Operation Paperclip
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🏛️ Program or study
Contents 6
| Type | Program or study |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Paperclip |
| On the Timeline | 1 event, 1953 |
Operation Paperclip was a secret U.S. government program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers and technicians to the United States between 1945 and 1959, many of whom had worked for Nazi Germany. Its recruits, led by rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, played a central part in the American missile and space programs.[1]
Origins
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In February 1945 the Allied command set up "T-Force" teams to locate German scientific and technical targets. On 20 July 1945 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff created Operation Overcast to bring German specialists to America, and the first group of rocket scientists, including von Braun, arrived in September 1945. In November the program was renamed Paperclip, after the paperclips that Army officers attached to the files of the people they wanted. President Harry Truman formally approved it on 3 September 1946. It was overseen by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, and the Soviet Union ran a similar program, Operation Osoaviakhim, from October 1946.[1]
Contributions
The German rocket team worked first at Fort Bliss, Texas, testing captured V-2 rockets at White Sands, and moved to the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Alabama in 1950. Their work led to the Redstone and Jupiter missiles and, after von Braun became the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960, to the Saturn rockets that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. Paperclip scientists also contributed to aeronautics and to aviation and space medicine; the program's value in patents and industrial processes has been estimated at about $10 billion.[1]
Controversy
Many recruits had been members of the Nazi Party or the SS. Von Braun had joined the party in 1937 and received an SS commission in 1940; Kurt Debus, later first director of the Kennedy Space Center, had been an SS officer; and space-medicine pioneer Hubertus Strughold was later linked to wartime human experiments, leading a professional association to retire an award named after him in 2013. Arthur Rudolph, linked to forced labour at the Mittelwerk rocket factory, gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1984 and moved to West Germany.[1]
In UFO lore
Paperclip is sometimes mentioned in UFO literature because German rocket specialists brought over under the program were working at White Sands in New Mexico in 1946–1947, the time and place of many early "flying disc" reports.[2]
On the UAP Timeline
- CIA memo on Civilian Saucer Investigation (9 February 1953) — A CIA officer admits monitoring a public UAP meeting in Los Angeles.
References
- Operation Paperclip — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- White Sands Missile Range — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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