During World War II, Schriever received a Master of Arts in aeronautical engineering from Stanford University in June 1942, and was sent to the Southwest Pacific Area, where he flew combat missions as a bomber pilot with the 19th Bombardment Group until it returned to the United States in 1943.

He remained in Australia as chief of the maintenance and engineering division of the Fifth Air Force Service Command until the end of the war.

His father was an engineering officer on the SS George Washington, a German ocean liner which was interned in New York Harbor on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914.

Germany was not yet at war with the United States, so Schriever's mother was able to obtain passage to New York for herself and her two sons aboard a Dutch liner, SS Noordam, so that the family could be reunited.

[3] As a wave of anti-German sentiment swept across the United States, Schriever and his family moved to New Braunfels, Texas, a community with a large German-speaking population, where his father found work in a brewery.

His father died on 17 September 1918, as a result of an industrial accident,[3] leaving Schriever and his brother in the care of his great uncle, Magnus Klattenhoff, a rancher in Slaton, Texas.

Chandler built her a house near the twelfth hole of the Brackenridge Park Golf Course in San Antonio, and her mother immigrated from Germany to care for the boys while she worked.

After Chandler died, Schriever's mother turned the refreshment stand that he had built for the children into a thriving business that sold sandwiches, cookies, lemonade, and soft drinks to golfers.

The boys became proficient at the sport, and Schriever made the semifinals of the Texas junior championships in June 1927, winning a pair of golf shoes.

He graduated on 29 June 1933, and was awarded his wings and a commission as a reservist second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps.

[10] Schriever's first posting was to March Field in Riverside County, California, where Lieutenant Colonel Henry H. Arnold was the base commander.

His mother had lost her savings when her bank closed and his brother quit Texas A&M in his sophomore year when she could no longer pay his tuition.

Word of Schriever's prowess at golf had reached Panama, and Brett asked him to become one of his aides-de-camp in the hope of improving his own game.

[13] In August 1937, Schriever was released from active duty at his own request, and became a pilot with Northwest Airlines, flying a Lockheed Model 10 Electra between Seattle and Billings, Montana.

[14] Schriever was assigned to Hamilton Field, California, as a Douglas B-18 Bolo instrument flying instructor with the 7th Bombardment Group.

In July 1942 he was assigned as a bomber pilot to the 19th Bombardment Group in the Southwest Pacific Area, where Brett, now a lieutenant general, was in command of the Allied Air Forces.

[18] He flew ten combat missions with the 19th Bombardment Group before it returned to the United States in 1943; around this time he received the Purple Heart.

[27] To formulate his DPOs, Schriever turned to the Scientific Advisory Board, RAND Corporation and outside consultants from industry and academia for help.

LeMay wanted a larger bomber that could carry a heavier bomb load to a higher altitude with longer range and supersonic speed.

[34] The strategic implications of this were obvious to Schriever: an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could be built to deliver hydrogen bombs.

[34] Von Neumann explained the process by which smaller and lighter hydrogen bombs of lesser yield would be developed in the future, and Schriever left the meeting convinced.

[38] Schriever found an ally in the incoming Eisenhower administration in Trevor Gardner, the Secretary of the Air Force's special assistant for research and development.

[43] It was initially located in the recently vacated buildings of the St. John Chrysostom School in Inglewood, California,[44] in order to be close to Convair, the prime contractor for Project Atlas.

After consulting with Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer, Schriever came back to the Scientific Advisory Committee with a radical proposal: WDD would manage the project directly, with Ramo-Wooldridge responsible for systems integration; Convair's role would be restricted to manufacturing the fuel tank and body of the missile.

[48] Not so Power, who felt that he was being made responsible for an expensive, high-profile and risky project that would be run by Schriever on the West Coast, where supervision would be difficult.

[50] Schriever made a point of keeping Power informed with weekly progress reports and frequently travelled to Baltimore to meet with him.

[56] In addition to the work on Atlas, the Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbott, authorized a second ICBM project, which became Titan.

On 8 November 1955, Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson ordered both the Army and USAF to proceed with the development of an IRBM, with a priority equal to that of the ICBM but without interfering with it.

[60] On 25 September 1957, Major General John Medaris, the head of the ABMA, urged that Thor be cancelled, ostensibly because it did not have 2,000 miles (3,200 km) range.

[6] USAF research and development activities were split between ARDC and the Air Materiel Command (AMC) until 1 April 1961, when White reorganized them.