 he moved with von Braun's team to Fort Bliss, Texas, and in 1950 to Huntsville, Alabama, and by 1960 he was Director of the Structures and Mechanics Division at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. When the team subcontracted development of the Saturn V to aircraft builders, Mrazek was stubborn in the clashes between their traditional design methods and his group's experience of building ever larger rockets; in one argument over internal loads in the S-II stage, North American ended up winning after a huge investment of engineering hours on both sides. He died on 8 February 1992 according to the Encyclopedia Astronautica.