Adolf Karl Thiel (also spelled Adolph; February 12, 1915 – June 2, 2001 Los Angeles) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n-born

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

expert in

guided missile A missile is an airborne ranged weapon capable of Propulsion, self-propelled flight aided usually by a propellant, jet engine or rocket motor. Historically, 'missile' referred to any projectile that is thrown, shot or propelled towards a targ ...

s during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, and later worked for the United States

Army An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...

and TRW. Thiel had been an associate professor of engineering at the

Institute of Technology An institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science ...

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

before joining

Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( ; ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German–American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and '' Allgemeine SS'', the leading figure in the development of ...

's team at the Army Research Center

Peenemünde Peenemünde (, ) is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the ''Amt (country subdivision), Amt'' (collective municipality) of Used ...

, where he was involved in developing the

V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...

. By the end of the war, he was transferred to the United States by the US Army (see

Operation Paperclip The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War I ...

and German rocket scientists in the US) where he resumed his work with von Braun's group in Fort Bliss, Texas. During the nine years Thiel worked for the U.S. Army, he held positions at

White Sands Missile Range White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a United States Army military testing area and firing range located in the US state of New Mexico. The range was originally established in 1941 as the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, where the Trinity t ...

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

and at

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. He primarily supervised preliminary design of the Redstone missile and other short- and intermediate-range ballistic missile systems. Thiel left the Army in 1955 to join Space Technology Laboratories, which later became TRW. During the late 1950s, he was program manager for the

Thor Thor (from ) is a prominent list of thunder gods, god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred g ...

ballistic missile, which became a first-stage launch for the

Explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

spacecraft. He was director of space projects for TRW when it developed Explorer VI and Pioneer V, two of the earliest US craft to explore interplanetary space. He oversaw all of TRW's space programs during the 1970s. After his retirement in 1980 as a senior vice president, Thiel served as an executive consultant to TRW and on

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

planning groups. He was named a fellow of the American Astronautical Society in 1968.

Family

He married Frances Thiel; they had two sons, Mike and Christopher.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thiel, Adolf 1915 births 2001 deaths Engineers from Hesse 20th-century American engineers Austrian military engineers German rocket scientists German people of World War II Academic staff of Technische Universität Darmstadt United States Army civilians Austrian emigrants Immigrants to Germany Operation Paperclip