Klaus Riedel

Klaus Riedel was a German rocket engineer, born in Wilhelmshaven and raised in Berlin after being orphaned, who joined Germany's amateur rocket society, the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt, after attending a lecture given by Rudolf Nebel. He became one of the group's most technically active members, helping design and build the Mirak and Repulsor series of experimental rockets using liquid oxygen and gasoline propellant, and in May 1931 one of his designs became the first German liquid-propellant rocket to fly successfully. When German army-sponsored rocketry work moved to the Peenemunde Army Research Center, Riedel served first as head of its test laboratory and, from 1941, as head of ground equipment, developing the mobile transport and launch support systems used by the V-2 missile program. He died in a car accident on August 4, 1944, two days after his thirty-seventh birthday; a lunar crater was named in his honor in 1970.