I thought that was Goddard
Wernher von Braun based his and his team’s development work with liquid fueled rocket engines upon Robert Goddard’s prior works. The U.S. Government neglected to make its resources available to Goddard in anything resembling those resources the German government made available to Von Braun and his team. This was due in part to support from Dornberger and the German Army.
It WAS Goddard.
Oberth was corresponding with Goddard in the late 1920s and Oberth later said that this was the foundation that the German space exploration society that he and Von Braun put together.
All the major elements of modern rockets were designed and patented by Goddard. Every rocket today that flies is a Goddard rocket, just with improvements.
When Von Braun and Rudolph were questioned by OSS after the war about what they did at Peenemunde, they said why are you asking us? We learned all of this from Goddard.
But because Goddard refused to be sucked into the Aerojet gang of Malina and Von Karman, he was pointedly not funded and ignored by the Army. His funding came from Guggenheim at the urging of Lindbergh.
He also invented triode tube amplifiers that were the basis for Collins Radios. He assigned that patent to Art Collins for free to spite David Sarnoff and RCA, who copied his patents and then tried to claim that DeForrest was the inventor. The resulting lawsuit ended in 1959 in Goddard’s favor, but of course it was way too late and he had died.
Goddard was a 100% American genius and creator. The Germans were smart guys and worked hard, but it was always the stupidity of American military bureaucrats that looked elsewhere for engineering capability rather then at home, probably because they couldn’t put up with a guy who was independent and didn’t need their “guidance” going down the wrong paths.