Вальтер Дорнбергер: Германиялық артиллерия офицері және ғарыш бағдарламаларына үлес қосушы.

German Army artillery officer

Major General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V 2 rocket programme and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Centre. After the war, the US Nazi scientist recruitment programme Operation Paperclip saw him move to the US, largely avoiding punishment for involvement in war crimes, to work for some decades in high positions in aerospace, including for Bell Aircraft and Boeing.

Dornberger was born in Gießen in 1895. In 1914 he enlisted in the German army during World War 1. In October 1918, as an artillery lieutenant, Dornberger was captured by United States Marines and spent two years in a French prisoner of war 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 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 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 labour in the production of V 2 rockets; he was subsequently transferred and detained for two years at Bridgend in South Wales. Along with some other German 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, where he worked on several projects, rising to the post of Vice President. He played a major role in the creation of the North American X 15 aircraft and was a key consultant for the Boeing X 20 Dyna Soar project. He also had a role in the creation of ideas and projects which, in the end, led to the creation of the Space Shuttle. Dornberger also developed Bell's ASM A 2, the world's first guided nuclear air to surface missile developed for the Strategic Air Command. Dornberger advised West Germany on a European space program. During the 1950s he had some differences with von Braun and was instrumental in recruiting several engineers out of the Huntsville's team for US Air Force projects. These included Krafft Ehricke, who later created the Centaur rocket stage and participated in several more defence projects. Following retirement, Dornberger went to Mexico and later returned to West Germany, where he died in 1980 in Baden Württemberg.

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