Helmut Hölzer

In October 1939, while working for the Telefunken electronics firm in Berlin, Hoelzer met with Ernst Steinhoff,^[7] Hermann Steuding, and Wernher von Braun regarding guide beams for a flying body.^{[Neufeld 1]} In late 1940 at Peenemünde, Hoelzer was head of the guide beam division^{[Neufeld 2]} (assistant Henry Otto Hirschler^[8]), which developed a guide-plane system which alternates a transmitted signal from two antennas a short distance apart, as well as a vacuum tube mixing device (German: Mischgerät)^[9] which corrected for momentum that would perturb an object that had been moved back on-track.^{[Neufeld 3]} By the fall of 1941, Hoelzer's "mixing device" was used to provide V-2 rocket rate measurement instead of rate gyros.^{[Neufeld 4]}

Then at the beginning of 1942, Hoelzer built an analog computer to calculate and simulate^[8][10][11] V-2 rocket trajectories^{[Neufeld 5][12]} Hoelzer's team also developed the Messina telemetry system.^[1] After evacuating Peenemünde for the Alpenfestung (Alpine Fortress), Hoelzer returned to Peenemünde via motorcycle to look for portions of his PhD dissertation^[5] prior to surrendering to United States forces at the end of World War II.

Hoelzer was a student of Alwin Walther.^[6]

One of his grandchildren is Olympic swimmer Margaret Hoelzer.

• Neufeld, Michael J (1995). The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. New York: The Free Press. pp. 104, 106, 107, 140.

• Helmut Hoelzer Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections