Jeff Findley wrote:
On another list Henry Spencer pointed out that, when they developed the
Saturns, Von Braun's team was pretty much the only team on the planet who
had real experience designing large rockets.


No, Korolev had some good sized ones, like the R-7 (built with some
German input), and Chelomei was working on the UR-500 "Proton" super
ICBM of the Saturn 1 class, a entirely home-grown Soviet design.
Von Braun's team's only real experience was in drawing big rockets, not
building them prior to Saturn I. Up till that point the largest thing
they had actually built was Jupiter, which wasn't even a ICBM.
Their multistage experience consisted of clustered solids atop the Juno
1 and 2 boosters, based on the Redstone and Jupiter respectively. I
don't know how much input they had on the V-2/WAC Corporal tests.

Pat