Major General Holger Nelson Toftoy (31 October 1902 – 19 April 1967) was a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

career officer instrumental to the development of the United States' early

rocket A rocket (from , and so named for its shape) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely ...

ry after World War II, such as the Redstone missile. He persuaded senior officers to bring German scientists to the US after the war, to make use of their expertise, and supervised the relocation of more than 119 scientists. In 1952 he was appointed to direct the Ordnance Missile Laboratories at

Redstone Arsenal Redstone Arsenal is a United States Army base adjacent to Huntsville, Alabama in the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. A census-designated place in Madison County, Alabama, United States, it is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistica ...

near Huntsville, Alabama. By 1958 he was deputy commanding general of the Army Ordnance Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal. Later that year he was reassigned as commanding general of

Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at APG. There are 11 major commands among the tenant units, ...

, Maryland. Two years later he retired because of health issues, and moved to Florida.

Early life and military career

Toftoy was born on 31 October 1902, in Marseilles, Illinois. He attended local schools before college. He studied at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

as an

ROTC The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC; or ) is a group of college- and university-based officer-training programs for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces. While ROTC graduate officers serve in all branches o ...

cadet before transferring to the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

at West Point, where he graduated in 1926. After taking basic flight training, he was transferred to the Coast Artillery and served three years in Hawaii as a battery commander before returning to West Point as an instructor. In the 1930s Toftoy was assigned to the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...

to command the mine defenses of the Pacific approaches. In 1938 he was transferred to the Submarine Mine Depot in

Fort Monroe Fort Monroe is a former military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. It is currently managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth o ...

, where he served six years as chief of the Industrial and the Research and Development divisions.

Operation Paperclip

While working at the Submarine Mine Depot, Toftoy oversaw the development and design of a new system of controlled submarine mines that was widely using 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 ...

. Toftoy acquired great expertise in mines and explosives; he helped clear harbors in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

during the war. In 1944, Toftoy became chief of the Army Ordnance Technical Intelligence teams assigned to Europe to seek and evaluate captured enemy ordnance weapons and equipment. During this time, Toftoy received a request from Colonel Gervais Trichel, chief of the rocket branch in the Ordnance Department at

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...

, to acquire and ship 100 operational

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 ...

s to the

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 ...

for testing. Soon after the Allied capture of the areas around Nordhausen and the

Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...

, Toftoy set up Special Mission V-2 to do the job. He assigned Major William Bromley in command of the special mission, who reported to Toftoy through Major James P. Hamill. The latter was responsible for shipping the weapons from Nordhausen to

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

, and from there to

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, for transportation to White Sands. Bromley and Hamill went to central Germany to salvage as many missiles as they could, under pressure because of the unwelcome news that U.S. forces would soon be withdrawing, as Nordhausen was in the planned Soviet Zone of Occupation, later

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

. Although one hundred complete V-2s were not available, Toftoy organized U.S. soldiers and camp workers to put partially completed rockets and major components into hastily requisitioned rail cars. From 22 to 31 May, several freight trains left Nordhausen for Antwerp loaded with missile and missile parts, thus successfully completing the mission. Toftoy knew the U.S. Army was planning to add guided missiles to its weapons program. He cabled the Pentagon, then personally went to Washington to recommend to senior officers that German scientists be brought to the U.S. for interrogation and possible employment. The mission became known as

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 ...

. By September 1945, the first group of scientists, including

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 ...

, had arrived in the United States. In the first year of this program, some 119 German scientists were brought to the United States under Toftoy's leadership. Toftoy was transferred to Washington and assigned responsibility for direction of the Army guided missile program.

After the war

In 1952, Toftoy was assigned to

, Alabama, as director of the Ordnance Missile Laboratories. This was responsible for planning, technical control, and supervision of what had become the nationwide Army guided missile and rocket development program. During this time the arsenal became responsible for the research, development, procurement, production, storage and maintenance of the entire Army family of missiles and rockets; some of the products of that program became widely used in the U.S. Military program. They included the

PGM-19 Jupiter The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear weapon, nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and Liquid oxygen, LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketd ...

, the

MGR-1 Honest John The MGR-1 Honest John rocket was the first nuclear weapon, nuclear-capable surface-to-surface rocket in the United States arsenal.The first nuclear-authorized ''guided'' missile was the MGM-5 Corporal. Originally designated Artillery Rocket XM31 ...

, the LIM-49 Nike Zeus and the

MIM-3 Nike Ajax The Nike Ajax was an American guided surface-to-air missile (SAM) developed by Bell Labs for the United States Army. The world's first operational guided surface-to-air missile, the Nike Ajax was designed to attack conventional bomber aircraft ...

, among others. In 1958, Toftoy became deputy commanding general of the Army Ordnance Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal. He served as commander at RSA until July 1958, when he was named the commanding general of

, Maryland (August 1958). In 1960 Toftoy retired from the army for health reasons, and moved to Treasure Island, Florida. There he had a private boat landing and access to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

for indulging in his passion for fishing. He continued to be active in his field, retained as a consultant by the

Northrop Corporation Northrop Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spiri ...

and by the Brown Engineering Company. He also became involved in local civic affairs; he was elected in 1962 as President of the Isle of Capri Civic Association.

Death and honors

After recurrence of an old ailment during a Christmas visit to his daughter at Huntsville in 1966, Toftoy was transported to

Walter Reed Army Medical Center The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), officially known as Walter Reed General Hospital (WRGH) until 1951, was the United States Army, U.S. Army's flagship medical center from 1909 to 2011. Located on in Washington, D.C., it served more ...

. He underwent four major operations in the following months. Toftoy died on 19 April 1967. Burial was in

Arlington National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the United States National Cemetery System, one of two maintained by the United States Army. More than 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington County, Virginia. ...

with full military honors. *Toftoy Hall was dedicated at Redstone Arsenal on November 3, 1967; it provides basic electronics training for soldiers. It now houses the Education Center. *The Ordnance School at Fort Lee has a Toftoy Hall for the Armament and Electronic Maintenance Training Department. *In 1968, a commemorative plaque was placed in Big Spring Park in Huntsville, Alabama. Townspeople had nicknamed him as "Mr. Missile". He was a member of Helion Lodge #1 Free & Accepted Masons in Huntsville.

Dates of rank

References