Konrad Dannenberg

Konrad Dannenberg was a German-American rocket propulsion engineer who worked under Walter Thiel on engine development for the V-2 ballistic missile at Peenemunde during the Second World War, present for the first V-2 launch to reach outer space in 1942 and later responsible for finalizing the missile's production engineering drawings. Brought to the United States in 1945 as one of 118 German rocket specialists recruited under Operation Paperclip, he worked on the Redstone and Jupiter missile programs before joining NASA's newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960, where he served as deputy manager of the Saturn program under Wernher von Braun through the development of the Saturn V, the rocket that carried the Apollo missions to the Moon. He received NASA's Exceptional Service Medal in 1973 for his role in initiating development of the Saturn V, and after retiring that year became a professor at the University of Tennessee Space Institute, remaining active for decades afterward as a public speaker on the history of American rocketry.