Holger Toftoy

After recurrence of an old ailment during a Christmas visit to his daughter at Huntsville in 1966, Toftoy was transported to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He underwent four major operations in the following months. Toftoy died on 19 April 1967. Burial was in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

In 1960 Toftoy retired from the army due to health reasons, and moved to Treasure Island, Florida. There he had a private boat landing and access to the Gulf of Mexico for indulging in his passion for fishing. He continued to be active in his field, retained as a consultant by the Northrop Corporation and by the Brown Engineering Company. He also became involved in local civic affairs; he was elected in 1962 as President of the Isle of Capri Civic Association.

In 1952 he was appointed to direct the Ordnance Missile Laboratories at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama. By 1958 he was deputy commanding general of the Army Ordnance Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal. Later that year he was reassigned as commanding general of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Two years later he retired because of health issues, and moved to Florida.

In 1952, Toftoy was assigned to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, as director of the Ordnance Missile Laboratories. This was responsible for planning, technical control, and supervision of what had become the nationwide Army guided missile and rocket development program. During this time the arsenal became responsible for the research, development, procurement, production, storage and maintenance of the entire Army family of missiles and rockets; some of the products of that program became widely used in the U.S. Military program. They included the PGM-19 Jupiter, the MGR-1 Honest John, the LIM-49 Nike Zeus and the MIM-3 Nike Ajax, among others. In 1958, Toftoy became deputy commanding general of the Army Ordnance Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal. He served as commander at RSA until July 1958, when he was named the commanding general of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland (August 1958).

Toftoy knew the U.S. Army was planning to add guided missiles to its weapons program. He cabled the Pentagon, then personally went to Washington to recommend to senior officers that German scientists be brought to the U.S. for interrogation and possible employment. The mission became known as Operation Paperclip. By September 1945, the first group of scientists, including Wernher von Braun, had arrived in the United States. In the first year of this program, some 119 German scientists were brought to the United States under Toftoy's leadership. Toftoy was transferred to Washington and assigned responsibility for direction of the Army guided missile program.

In 1944, Toftoy became chief of the Army Ordnance Technical Intelligence teams assigned to Europe to seek and evaluate captured enemy ordnance weapons and equipment. During this time, Toftoy received a request from Colonel Gervais Trichel, chief of the rocket branch in the Ordnance Department at the Pentagon, to acquire and ship 100 operational V-2 rockets to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for testing. Soon after the Allied capture of the areas around Nordhausen and the Mittelwerk, Toftoy set up Special Mission V-2 to do the job.

In the 1930s Toftoy was assigned to the Panama Canal to command the mine defenses of the Pacific approaches. In 1938 he was transferred to the Submarine Mine Depot in Fort Monroe, where he served six years as chief of the Industrial and the Research and Development divisions.

He studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an ROTC cadet before transferring to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1926. After taking basic flight training, he was transferred to the Coast Artillery and served three years in Hawaii as a battery commander before returning to West Point as an instructor.

Major General Holger Nelson Toftoy (31 October 1902 – 19 April 1967) was a United States Army career officer instrumental to the development of the United States' early rocketry after World War II, such as the Redstone missile. He persuaded senior officers to bring German scientists to the US after the war, to make use of their expertise, and supervised the relocation of more than 119 scientists.

Toftoy was born on 31 October 1902, in Marseilles, Illinois. He attended local schools before college.