Walter Kaaden

Working for the MZ Motorrad- und Zweiradwerk part of the Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau (IFA), he laid the foundations of the modern two-stroke engine.

Despite many reports to the contrary, Kaaden did not work on the V-1 flying bomb (the Vergeltungswaffe 1, Fieseler Fi 103) nor under Wernher von Braun on the V-2 German rocket program during the Second World War.

The Germans then moved missile production and testing into the secure, deep tunnel network built beneath the Harz mountains at the Mittelwerk factory, Dora-Mittelbau Concentration Camp.

He eventually returned to Zschopau to start a timber business specialising in roof trusses that were in great demand to renovate bomb-damaged buildings.

[3] By February 1953, Zimmermann was finally persuaded and by March 1953, Kurt Kämpf had been moved sideways within IFA to make way for his successor, Walter Kaaden.

[5] Working with extremely limited resources, in 1955, Kaaden developed the expansion chamber idea using an oscilloscope to examine the resonance in the exhaust system.