14 Facts About Walter Dornberger

Major-General Dr Walter Robert Dornberger was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II.

Walter Dornberger was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects at the Peenemunde Army Research Centre.

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.

On 21 December 1932, Captain Walter 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.

Walter Dornberger took over his last military command on 1 October 1934, a powder-rocket training battery at Konigsbruck.

In September 1942, Walter Dornberger was given two posts: coordinating the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket development programs and directing active operations.

The launch sites for V2 rockets in the Netherlands were built by Dutch slave labour, with Walter Dornberger having the workers killed once each project was completed.

Walter Dornberger organised a brothel for the German launch crews, with 20 Dutch women at a time forced into prostitution; each group was executed after two weeks in order to maintain security.

In June 1943, in a speech to nearly 6,500 German employees and soldiers in Peenemunde, Walter Dornberger blended traditional German patriotism with Nazi ideological motifs while highlighting and reinforcing many of the unique factors that made missile development so successful at Peenemunde in the first place.

In January 1944, Walter Dornberger was named Senior Artillery Commander 191 and was headquartered at Maisons-Lafitte near Saint Germain, and in December 1944, Walter Dornberger was given complete authority for anti-aircraft rocket development.

In mid-August 1945, after taking part in Operation Backfire, Walter 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 transferred and detained for two years at Bridgend in South Wales.

Walter Dornberger 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.

Walter Dornberger had a role in the creation of ideas and projects which, in the end, led to the creation of the Space Shuttle.

Walter Dornberger developed Bell's ASM-A-2, the world's first guided nuclear air-to-surface missile developed for the Strategic Air Command.