Everything about Walter Dornberger totally explained
Major-General Dr
Walter Robert Dornberger (
6 September 1895 -
27 June 1980) was a
German Army artillery officer whose career spanned
World Wars
I and
II. He was a leader of Germany's
V2 rocket program and other projects at the
Peenemünde Army Research Center.
Dornberger was born in
Gießen and enlisted in
1914. In October
1918, artillery lieutenant Dornberger was captured by
US Marines and spent two years in a
French POW camp (mostly in solitary confinement because of repeated escape attempts). and in the
Spring of
1930, Dornberger graduated after five years with an MS degree in
mechanical engineering from the
Technischen Hochschule of the
University of Berlin. In
1935 Dornberger received an
honorary doctorate, which Col Karl Emil Becker arranged as Dean of the new Faculty of Military Technology at the Technical University of Berlin.
Rocket Development
In April
1930, Dornberger was appointed to the Ballistics Council of the
German Army (
Reichswehr) Weapons Department as Assistant Examiner to secretly develop In the Spring of 1932, Dornberger, his commander (Captain Ritter von Horstig), and Col Karl Emil Becker visited the
VfR's leased
Raketenflugplatz (English: Rocket Airdrome/Flight Field/Port) and subsequently issued a contract for a demonstration launch. In September 1942, Dornberger was given two posts: coordinating the
V-1 flying bomb &
V-2 rocket development programmes and directing active operations. The first successful test launch of a V-2 was the third test launch on
October 3 1942. In the early morning of July 7, 1943, Dr Ernst Steinhoff flew von Braun and Major-General Dornberger in his
Heinkel He-111 to Hitler's
Führerhauptquartier "
Wolfsschanze" headquarters and the next day Hitler viewed the film of the successful V-2 test launch (narrated by von Braun) and the scale models of the
Watten 'bunker' and launching-troop vehicles:
Reutte for the night.
Post World War II
In mid-August 1945, after taking part in
Operation Backfire, Dornberger was escorted from Cuxhaven to London for interrogation by the British War Crimes Investigation Unit in connection with the use of
slave labor in the production of
V-2 rockets; he was subsequently transferred and detained for two years at Bridgend in South Wales.
Along with other Nazi rocket scientists, Dornberger was released and brought to the
United States under the auspices of
Operation Paperclip, and worked for the
United States Air Force for three years developing
guided missiles. From 1950 to 1965 he worked for the
Bell Aircraft Corporation, and was a key consultant for the
X-20 Dyna-Soar project. Dornberger also developed Bell's
Rascal, a nuclear air-to-surface guided missile used by the
Strategic Air Command. . Following retirement, Dornberger returned to Germany, where he died in 1980 in
Baden-Württemberg.
Further Information
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