Byron Gordon MacNabb served in the Navy from 1943 to 1948 as an ordnance officer, including early work in barrage anti-aircraft rockets tested to defend the carrier USS Midway from kamikaze attacks. He worked for Sandia in New Mexico, and then Pullman, directing pioneering research in production and storage of cryogenic liquid hydrogen for the nuclear weapons program. He was hired by Convair in 1953, becoming Operations Manager for the Atlas development flight test program at Cape Canaveral throughout the development and flight career of the Atlas missile. From 1966 to 1975 he worked for General Electric as Manager of Test and Operations for its military space projects.

Link to the collection's finding guide.