Talk:Helmut Gröttrup

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Contents 1 Biography assessment rating comment 2 Article needs to be rewritten 3 WikiProject class rating 4 POV tag

[edit] Biography assessment rating comment

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Substantial history of Groettrup can be found in the second volume of Chertok's book "People and Rockets", just published by NASA. Chertok was a friend to Groettrup, and later in life became friends with his daughter. The information on Astronautix should be taken with a grain of salt, as German historians like to greatly exagerate the role that German specialists played in the Soviet Union's space program.

What does the article mean when it says missions were launched from the island? Rockets were launched from the island? That seems doubtful. Groettrup's team mostly helped on the R-1 project. All the G-series missiles were just concepts on paper, some of them barely developed.

[edit] Article needs to be rewritten

This is a terrible article. It needs to be completely replaced. Groettrup chose to work for the Soviets because he wanted to be more influential and he didn't get along with von Braun's team that well (Willy Ley discusses this in his books). He worked for a time in a lab set up by Boris Chertok in Germany, and then they were transfered (not "kidnapped") to Russia. Their primary mission there was the R-1, to help the Soviets learn how to build a rocket factory, and they started by learning to duplicate the V-2. Most of the Germans were returned home in the late 1940s, and they never were allowed to know anything about later developemens like the R-2 and R-5.

There is a modern revisionist movement in German history, claiming that Groettrup was mistreated and that his small group of scientists invented all the Soviet rocket technology. That is absurd and no documentation support such an extreme viewpoint. DonPMitchell 18:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It could be argued that Groettrup and his group was indeed mistreated, but for a different reason. They were underused and shunted to the sidelines, they understood it and were disheartened by that. All their work other than reproducing V-2 as R-1 remained on paper as were not given any real production or testing resources. Because of classified nature of the "mainstream" missile work headed by Korolyov, or any defence work for that matter, they had no access to it and could not contribute in any way. IMO this doesn't belittle their achievement in any way, and their work probably made an impact on Korolyov's own designs but it is far from fathering Soviet rocket technology. Further, the claim that they had to remain in the Soviet Union because of their knowledge is completely false. In fact, one of the sites the article references says

Somewhat surprisingly, Soviet authorities apparently made no effort to contain German rocket specialists on the Soviet side of the "iron curtain." Although Germans were "shipped" to the Soviet-controlled East Germany, many of the repatriants, including Helmut Gröttrup, made it to the West without much trouble. Some even moved to the United States and apparently continued working in aerospace. Not surprisingly, the operatives from the Air Technical Intelligence Center of the US Air Force in cooperation with British Air Ministry apparently debriefed every German returning from the USSR.

The R-1s were launched from Kapustin Yar missile range, not from the island. According to Chertok, they were performed by a group consisting of engineer-captain N. N. Smirnitsky, L.A. Voskresensky, N. A. Pilyugin and Chertok himself, supported by BON (a Russian acronym for "Special Purpose Brigade") of Soviet army soldiers and officers.

ScalarField 23:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV tag

This concerns POV tag cleanup. Whenever an POV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. This is a drive-by tag, which is discouraged in WP, and it shall be removed. Future tags should have discussion posted as to why the tag was placed, and how the topic might be improved. Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements. This statement is not a judgement of content, it is only a cleanup of frivolously and/or arbitrarily placed tags. No discussion, no tag.Jjdon (talk) 23:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)