Konrad Dannenberg
| Konrad Dannenberg | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 5, 1912 Weißenfels, Province of Saxony, German Empire |
| Died | February 16, 2009 (aged 96) Huntsville, Alabama, United States |
| Alma mater | University of Hannover |
| Occupation | Rocket engineer and designer |
| Spouse(s) | Ingeborg M. Kamke Jacquelyn E. Staiger |
| Children | 1 |
Konrad Dannenberg (August 5, 1912 – February 16, 2009) was a German-American rocket pioneer and member of the German rocket team brought to the United States after World War II.
Dannenberg was born in Weißenfels, Province of Saxony (current Saxony-Anhalt). At the age of two, he and his family moved to Hannover, where he spent his youth. He became interested in space technology while attending a lecture by Max Valier, a German pioneer in that field. He witnessed two tests with a rocket-driven railroad car in Burgwedel near Hannover and then joined Albert Püllenberg's group of amateur rocketeers. Dannenberg studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Hannover (current University of Hannover) with emphasis in diesel fuel injection, because he recognized that injectors would also be part of the process of moving propellants into a high-pressure rocket engine.
When World War II began, Dannenberg, a member of the Nazi party since 1932, was drafted into the German Army in 1939, serving first with a horse-artillery unit acquired by the German Army in Czechoslovakia. He took part in the initial stages of the Battle of France.
In the spring of 1940, through the influence of Püllenberg, Dannenberg was discharged from the army and became a civilian employee at the Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde (Peenemünde Army Research Center). Under Walter Thiel's guidance, he became a rocket propulsion specialist. His main assignment was developing a rocket engine for the V-2 ballistic missile. He was at Peenemünde on 3 October 1942 to witness the launch of the first man-made object to reach outer space, a V-2 rocket. This was the first man made vehicle to ever reach space which most experts agree is over 50 miles in altitude. Many improvements on which he worked could not be completed in time for production. After Thiel's death in an August 1943 bombing raid, a design freeze stopped all development efforts. Dannenberg then became Walter Riedel's deputy and headed the crash effort to finalize production drawings of the V-2, the world's first ballistic missile, used by the Nazis to bomb London. He was interviewed for the documentary "The Hunt for Hitler's Scientists."
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