Stepan Stepanovich Velma_x000D_ _x000D_ Rank: Senior Lieutenant Type of Troops: Artillery._x000D_ _x000D_ My father, Stepan Stepanovich Velma, graduated from the Kharkov Chemical-Technological College of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry of the USSR as a technician-technologist-pyrotechnician in 1939. He was drafted into the army in July 1941 with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. He was a Technician-Lieutenant of the military acceptance at plant number 12 of the USSR People's Commissariat of Ammunition at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command._x000D_ _x000D_ The plant manufactured the “Katyushas” and other advanced weapons. The plant tested the equipment and immediately sent it to the defense of Moscow and other frontlines. Stepan Stepanovich was proud of the medals "For the Defense of Moscow" and "For Victory over Germany"._x000D_ _x000D_ He was sent to Germany in 1946 at the Nordhausen Institute in Bleicherod and Sommerd to study German V-2 missiles. Nordhausen is a Soviet institute established in February 1946 to study German V-2 missiles in the city of Nordhausen (Germany). The Nordhausen included three factories for assembling V-2 missiles, the Rabe Institute, the Montania plant, which was engaged in the manufacture of engines for the V-2, and a bench base in Leesthen, where fire tests were carried out, as well as a plant in Sonderhausen, which assembled control system equipment._x000D_ _x000D_ Director – L.M. Gaidukov, Chief Engineer – S.P. Korolyov. V.P. Glushko headed the department for the study of V-2 engines. The institute worked until 1947. In 1949 Stepan Stepanovich Velma was dismissed from the ranks of the Soviet Army due to illness.