2 10 83 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/08ba46ae7d98993bf1022031a4c08180.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ed7b9258971206614488068cff3f24ce.mp4 82f42e37e2014501d6f365c4f51d8194 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000047_A Title A name given to the resource Sweat, Sidney J, McKay, Therman, and Powell, Luther Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/be4aac252087ea7122f9eda5240dfa17.pdf 0c454e265ad842e65ce9219f5f90570a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000046_T Title A name given to the resource Stuhlinger, Ernst (Transcript) Description An account of the resource General Saturn topics, Projects Highwater and Pegasus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-23 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/41818bb74e5d75e7d9ea39309acec5ee.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/19688b42c65bf8ba9d283dcdef9ca7ff.mp4 e40d3d26a257735ba8ef55d604197bc6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000046_A Title A name given to the resource Stuhlinger, Ernst Description An account of the resource General Saturn topics, Projects Highwater and Pegasus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-23 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/9817aff418bab19cd6b6e9ad577f5a54.pdf d52f9cf691f7294565f7add85d9e62cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000045_T Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Rod (Transcript) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/e52795f3bddb4b7494f96b28bdb029f4.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/28cf2deb5bb972fd09e63f005654293b.mp4 543c685002c998995d9c139cdf4df040 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000045_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Rod Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/fbed9e289d367edaf67db2ea8d6494ad.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ff3feab03b15a3a28709f814dddc8de0.mp4 66027062dc4d69ca561cb7ab5f241fc9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Rodger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:57:07 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 2 [00:00:16] Donald Stewart: What they decided to do on that particular flight was to go ahead and dump the—since the CG location was out of kilter for this particular test—go ahead and dump the water overboard. Well, this sounded like a real good idea, so they hit the pump to dump the water overboard. Due to the pressure differential, the water didn't want to go, so they just filled up the deck—the main deck. It was running in, and Sandy Freizner was on the mic hollering, “You got water in the deck! Water in the deck!” Conroy [on the cruise?] thought they said, “Flutter.” They almost had a damn conniption. [Roger Bilstein laughs] They came in on an emergency landing, and one guy went back to look to see where the flutter was, and he saw this guy, Sandy Freizner [standing down?] he just [inaudible] down completely with water, just came flowing down that hatch. That was one of the hilarious points. [00:01:22] The other one was we had to…See, normally you have to do, the company has to do their preliminary tests, [turn it on to?] the FAA, and FAA verifies it, and finally FAA will put their people on board and flight test the airplane. Another occasion was that…You have to go through various maneuvers, roller coasters, and check the rudder throw, the [ailerons?]...What you do, you put a pulse in there, in your instrumentation, in your rudder, see? You pulse and you gonna do…You’ve heard people…You say you’re aeronautical, aren’t you? [00:02:08] Roger Bilstein: Theoretically, yeah. [00:02:10] DS: All right, well, you know the old dampening effect? You do roller coasters and see how long you dampen out? It’s quite different than the theoretical thing in the book. All you do is put a pulse and let everything dampen out. Well, they were doing this. What you do with the rudder after you do this dampening-type experiment and check for the instrumentation on to G-loads on things of this nature, FAA says, “You've got the Stratocruiser had the limits on the rudder. You've got to check this test.” [00:02:52] DS: Conroy sold…Any time FAA wanted something, Conroy, it’s just human nature for him to fight it. He says, “Hell no!” and they said, “Hell yes!” and finally they decided we'll do it through some encouragement for myself as a NASA rep. He says he'll get those damn FAA b*st*rds up there and teach them a lesson. They take off that afternoon, they’re doing some [slip?], and they receive rudder effect, and [it's a beautiful thing?] to watch. They’re on board the airplane, and the FAA guy says, “Okay, ready for this particular maneuver?” Side slip to the right, side slip to the left…So what you do is you go into sort of a fixing to fall over and you kick your rudder, and you can get reverse rudder [lock?] on this thing. FAA had never had a [inaudible] like this in the air, so when we kicked it up, started to side slip through the rudder end, and you could just feel the G-load build up. The FAA man started screaming, “Stop this thing! Stop this thing!” So they pulled her on, let her slip on out, get on out of the thing, and then had a rudder limitation of plus or minus seventeen degrees. You never did have to prove seventeen degrees, we only got up to about twelve. [00:04:34] RB: [Laughs] I hope you don't mind backtracking, but did they leave those two outboard engines in with full props? They never chopped the ends on those? [00:04:42] DS: No, they never did chop them. [00:04:45] RB: And I really don't know…How do you…Where do you place your strain gear just on a prop? Down near the hub? [00:04:53] DS: No, you're going to place it at different stations along your axes. Say your longitudinal axis of the prop is just an [airfoil?] just like a wing at certain stations along there. Then you place it at certain [co-ed?] locations. It's just a wing section. So you put it along the—-I can’t think of the terminology now—but along the center line of the [airfoil?] [00:05:33] RB: Of the propeller? [00:05:34] DS: Of the propeller section there, you place it at various stations, so you get a [bend?] increase just like in a helicopter. An airplane propeller tends to make the same actions—lag and lead actions—that a helicopter blade will. An airplane propeller tries to do the same thing, but its rigidity and reduced length, it can’t do that as much. You design an airplane propeller blade to resist all this lead and lag, which the helicopter people found out if you do that you get blades that you can't fly with. Probably you can. What you're doing is you're checking those, as you go through bending and [inaudible], you're checking the strength or stresses of the particular points that collided from the critical stresses limited by the design of the cross sectional area of the blade. All we had to do was one propeller. You gotta do some of this during the flight and a lot of it on the ground. [Inaudible] gets up to 120 in the shade. This can be rather tough on an old engine. [00:07:12] RB: Did you burn that engine out? [00:07:13] DS: No, we never did burn the engine out or anything. We had some other, I guess you’d call, anxious moments of different loadings when we were going through our first load test. We had designed here at Marshall a pallet to carry the S-IV-B basically, and it gave the design to Bob Prentice’s people out at Douglas. They built a pallet because they had to make basic responsibility for it. [00:07:58] RB: It came out of Heimberg’s shop, right? [00:07:59] DS: Yeah. The basic design… [00:08:00] RB: That’s for the S-IV you’re talking about? [00:08:04] DS: S-IV, yeah. So my boss and I—Julian Hamiliton at the time—we had, let’s say, a difference of opinion about what you would put on the aluminum to the aluminum. See, the Super Guppy had two [angles?] that served as the rails, and the pallet was an I-beam that would slide directly on this aluminum to aluminum sliding [inaudible]. My boss and I had a discussion about what to use as a bearing, a lubricant bearing, some sort of frictionless bearing surfacing. I wanted to use teflon, and Jack Conroy, being the non-engineer, talked to my boss and says, “You've got to think of the freezing conditions you get with teflon. Teflon will freeze up.” He and my boss decided, well, they would go to nylon. I tried to tell them that due to [porosity?] of nylon, if you let the thing sit there very long, you're going to freeze. The cold flow that they were worried about in the teflon, you had to get something like 150,000 psi to start cold flowing the teflon. I couldn't talk them out of it, so I suggested we put banana peels on it. [Both laugh] [00:09:53] DS: So we put nylon on it, and so we were sitting out at Marshall here, designed what we call the cargo lift trailer, Karl Heimberg’s outfit did. This is a scissor on both ends, steering wheel on both ends, to raise the cargo up to the floor of the Guppies. Like I said, we went ahead and installed the nylon per my boss' direction—Julian Hamilton’s direction. We were sitting out at FAA hanger in Los Angeles going to go do a loading exercise with Dr. Von Braun. Somehow about maybe an hour, hour and a half, two hours before Dr. Von Braun was to arrive, [inaudible] some of the officials from NASA headquarters to show them what we had done, Julian Hamilton and the Douglas troops decide well, maybe we ought to go through just a little halfway practice run. They raised the cargo lift trailer up, get it, you know, proper orientation of the aircraft flow, start up the winch to move the S-IV in, start, and it won't go. Start, and it won't go. I told my boss, I said, “Well, remember that nylon you're going to use?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, I think it's frozen.” I said, “Now, if you take two 4x4s, and put under the end of the pilot”—because it overhung the cargo lift trailer—- “and lower the cargo lift trailer, you'll break that suction you created with the nylon, which teflon wouldn't have done. Now, I'm going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information. I hope you all get done unstruck before Dr. Von Braun gets here.” When I left there was about twenty-five people running around in mad hysterics. [Both laugh] They finally got it unstuck. We were able to carry out because Dr. Von Braun normally is late, gave them an extra hour to accomplish it. [00:12:27] RB: Did they replace it with teflon then? [00:12:30] DS: Well, we…Not really. A couple of Douglas design engineers and myself had to hoodwink all his people, wanted to do what my boss wanted to do. My boss, after that, wasn’t as adamant for nylon. [00:12:51] RB: Is this Heimberg you’re talking about? [00:12:53] DS: No, Julian Hamilton wasn’t as adamant for nylon as he was before. I told the Douglas people that we wanted to put something on there based on the recommendations, which was oil [light?]. Told the Douglas people that's what we was going to put on there based on the recommendations of his design engineer...[tape cuts out and restarts at “I’m going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information…] [00:14:40] DS: I came back to Marshall and talked back to Marshall and said that’s what Douglas wants to do. Through a little diplomacy there, we got teflon [delivery?]. The airplane never had any other problems. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [00:14:58] DS: We hauled [I guess all the S-IV?] [inaudible]. We did another thing one day…Just getting into the operation of hauling S-IVs…So I was on a flight, we were late getting out of Los Angeles, supposed to have cleared various SAC bases, military bases, whatever it might be. On our route from Los Angeles, [USC?], we had to divert [inaudible] because of weather. We had to supposedly [inaudible] supposedly cleared us for all these different Air Force bases. We’re tooling along [inaudible] SAC base [inaudible]. [00:16:10] RB: Is this for emergency landing? [00:16:12] DS: No, we had to re-fuel. The weather [inaudible] landing there. We land on this particular SAC base—I forget the name of it now—tooling up to the hangar, all of a sudden, my God…People’s eyes [inaudible] didn’t know what had landed. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [From outer space?] [Inaudible] guards, slowly but surely and very fast, escorted us out to the boonies. They let us off the plane, guards around there with carbines and M1s [ready?] and 45s, “Where the hell did y’all come from? How did you get in here?” [We’re supposed to get in here?] Finally, this is about one or two o’clock in the morning. [Inaudible] A couple of hours, the crew sleeping on the deck out there, guards surrounding them [inaudible]. Airplane captain trying to locate the base commander. We finally had clearance to go on. [Roger Bilstein laughs] Fuel up and go on. [00:17:30] RB: When you flew from…Where did you usually leave from in California? Some Navy… [00:17:36] DS: No, that S-IV stage [inaudible] Sacremento. [00:17:41] RB: That’s right, directly out of the test area then, yeah. [00:17:44] DS: We’d fly out of [inaudible] airport [inaudible]. [00:18:05] RB: How many refueling stops did you have to make with the Pregnant Guppy? [00:18:07] DS: We did it on the [wind?]. [Inaudible] [...stop in Houston, Carswell?] [Inaudible] [00:18:33] RB: This is about an eighteen hour flight then? [00:18:36] DS: Yeah, depending on the crew or the crew ran out of time. [Inaudible] There was a number of things, I guess, [inaudible]. A lot of other happy experiences. There were [inaudible]. [00:19:18] RB: Did you know a guy at Douglas named [inaudible]? [00:19:22] DS: The name sounds familiar [inaudible]. [00:19:25] RB: Well, I talked to him, and as I recall, he said that they were in the Pregnant Guppy flying somewhere and heard kind of an ominous noise from the back. They said they put down in a real hurry, and a twelve inch gap had opened up. Do you remember anything like that happening? [00:19:41] DS: No…It’s quite a bit of [inaudible]. We had a lot of complaints about it [inaudible] tests to determine [inaudible]. It could’ve happened and [inaudible] reported. [Somebody?] had failed to cinch up the [bolts?]. Well, and there was different kinds…We had a number of rear [axis?] problems, flying different cargo because we had just started [inaudible] a new airline and air transportation of outsized cargo. We [inaudible] Boeing chief flight test engineer and from talking to some of the [Boeing?] people [inaudible] S-IV-B visibility test [inaudible] Saturn contract. That’s where a lot of their…The Guppy—based on the information I’ve given to Douglas and Boeing people—the Pregnant Guppy proved that you could extend [inaudible] stretch DC-8. [00:21:22] RB: Is that right? Is that where that came from though? [00:21:25] DS: Whether the Douglas will admit it or not, yes, that’s where it came from because Douglas…Ted Smith, a few others, I’d say [inaudible] preliminary meetings [inaudible]. [00:21:39] RB: That’s really interesting. We talked to Ted Smith… [00:21:41] DS: Ted Smith and a few of his cohorts sat in there [inaudible]. Based on our knowledge of building airplanes since the beginning of time the Pregnant Guppy won’t fly. Afterwards, every time we’d go back to test, at the test we had a lot of film coverage. [Inaudible] real adamant [inaudible]. You know, that son of a b*tch is flying. [Roger Bilstein laughs] He would grin [sheepishly?] [00:22:19] RB: I like Ted Smith. That was one of the best interviews we had. We didn't get into the Pregnant Guppy. [00:22:25] DS: Ted and his people…[Bob Prentice?] worked with Ted, and [we were all done?] with the Saturn contract. Ted Smith's people had to be a little bit skeptical because they had presented a proposal to NASA to use the C-133 and [inaudible] piggyback [inaudible] carry the S-IV and had gotten a considerable amount of [inaudible]. Conroy never got his. [Inaudible] This was all turned down. We had a number of proposals back in those days carrying the S-IV by blimp, carrying it by [towed glider?]. [Inaudible] proposal [inaudible] glider [inaudible] not only used for the S-IV stage, but the S-II stage, [inaudible] all the stages. We had a number of proposals [inaudible] vehicles—you name it, and people had suggested it. It was a comical engineer at Douglas suggested firing the S-IV-B [inaudible] to launch it [inaudible] the Cape, so… [00:24:14] RB: Was he serious? [laughs] [00:24:15] DS: Well, [inaudible] talking about the Guppies, he said, [inaudible]. Conroy, I feel [overcame?] insurmountable amount of negative pressure. [Inaudible] got his basic strength to go on when things were [inaudible] down in the dumps again. I think he derived a lot of his strength from Karl Heimberg and Dr. Von Braun. Conroy would come in, I’d meet him, and he didn’t have enough money to pay his motel bill or pay for his car. I’d pick him up and take him to his motel. Mr. Heimberg would come on and have a few drinks. Heimberg would reassure him he was going to this and do that [inaudible]. [Inaudible] pick him up the next morning and bring him out here. One time, he got so broke that he had to spend the night at different people’s houses working on the thing. I always felt that they...in the early stages, they did Conroy…They would give Douglas, North America, Boeing, Chrysler, half a million dollars just to do a study, and here was a guy that [had sold his soul?] and [they wouldn’t?] give him fifty dollars. But it all played out in the end [with the Pregnant Guppy?]. It was really ironic [the way they went about starting?] Saturn V, Conroy had already gotten the Pregnant Guppy running, and [inaudible] he says, “Well, I think I’ll talk to them myself.” [Inaudible] Sky Trails in Van Nuys, and he says, “I think I’ll build another airplane.” [Inaudible] “What kind of airplane?” [Inaudible] “...Carry the S-IV-B.” “Sounds good, Jack. I’ll talk with Mr. Heimberg about it.” So I came back and talked with [Jack Balch?] and Karl Heimberg, made a couple of sketches on the back of used envelopes, made up some charts, and talked to Mr. Heimberg and Balch. [Inaudible] [00:27:32] DS: [Fritz?] Kramer could understand how they built this thing because he built the things in Germany [inaudible]. I think [Fritz?] Kramer was very encouraging I think…He went out once to evaluate the way they were going about building the Guppy. [Inaudible] says, “That’s the way we did it in the old country.” [Inaudible] cost a million dollars [inaudible]. [00:28:21] RB: How do you spell his name? [00:28:22] DS: Kramer? K-R-A-M-E-R. [Fritz?] Kramer. [00:28:26] RB: Do you know happen to know what aircraft firm he worked for in Germany? What he did? [00:28:29] DS: He worked for on of the [inaudible]. [00:28:47] RB: Is there any big difference between the Super Guppy and the Pregnant Guppy really? I mean outside of the... [00:28:54] DS: About seven and a half foot plus… [00:28:55] RB: Diameters, yeah. [00:28:57] DS: There's seventy inches added aft [inaudible], rear section [splice junction?], seventy inches there. In the forward section, there’s another fifty inches. Plus the twenty-five foot in diameter. Then there’s a seventeen and a half foot wing [inaudible] section that was added. [00:29:30] RB: So they didn’t have to chop the prop… [00:29:33] DS: There was twenty-five foot internal diameter. I forget how many square foot of area added to the verticals [inaudible] added to the base of the vertical stabilizer. There’s tips instead of rounded off [inaudible] structures. There’s more vertical stabilizers and also more horizontal stabilizers. There’s more area added there. Plus, the fact is…See, the original Stratocruiser was designed basically as a C-97 and a commercial version by Boeing. It was originally designed to carry, to be powered by turboprops. [Inaudible] same basic power as the [inaudible] 133. The airplane reached the final stage where it needed props and engines before the turboprop engine was [certificated?] and ready to go. They went to an alternate R-4360 engine instead of the turboprops [inaudible]. The Super Guppy was Conroy’s idea when he started thinking Super Guppy and the difference in weight and size and all this except he needed turboprops [inaudible] thrust per pound of weight [inaudible]. He knew General [Funk?] and General [Gherig?] had two of these Stratocruisers, turboprop versions that Boeing had developed for them and also knew [inaudible] FAA [inaudible] original design turboprop. That was his selling point there. Finally Conroy found out that these planes were going into salvage. All he wanted was the landing gear because of the 175,000 pound [inaudible]. Some basic structures to the airplane, some [inaudible] put these things in salvage in Tucson. He was able to con the Air Force into buying it at scrap for the national interest of hauling S-IV-Bs. He used the wings because they had the turboprop fixtures on there. The cowlings, the turboprops, and [inaudible] S-IV-B. Super Guppy to work up a bargain with NASA, so we were able to get on the Air Force [inaudible] engines. [00:33:14] RB: Okay, because somewhere said they were on lease or something. [00:33:18] DS: They were on lease from the Air Force. Conroy got a lot smarter, [inaudible]. We got a lot smarter [tape cuts out] [Inaudible] scrap [inaudible]. We went out [inaudible] the airplanes he brought them back to Van Nuys. [On Mark Engineering?] did the modification [inaudible]. Conroy was able to get a better financial deal. [Inaudible] engineering did the design modification. During this time, Aerospace [Lines?] had had some sort of altercation with FAA, and FAA was going to fine the company. You have to know Conroy to appreciate his attitude: “If the FAA had been in existence when Orville and Wilbur Wright started, we still wouldn’t be flying!” He made it in his mind that he was going to take FAA to court, so sure enough he took them to court, and sure enough he won. [00:35:00] RB: [laughs] What was the hassle over? [00:35:08] DS: The court [inaudible]…Conroy used the thing of saying, the Pregnant Guppy is a certified airplane, so we’ve done that part of it, but it should be operated as a public airplane. Public airplane definition is any airplane used solely by municipalities—federal, state, or on a government lease—which the Pregnant Guppy was used solely for that. This is the way the FAA court ruled. The Guppies became public airplanes. When this happened the FAA wouldn’t touch the Super Guppy, so we had to use a different…We finally talked the FAA into advising us as consultants. Bill Gray and I’s job became doubly demanding in the Super Guppy effort because he and I had to do all the reviews the FAA had been doing. [00:36:30] RB: Was this to get away from that “Part 8” certificate kind of thing? [00:36:34] DS: Well, it was to get it into a public airplane operation, rather than…But FAA was wanting to stay away from the Super Guppy was right because to have certified the power plants, the wing structures, the landing gear, and the various structures used off of military airplanes which weren’t certified by FAA would’ve probably cost a million or more dollars. FAA off the cuff, unofficially, advised Bill Gray and I not to push that part of it because it would cost the government too much money. Finally, FAA agreed to serve as NASA consultants on the modifications of the Super Guppy. [00:37:29] RB: Is there one guy in the FAA or a couple fellows that stand out? A number that worked on this, the Guppy and the Super Guppy? [00:37:36] DS: Charlie [Hawks?] He’s retired. [00:37:44] RB: Does he live in Washington? [00:37:46] DS: No, he’s in Los Angeles [inaudible]. [Rocco?] [Inaudible]. L-U-P-P-I-S, you see the spelling in some of the FAA documents [inaudible]. [00:38:11] RB: Is he in Los Angeles too? [00:38:12] DS: All these guys are in Los Angeles. Rocco Luppis, [inaudible]. There’s numerous guys…George [Stevens?] is one. George [Stevens?] [inaudible] real dedicated. There’s numerous other people. After Conroy broke the ice on the Pregnant Guppy, which was very…They were behind him this time, helping him instead of pushing back, trying to hold him off. [00:39:09] RB: What happened to the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy? The Super Guppy is still flying. [00:39:14] DS: Both airplanes are still flying. I guess they’re still under contract with NASA. [00:39:18] RB: Did Aerospace go ahead and build some other mini-Guppy kind of airplanes? [00:39:23] DS: They built a mini-Guppy, and they built the commercial version of Super Guppy. [00:39:28] RB: And they're all still flying? [00:39:30] DS: Yeah. I believe both airplanes are leased: one to France and one to England. [00:39:39] RB: So they're flying on the continent now? [00:39:43] DS: In Europe. Yeah. [00:39:45] RB: Yeah. What kind of cargo do they carry there? [00:39:48] DS: Oh, basic things. Outside cargo is the big thing, other cargo airplanes. [00:39:53] RB: Not necessarily space equipment. Whatever is… [00:39:55] DS: Whatever is needed. The Super Guppy version of Aerospace [things?] carried the SST [wings?]. [00:40:08] RB: In Europe? [00:40:10] DS: In Europe. The Super Guppy we have here carried the L-10. Super Guppy also carried some fighters from [inaudible] San Diego [inaudible] Navy fighters. Jack Conroy left Aerospace [inaudible] own company, and he developed [CL-44?] swing-tail, Canadian [inaudible]. [00:40:57] RB: Really? He was in on that? [00:40:58] DS: Yeah, that was his airplane. Jack [inaudible]. This airplane is being used [leased in England?] Conroy’s outfit was a new company when they made the design, and they took the DC-3s and C-47s and modified them, put turbo props on them to sell them to South American countries. [00:41:32] RB: What’s the name of this new company? Do you remember at all? [00:41:33] DS: Conroy…Conroy Enterprises, I believe. Conroy Aircraft [inaudible]. [00:41:43] RB: How come you sold out to [inaudible]? [00:41:45] DS: Well, they reached…They had some problems with the internal management structure. [Inaudible] bought into Aerospace [inaudible] manufacture [inaudible] type thing. They had no concept of operating airplanes. [00:42:12] RB: They’re just trying to diversify a little bit? [00:42:14] DS: They were attempting to diversify, and in my estimation, bleed the company dry, which they succeeded in doing. [00:42:22] RB: It seems like such an odd diversification direction for them to take. [00:42:28] DS: Well, they pulled a couple of shenanigans on Conroy, and Conroy just [inaudible] and sold out. They brought in the Boeing people—[Rex?] Johnson’s crowd—and Conroy was running the total operations of two airplanes with 150 people. At one time they had about 5000 people running the thing—designing new airplanes. Aerospace [inaudible] stock offer, [Publix?] Market, I believe. [00:43:18] RB: Still part of [inaudible] though? [00:43:19] DS: Still part of [inaudible]. [00:43:24] RB: I’d like to write to them to get more information. [00:43:27] DS: They probably won’t give you any. [00:43:30] RB: No, but I mean just to…for whatever they got. They got an address here. Is that the correct address? [00:43:41] DS: Yeah, that’s the correct… [00:43:43] RB: I’ll just write to them and see what information they might have. [00:43:47] DS: Probably want to write [Joe Andrews?] He’s a sales rep. [00:43:50] RB: Okay, good. Joe Andrews…Should I mention your name? Is that all right? What’s his title? [00:43:57] DS: Yeah. He’s Vice President in charge of sales. If he’s still with the company. They got more Vice Presidents out there than Conroy had total officials in the company. [00:44:22] DS: Another difference in the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy is the swing nose for loading instead of the tail. [00:44:32] RB: Right. How come they made that configuration change? [00:44:38] DS: It was much easier than attaching all this dolly and different [inaudible] tail. Much less time consuming. [00:44:52] RB: Did they get design [info?] from that British [inaudible] cargo aircraft? [00:44:58]: DS: No, that was Jack Conroy’s. Jack Conroy gets credit for having fathered the [maybe?] C-47, C-97 Stratocruiser [inaudible]. He really didn’t do that. That was other people [inaudible]. He just pushed it through [and saw it through the end?]. Conroy did develop, was responsible for the S-IV-B airplane. One time we had the S-IV-B airplane so [inaudible] at headquarters [inaudible]. Conroy came in and started talking to Von Braun about an S-II airplane. [Inaudible] Dr. Von Braun was, he says, “That’s the way to go. Forget the S-IV-B airplane.” We would have run into probably twice as much reluctancy. Everybody [inaudible] did on the Pregnant Guppy. Conroy’s idea was to take the old [inaudible] and modify it for jets. [Inaudible] jetpacks and [inaudible] airplanes, carry the S-II was smaller in size [inaudible]. [Inaudible], a company called Fairchild Strato or Fairchild [inaudible] at that time thought it was such a good idea, they invested a half-million dollars in a study. [00:47:01] RB: For a B-36? Were there any left around that time? I personally thought they were all pretty well scrap. [00:47:10] DS: Yeah. Well, they were in various state of…The one that they were planning to get [inaudible] the basic structure for the airplane was in the desert again, so [inaudible] shape [inaudible] Air Force base. [Inaudible] piece at one of the air museums. Even the Air Force was…Assistant Secretary Charles was quite interested in [inaudible]. [00:47:54] RB: What about the pressurization on the Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy? Were both of them or was one of them pressurized? How does that… [00:48:03]: DS: The Super Guppy never was, and the Pregnant Guppy was never planned to be pressurized. The Super Guppy was supposed to have been pressurized but due to the project logistics office—non-engineering people—trying to make too many engineering decisions, Karl Heimberg says, “That plane is operating and let them people have it and get it.” So we did. [00:48:41] RB: Was the cockpit pressurized at all? [00:48:43] DS:Yeah, the cockpit was pressurized. [00:48:47] RB: Could you overfly bad weather then with both airplanes? [00:48:51] DS: Only with the Super Guppy. We had some…It’s surprising how many experts come out of the wall when you do something like the Pregnant Guppy. We had all kinds of experts in Marshall. Then the Super Guppy, it was quite difficult to overcome some of the expertise at that time. We had experts at headquarters, Houston, Marshall, [Iola?], [inaudible]. When it came down to doing the work, none of them was…They were always gone. [00:49:39] RB: [laughs] Did you overfly the bad weather with the Super Guppy? [00:49:43] DS: Yeah, we did. I think it’s about 18 or 19,000, I don’t think you get over normal bad weather—[inaudible] thunderheads [inaudible]. West of the Mississippi, you got to go around [inaudible], twenty-three, twenty-five thousand feet [inaudible]. [00:50:16] RB: But the Pregnant Guppy then, was this cockpit also pressurized or you just didn’t know? Okay, so you just operated them both. [00:50:26] DS: I’m going to have to retract that [inaudible]. The last I remember, we were still using oxygen at certain altitudes and [inaudible] a mask. It may have finally gotten pressurized at certain altitudes. [Inaudible] oxygen, the same way some altitudes [inaudible]. Both airplanes had to have basic limitations being an airplane, and even the 707 had certain limitations. We had a good…Various people around here to understand that. That’s the reason we had to have real close engineering control, which finally fell apart. We…When Mr. Heimberg’s shop…Finally just washed our hands of the whole thing. When people run into trouble, [inaudible] would bail them out. I guess [inaudible]. The Pregnant Guppy, I would say, is still being carried on a contract, but they haven’t needed a Pregnant Guppy [inaudible] four or five years. The question in my mind now is the Super Guppy [inaudible]. I don’t make these kind of decisions. [00:52:43] DS: I think Conroy’s vision of having outside cargo aircraft would probably have materialized a lot sooner if he had stayed with Aerospace [inaudible]. I think [inaudible]. Of course, now they’ve got [problems?]...A two airplane operation is going to support three or four hundred people. [00:53:37] DS: The Super Guppy is a real good airplane, and it climbs about as fast as a F-86 depending on the load you carry. It was given a thorough flight test with the supervision of Bill Gray and myself. We also after we finished this flight test at Edwards, we had Herman [inaudible], chief engineer of flight tests,[inaudible] Aerospace Lines expert on the job. Once we finished the flight test program, we went over and had Joe Walker of Edwards, the old X-15 pilot. [00:54:33] RB: Joe Walker? [00:54:34] DS: He did the final NASA-type flight test acceptance in the air frame. [00:54:47] RB: Before I leave I wanted to ask again about the Pregnant Guppy, and there was an accident and a picture of it out at Ellington. Do you remember about what time that was? [00:55:00] DS: I believe it’s on the back of the picture. I’m not sure. I believe it was… [00:55:02] RB: Oh okay. I can check it [out?] the picture I suppose. What was it? The wind just caught inside the [inaudible] bay or caught the [inaudible]? What was the… [00:55:24] DS: I think it was a combination of both. It was…What do they call them? Dust devils? Ground twisters? It was quite a [terrific?] wind that came through at the Ellington airport. The airplane was tied down to a couple of [tugs?]. [LIfted the tugs?] right off damn ground. [00:56:11] RB: What was the airplane…It was separated. What was the separation for? [00:56:17] DS: To offload the cargo. [00:56:20] RB: It wasn’t the S-IV stage then? It was a different… [00:56:23] DS: No, we were either picking up or delivering command service modules to test—the ascend or descend stage. I’m not sure…It was back before…I’m looking at some old travel orders here. [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000044_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 2) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource Discussion about Jack Conroy and his Pregnant and Super Guppies https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/d953f7b1f7716f2ed2046beb0baa779e.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/0d040045c33de88955df07c14f3a498e.mp4 21ebc05be88f85e316d1e7ff6b03c047 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:38 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 1 [00:00:07] Roger Bilstein: Let me begin…I'd like to verify a couple stories before we start. One of them is the story that Conroy was getting a little bit low on money and didn't have a NASA contract yet. He shored the inside of the pregnant guppy up with wooden timbers and flew it out here to Huntsville and landed out here at the Redstone Arsenal airstrip, and Von Braun got in and flew around with it. [00:00:35] Donald Stewart: I thought I might have some pictures of that. Well, it all goes back quite a bit further than that. There was a guy by the name of Lee Mansdorf that had bought all of Pan Am and I believe TWA's C-97 Stratocruisers. C-97 is the military designation of them, and Stratocruisers is the commercial designation. He stored all these in the Mojave Desert because he didn't have any real big problems with corrosion. He had a young guy that was working for him or with him or a friend who also worked with Hughes. I don't remember his name. But Jack Conroy came in and wanted to start a commercial airline with his Stratocruisers. So this young guy—this is in 1960—this young guy just off the top of his head says, “Well, a way to start something to get to the commercial airline end of it would be make a missile carrying stage out of these Stratocruisers. [00:02:13] RB: This is not Mansdorf, this is the other guy you’re thinking of... [00:02:16] Bill….I’ll think of his name…I want to say [Schuman?], but I don’t believe that’s right. Then Conroy thought about it and still hot to make this commercial airline, non-scheduled commercial airline arrangement. This kid, there was a guy name of Walters—a retired Boeing employee who worked with Mansdorf—that took this idea and said, “That’s a pretty good damned idea,” and made up some sketches and drawings, and I think I have most of those here…He and Mansdorf came to Marshall to talk with Marshall because we were responsible for all the stages. [00:03:20] RB: What year was this? Do you remember? [00:03:22] DS: 1960. [00:03:25] RB: That was really early on then that they were doing that. [00:03:28] DS: I said there's some history on this. A lot of people don't really know, and if you want to tell the whole story, you have to get this in. I was working at Boeing in 1960—this is interesting—this is beside the point—interesting [inaudible]—I had talked to some people, put in some applications. My application got to Chrysler here. At that time, I came down to interview Julian Hamiltion who was in charge of transportation before the Cape split out and became a center of its own. Julian was working with the special transportation group who developed the transportation scheme for the land, sea and air and all this. He needed an aeronautical engineer that knew something about airplanes, so he offered me a job as a [cycling?] man to work for Chrysler and work for Jim. This was in November of 1961. [00:04:41] DS: So about December 13th or 14th of ‘61, I was sent out to Los Angeles and UCLA’s very rudimentary open wind tunnel to observe wind tunnel tests of Pregnant Guppy. These people had a model that I think they had built in Japan that mounted in the tunnel. Really, they didn't know how to run a tunnel test. Instead of observing, I wound up being responsible for running it. We ran—when we had a lunch break that day, they actually showed me what they were going to do—we went out and got about five dollars worth of modeling clay and a roll of thread, so we could make a configuration so it looked like its aerodynamic state. After we got it pretty much concocted so we had fairly good flow with all the controllable air surfaces, we ran the test, and everything looked real good for a tough study, just a preliminary study. I left then and said, “Well, you guys, what you need to do now is go into a surface flow, use chalk or whatever you want to, to get some surface flow so you can tell what kind of surface flow you got and how efficient your laminar flow streams are for your surfaces. They said, “Yeah, we'll do this.” [00:06:54] DS: Conroy had donated I think $200 or $300 to UCLA's aeronautical department, so that we could get the wind tunnel study run while the school was out. In that time Jack Conroy, Mike [Healy?], and Ben [Aziz?] and Kaplan—he was a structural engineer, design engineer—they said, “fine.” I left and came back to Huntsville and made my report. I guess I had [trip reports?]. The next thing I knew, they were calling in after Christmas holiday saying, “Come see what we've done.” Well, they had started the structural modification in January, and the Super Guppy was taking shape. [00:08:03] RB: The Pregnant Guppy? [00:08:05] DS: I mean the Pregnant Guppy was taking shape. Here's a picture of the way it looked around February or March. [00:08:21] RB: This is the original cabin [inaudible] [00:08:25] DS: What happened is they cut at this point here [inaudible] and here’s the original frames. When they brought it in, Conroy liked it so much, he said he was running out of money. He had begged, borrowed, stealed [sic], stoled [sic], done everything he could, just running out of money, so what he needed now is hopes of getting the contract for this thing. He ran—on the original body, on top of the original fuselage—he ran wood and steel frames or aluminum frames to stabilize this thing, so he got an experimental FAA clearance to fly the Pregnant Guppy into Huntsville. [00:09:27] RB: This was when, early ‘62 when he was doing this? [00:09:31] DS: This was...I would say in mid-’62. On the way in, it was a real fiasco headed into Huntsville, he had to fly a certain FAA designated route over an unpopulated area. This was sometime I guess June or July of ‘62. They came through Tulsa. They were so low on money, one of their friends knew a friend that was with [Phillip Oil?] called him, made some personal contacts, filled the airplane up with gas and left. Oklahoma people were hot after him to get their money back for gasoline because he didn't buy it. He didn't give them a credit card or nothing. So he then arrived in Huntsville. I met him at the airport. [00:11:28] RB: This is out here at the Redstone field? [00:11:29] DS: Redstone Airport. This was sometime September…say…sometime around October 1st. Last week of September, first week of October. [00:11:50] RB: How long was he down in Tulsa? A couple of months then? [00:11:50] DS: No, he was just in Tulsa...just over night. [00:11:57] RB: Oh, okay. This is when he flew out. He flew out then in the fall of 1962, okay. [00:12:06] DS: The next Saturday after arriving—he spent some time here during that week—I guess it was the next Saturday, Friday or Saturday, that Dr. Von Braun came back into town. He decided to do a demonstration unbeknowning [sic] to the Marshall NASA people. He had only a very limited amount of gas. He performed his demonstration in front of Kroeger, Kramer, Dr. Von Braun, Rees, Karl Heimberg, Julian Hamilton, and myself. The crew at that time was…Jack Conroy… [00:13:17] RB: He was a certified four engines? [00:13:20] DS: He was a pilot. Co-pilot was…[inaudible] the flight engineer was [D’agostino?]; the mechanic with him was Bill Cuff; and...I can’t think of [inaudible] I might have some cards in here… [00:14:25] RB: Was Goodrum out there that day? [00:14:26] DS: No. [00:14:29] RB: [laughs] In talking to him, I got the impression he was. [00:14:33] DS: Well, the story's been told a number of times. [00:14:39] RB: Were any of the people out there that day very skeptical about it going off? Marshall people? [00:14:43] DS: Oh, yeah, Marshall...I forget the co-pilot's name, but anyway...There’s one other member that was stuck [inaudible] gas in Oklahoma. There was a boy, there was seven man crew. Jack Podesky was the co-pilot. They were very skeptical—Dr. Von Braun, Dr. Rees—were all very skeptical of the airplane, so Conroy told them, "Well, I'll give you a demonstration.” Well, he took the airplane up, flew it around, came back and landed, and then he took Julian Hamilton and Hermann Kroeger aboard the airplane for the next ride. [00:15:42] DS: One way to demonstrate the capabilities of the airplane was if you could put— since the volume of the body was so great—one of his tricks to really demonstrate the people the controllability and stability of the airplane was to cut the number one and two engines on the port side and fly by in a straight line. He was out and Julian Hamilton was in the plane with Mr. Kroeger, so Julian Hamilton said, “Well, I'm going to show you, Mr. Kroeger, how stable this airplane is,” because Mr. Kroeger was an old test pilot from Germany, World War II. He chopped number one and number two engine. Hamilton was standing right behind Kroeger, so Conroy told Kroeger, “See, number one and number two is out.” It was still a straight flight. He showed Mr. Kroeger that he only took a thumb and a toe to hold the thing on a straight flight, which is contrary to most two engine airplanes as well as Boeing’s. Mr. Kroeger kind of wants to see the engines out there. Mr. Kroeger looked out and says, “Good God.” Then at that time, they were flying across the field according to Hamilton's account of the story. [00:17:31] DS: Dr. Von Braun's comment was, “That reminds me of the story of the bee that doesn't fly.” [Roger Bilstein laughs] Then his next comment was, “Aww, it should do that because the airplane is nothing but a [fly and rudder?]”. Conroy came in and landed, so this really stimulated Dr. Von Braun's interest in the airplane then. When Kroeger got off the airplane, he was so excited he reverted back to his native tongue. The only thing you could understand from his conversation was “The thumb and the toe,” “The thumb and the toe.” Dr. Von Braun shook his head and got in the airplane and took off, so then he flew around. [00:18:32] DS: Then Conroy landed and tied the airplane down and went out to get something to eat later that evening. He got together at Conroy’s motel and talked to him, possibility of NASA contracting Boeing. The next day Conroy was talking to Mr. Heimberg, and Conroy had told me and Julian Hamilton that he needed some gas, and we mentioned it to Mr. Heimberg. Heimberg asked him, says, “I understand you need gas.” Conroy said, “Yes, I could use a little bit.” He told myself to take care of it, so I talked to Ken Hill. Ken Hill had the commercial airport send a truck out. Conroy filled the airplane up—24,000 gallons. The last time GAO was here that I remember was still trying to explain how we used 24,000 gallons of aviation fuel in the test stands [Roger Bilstein laughs]. There never was a contract about… [00:20:06] DS: Brainerd Holmes, Dr. Siemens—Bob Siemens is now Secretary of the Air Force. All NASA headquarters was totally against air transportation. They figured out business was missiles and space exploration. Jack Conroy kept telling everybody, Dr. Von Braun and everybody concerned, “The second word in the N-A-S-A is National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and aeronautics comes before space.” So Holmes or Siemens—I believe Siemens—finally wrote a letter—that I've got a copy of—said if Conroy ever developed this airplane and got FAA certification, Holmes or Siemens…the biggest fallacy there was the fact that he didn’t spell out what kind of certification—it said certification so it could safely operate—that he would, that NASA would consider the use of the airplane. [00:21:38] DS: Conroy's idea then was, “Oh you know tell you what,” to develop the airplane and to get a “Part 8” certificate, which was a special certificate that crop dusters and general junk airplanes have. The certificate says that you cannot carry any cargo for hire. We went through quite a battle of six or eight months—maybe three or four months—of working all this out, fighting with Conroy. I was the project engineer on the thing, and I was fighting with Conroy and his people constantly to keep them from cutting corners and making sure that FAA considered the price of twenty-four or twenty-five million dollars, whatever the S-IV lease cost was, was the main consideration in their safety, [because?] we considered to be more valuable than men at this time. One thing that put the push on the Guppy was the fact that the S-IV test stand [blew?], and we had some problems which put the S-IV behind schedule for the Saturn I program. This added a lot of impetus to developing this special carrier. It would take eighteen hours to fly the stage to the Cape instead of eighteen days around through the canal—or twenty-one days. [00:23:28] RB: A couple stages could save you a month. [00:23:30] DS: We never could get the people at headquarters or KSC or any place to agree on what it costs one day of delay at the Cape. But once they started having S-IV problems, they never would say how much it cost but they sure got behind this at headquarters then. They went to FAA and requested that they allow an [inaudible] for this “Part 8” certification to allow Conroy to fly for hire because of national interest, and Conroy was allowed to charge us. I've got a copy here that you can use for his first proposal. In November, he made his first proposal in October of ‘69, Dr. Von Braun, and made his addendum to that proposal November 6th. Conroy was one thing: he was opportunist. He was the kind of guy that if you keep around he's going to keep you real honest because he wasn't an engineer, but he had a lot of common horse sense to some degree that most fighter pilots had. Conroy did hold the F-86 record from flying Los Angeles to New York; having breakfast in Los Angeles; flying to New York having lunch; and then flying back to Los Angeles and having dinner that evening at the [Skyeville?] Festival. He was quite an ego maniac to some degree. [00:25:39] DS: In those days, the Saturn program was not “How you can't do it” but “How can you do it and get it done fast?” We went through quite an uphill thing in Pregnant Guppy. Normally, an aircraft company takes an airplane to the desert to go through flight tests carries at least four spare engines. They take a hundred percent spares. When we went to Edwards Air, we took the airplane. Oh, at that time, Dr. Von Braun thought it would be wise since we were going to the Missile Center, to get Edwards Air Force Base involved. [00:26:38] DS: You've got to mention in this thing, there was a guy named Jackson M. Balch, down at MTF, who we had met with all kinds of difficulties selling headquarters and everybody on this program. Then Jackson Balch came to work for Karl Heimburg,Mr. [sic] Rees’ technical assistant, administrative assistant, who was assigned to test lab to learn the ropes of Marshall. One of the first things Karl Heimburg did was say, “Hey, we've got a real good problem here,” and gave him the Guppy problem. People resented his entering the program, but Balch had a lot of [learning?] and could convince people that—there's a lot of convincing you can’t mention in this thing because we’d all probably be behind bars—but anyway, we finally convinced the people from NASA activities… [00:27:53] RB: Did Balch go to headquarters then? [00:27:56] DS: Yeah, Balch went to headquarters, he had bought…Jack and I went to headquarters two or three times to give presentations. [00:28:04] RB: Who were you talking to? Low? Or Holmes? [00:28:07] DS: Talked to Holmes, once he was with Siemens…I guess…I believe Low at that time. But the thing was, Balch came on the same [inaudible] Conroy first went into this. Conroy started his construction at On Mark Engineering. He had no people of his own, so he let On Mark Engineering in Van Nuys do the structural modification. Then he let this guy he subcontracted with—Kaplan, the Strato engineer—do the engineering and the FAA coordination because he was an FAA designator. He was more or less at the mercy of these people as well as trying to get a contract with NASA. He—as some managers have been known to do in the Saturn program as well as any other program, the C-5A, the F-111—he was too optimistic in his selling and wound up in…Christmas of ’62, I was out helping in Conroy's office, and he got a call from—at this time he had lost all his help and doing work for free. He had his wife working as a secretary, so he got a call. The call was they were going to foreclose on his house. Things got real bad sometime around just prior to Christmas, I guess. [tape cuts out] [00:30:28] DS: This time Jack Balch, Julian Hamilton, William Morrow, and myself, we went to California to see how things were going on. I came back and reported, and we went out there to see how things were going on. I think I made a mistake in that date…It was ‘62… more like… June instead of Christmas. We went out there and talked with some of Conroy’s investors. There was a Jay [Humison?]...no…Jay [Overholtz?] and a guy by the name of Mr. [Humison?], who was a design engineer for the project system on the S-IV stage who…one of the few millionaire engineers you run into. Jay [Overholtz?], who had investments in one of the casinos, and Las Vegas was there. There was one other gentleman that I can’t remember, he was sort of the silent partner…well, I guess it’s Lee Mansdorf. One thing’s got to be said about Lee Mansdorf: he had everything so that if the airplane went, he'd make amends; if it folded, he'd still make amends. He believed in really hedging his bets. But those three more or less went on a [note?], and then Conroy could finish this endeavor. One of the first things to know of Mr. [Humison?] was really a gentleman. One of the first things he said he wanted to do was get Conroy’s debt…house out of hock, so he could stop having all these family problems and things going on. [00:33:09] RB: How do you spell this guy’s name now? [00:33:11] DS: [Humison?]…I don't know who was it. It was [Humison?], Howe, and [Overholtz?]. I may or may not [inaudible]. Howe is the Howe that has [Navajo Truckliners?]…I may can find the spellings of his name, write it down, look it up later. [00:33:47] RB: Okay. [00:33:48] DS: Like I said, this was sometime around, sometime between June and Christmas. Sometime around between Christmas of sixty…one...and June ‘62...because in September of ‘62...the Pregnant Guppy...Boeing 377 Stratocruiser took off from Van Nuys Airport and moved up to Mojave Desert…where we…But then the flight test came after the maiden flight. This is where we really had problems. [00:34:51] RB: Before we get to that, I heard one story that when Conroy had flown to Huntsville, Heimburg or somebody wanted to do some load tests, and so they really filled the airplane up with gas when Von Braun was on it. [00:35:09] DS: FAA requested a load test, test out the structures. That was load test may be referring to, but it wasn't. Nothing was put in the airplane by Dr. Von Braun. [00:35:32] RB: It still had the wooden timbers in it though. [laughs] [00:35:33] DS: Yeah. Well, the wooden timbers was just to load up the [support?] structures. This was prior to going to Edwards for the flight test. I started mentioning before that we went to Edwards and got Edwards involved, so I went in, and I was sent up as a measly NASA peon, and I talked to Jack Balch, Paul Bickle, the director of Edwards NASA flight research center. I went in and explained our problem at the [missle?] center. Dr. Von Braun, I guess, had already written him a letter and explained some of the problems we were running into. He called all of his people together and called in one guy by the name of Bill Gray, who had been a FAA chief of FAA flight tests prior to going to work for Douglas and doing little flight test work, freelance flight test work on his own. He did the Purdue flight test at the flying TV station, the relay station. He had since come back to work for NASA, and he was assigned to the project as knowing the ins and the outs of FAA, things of this nature. [00:37:16] DS: One of the things, to show you the way people felt about Dr. Von Braun, he's in the missile business, he gets all the money from the NASA budget, Mr. Bickle gets whatever crumbs is left over, but he...Bickle was quite an avid airplane fan and gave me a couple examples of him modifying his glider. He held the national record for time aloft and flying it for a long time. Anyway, he says, “Whatever Wernher wants, we'll give it to him, even if we have to certify the airplane, say to hell with FAA.” [Bilstein laughs] So that was a little interesting… [00:38:07] DS: Then Bill Gray came on the scene and started advising me. Let me know where Conroy was trying to undercut, take shortcuts, which I was going to the FAA and say, “Watch that [inaudible] Irishman,” “I don't believe this is right,” “Are you looking at this?” “Are you looking at that?” FAA was rather reluctant at that time because they're one agency that’s liable that I know of by law for any engineering decisions. The man that approves something—structures, systems, anything in FAA—if that's not right, and they have a crash and accident, he pays himself with time in prison. If he can't be proven that some change was made or something he didn't approve himself. He's held liable by law, and CAB and Congress gives CAB the power to put that guy on the spot, and I guess that's the reason FAA, they were reluctant to comment as of this time. They says, “Okay, anything has got to come through Conroy because Conroy is the applicant for the 'Part 8’ certificate.” I just kept saying, “Look…” and the people from headquarters kept telling FAA headquarters, “Stay on this, because this is a momentous thing, something that's never been done.” [00:39:51] DS: So we went through quite a hairy, I guess you'd call it, flight test program. The plane actually performed, it's kind of like the [inaudible] performed better than the original Stratocruiser…be more responsive by adding the seventy inches after the wing at the field splice, after the trailing edge of the wing, which it did. But there was still some concern of the wash off the bubble [inaudible] section. It was always contingent, it would wash out in certain angles of attack, certain roll angles, one of your horizontal stabilizers, which would get in trouble, but we went through all this testing. Conroy—was smarter than I guess a lot of people give him credit for—sold FAA, only checking those things that were critical, which at that time, Bill Gray and I, I guess, still had our doubts that the damn thing would fly and figured that if it does, great, if it don't, great. We really had no control over flight testing. Whatever he sold FAA would do, we had to buy it because that was [inaudible] at that time. I guess it was Siemen’s directive if he had it certified, we’d buy it, we’d use it, consider the use of it. [00:41:45] DS: But anyway, it was a rather hectic thing, trying for Bill Gray's advice, trying to force Conroy to do more than what he had contracted to do with FAA to get a certificate. Through a little coercion here, a little coercion there, we were able to achieve this. One of the big things that I guess that we had, is Conroy had a guy by the name of Sandy Friezner, who was…and I do know how to spell his name…Sandy was an instrumentation man, and he’d done a considerable amount of submarine instrumentation work, oil rigs…you name it, he's done it if it's been needed to be instrumented. Sandy was one of Conroy's close friends, and sort of, thought it was great to be a citizen and try to do some of the [stupid?] things that he was doing. He was the only one that would consider the instrumentation job on this thing, so...Friezner is Sandy F-R-I-E-Z-N-E-R… [00:43:10] RB: Yeah, excuse me, I just know it…I've got another, unfortunately, interview coming up on the hour, which is really unfortunate because I'm enjoying this, I… [00:43:22] DS: …We fed all…[McNamara?] started the C5-A, we fed him information on the guppy. He did his cost-effect analysis on the side, came up with an airplane that was less than the guppy because of some of the structure loads, and some of the other things. We actually fed him information on this airplane. We had two airplanes [inaudible] ‘61…‘69…seven years, seven and a half years, and I still get involved [inaudible] on occasion people call… [00:44:15] RB: Turned out to be pretty successful didn’t they? [00:44:18] DS: Oh, it has its limitations just like the Piper's assessment, 707 and anything else. I think that's where the people in the space business don't understand, don't know is the fact that they try and strive too much for perfection because they’re in an unforgiving environment. In the airplane business, you’re in a pretty forgiving environment. [tape cuts out and restarts] [00:44:54] DS: He could've been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. He could have been out there—I got to thinking about that yesterday—he could have been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. I was observing. What I was giving you was the people were working on it at that time, but he could have been out observing the flight or something. I don’t know. Just knew the people personally involved in it at that time. [00:45:37] RB: Did Karl Heimberg's test lab have a lot to do with the Guppy? [00:45:44] DS: Karl Heimberg? I would say Karl Heimberg probably was the man here at Marshall that pushed it through and more so Von Braun and upper management because everybody that worked on the Guppy from the beginning worked for Carl Heimberg, more or less. All of the development of the Guppies was handled out of Heimberg's shop because he had, what you call, the lab responsibility for special transportation. Heimberg's outfit handled all the barges and did all the design work modifying the barges to haul Saturn stages did all the design work, and design review of the contract for modifying the Guppies. [00:46:54] RB: This was up to ‘63 anyway? [00:46:56] DS: This was up to the Super Guppy. P.M.—John Goodrum’s outfit—P.M. was, more or less, we turned the Pregnant Guppy over to PM, which was formed in ‘63, ‘64—which was called Industrial Operations at that time—to John Goodrum’s outfit. Well, it wasn’t John Goodrum’s outfit then, I guess, it was…nobody had been designated at that time to turn it over, more or less, I.O. to handle operations of it. Heimberg’s outfit handled all the technical design, special equipment requirements for Marshall [inaudible] [00:48:03] RB: There's something I want to ask you a little bit more about too, that was that McNamara used Guppy information for C-5 work analysis. [00:48:12] DS: Yeah, what we did, there was a guy at NASA headquarters who was transportation. There was two of them—there was Earl Barr and…. [00:48:24] RB: Stan Smolensky? Is that who you’re thinking of? [00:48:28] DS: No, not Smolensky. I'm talking about the transportation people that we interfaced with at headquarters—Earl Barr and Jim McCullough—that we interfaced directly with. According to Earl Barr, D.o.D. directly contacted him, and as we developed information and everything, we more or less fed it into headquarters who, in turn, gave it to D.o.D. [00:49:05] RB: What kind of information were they using? [00:49:09] DS: We fed him wind tunnel data, copies of all the reports, design reports and everything, and requirements for volumetric type airplanes to carry volume loads…a bit of wind tunnel data, flight test data, and quite a…just anything they wanted or were interested in, you know, some copies of this data to Earl Barr at headquarters who in turn gave it to D.O.D. [00:49:47] RB: You mentioned the Pregnant Guppy, there was some concern about the air flow and empennage, would that have been…Oh, C-5, has a fairly good... [00:49:57] DS: Well, C-5 has a very high tail, it was just…At that time, the C-5A, the information we got, they were trying to determine the actual diameter that the C-5A could sit in, the optimal diameter for C-5A. It fluctuated anywhere from the diameter of this Pregnant Guppy to the present diameter, which is about twelve…twelve…or thirteen foot high, and some ten, eleven foot…it's more or less figure-eight shape type thing. The Guppy, the C-5A, it's not a real drastic, upside down figure-eight shape like the Pregnant Guppy or the Stratocruisers. But anyway, all this information we were able to get. Everything was given back to headquarters who in turn passed it on to Department of Defense to assist them in running their cost-effect analysis, to determine the actual diameter of the C-5A—which in turn, they wound up with an airplanes just like the 141—is good for carrying steel rails, tanks, concrete blocks, and sacks of cement. If you want to really carry a volume such as the S-IVB or the S-IV stage or the Titan, it can get— because of their upper structure, the bubble comes up, and the crew compartment in C-5A—you begin to run into height problems. [00:52:06] RB: Do you remember any particular difficulties or any incidents that occurred during the operation of the first Pregnant Guppy? I'm thinking of that picture you showed me in a day, was it Ellsberg [sic] Air Force Base, you said that was? Where the tail took off or something like that? [00:52:21] DS: No, it was Ellington. Yeah, we had…the Pregnant Guppy has always had…very limited due to the 4360 engine. Engines were the limiting factors. Any time you lost an engine on takeoff, you had to start looking for a damn place to land real quick because the glide of it…opposed to something like jets [inaudible]. One thing I was going to talk about with flight tests, I brought up this guy Sandy Friezner. It's a kind of [inaudible] to make this damn airplane work, you had to go in and clip about six, eight inches off the end of the props. He predicted that—from his non-engineering, swinging a mass like you do a propeller from his knowledge of his basic fundamental flying airplanes, propellers, and helicopters—he'd swing in this mass of the propeller on some wing on the arm at some CG location, and if you started chopping it off, it reduces stresses in its blade, propeller blades. Some of the original history behind the C-97 was a hollowed [derow?] blade the Air Force had used for this thing. [00:54:22] RB: What kind of blade? [00:54:23] They called it [derow?]. It’s an aluminum, hollow-casted…Some of the big problems they had on the C-97 was that the blades would separate, caused considerable problems in the loss of airplanes like they had on the C-133. Conroy's idea was that he had to have eight inches to clear the fuselage, so he said, “We gonna cut the damn blades off and go because if any nut, I'm not even an engineer, I can figure it out, it's going to reduce the stresses of this blade.” The commercial version was a steel blade, which was much better than the Air Force blade that was prepared for him. They cut the tips off this blade and had this guy Sandy Friezner to instrument it. Sure enough, Sandy Friezner’s instrumentation says the stress is reduced by a certain level, a certain percentage. [00:55:30] DS: Well, FAA has a real funny way of operating, and I guess they have to operate this way, but they says, “This is fine and good, but before we’ll accept it and certify it, we have to have the original hand-standard people do the stress survey.” I think this cost Conroy some forty…thirty…forty thousand dollars and upset him to no end because you can set out on the end of a runway and what you do is set out and run that plane through numerous sequences of flying conditions on the ground to determine the stresses and the built up stresses in the blade. You leave them off and pull them up again. Commercial outfits built the airplane burnout three and four engines sitting out there to get all this data that you need, for the prop manufacturer needs, to justify the FAA making these changes because it was certified in a certain way. When you start making changes like Conroy's making to the airplane to the props, you got to justify all this to the FAA. It's up to the applicant to prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that it in no way endangers the crew, the cargo, the people on the ground. [00:57:00] DS: Like I was telling you, we took hardly…we took the airplane and very limited spare parts. [Nose?] we didn't carry oil up there because Conroy had checked in with some of his Air Force cronies at Edwards that the particular oil that is needed for the Guppy was a bunch of surplus up at Edwards, so we just used the Air Force oil as a giveaway type thing. We used Air Force gas about eight…seven…three cents a gallon or something like that. When we got up, and the FAA finally made their thing that “Okay, you gotta run this stress survey on this prop,” Conroy went through the [old bay head?], and he and I had some very rough altercations there. Finally, I told him, “Okay, fine, I'm going to pack up and go home, and I'll just tell Marshall that you're not going to do what is required by FAA.” Finally Conroy blew his stacks and said, “Okay, go ahead and do it! Burn up the damn airplane!” We ran the survey and sure enough Sandy Freizner’s previous instrumentation predicted [the strain gauges?], we did—they did—reduce the stresses in this blade. [00:58:28] DS: [Hamstander?] thought this was so great they suggested to Conroy, “Hey, go and cut off the tips of the outboard propellers,” because they cut it off from the rounded tips which squared it off. Conroy says, “Hell, I can't afford another prop survey. I ain't even got a NASA contract yet. To hell with you!” [00:58:50] DS: Then we had some different flight tests..I think where you were mentioning about water for [ballasting?] and I said, where you’re going through flight tests, you gotta do various CG locations. The way you do this is by ballasting water tanks. You go up and you go up, you ready to fly all morning, and at Edwards, we would take off at about five…four-thirty…five o'clock. You get up [tape cuts out, inaudible] high. What Aerospace did—kind of what people did—they came up with a water ballast system. It was the day, was going out and was checking for flutter, and so we had Sandy Freizner and [Bill Covers?] on the system worked out…I don't believe it was Jack Podesky…Bobby [D’agostino?], flight engineer [tape cuts out] below the main deck. They went up and did their various CG locations by [ballasting?] out the tanks and so finally they was ready to do zero. You have to do all these cal…You’re probably familiar, you have to do all this calibration room… [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000043_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 1) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource Discussion about Jack Conroy and his Pregnant and Super Guppies https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/12a260c93f56882444684c51b46203ca.pdf 7d02ecc5b50c9a5f3cdc96022f0df03e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000042_T Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill (Transcript) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/0bd0a0517854aec2ebafcfae7a821be0.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/54cdd3c5587bb4e45de7eff6bb27747a.mp4 43f7405297e74f43314ab4afba80a0cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000042_A Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ed1bb3c89bb63d941b811b4ebb814cb0.pdf cfd58e225dfdefc7a7773859c8cda894 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000041_T Title A name given to the resource Sloop, John L. (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-12-02 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.