Reinhold Tiling

Reinhold Tiling was a German engineer, pilot and rocket pioneer who moved from aviation into rocket development in the late 1920s. In 1928 he registered a patent for a solid-propellant chamber rocket design, alongside proposals for rocket-powered aircraft with swing-out wings intended to glide back to earth after launch, and from 1929 to 1933, financed by Baron Gisbert von Ledebur, he conducted extensive rocket research at the Arenshorst estate near Bad Essen before leasing an additional test site on the North Sea island of Wangerooge. On April 15, 1931, at a test site called the Dummer, Tiling launched what the state archive of Lower Saxony describes as the first German postal rocket, carrying a bundle of 188 numbered and autographed postcards to demonstrate the potential of rocket mail delivery. Tiling died on October 11, 1933, in an explosion during rocket testing; a lunar crater on the far side of the Moon was later named in his honor.