Walter Haussermann: Rocket scientist who worked on V1s and V2s then later for Nasa

Walter Häussermann was a leading member of that remarkable team of German rocket experts who worked on the V1 and V2 rockets. After the War, led by Wernher von Braun, the group eventually put the Americans on the moon.

Born in the small town of Künzelsau in South Central Germany, in 1914, Häussermann told how he was fascinated by rockets as a small boy. He was not alone. Several books had been published on space flight and in October 1929, Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond [Woman on the Moon] premiered in German cinemas, increasing popular awareness of the potential of rocket science – there were clubs for enthusiastic amateurs.

Häussermann studied electrical technology at the Technical Universities of Stuttgart and Darmstadt. Did he notice the burning of the synagogues in those towns in November 1938, or the deportation of Jews? There is no record of any recollections. In 1939 he was awarded a doctorate in physics; the War had already started. He was called up as an ordinary soldier and was on his way to Poland when the train stopped; he was taken off and ordered to the army's research station at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast. He arrived on 2 December 1939 and was taken to Dr Wernher von Braun immediately. Braun, only two years older, had started with about 80 researchers in 1936, but by late 1942 their number was nearly 5,000. Their job was to develop the so-called Vergeltungwaffen, revenge weapons, the V1 and V2 rockets.

After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Häussermann claimed, he became convinced the war would end badly, for Hitler had written that the First World War was lost because Germany had to fight on two fronts. He managed to leave Peenemünde, in 1942, and get back to Darmstadt University, where he researched guidance systems. This was lucky in another sense: he left before the widespread use of slave labour and before the devastating British and American raids of the rocket sites.

On 3 October 1942, General Walter Dornberger, in charge of the rocket programme, boasted that, "We have proven rocket propulsion practicable for space travel." He was commenting on the first successful test launch of the V2, a weapon which was soon to be raining death and destruction on London, Antwerp and elsewhere. Like Häussermann and Von Braun, after the war he had a successful career in the US.

Häussermann did not escape Nazi war crimes, nor the War itself, by returning to Darmstadt. In 1942, over 3,000 Jews were deported to camps, where most died. As he pursued his military research and academic career, Darmstadt was under bombardment. Attacked 35 times, the old city centre was largely destroyed in a British bombing raid on 11 September 1944, when 11,000 died in an early instance of the firestorm tactic subsequently used on Dresden in February 1945.

The US Army captured Darmstadt on 25 March 1945 and became permanent residents; Häussermann was not forgotten. He was offered the chance to escape to the US. Surprisingly, he turned down the offer because he would have had to leave his sick wife behind. By January 1948, however, he had decided to go and was flown to El Paso, Texas, to join many of his old colleagues.

He worked on the space programme, including Redstone rockets and Saturn V, specialising in guidance systems. Granted citizenship in 1954, in 1959 he was awarded the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest military honour for a civilian. In 1960 he was appointed director of the Guidance and Control Division of the Marshall Space Flight Centre of Nasa and played a major part in getting Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the Moon.

Walter Häussermann, rocket scientist: born, Künzelsau, Germany 2 March 1914; married; died Huntsville, Alabama 8 December 2010.