Walter Dornberger

Walter Dornberger
Portrait of Major General Dr. Walter Dornberger taken during captivity, 1945
Born	(1895-09-06)6 September 1895 Gießen, Germany
Died	27 June 1980(1980-06-27) (aged 84) Obersasbach, Germany
Nationality	Germany
Engineering career
Institutions	Peenemünde Army Research Center
Projects	V-1 flying bomb V-2 rocket

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 Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Center.

Dornberger was born in Gießen and enlisted in 1914. In October 1918, as an artillery lieutenant Dornberger was captured by US Marines and spent two years in a French prisoner-of-war camp (mostly in solitary confinement because of repeated escape attempts). In the late 1920s, Dornberger completed an engineering course with distinction at the Berlin Technical Institute, and in the Spring of 1930, Dornberger graduated after five years with an MS degree in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in 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 TH Berlin.

In April 1930, Dornberger was appointed to the Ballistics Council of the German Army (Reichswehr) Weapons Department as Assistant Examiner to secretly develop a military liquid-fuel rocket suitable for mass-production that would surpass the range of artillery. In the spring of 1932, Dornberger, his commander (Captain Ritter von Horstig), and Col. Karl Emil Becker visited the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR)'s leased Raketenflugplatz (English: "Rocket Flight Field") and subsequently issued a contract for a demonstration launch. On 21 December 1932, Captain Dornberger watched a rocket motor explode at Kummersdorf while Wernher von Braun tried to light it with a flaming gasoline can at the end of a four meter long pole.