Edward N. Hall
Edward N. Hall ( * August 4, 1914 in New York City; † 15 January 2006) was an American General, engineer and founder of the U.S. Minuteman missile program.
Life
Hall was born on 4 August 1914, the son of a fur trader. His family was poor, through the Great Depression, however, he came through a contest on the Townsend Harris High School. He studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York, but could not find a job after graduation and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was sent as a lieutenant to the UK. He supervised the repair and maintenance of bombers of types B -17 and B -24. In 1943 he was awarded the Legion of Merit for the development of a rapid method for the repair of serious damage to aircraft fuselage.
Interest in rocket technology he developed in 1945 after a visit to the V2 factory in Nordhausen. Later he was transferred to Wright - Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where he soon built bigger and better operated with liquid fuel rockets. By 1954, he had a rocket with a thrust of 600 kN, more than twice as much as the 250 kN of the V -2. During his work, he worked on the Bomarc missile, Navaho, Snark, Rascal and Atlas. In 1957 he switched from liquid fuel to solid fuel propulsion drive. In 1958, he created the concept of the three -stage intercontinental ballistic missile Minuteman. After he left the U.S. Army in 1959, he worked for 14 years as an engineer at the United Aircraft Corporation. He was married and had a daughter and two sons.