During World War II, Doctor Wernher von Braun was the director of the successful military guided-rocket program, which produced the V-2 rockets used to bomb Britain from bases located in Northern Europe. At the end of the war, he was one of a number of German scientists captured by the U.S. Army invited to help with different military and civilian projects taking advantage of their advanced scientific know-how.
In 1855, Wernher von Braun naturalized as U.S. citizen in order to be allowed to join NASA and directed the projects that produced the Redstone rockets for the Mercury project (used in one-maned orbital flights) and the more famous Saturn rockets for the Apollo project that took U.S. astronauts to the Moon.
