Historical questions about Fort Bliss/WSMR/El Paso... (houses, schools)

[Stevemanley]

Hi all, I’m doing some very specific research but for the life of me can't find what I'm looking for, so I was hoping some Locals might be able to help me out as I'm in London, UK, a long way from Texas!!

I'm doing research on the German V-2 rocket scientific team who arrived in El Paso around February 1946 and were initially housed (I think) in WSMR or White Sands Proving Grounds as it was then known. My questions are actually regarding their families, who began arriving around December of 1946 onwards:

Basically I need to know where those wives and children would have lived upon arrival; I believe it may have been within Fort Bliss as there is both housing and schools for the children (was that the case back in 1946 onwards?)

What would the houses have been like? Were the accommodations recently built? Finally, what kind of restrictions would they have lived under?

Apologies for the many questions, but if you can assist me in any way with any of them I would be most grateful. There’s plenty of research material out there for the V-2 team, and the base in general, but I’ve been unable to find anything this specific. I've also tried emailing the museium but haven't had an answer.

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Steve

[kidicarus89]

I'll be honest; information like the families of the V-2 rocket team is going to be incredibly hard to come by without sitting down at the UTEP Special Collections Dept. or pouring through archives for snippets of information. I don't know much about the Bliss Museum - it seems that every Army installation is varying in degree of quality of its archives and so on.

You might want to call UTEP Special Collections to ask what they have in their possession, as well as the Museum, but again, as none of their holdings are archived or indexed in any way it's going to be difficult to work all the way from London. Ultimately I think your only hope is going to be that museum, however.

[Stevemanley]

Many thanks. I'll give UTEP collections a try... other than that I suppose my next vacation could always be El Paso!