In the 1979 series it is revealed that he and fellow scientist Reinhardt was captured and forced to work on Operation Superman (possibly the first cyborg project ever) for the Nazi regime during the 1940s. Gilmore, when he learned that he was working on Hitler's secret project, was disgusted by this fact and decided to escape. He was aided by the chaos created by an Allied strike on the laboratory he was working in and managed to escape in the confusion.
