Oscar Holderer

Oscar Holderer (1919-2015) was a German-born engineer, a wind-tunnel designer and aeroballistics expert on the German rocket programme during the Second World War, who afterward became a member of Wernher von Braun's rocket team in the United States. He arrived in America under Project Paperclip on 16 November 1945, already fluent in English, and worked his entire career with the team at Fort Bliss, White Sands and then Huntsville, Alabama. In the United States he designed the high-speed wind tunnel used in the Saturn project, the multi-axis trainer called 5DF for the American space programme, and a one-sixth gravity chair that is still in use at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. He took US citizenship in 1955. An obituary quoted on the Encyclopedia Astronautica page describes him as the last known survivor of the German rocket team that moved to America and worked on the Saturn V.