Dornberger, Walter Robert

Walter Robert Dornberger, (born Sept. 6, 1895, Giessen, Ger.—died June 27, 1980, Baden-Württemberg, W.Ger.), engineer who directed construction of the German V-2 rocket during World War II.

Dornberger enlisted in the German army in 1914 and was commissioned the next year. After being captured by the French, he was released in 1919 and retained in the small army permitted Germany under the terms of the Versailles treaty. He was sent by the army in 1925 to the School of Technology in Charlottenberg; there Dornberger specialized in ballistics and earned an M.A. degree in 1930. He was assigned to the development of rocket weapons, a category not prohibited by the Versailles settlement, but had to struggle to obtain recognition for his efforts. In the summer of 1932, however, he was placed in charge of Research Station West at Kummersdorf, a few miles south of Berlin, where, with Wernher von Braun, he began to perfect the rocket engine. In May 1937 the staff was moved to Peenemünde, where the A series of rocket missiles was built; the A-4 rocket developed there later became widely known in its military form as the V-2 and was the forerunner of all postwar space vehicles.

After World War II, Dornberger, who had attained the rank of lieutenant general, spent two years in England as a prisoner, then emigrated to the United States in 1947, where he worked as an adviser on guided missiles for the United States Air Force. In 1950 he became a consultant to the Bell Aircraft Corporation and in 1954 wrote V-2, his reminiscences. During his association with Bell, Dornberger participated in the Air Force–NASA project Dyna-Soar, which was eventually transmuted into the space shuttle program. Dornberger retired in 1965.