Welding torch shaft with cutting tip from the Dora Mittelbau V2 factory

Chester C. “Jack” Boone entered the United States Armed Forces in 1942. He initially served in the Maritime branch, then transferred to the Army Transport System, where the skills learned in the family machine shop were put to use. Boone earned Second Lieutenant status and received training as an amphibious engineer at an Air Force training center. He served in the European Theater, under General Omar Bradley. He maintained the mechanics of a ship that transported troops, to the north of Omaha Beach, prior to the June 6, 1944, D-Day assault. In 1945, Boone was put in charge of the army detachment that took over the underground V-1 and V-2 rocket factory outside of Nordhausen, Germany.
Upon arrival at Nordhausen in April 1945, Boone saw the piles of bodies of the slave labor workers that the Nazis had enclosed in barbed wire and massacred, leaving their bodies where they fell. The underground factory was “very weird” in Boone’s words. It was not discovered by US forces until the war was almost over. It was built under a mountain, and consisted of two mile-long tunnels that stretched from one end of the mountain to the other, with cross tunnels connecting them. The tunnels were equipped with lights and railroad tracks. Train cars were loaded with raw materials and slave labor assembled the rockets, as the cars moved down the tracks. When Boone arrived, there were 120 V-2 rockets present. A forced labor camp of 6,000 people was attached to the factory, by a blacktop path, lined with barbed wire. When the inmates were freed by the US troops, few people left; they had nowhere to go.
Boone’s detachment was charged with securing, and then, dismantling, the factory. However, after six months of work, little progress had been made. When Germany was divided in 1945, the factory was in Russian territory, so Boone’s detachment left. They were able to remove all of the rockets from the factory, but were unable to dismantle it. Boone believes that the Russians began producing their own rockets in the factory, the day after the US troops departed. Boone took the set of German welding torches with him when he left the factory. During his time there, Boone met Werner von Braun, the father of German rocketry and spoke with him about German advancements. Braun was eventually offered a contract for him and his team to continue their research in the United States.
The reaction Boone received from other people while in Germany was, overall, a positive one. At the Russian checkpoint at Berlin, he was not received with the warmest reception, so he never saw Berlin. In 1947 Boone withdrew from active service and was honorably discharged in 1952.