Item COLD WAR 27/35 - Transcript of interview with rocket scientist Dr Ernst Stuhlinger, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Dr Ernst Stuhlinger, German rocket scientist and member of the German Rocket Development Programme, Peenemünde, Germany, [1943]-1945, relating to the surrender of Wernher von Braun and Col Walter (Robert) Dornberger to the advancing US Army, Germany, May 1945; the billeting of captured German scientists by the US Government at Fort Bliss, Texas, USA, 1945-1946; the role of Col (later Maj Gen) Holger Nelson Toftoy, US Army, in the use of German expertise in the US rocket development programme, 1949-1970; US rocket development, Huntsville, Alabama, USA, 1949-1970; the US reaction to the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, USSR, 29 Aug 1949; US development of the Chrysler SSM-A-14 Redstone rocket, 1950-1953; the launch of the Soviet Sputnik I and Sputnik II Earth orbiting satellites via SS-6 'Sapwood' Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), Oct and Nov 1957; the failed attempt by the USA to launch the Vanguard rocket, Dec 1957; the successful launch of Explorer I, a modified Redstone rocket, Jan 1958; the launch of the first man to travel in space, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuriy Alekseevich Gagarin, 12 Apr 1961; the statement by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, May 1961; the successful landing on the Moon of US Astronauts Neil (Alden) Armstrong and Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr, Apollo 11 mission, Jul 1969; the design of the Saturn V space rocket by von Braun, [1965]; Stuhlinger's work on the development of the US General Dynamics SM-65 Atlas and the Martin SM-68 Titan ICBMs, 1953-1961; the 'missile gap', a US perception of the advantage held by the Soviets in the production of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), [1958]-1960; the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962. 17pp