ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 3, 1996 TAG: 9601030081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HUNTSVILLE, ALA.
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Pres
Rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph, who helped the United States win the race to the moon, has died in Germany, where he returned after being accused of Nazi war crimes. He was 89.
Rudolph lapsed into a coma and died Monday at his home in Hamburg, according to Hugh McInnish, a friend and retired defense specialist. Rudolph was recently hospitalized for a heart condition, McInnish said. A woman who answered a Hamburg telephone number listed for Arthur Rudolph identified herself as his wife but refused to confirm or deny that he died.
``We want nothing to do with the press. I will give you no information,'' the woman said before hanging up.
Rudolph left Germany at the end of World War II and became part of Wernher von Braun's team of scientists who developed America's space program.
He headed the Saturn 5 project at the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, playing a key role in the development of the rocket that took man to the moon for the first time in 1969.
In 1982, Rudolph was accused by the Justice Department of war crimes involving forced labor at an underground rocket factory.
Rudolph signed an agreement renouncing his U.S. citizenship and left the country rather than fight charges in a trial.
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