Last known surviving member of the US-German team that landed a man on the moon dies

Oscar Carl Holderer was born in Germany but became a US citizen in 1955

Holderer holds some technical drawings in his home shop behind his house in 2008 (AP)

The last known surviving member of the German engineering team that took US astronauts to the moon has died.

Oscar Carl Holderer, passed away in Huntsville, Alabama, after suffering a stroke last week. He was 95.

Born in 1920, Mr Holderer was among 120 German engineers who came to the US after the end of the Second World War as part of a project called “Operation Paperclip”.

The project sought to transfer technology – using German engineers – from the German V-2 missiles to the US, with the team eventually working on the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon in 1969.

Mr Holderer’s son Michael said his father, who became a US citizen in 1955, designed the wind tunnel that was used to develop the rocket and later oversaw Saturn’s construction at Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Centre, Redstone.

‘‘He was one of the more hands-on members of the team,’’ his son told the Boston Globe.

The German-born engineer retired from Nasa in 1974, but his training devices remain in use at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville.