Stiff Ray C (1 results)

Classified as RESTRICTED, this rare detailed study collates the latest intelligence gathered on the rocket drive for the Me163, the assisted take off (ATO) units for several conventional aircraft, and the rockets for the Henschel Hs293 and Hs117 radio-guided bombs, the Blohm and Voss BV143 rocket-assisted glide bomb, and the Enzian - a name familiar to devotees of Thomas Pynchon - a surface-to-air antiaircraft missile. Scarce with just a single copy traced at the National Aerospace Library, Farnborough. CIOS was established from SHAEF's G-2 (Intelligence) Division as part of Operation Paperclip, it was tasked with seeking out and assessing caches of scientific and technological secrets, hidden test sites, and underground factories with the aim of co-opting Nazi German weapon technologies for the coming Cold War with the Soviet Union. The author, a chemical engineering graduate from Texas Tech, was a member of the US Navy's Naval Technical Mission in Europe, activated in January 1945 to assist in this task. Stiff had been working on jet propulsion with the navy's Bureau of Aeronautics since 1941, and after the war he continued in rocketry becoming an executive for the Aerojet Engineering Corporation responsible for the engines for the Titan, Gemini, Viking, and Voyager projects, and for the main engine on the Apollo Command Service Module. This copy, numbered 150 of an unstated edition, was sent to the MSL in Maribyrnong, Victoria, Australia, established in 1922 to assist commercial munitions producers in overcoming any technical difficulties arising, and to ensure conformity of specifications. National Aerospace Library only on Library Hub and WorldCat, copy in the Imperial War Museum, LBY 15 / 696. Wire-stitched in the original buff printed card wrappers. 28 plates, paginated in the text, 2 of them folding power unit schematics, tables to the text. Reproduced typescript. Ink stamps of the Munitions Supply Laboratories, Technical Information Section to the front panel of the wrappers together with inked accession numbers, and to the title page, very slightly rubbed, but overall very good indeed.