I know a good deal of history........particularly of WW2............which is how i pieced all this together..

V2: The Nazi rocket that launched the space age - BBC Future

https://www.bbc.com › future › article › 20140905-the-nazis-space-age-ro...

Sep 5, 2014 - “The Soviets completely recreated a V2 and the Americans took them over to America to launch and carry out some of the first upper atmosphere experiments.” However, the US knew that it wasn't the hardware that was as important as the men behind it. And they had Von Braun.