Monday, August 23, 2010

Fascinating!

Looking Out: Nazis On The Harbor
Henry Kolm had an interesting job as a 21-year-old.

He smuggled Nazi scientists into Boston Harbor.

He’d meet most of them off Nixes Mate, the smallest of the Harbor Islands — no more than gravel shoals — where a beacon warns ships coming into the harbor. Then, he and a Boston whaler captain named Corky would scoot them out to Long Island and a secret hotel fashioned from the barracks of the old Civil War derelict known as Fort Strong.
The article's really about Project Paperclip, the post-WWII/pre-Cold War project to bring Nazi scientists to America to aid in our propulsion efforts. The "star" of Paperclip was none other than the father of the V2, Werner von Braun, and his trials and tribulations after the end of WWII, where he was brought to the US to help us in the Cold War. It's a truly fascinating story, with cloak-and-dagger type stuff mixed in with the truly geekarific.

Plus it gives me a reason to post this:



I don't care who you are, that's cool right there...

That is all.

3 comments:

notDilbert said...

.....I'm guessing the large hole 2 32 sec is proof that they learned that smoking during fueling in the previous scene was NOT a good idea.

Anonymous said...

Like all good Germans those Nazi rocket-scientists kept incredibly good records. Some of the early films of the failure while the V-series of rockets were being tested are down right scary.

B Smith said...

I read, some time back, that there was a Hollywood biopic of Werner von Braun titled, "I Aim For The Stars".
A film critic called it, "I Aim For The Stars (But Sometimes I Hit London)"