Walter J.H. Riedel
From The Space Library
Walter Julius Hermann "Papa" Riedel was born in 1902 in Königswusterhausen, near Berlin Germany. From 1921 - 1927 he was employed as a civil engineer working for Mamag and Wolf, and Netter and Jacobi.
In 1927 he joined the A.G. Fuer Industriegasverwertung as a designer and engineer. He was assigned by his boss, Paul Heylandt, to be an assistant to the early rocket pioneer Max Valier, a role which he took from January 1930 until Valier's death in May 1930.
During those few months Riedel worked side by side with Valier and Arthur Rudolph as they created ever more powerful liquid fuel rocket engines. Over a four day period at the end of January 1930 Valier's engine increased in thrust from 300gm to 2,150gm. After a brief interlude Valier, Riedel and Rudolph increased the thrust in March 1930 to 8,000gm. On March 22nd 1930 the engine was installed in Valier's experimental rocket car the Rak 6, which was renamed the Rak 7. Valier was able to drive the car around a track for 22 minutes. By April 14th the engine was putting out 28kg thrust. The car was put around a test track for nearly 10 minutes and Riedel later wrote, "April 17 and 19 1930...These dates should be noted because they are of some historic importance. Indeed, it was the first time that a rocket propulsion with liquid propellants was demonstrated in Germany..."
On May 17th 1930 Riedel was operating the valves on an engine test using kerosene as the fuel. The kerosene and liquid oxygen created a slurry in the engine nozzle and when the gelatinous mixture fell into the exhaust the engine exploded. Valier was mortally wounded and Riedel could do nothing more than catch him as he fell. Valier's death was the first high-profile accident involving a fatality with a liquid fuel rocket.
In 1931 or 1932 Riedel and his partner Arthur Rudolph proposed and then built regenerative cooling for rocket engines.
Peterson reports that in March 1933 Riedel voted for the National Socialist Party.[1]
In 1934 his rocket group caught the attention of future head of Peenemunde Walter Dornberger and was amalgamated with that of Wernher von Braun at Kummersdorf. In 1937 Riedel became chief designer of the V-2 missile. In October 1942 he became Chief engineer on the V-2 production. By the summer of 1943 it was reported that he was special assistant to Von Braun in charge of monitoring production timelines for the V-2.[2] Later he was sent to survey a potential location for an underground construction site for rockets near to Ebensee in Austria. Peterson also reports that Riedel "temporarily transferred there to assist in the work." The site later became a notorious concentration camp where military hardware was constructed by no rockets came from Ebensee.
On May 14th 1945 Riedel was located in a jail cell in Saalfeld where he was being held by U.S. Counter Intelligence. Some local people had directed the Americans to Riedel in the town of Leutenberg and accused him of making a bacteriological weapon. When Riedel tried to explain to his interrogators that what they were looking at was a valve for a surface to air missile they didn't believe him. When he lost his temper he was roughed up.
In March 1947 he was relocated to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough England before moving to the associated Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott in Buckinghamshire in 1948. Riedel was granted British citizenship on November 18th 1953 and his wife, Inge Berta Margarete joined him on September 9th 1954. Riedel remained working at Westcott until his death which happened during a visit to Berlin on May 15th 1968. In his obituary in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society it was reported that he worked on both liquid and solid fuel rockets at Westcott. It is believed that Riedel never travelled to the United States but he was often mistaken for Walther Riedel, another rocket pioneer who also worked on the V-2 before moving to California to work for North American Aviation.
It is believed that Riedel became a member of the VfR. In 1953 he wrote of his experiences with Valier in an article for the journal Weltraumfahrt.
In 1956 writing in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society Wernher von Braun stated, "Hardly a rivet or washer in our experimental A-3, A-5, A-9, and particularly the A-4 can have escaped his personal scrutiny."[3]
His memoirs from 1930 to 1942 were translated into English in 2005 and published by the Rolls Royce Historical Society.
