Hall's introduction to missiles came near the war's end when he was assigned to acquire intelligence on Germany's wartime propulsion work. He was promoted to captain in October 1943 and major on 1 June 1945. The award of the Legion of Merit was very unusual for a first lieutenant. Plates that spanned the fractured spar were connected with oversized pins, forced through holes drilled through the plate/spar overlap using extreme hydraulic pressure. #NATHANIEL IVEN MISSILE COMMANDER SKIN#He received the Legion of Merit for devising a new method of airplane spar repair that saved several days by eliminating the stripping of the skin from the wings to replace the spar. Hall became the officer in charge of the repair of battle-damaged Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers aircraft at Base Air Depot 2 at Warton Aerodrome. They were married in June 1943, and had two sons, David and Jonathan, and a daughter, Sheila. Soon after he arrived, he met Edith Shawcross, a niece of the English barrister and politician Hartley Shawcross and a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she earned an honors degree in botany. Hall immediately did so, and he was commissioned as a second lieutenant soon after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. In 1941, the Air Corps put out a call for enlisted men with appropriate qualifications to apply for commissions. After graduating, he was posted to March Field in California, and then to Elmendorf Field in Alaska, where his skill at repairing aircraft and fixing the mistakes of others earned him a promotion to sergeant. He attended the school for airplane mechanics at Chanute Field near Chicago. Hall enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on 26 September 1939 the Air Corps was not yet commissioning engineers as officers. He still had trouble finding work as a chemical engineer, and for a time worked as an auto mechanic, a steamfitter, a plumber, an electrician and a radio repairman. He suspected that this was due to the prevalent antisemitism in the United States, and in 1936 he and his brother Ted, then 11, legally changed their surname to "Hall". Jobs for chemical engineers were hard to find during the Great Depression years, and despite having two degrees, he was unable to find work. #NATHANIEL IVEN MISSILE COMMANDER PROFESSIONAL#He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of the City of New York, where education was free, in 1935 and a professional degree in chemical engineering the following year. Holtzberg and Sons, went broke during the Great Depression and the banks foreclosed, but Edward gained admission to Townsend Harris Hall Prep School by passing a competitive examination. The family company his father worked for, J. Ted worked for the Manhattan Project and became an atomic spy, passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. He had a younger brother, Theodore (Ted), who became an accomplished physicist. He also headeĭ the Minuteman project, and then went to Europe, where, at the urging of the Pentagon, he started the French Diamant missile project, a nuclear warhead-carryig IRBM which was central to President De Gaulle's desire for France to have an independent nuclear force separate from the US and NATO.Įdward Nathaniel Holtzberg was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, the son of Rose Moskowitz and Barnett Holtzberg, a furrier. In 1957 he was the director of the Thor development program and supervised the installation of Thor missiles in the UK. In August 1954 Hall joined the Western Development Division as the chief of Propulsion Development, and directed the development of engines for the Atlas, Titan and Thor missiles. After the war ended he was assigned to the Wright Air Development Center (WADC), a top secret research lab where he collated reports on the German V-2 rocket and participated in the development of solid and liquid rocket power plants, working with Rocketdyne to develop more powerful rocket engines. During World War II he served in Britain where he was awarded the Legion of Merit for the repair of battle-damaged Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers. He is known as the father of the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.Ī graduate of the College of the City of New York, Hall enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps in September 1939. Edward Nathaniel Hall (4 August 1914 – 15 January 2006) was a leading missile development engineer working for the United States and its allies in World War II and the late 20th century.
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