Dorr served in the United States Air Force in Korea (1957-60), and spent 24 years as a Foreign Service officer (1964-89) with the U.S. State Department. He held senior positions in Washington after tours of duty in Tananarive, Madagascar; Seoul, Korea; Fukuoka, Japan; Monrovia, Liberia; Stockholm, Sweden; and London, England.

Dorr published his first magazine article in 1955 (age 16) and is best known for magazine and newspaper work. He regularly contributes articles to Air Forces Monthly, Air and Space Smithsonian, and Flight Journal. His weekly opinion column in the trade journal Air Force Times is read by about 100,000 current, former and retired military members and their families. He also writes four weekly history columns a week for the Military Times newspapers. His opinion column typically displays a liberal political point of view; in a September 10, 2007 column that was widely reprinted around the United States, he called for an end to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for treating war prisoners openly under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Dorr is an observer of events in North Korea. Service academies, universities, and Veteran's groups have used his speeches and writings on foreign affairs and Air Force history. Dorr has been interviewed on several networks, including C-SPAN, the Discovery Channel, and local Washington-area newscasts.

Dorr and former astronaut Tom Jones published in 2008 a wartime history of the 365th Fighter Group, "Hell Hawks." This is a history of an aerial band of brothers who went ashore at Normandy just after the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion, fought on the continent through the Battle of the Bulge, and were still in action when Germany surrendered. These American airmen lived under crude conditions, were subject to harsh weather and frequent enemy attacks as they moved from one airbase to another, accompanying the Allied advance toward Germany. To tell their story, Dorr and Jones interviewed 183 surviving veterans who supported, maintained, and piloted the group's P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. "Hell Hawks" is in its ninth printing with almost 30,000 copies in print.

Dorr's book "Mission to Berlin," about the 8th Air Force raid of 3 February 1945 over Europe in World War II, will be published by Zenith Press in March 2011.

A partial listing of books authored or co-authored include:

• Air Combat: An Oral History of Fighter Pilots (2007) ISBN 0425211703
• Air Force One (2002) ISBN 0760310556
• Air War Hanoi (1988) ISBN 0713717831
• Air War: South Vietnam (1991) ISBN 1854090011
• B-24 Liberator Units of the Eighth Air Force (1999) ISBN 1855329018
• B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force (2000) ISBN 1841760811
• B-24 Liberator Units of the Pacific War (1999) ISBN 1855327813
• B-29 Superfortress Units of the Korean War (2003) ISBN 1841766542
• B-29 Superfortress Units of World War II (2002) ISBN 1841762857
• B-52 Stratofortress : Boeing's Cold War warrior ISBN 1841760978
• Chopper: A History of America Military Helicopter Operations from WWII to the War on Terror (2005) ISBN 0425202739
• Desert Shield : the build-up, the complete story (1991) ISBN 0879385065
• Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht (2008) with Tom Jones. ISBN 0760329184. Zenith Press.

• Korean War Aces (1995) ISBN 1855325012
• McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II" (1988) ISBN 0850455871
• Marine Air: The History of the Flying Leathernecks in Words and Photos (2007) ISBN 0425213641
• U.S. Marines: The People and Equipment Behind America's First Military Response (2006) ISBN 1592236189