14 10 544 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/740d873e522a4c61969a487e0a927917.pdf 55b3416b2b3bfad41e0329904c592790 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 Christensen, David 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_crst_000031_T Title A name given to the resource Von Braun, Wernher (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974-10-08 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/3191b4d3feaa2a7db232a17f1ebec312.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/da91786e6024413f8ece505d615626d0.mp4 822a01bf9a2891d6614dfffb7bc4b357 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 Christensen, David 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_crst_000031_A Title A name given to the resource Von Braun, Wernher Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974-10-08 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/6d11f1b912facb786c4b6bc96b9a01b3.pdf 767fa7a4e44976311f55ffc3f58d79f4 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_000049_T Title A name given to the resource Urlaub, Matthew (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-11-13 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/0524bf4e398998dae0c7c8353a3ecd22.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/61de1d69d6cb6c872e3775625fded5d5.mp4 d76921117935c43d60980c17ca7446ec 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_000049_A Title A name given to the resource Urlaub, Matthew Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-11-13 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/c050cee4d0016e8b130923224d23aed1.pdf e4da0338d15d099bf318e01e46e5b911 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 Christensen, David Collection Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Trichel, Gervais Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Christensen, David Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2 pages Text Any textual data included in the document Gervais Trichel 28 April [1971?] Birmingham, Michigan February-March 1944 I visited England in connection with small rockets being produced for the invasion. Dr. Allyn Crowe [Alwyn Crow] was the head of rocket work at the Ministry of Supply at that time. He showed me a photograph from a reconnaissance airplane of what appeared to be a large rocket on the island of Peenemunde. Crowe said that it was a Trojan Horse. “From our computation of it, its weight would be over 100 tons. By no means that we can visualize could it get off the ground.” One of the things that convinced the British that it was fake was that it was too convenient – being left in the open for photo reconnaissance. They considered it to be an instrument of psychological warfare. Another thing which convinced them was that their airfields on the French [coase?] were camouflaged – they even went to the trouble to build dummy aerodromes out of canvas and cardboard. (Trichel at that time was serving as military attache in Britain – in France). The British raided the camouflaged airfield (‘bombed the hell out of it’) and then – after the raid, dropped a wooden bomb on the dummy airfield. [Anyway?], the British figured the same thing was happening in Peenemunde. Dr. Sorenson was visiting in Sweden when the Swedish rocket fell. He was able to persuade the Swedes to turn it over to him certain pieces of the rocket were recovered. These pieces wound up in my office in Washington. We had pieces of the framework and pieces of the propulsion motor – enough to realize that it was not a solid structure but an aircraft type construction. We then decided that we needed someone studying this thing. We didn’t want to interrupt Cal Tech. Instead we went to the General Electric Company and got them to undertake a contract to investigate and correlate the information we had about this rocket. They set up a project under Dr. Porter. They built an artist’s conception of the rocket. We then very rapidly accumulated parts from [English?] recoveries so that long before the invasion, GE had a very good idea of what the V-2 was like. We were not aware of the English activities although we had liaison Trichel -2 people in England, who supplied constant streams of information from (wreckage). But we did have reciprocal activities with the British. With the Invasion coming about, the Ordnance Department asked to set up investigation teams to study tanks, weapons, etc., including the Buzz Bomb and the V-2. GE was given this assignment. The GE team did a very good job. They did something no one else did. GE had for many years had manufacturing facilities in Germany through its international operation. They had in their organization technical people who lived in Germany, who spoke German and generally, knew where things were. Henry Saylor – Chief Ordnance officer of the Expeditionary Force complimented me: “You're probably the only ones there who didn’t have to be spoon fed or hand carried around.” They knew what to ask about, who to ask, and how to ask it. Porter’s group was well organized. They had 5-6 months working on reconstituting the V-2 problem – year’s effort. After the capture of Nordhausen, we got a message from Sayler’s office, saying that they had a factory and could get samples of the material we wanted. He had a large group of the people involved, there. It was their opinion that this group ought to be brought to the US. We (Barnes and I) immediately agreed and reacted to their word. We went cables to Sayler’s office to get at least 100 complete missiles and enough to assemble another 100 in spare parts, and to ship them to the US. Toftoy got 1500 European railroad cars full of stuff out of there before the British or Air Force found out. Then the British found out through their work mission, they made a strong plea to send it to England to test fire it there. We felt it should come here to the US. Meanwhile the Air Force found out. We told them, yes that we had “it”, but not how many. We even agreed to give Wright Field one German ^and 5 to the British which was quite a generous offer until they found out how many we had. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Typed Transcript of Interview 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_crst_000027_T Title A name given to the resource Trichel, Gervais (Transcript) Description An account of the resource Role of US Army Ordinance in rocket research in WW Ii. Details of evacuation of V-2s and German engineers after the end of war. Post-war rocket developments USA with German team Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-04-28 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/ec6923c8fb38fd042cfa2f690ac4095b.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/5263cdac769c9f0da50ddebf6d36988c.mp4 42cb4d81291601c5686b7e8c7f722b67 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 Christensen, David Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Trichel, Gervais Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Christensen, David Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:31:48 At 1:01:05 recording repeats first 30 minutes of recording Location The location of the interview Birmingham, Michigan Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:07] David Christensen: Testing. This is an interview with Dr. Trichel in his home in Birmingham, Michigan on April 28, 1972. Dr. Trichel has been telling me of his background in rocketry prior to the time that the V-2 rocket was fired and landed in Sweden. He has gone into an extensive detail of his activities, particularly in the early Army Ordnance Rocket Program. [00:00:40] Gervais Trichel: Well, to start the V-2 at the beginning, I would have to go back to about February or March of 1944. At that time, I visited England in connection with some of the rockets being produced for the invasion. [00:01:22] DC: So, the smaller rockets? [00:01:23] GT: Smaller rockets. At that time, Dr. Alwyn Crow was head of rocket work in the Ministry of Supply in England. And on one of my visits with Dr. Crow, he showed me a photograph taken by a reconnaissance airplane of what appeared to be a large rocket on the island of Peenemünde. [00:02:06] DC: I see, you were keenly interested, I guess. In seeing something like that. [00:02:13] GT: I asked Dr. Crowe what they made of this, and he laughed and said it's a ‘Trojan Horse’. He said that from our computation of the thing, the size – we can get very accurately off of the photograph — its weight would be over 100 tons, and by no means that we can visualize, would you be able to get it off of the ground. [00:03:02] DC: Yeah, I see. [chuckle] That was the official opinion at that point. [00:03:06] GT: Right. Now, I don't know whether you have heard this, but this was not hearsay, this was an actual conversation between myself and Dr. Crowe. One of the, of course, reasons, [as he would often say?] for his belief that it was a Trojan horse, was that it was left so conveniently out where it could be photographed. [00:03:39] DC: Too obvious. [00:03:40] GT: It was obvious. It had been left out there. [00:03:48] DC: He was really thinking it was being done to the psychological – ? [00:03:52] GT: Yes. Of course, the British were much more likely than the Americans… Long before we were in the war, I was in France as an assistant military attaché. The airfields were camouflaged, and they went to a great deal of trouble, the Germans did then, to actually build some dummy air drones out of canvas and cardboard near where the fields, which had belonged to the British before Dunkirk, were located. The British, however, knew full well where these airfields were. And at one time when I was there, they came over and raided one of these camouflaged fields, and bombed the hell out of it, and then dropped a wooden bomb on the cardboard target that the Germans had created for them. [00:05:27] DC: A wooden bomb. [00:05:28] GT: So… that actually the British sense of humor, you might say, of going to the trouble to drop a wooden bomb on a make-believe [peel?], thought that maybe the Germans were doing the same thing at Peenemünde. [00:05:52] DC: I see. Until the summer of ‘44, you mentioned, when the Swedish... [00:05:56] GT: That's right. [00:05:57] DC: That was a burning point. [00:06:02] GT: The next thing that came to my attention about the V-2 was that sometime in the summer of 1944, when this rocket escaped and accidentally went into Sweden. Dr. Sorensen was at that time visiting in Sweden, and he was able to persuade the Swedes to turn over to him certain pieces recovered from this rocket. These pieces wound up in my office. [00:07:01] DC: Really? [00:07:02] GT: In Washington. [00:07:05] DC: I guess the British somewhat resented this, didn't they? [00:07:07] Well, I don't know. But anyway, we had the propulsion motor for the pumps. We had enough pieces of the framework to realize that it was not a solid structure, as Dr. Crowe had suggested, but an aircraft type of construction. Anyway, we then decided that we should have someone studying this thing. And because of our knowledge of the thing, we didn't want to interrupt Caltech. Instead, we went to the General Electric Company and got them to undertake a contract to investigate and correlate the information we had about this rocket. This they did. They set up a project under Dr. Porter. And they built in the room there an artist's conception, if you will, of this rocket, where we put together all the things. [00:09:11] DC: Were the British doing something simultaneously similar to this? [00:09:15] GT: I don't know. [00:09:16] DC: I see. This is— [00:09:17] GT: What we did. I believe it was about September when the first V-2 came across in England. We then very rapidly accumulated the parts missing and what have you from these recoveries in England. [00:10:02] GT: So that long before the invasion, General Electric and Dr. Porter had, under his group there, had a very good idea of what the V-2 was like. [00:10:22] DC: Now were you aware that the British were also in Poland – about that same time – trying to piece together, from the Blizna firing area, pieces of rockets? About the same time the first rockets were hitting England. They were doing this similar activity. You weren't necessarily informed. [00:10:43] GT: I don't know how much information we had on that. We got very good information and very quick from our own military people in England, who supplied us with a constant stream of records. [00:11:04] DC: Were the British aware of what you were doing? Were they also trying to keep a close liaison, and see what you came out of from your investigation of piecing all these pieces together? [00:11:16] GT: Yes. I had a British officer attached to my... [00:11:23] DC: So, they were feeding US data back to England too. [00:11:26] GT: Yes. [00:11:27] DC: So, you were getting across as part of the [invasion?]. [00:11:29] GT: I had a British Lieutenant Captain, I’ve forgotten. Anyway, the officer attached to the rocket development division. [00:11:40] DC: I see. [00:11:43] GT: As liaison. But anyway, when the invasion the following year was coming about, the Ordnance Department were directed to set up teams, scientific teams, to investigate all sorts of things. [00:12:25] DC: All kinds of weapons and tanks... [00:12:26] GT: Weapons, tanks and other things. The problem of getting such a team for the V-2 rocket – also for the buzz bomb — and the V-2 rocket team was assigned to us. And since we had had General Electric do that, we had been doing all this other work on it, but they were also contracted for such a team. Which incidentally, did a very good job. [00:13:17] DC: The GE team. [00:13:19] GT: The GE team. [00:13:20] DC: Very professional. [00:13:21] GT: Not only professional, but they did something that no one else before, as I know, bothered to do. As you know, General Electric for a great many years at least, had had manufacturing facilities in Germany. [00:13:49] DC: Through their international operations. [00:13:51] GT: Through their international operations. And they had in their organization, technical people who had either lived or otherwise been assigned to these projects and who spoke German fluently. Henry Sayler complimented me – he was the Chief Army Ordnance officer of the expeditionary force— complimented me once and he said that, “Your people were the only ones that came over there that didn't have to be spoon fed and hand carried around.” Because they not only spoke German, but they knew where things were in Germany because most of them had lived in Germany at some time or other. [00:14:43] DC: That was a tremendous asset to the success of the whole mission. [00:14:49] GT: And that spoke volumes for GE's organization. [00:14:55] DC: Well, it explains a lot to me over the success of the whole mission, I think. [00:15:00] Of course. Because they knew. Not only knew how to ask and find them things, but they knew a lot of people to ask about. [00:15:13] DC: Right. [00:15:14] GT: To find out what was going on. [00:15:16] DC: They already had contacts. [00:15:18] GT: Had contacts. [00:15:19] Now, I see that's not particularly germane to your inquiry, but it is. [00:15:25] DC: It certainly is. I think it's one of the key factors that needs to be brought out in the story as to the success of the whole operation. [00:15:35] GT: Well, anyway. Porter's group were well organized and of course it had five or six months. Well, no, more than that. Nearly a year from the summer to one summer to the next. Working on the reconstituting the V-2 problem. [00:16:05] DC: When did you first get involved with the interest in the people behind the V-2? I think that's the story we really need to investigate. [inaudible] — that Paperclip Operation? [00:16:24] GT: Well, after the capture of Nordhausen, we got a message from Sayler's office saying that they had this factory where the V-2s were. And that they could get samples of the material for one. And that they had a large group of the people involved. And that it was their opinion that this group ought to be brought to the United States. We immediately, and myself and the General Barnes, sent cables to Sayler's office [inaudible] to get at least 100 complete missiles. And enough to assemble another 100 in the form of spare parts. And to ship them to the United States. [00:18:08] DC: Of course, we were still at war with Japan, so that was one of your motivations, I think. [00:18:12] GT: Well, our motivation was, I don't remember too well, except that we agreed with Sayler's office over there. And I guess that Toftoy and company had told him, because I don't know whether, but anyway, that it should be done. Well, anyway, pursuant to his offer and our request back from the Chief of Ordnance to the Chief of Ordnance [office?], Toftoy got 1500 French railroads, or European railroads, carloads of stuff out of there. And he got all this stuff going before either the British or the Air Force found out about it. [00:19:05] DC: What do you attribute this to? Just getting out of there fast? [00:19:08] GT: That's right, just fast is all. When they found out about it, and I think the British found out through their mission in Washington that we had this stuff coming. They made a very strong plea that this stuff be shipped to England and that it be test fired and whatnot over there. Well, we were equally of the opinion that it should come to the United States. And meanwhile, the Air Force found out about what we were getting, and we said yes, that we were getting some of these. We didn't tell them how many. And so, we immediately agreed that we would give Wright Field one of them, which they thought was very generous until they found out how many we had. [laughing] And we gave five to the British, which satisfied them, or at least seemed to. In the meantime, the Toftoy and company were busy getting these things down to the port and getting them sent back to the United States. And then correspondents, people, not concerning the civilians, personnel, and whatnot. And we were having difficulty there. The reason being that a lot of people were very much opposed to bringing these people in the United States. They were German. They were thought to be indoctrinated Nazis. They had been engaged in this project over there. And they thought it, at least one very high-placed scientist in the United States said that they will not be able to teach us anything that American science can't do. So, rather, the State Department were very unwilling to grant visas to bring these people in. And the employment people said, how are you going to pay them? How are you going to hire them? They're enemy aliens. Well, I knew this, that we were employing Germans, civilians in Germany, by the thousands. It's true that we were employing them as laborers and mechanics that we were employing. So, when this objection was raised, I went over to the Secretary of War's office and got a hold of personnel people and said, how are you able to hire these people in Germany? If we can't hire them over here? Oh, they said, [when they got the regulations out?], the Secretary of War has authority to hire enemy aliens in the combat zone. But we got the actual act or directive, whatever it was, and it said nothing about combat zones, but they'd give them authority. So, when the matter got up to Mr. Patterson, Judge Patterson said that I can hire them in the United States or any other place. [00:24:21] DC: So, it wasn't restricted then? [00:24:23] GT: No. There was no legal reason why we couldn't hire them over here. [00:24:33] DC: So, of a keen interest, I guess… [00:24:35] GT: The State Department were much more difficult. And we finally through... who was the Assistant Secretary of State there, or the Assistant Secretary of the Army… He was the Assistant Secretary of the Army and was on this so-called SWAN committee, State War and Navy committee. And he was on our side trying to get them, and actually, they had to get to the Secretary of State himself to get an order issued to these immigration group there to let these people in. And we had to agree in turn that we would bring them in under the condition that they were to stay together, be held together, and on a military reservation. And that they would not be allowed to travel from this island except with special permission and for special purposes. And that they were not to be immigrants, but they were under contract. And that if they violated that contract, that we would return them to Germany. And that when our need for them was over, that we agreed that we would, at our expense, return them, repatriate them to Germany. [00:26:40] DC: So initially it was all just a temporary... [00:26:42] GT: That's right. [00:26:43] DC: ...a temporary right. [00:26:51] GT: Then the decision was that we would take them to White Sands. Now, this is the first time I've mentioned White Sands. But White Sands Proving Ground came about again because of the Caltech Project. [00:27:19] DC: The same program you mentioned earlier? [00:27:21] GT: Yes. The initial so-called Private A was fired on the dry lake range. The succeeding models, though, did not... they didn't have any range that was sufficient. And General Barnes agreed that we ought to have such a range. That firing over the water was unsatisfactory for two reasons. In the first place, at that time, nobody knew how accurately you could track with radar. It wasn't even certain that you could transmit through the heavy side layers to a missile in flight. And there was strong need that you have some method of checking optically. And correlate the radio observation, radar observation, with optical observation. And this brings in, then, the Askania story, which you probably know. [00:28:53] DC: [Eh, you tell me?]. [00:28:56] GT: Before the war, Aberdeen had made a contract with Askania in Germany for some very large theodolites, recording theodolites. Photographs, bombs in flight, particularly. [00:29:26] DC: That was a German firm? [00:29:28] GT: German firm, Askania. The war came along. And by the time that Askania had these things ready for delivery, we were at war with Germany. Technically, they were not war material. Theodolite is a surveying instrument. And I don't know how. You can probably find out. We arranged through the Swiss to trade with the enemy. And legally brought those theodolites into the United States. The Germans got them into Switzerland, and we got them out of Switzerland. [00:30:25] DC: There was a lot of this interchange going on. [00:30:27] GT: Oh, yes. It was this trading– [00:30:29] [recording malfunction] [00:30:45] GT: Uh, anyway. These Askania theodolites were available. And they were far better than anything either the Army or Navy had for that purpose, because they had been specially designed and built for the war. And we wanted a land range where radar tracking could be correlated with theodolite data from these Askania theodolites. So... [00:31:24] DC: So, what year did you get those? [00:31:28] GT: Well, yes, it was in ‘44. They were available in 1944. General Barnes’s suggestion, we got, from the Department of the Interior, maps showing all the public domain in the United States. And we were looking for a range that would be 100 miles long and 50 miles wide. And then we got an aircraft and started looking at these areas. [00:32:18] DC: Aerial surveys. [00:32:32] GT: Well, we had the map, but we went and looked from the air. The three areas that immediately seemed to offer some chance, with the area in Nevada south of Winnemucca. The range was there, but the impact area was very mountainous, very rugged. And it might have been jeepable in the summertime, but certainly when the snow fell, it would be impossible to [get?] land transportation in there. The other large area that had only a small installation in the middle of it was the Ajo area in the southern part of Arizona. Ajo had two disabilities that we couldn't do much about. One was that the area lay along the Mexican border. And remembering what happened to the Swedes, although we didn't know about it at that time, our fear was that we would have an international accident, an incident because of an accidental missile going into Mexico. The other one was a main transcontinental railway in the southern Pacific runs across that thing, the northern boundary. We were also afraid that we would have a large public outcry about firing any place along those tracks. And the tracks ran parallel to the direction we wanted to fire. [00:34:48] DC: And that made it even worse. [00:34:53] GT: The area that we finally started on was the one that [lay in?] White Sands. It wasn't as long as one, but at that time we had 85 miles by using part of the Fort Bliss elevation. In fact, we started out that Fort Bliss was to be the base, the firing point. And I'm not sure, but the firing point isn't on the Fort Bliss reservation today. But there were about 4 million acres, only 47,000 were the only privately owned property there. Well, 47,000 acres is a lot, but— [00:35:48] DC: Not out there. [00:35:50] GT: Not in that area. The White Sands National Monument, which was already a public…lay in the middle of it. The north end, the Air Force had the Alamogordo bombing range, which at that time was being used by the bomb people. The principle of all this public land were under grazing permits. And we had a terrific outcry on the part of the ranchers there, we were taking their grazing permits away from them. And they were up on the governor's doorstep. And the solution to that thing, credit must go to John Howard, who was my executive officer. He had been down and talked to the people in the governor’s office. And the political situation was pretty hostile. So, Howard came up with the idea that [if] you can't lick them, join them. So, he says the thing is wrong, he told me, he says the thing is wrong, is that the Texas Project is going to take all of those things. He says that actually it isn't any further to Las Cruces, New Mexico, than it is to El Paso. So, let's change the… [00:38:21] DC: Make it a New Mexico Project. [00:38:22] GT: Make it into a New Mexico Project, which is what we did. And immediately we got the Chamber of Commerce in Las Cruces behind the thing. And they had apparently as much political muscle as the ranchers. [00:38:48] DC: So, you got the [inaudible] [00:38:49] GT: So, we got the political objection to the thing. And then we had authority to condemn these grazing permits and to condemn and buy the 47,000 acres of land there, which was that. The range we wound up with was neither as wide nor as long as we had set out to, but it was reasonable. Actually, some places 40 miles wide, and I'd say it was 85 miles in length, which looked like it would satisfy our immediate needs. [00:39:50] DC: Now when that was selected, that was prior to the awareness of the V-2 project? [00:39:55] GT: Oh yes, that project was all going on with the idea of providing a place where it was part of the more advanced vehicles from Caltech. And also, the mountain area around that thing is far up a valley. And these surrounding mountains gave an excellent place to locate both radar and optical control system. The whole area is jeepable, so we could recover. [00:40:34] DC: And it's not that much of a weather problem. [00:40:36] GT: No, the weather is excellent there. Anyway though, we had the land and the money to buy the equipment that we needed initially was nothing like what we have now. Like $4 million I guess was the only estimate for the communications equipment and camera installation. We had the cameras. [00:41:14] DC: You did get your deadlines from the government, under wartime…? [00:41:17] GT: Oh yes, we'd gotten them in the [name?]. In fact, they were on hand when we got them at the range. They belonged to Aberdeen, but that's Ordnance too. Well anyway though, the next step was to build a firing point, because this was just opened. And there goes the credit that ought to be given, more measure than you ever got to a rather unusual man, Colonel Turner. [00:41:55] DC: Turner? [00:41:56] GT: Turner, yeah. Colonel Turner came to me in the Rocket Development Division from the Ammunition Division. And General Barnes, at one of our luncheons, said that the Ammunition Division Chief, I forgot what his name was anyway, has got a lieutenant colonel that he would ask me if I would take off because he's difficult, he's causing trouble. And he said they don't want to fire him, but they've got to get rid of him. Of course, they could use a reserve officer so they could [award him?] back for life if they wanted to. But anyway, he was, as Barnes said, difficult. So, he said could you take him? And well, what could I say? I said, yeah. Well, Turner was one of these very aggressive people. And he was certainly an advocate of ‘do it now’. Anyway, this happened at about the time that we were going to build White Sands. So, we decided the thing to do to build White Sands there was to get some temporary barracks that had been built at Fort Bliss and move them up there. And so, we set out to get permission to do that. In the meantime, I decided that Turner might be just the man for this ‘do it now’ job to get out there. So, I sent him to White Sands to build a place, and he did. The next thing I knew, I was called up to General Clay's office, because my man Turner down there had charges prepared against him by the area engineer for stealing— [laughing] [00:45:14] DC: Just grabbed everything? [chuckling] [00:45:16] GT: – these buildings without authority. [00:45:20] DC: When he went up to Bliss and got buildings and moved them [inaudible]? [00:45:23] GT: He moved them out there apparently without waiting for the paperwork. Anyway, I was able to… General Barnes to persuade them not to actually court-martial him on the grounds that here was a man who was getting something done and for God's sake – [00:45:48] DC: Don't stop it! [00:45:50] GT: Don't stop it! It needed to be done and everything. Actually, the paperwork was in the mail. There was no reason he couldn't. Anyway, Turner built White Sands literally out of nothing. He was accused of stealing. If the truth was known he probably did. But he actually took stuff without having the paperwork completed. [00:46:23] DC: That seems to be the whole story of the rocket program. You always had to scrounge, make do. [00:46:32] GT: We had no money for construction. The Ordnance money was not at the will to construct barracks. With Ordnance, we couldn't build barracks out of an Ordnance appropriation. Anyway, White Sands was in operation and was an ideal place to move the Germans when they decided to bring them in. That was the place. The first place it was isolated. There was probably no better place we could have picked for him that would have that. We had a range there where they could fire the V-2 missiles. Not full range but far enough distance to do what we wanted to. [00:47:35] DC: When did you first meet some of these people? In Washington? Did you ever get out and visit with them out there? [00:47:43] GT: No, I never laid eyes on them. After these arrangements were all made, I went to the Philippines as Deputy Ordnance Officer of the Western Pacific. [00:48:00] DC: I see, what was the month and year was that, if you will? [00:48:06] GT: I left the United States in June or July of ’45, after the fall there and so on. This thing was all arranged with these things on. I left and we had agreed. Again, I had [inaudible] Toftoy, so Toftoy was brought over to succeed me. And I was ordered to the Philippines. [00:48:42] DC: Would you mind telling me a little bit about how you first met him and a little bit of his story from your viewpoint because he's not here to tell himself? It would help me to get a little background of this relationship and how he... [00:48:58] GT: Toftoy was a coast artillery officer, which I had done too. At the time that I was an instructor in the coast artillery school, Toftoy was in the mine command at Fort Monroe. That's when I first knew him. [00:49:19] DC: When did you get acquainted with the rocket program, again? Reacquainted. When did he…? [00:49:27] GT: Not at all until he — I never laid eyes on him. Oh, I guess I had seen him in Europe as far as having any dealings with him. But when we were looking for someone to take my place, because of his connection with this thing in Europe, he seemed like an ideal man to bring back for that purpose. And he was brought back because he had, as far as I know, been the moving spirit in getting the actual man on the spot over there. Of course, Sayler's office, if you want to say, was responsible. After all, Henry Sayler had a lot of other responsibilities. Toftoy was actually the guy... [00:50:18] DC: How do you spell Saylor? [00:50:19] GT: S-A-Y-L-O-R, [Sayler is correct] Henry Sayler, he was Major General. [00:50:28] DC: There was another fellow that I want to ask you about. Staver, Bob Staver, did you ever meet him? [00:50:36] GT: Yeah, he was at Caltech, but he was stationed out there. I guess he had been liaison officer with this [part of work?] that was in the [RC?] we’re doing. [00:50:58] DC: He also got involved in the same activity in Europe too, I understand. [00:51:02] GT: Well, I don't know. He was not a part of my group. [00:51:09] DC: I understand that. [00:51:16] GT: See, our dealings were actually with Sayler's office, and Toftoy was, as far as I know, was the guy that was actually in charge of the local [on the spot?] level. I’d say I left the United States before any of this stuff arrived. Now though, in, ‘46 though, we had the war shut off from under me in the Pacific, so I came back in – no, not forty[six] – in ’45, of course. Yeah. When the war ended, my boss, who had been out there the whole four years, General Davis, was immediately returned to the United States. And I became Chief Ordnance Officer in the Western Pacific, and [half-west back?]. The job there was one of tearing down, and a big job of disposing of the ammunition. [00:52:53] DC: Mopping up. [00:52:54] GT: Mopping up. And the new development division back in the War Department now, which was the division of the Special Staff, not the General Staff in the War Department. The Special Staff, was headed by an ordnance officer, a brigadier general, who had known me very well. And he wanted me back there as his deputy. And I didn't want to leave. I had a job that if I stayed on for six months would promote me. And General Styer was… agreeable to keeping me, and when they requested my return, he objected. And then they came back and said that the Secretary of War, which of course probably never heard of me, but anyway that wanted me back to this new development division. And that they would replace me with the list of three officers that they gave, including Davis, who had been Chief Ordnance Officer. In other words, they agreed they would send him back. So Styer said, “I don't want to make Davis come back out, but I've got to let you go.” So, they took Colonel Hoff, who was [inaudible] [officer’s course?], and said he'd got me on the airplanes and sent me back. So, I came back to the War Department Special Staff in December of ‘45. And by that time, because of new developments in this rocket work and so on, in fact all of the [inaudible] staff supervision of it. We had no control over it. Staff job. And then they decided to reorganize the general staff and create the research and development division in the general staff. And my boss decided to retire, so that left me at least temporarily in charge of the – I was the senior officer presently in the new development division. I fell in the job of organizing and getting started for this new development research division of the general staff. And I was the acting head of that for about six months. The general staff division. [00:56:59.] DC: I guess you still kept an eye on guided missiles. [00:57:02] GT: Oh yes, of course. I was very much interested in them, but I had no control over it. I did though, at that point, have considerable to do with keeping guided missiles in the Army. [00:57:24] DC: Oh really? [00:57:25] GT: Yes, because the Air Force, by that time we were trying very hard to get… [00:57:35] DC: That’s the [wing controversy?]. [00:57:38] GT: – the long-range missiles turned over to them. And my old friend Ben Wilson was still there, and General LeMay at that time, the major general, was head of that development group inside that. But anyway, several times I had the order all gotten up to turn it over, because they too were part of the Army at that time, to transfer all this missile work to the Air Corps. But by that time, I was an acting deputy chief of staff, so it required my consent. [00:58:41] DC: So, you moved up into that [?]. [00:58:47] GT: I didn't have any weight, but sitting across the ground force there was Jakey Devers, who had four stars on his shoulder and who did have a lot of weight. So, every time these things came over, I trotted over and stirred up Jakey. [Laughing while speaking] He immediately got on his horse and came over to the Pentagon and got with… [00:59:11] DC: You were the watchdogs there. [00:59:13] GT: That’s about all I did there, of course, exercising influence. But all I had to do was to alert Devers and he was able to get over on Tom Handy's level and say, nonsense, these things are artillery. The action of course is correct, I can say. They bear no resemblance whatsoever to an airplane except they fly through the air is all. [00:59:43] DC: Guided artillery shell. [00:59:52] GT: In the light of the things that have come to pass afterwards, maybe I was wrong. But because the Air Force of course did win the war, but it took them a long time. It was 20 years I guess, pretty near, before they actually got the thing from the Army. [01:00:18] DC: I was somewhat involved in that. I was in the Jupiter program which was turned over to the air force in… [1:00:30] GT: I was up to my ears in 1946. And I say nobody paid much attention to me, but they would pay attention to people like Devers. [01:00:45] DC: That's certainly given me a much better overall feel of how these things come about. It pulled me out a lot of good [chances?]. [01:00:55] [interview ends] [01:01:05] [recording repeats first 30 minutes] [END] 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_crst_000027_A Title A name given to the resource Trichel, Gervais Description An account of the resource Dr. Trichel's account of post-WW2 V-2 Rocket acquisition, roles of British intelligence, importance of General Electric and Dr. Porter, Askania theodolites, the hiring of Operation Paperclip German scientists, the selection and establishment of White Sands Missile Range, and Ordnance acquisition. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-04-28 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/25644c9b7e86aaca4602775de31c4558.pdf b8db6910cab1bca25bfda3407b94b8eb 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 Christensen, David 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_crst_000026_T Title A name given to the resource Toftoy, Hazel (Transcript) Description An account of the resource Experiences in the early days of Gen. Toftoy's career in Huntsville. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972 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/a515520cf54888093abaa7607f746471.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/746b745e3a4cb981067a082e2b18f062.mp4 ea2fa3de7817bbd12597a998f6830d8a 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 Christensen, David Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Toftoy, Hazel Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Christensen, David Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:33:56 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:08] David Christensen: Interview with Hazel Toftoy, August 31, 1971. And she's going to tell a few anecdotes about General Toftoy. Hazel, you mentioned on one occasion that the general actually got down on his hands and knees to beg for money for the missile program. Would you tell a little more…? [00:00:27] Hazel Toftoy: I know he got down on his hands and knees to beg for Redstone Arsenal. And when General Ridgway was Chief of Staff, I think, at that time, and he tried to influence the crowd, the executive crowd that was there. And he couldn't seem to get to first base, so he said, we'll put the map on the floor, and they put the big map on the floor. This has to do with Redstone, I think. Then he got down on his hands and knees and showed where Huntsville, Alabama was, you know. And then he said, that's the place we need, General Ridgway. Everybody else was against it. General [Pike?], I think, was the more than said no, irrevocably no, or something. And his decision and they all went no. General Ridgway looked at Toftoy and said, “Alright, that's where it will be.” And so, everybody was, of course after all, the Chief of Staff was the one to decide. So, then he was real happy, and he rolled up the map, and away he went. So that was one of the things that happened. And then on several other occasions, I know he was called up to Congress because they weren't giving enough money. For instance, the Redstone missile, they couldn't get enough money and the contract, I think, was being given to Chrysler. And they needed some other funds, government funds. And he would do everything possible to get funds for that. And then going back to the Germans, you know, when they first came, they were aliens, really, in this country. And he tried to get funds for them, and everybody said no, send them back. We don't want them here because we have our own science. [00:02:59] DC: Was that the military thing, or the industry? [00:03:03] HT: This was the industry, mostly, our own scientists. They thought they were coming in and taking over. And I can remember him on the phone, and two or three phones going, you know, back and forth with people in Congress and up there. And I think that Senator Sparkman and Bob Jones should be given this credit for helping to push this through, you know. [00:03:34] DC: It would be wise to talk to them about this. Do you remember any incidents when the General used to drive to Fort Bliss? I guess you were in Washington then, mostly, weren't you? [00:03:50] HT: Yeah, I was in Washington. [00:03:51] DC: Did you ever go out with him on any trips to Fort Bliss to visit? [00:03:56] HT: No, I didn't get out there. White Sands or Fort Bliss. Never gone out there. [00:04:02] DC: Was he out quite frequently though? [00:04:04] HT: Oh yeah, he was a traveling man. Talk about a salesman. He was a salesman for missiles. That's about what you’d call a missile salesman. But I think that Colonel Hamill would have all the stuff on the housing and all the – you know, because they were in those igloos at first, you know. And then they built little houses for them, better housing, and then they finally took over the hospital at Fort Bliss, you know, and put everybody out of the hospital so that they could take over. And that's the story in itself. And I can't quote that exactly. [00:04:55] DC: Yeah, we have most of the details. [00:04:57] HT: But he can do that much better than I can. [00:05:05] [recording cuts] [00:05:06] DC: A little bit about the salesmanship of this getting industry interested in the missile programs. [00:05:12] HT: Well, first he, I can remember, I don't know whether it was the first one, but he went to Thiokol and talked to them. And then Rohm and Haas, they were in on it at the beginning. And then he went out to Chrysler and had the people come here to see, you know, what was going on and what they were. [00:05:33] DC: Bell Labs. They had to sell them too. [00:05:35] HT: Uh-huh. And then Douglas Aircraft. And he picked out, I think, some of the leading ones in the industry at that time. Then Martin got into it later. And let's see. I think, I'm trying to think of all this and doing dynamics. [00:06:04] DC: You have a hard time investing them to get into this kind of business? They were all aircraft people, primarily. [00:06:10] HT: Yeah, but they didn't see much. You see, nobody in the country saw much missiles in the early days. In fact, half of them didn't know what a missile looked like, you know, or a rocket. And so, they didn't want any part of it. So, you had to have some good salesmanship. He had other men go out with him. [00:06:34] DC: Can you recall any names of some of these other people? We might want to [inaudible]. [00:06:39] HT: Well, you know, I really don't, except Hamill. Of course, he was always a good, because he was a booster. Well, I would say Dr. von Braun was one of our biggest salesmen. [00:06:53] DC: Yeah, carried him along, too. [00:06:57] HT: He wanted to stay here, and of course he wanted to get in on all this, too. And although he was actually working on other things, he went along with that. And in fact, I think Maria will tell you that he kept the seats hot on the plane. That's the way she put it, because he was always traveling from one place to the other. And... [00:07:29] DC: Was there any effort to break up this team and sort of put them out to industry? Do you recall anything there? [00:07:35] HT: Oh yeah, they had fabulous offers from industry once they got started and they knew what they could do. I think every one of them, I don't know, but really, they did. They had a lot of people. [00:07:51] DC: How did Toftoy fight that, to help keep them together as a team? Was this a story for their [?]? [00:07:58] HT: You mean all the German people? Well, he was like the father to them I think. Because he was the one that actually got them together, brought them over here, they felt like – I don't think they felt like they owed him anything – but they felt like he was the father of the brood, you might say, and the group. He just kept them going, you see, and put them to work. And he had charge of putting all these in at Aberdeen, all these charts and things that they picked up from the documents. And then he had charge, ran the White Sands. I don't know how he did some of those things, and still I saw a little bit of him once in a while. And the children, they always say, well how did the children ever get to see their father? I said, well you'd be surprised how he could sandwich a lot of things together. We still made trips and he just seemed to enjoy, that was sort of the other part of his life. [00:09:19] DC: Yeah, did he turn his missiles off when he got home? [00:09:21] HT: Oh yeah, one thing the front door shut and the missiles went off, but the phone was there. And in order not to, I'd often go in the room and take the phone off the hook. And then he'd get so mad because he wanted to call somebody and he'd see it, I'd forget to put it back, and he'd see the receiver off and then I'd catch hell. But yeah, he really did. And I think that's the reason we got along so well. And I went on lots of trips with him. And of course, the Army didn't pay mine, I had to pay my own, but that was all right. We had the time together and that was the only time that actually we enjoyed each other was to be on a trip. [00:10:23] DC: What was the general opinion of the Air Force? I guess there was some controversy all the way [inaudible]. [00:10:29] HT: Oh man, yeah, well he kept quiet. He was a very tactful person. He could have, I think, made a real big noise about everything. If he was that type and I think everything would have blown up and we'd have nothing. [00:10:50] DC: So, he would lean over backwards just to keep the thing going. [00:10:53] HT: Yeah, he'd rather if they wanted something, except that he did not want them to have the missile. He thought that the Army should, because it was his baby and he felt like he started over there with them although the Air Force was in it too. But they should have some of it. But where do you draw the line? But where should they start? Where should they stop and where should the Army? They wanted them to go up 250 miles and they argued over that and he went too. [00:11:32] DC: Some had wings and some couldn't have wings. [00:11:34] HT: And there's a story about him almost being court-martialed on something. But he got out of it. Some congressman got out of it. I can't. Well, I think maybe Colonel Hamill has some data on that. But yeah, Hamill was in on it. [00:11:54] DC: [By the Air Force or something?] [00:11:54] HT: He says, well, goodbye, honey. Goodbye. I may be in jail the next time you see me. I'm going to Washington and I'm going to be court-martialed and this man's after me. And it's almost like a criminal case like you've done something bad. You know, I mean, this is so serious. And now that I'm out of the missile business, I can really smile again. I felt like everything was, I felt like missiles were the thing. So did everybody at that time that were working with us. And I felt like they were coming out of my ears, my eyes, my head all around me were missiles. And at night I'd see one going up in front of me and I'd think, oh, is that the Redstone? Which one is that? Wake up in the morning and grab, you know, I think I was grabbing a missile. [00:12:54] DC: You were really [missiled?]…[laughing] [00:12:54] HT: And I'd be grabbing, yeah, I was really [missiled?]. And I was grabbing my husband instead of the missile. He'd say, ‘What's the matter, honey?’ I'm sorry I didn't have that term right there. I would have said I've been [missiled?]. But anyway, we had a lot of fun over and yet there were real sad moments. And he almost, I don't think anybody else knows this, but he almost resigned from the army because... [00:13:28] DC: Over here at Redstone? [00:13:29] HT: Yeah, over here at Redstone. Maybe you found out about that because he didn't feel that he was getting the support in Congress, the money, or that people didn't understand. To him and to everybody working in the missile field, it was very serious, all this stuff. And of course, we wanted to beat Russia and that was part of it. And yet, that was in the background. But he actually, and he had the phone in his hand to call up the Chief of Staff. He was putting in his resignation. And I took that phone away from him. I'd bet about six times we went through that and almost had a fight. And I think if he was a different temperament, I would have got that phone in my head, on my head. But he was a general type and he put it down. And I said, now come on, let's talk about it. [00:14:34] And he had an offer from [Bulova?] to be president of the [Bulova?] company. And we went out to see Bradley down there. [00:14:46] DC: He was Chairman of the [Bulova?]. [00:14:50] HT: And so that was a fabulous offer in itself for, I don't know, I won't quote the amount of money, but much more than the army could ever give him, even as a general, even if he had been promoted. And he was then a Brigadier General, I think. And like that, somebody got wind of it in Washington because I talked about it so much. Oh, my husband's gonna retire, oh dear, oh dear, he's going out of the army. And we liked the army so much. [inaudible] [00:15:30] DC: So, the word got out. [00:15:32] HT: And word got out and next thing you know, down came the promotion to Major General. So of course, that boosted his ego. And he knew that he was worth something then or they would not promote him as Major General. And so… [00:15:53] DC: About what time, probably, would this be about ‘53 or something like that? [00:15:58] HT: I think, well, we can look up when he was promoted. That was when the offer came in. And of course, we dickered with that for a long time before I almost got the telephone on my head. And I thought, sure, he was going to, you know, throw it out. He was so mad because I was interfering and I didn't think he was thinking this thing through. He was just mad at Congress, mad at missiles, mad at everything. [00:16:30] DC: Frustrated, yeah. [00:16:31] HT: Yeah, frustrated. He just couldn't get to first base with anybody. They said they didn't have the money. You couldn't do this. You can't do that. And he said, you can do it. He was a perfectionist and he wanted everything done right. He thought anybody could do anything that they wanted if they tried. And so that was his, sort of his model. [00:17:00] DC: Of course, he also had kept the team together. I'm sure he didn't want to leave the boat after keeping the group together. That would have been a... [00:17:08] HT: But see, the group at that time were also... [00:17:11] DC: [inaudible] [00:17:12] HT: Well, they were offered, I think, [gentle?], and I won't say [inaudible] dynamics because that may be the wrong one, but it was one of these big industries that kept offering them jobs, you know, at fabulous prices by that time. [00:17:31] DC: We need to find out who and talk to them. That might be interesting for our story. [00:17:36] HT: But I know that they were threatened to get out and I guess maybe he knew about it. Of course, he didn't tell me... [00:17:47] DC: The whole thing was pretty rocky right at that time. [00:17:49] HT: Yeah, he didn't tell me details because he never discussed those kind of things with me, but I knew there was something that was making him feel like... Like... And after all he was doing, and I think we got Colonel Hamill on the spot. I don't know whether I phoned him. I phoned around a lot of people to phone him to tell him how good things were going and everything just to keep his morale up, you know? So, a wife really has an important part in this business too. As I say, you have to go through all these missiles coming at you and out of you, dreaming of them and wondering if you were sitting on one going up when you got up in the morning and all this. And then as soon as he got out of the door, then it left me and I went on with my chores. [00:18:53] DC: Did you ever see a launchers at all? [00:19:00] HT: I saw just the ones that went off at Redstone. You know, they started in with what they call Toftoy’s Folly here in Redstone. That's when they built the little test stands, you know? And they said that was, for instance, this is the way the top crowd looked at it. I won't say general staff because I don't know who it was, but they thought that was much too big. We never had, because it wasn't that high, but you know, whatever height was, we never had anything that would. And then it grew so much that they had to build that great big one, you know? And I don't know whether they call that Toftoy’s Folly or whether that was another story. Did you get in on that one? [00:19:56] DC: I'm generally familiar with the story. The first Redstone test stand and the larger one, you know? [00:20:01] HT: Well, of course, we got to see all those around the arsenal. [00:20:05] DC: You saw some of the first static tests of the engines around it? [00:20:09] HT: Uh-huh. Oh yeah. And the wind tunnel, you go in the wind tunnel at the beginning, you know? When, and [inaudible] you’d think you were going to be blown out of there. The roar. And he said — I said, “Is that a rocket in there roaring?” He says, “oh, that's the way it's going to sound worse than that.” You wait and see. And one incident I remember is White Sands. He came home and told me about it, that a reporter from one of the newspapers, I think Washington or New York, saw this thing for the first time at White Sands. Guess it was a V-2. Anyway, the first one that went up, and they weren't sure. And everybody was saying,oh, that thing is going to go right, and it'll probably go to Mexico. It was not the one that went to Mexico, by the way. But it was an awful roar, and the first time any of these reporters had heard a roar, you know? And so this one got down in the sand, in White Sands, and covered himself all up quickly. And [got down] and never did see the fire. [laughing] [00:21:21] DC: [inaudible] [00:21:22] HT: Because when he heard the roar, you know, that's all he did was dig like, and went right on down and covered himself. And said, so then when they said, it's all over, Jim. I don't know whether it was Jim Lucas or not, but it's all over, Jim. Come on out. And then he uncovered himself and came out all full of sand, and they laughed. They said that was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. And I think the general was nearby there. But he said this poor guy was scared to death. And of course, he still had to be quite far away from it. And he didn't want any part of that. And so, the newspaper never sent him again because he came back with no report, except he buried his head in the sand. [00:22:21] DC: It’s a good story. [chuckling] [00:22:23] [recording cuts] [00:22:25] DC: This is the story of the [steakhouse that’s off-limits?]. Just mention a little bit so I know what that [inaudible]. [00:22:30] HT: Yeah. Well, they went down. They were looking for the quarters for the German crowd at that time. They wanted a hospital, at least. Hamill had in the back of its mind that this hospital was giving up and that they had no money to put into it. So, one night he said, or I don't know whether it was Colonel Toftoy or Hamill, they said, “well, let's go to the steakhouse.” So, they did go to the steakhouse. And then on the way back, instead of turning, go to White Sands or Bliss, wherever it was they were going. He turned the other way and said, “where are you going?” He said, never mind. I'm going down by the hospital. And he had it all fixed with the commanding officer and they stepped in there. And so, he said, now you tell them you want this hospital for these Germans. You're going to have a better place to live. So, they went in there and he showed them all around him and said, well, I don't think I could do that. And Hamill had already, as he made the way for this by telling them that — I don't know whether he got permission from Washington. I don't think he had at that time. But anyway, he had made some kind of preparation beforehand. And they went right in and he said, all right, tomorrow morning, Hamill, you will get this thing. And it was just like that, right overnight. Because they were going to move out of there anyway, they had no money to run the place. And the congressman gave it to them and said, all right, you can have it. And of course, that was another get down on your knees, what I call get down on your knees and plead. Because that was another thing. They had to plead for that because they said, “Oh, we have other plans for that. That's going to the Air Force or the Navy,” or somebody was going to take it over. Not the Army. And they said, “Well, they can't have it.” And they were real upset and mean about it. And so, they thought, well, they better please them. You know, and so sometimes it works the other way where they have to be tough on the congressmen and the ones up at the top instead of the ones at the top being tough on them. So anyway, that's a little bit. I don't remember all the details. He can tell you what even the speed they went and they said, why are you going so fast? Oh, we got to go someplace and all the details can be told by Hamill. Better than me, because I just heard about it when they came back. They just told the story. And that was long ago. [00:25:47] DC: I guess Hamill was in close touch by telephone to Toftoy in Washington. [00:25:52] HT: In Washington. [00:25:53] DC: There were a lot of problems with Bliss they had straightened out in Washington. [00:25:54] HT: Oh, yeah, they got all the orders and [Sagan?], of course, Mr. [Sagan?] was down there again with them. And so, they had quite a time. It was uh… [00:26:12] [glass or cups clinking] [00:26:13] DC: I put a little in there already. Maybe not enough. [00:26:15] HT: You put sugar in it? [00:26:20] HT: But they had a hard time getting real. It was real difficult getting all these things put together. And at the same time, you know, he was trying to run the whole show. And it was hard to convince people that this thing was important. That's why he got so serious, that I couldn't half the time get a smile out of him. Although he did have a beautiful smile. And we'd always say, look at the birdie smile. That was our famous. So that he'd give that time because it was so dead serious about this thing. [00:27:05] DC: Well, I guess one of the biggest problems was the American public wasn't that interested. After the war, they were tired of… [00:27:10] HT: No, they were very [inaudible] and didn't care. And, of course, everybody knows we went into the deep freeze and all these things. We were more interested in household. [00:27:27] DC: [inaudible], homes, automobiles. [00:27:30] HT: Yeah and didn't care about missiles. And that's what I'm afraid of when Vietnam, they give up, you know, Vietnam and that money they'll want for the poor. They've been talking about welfare and all that. And they won't give it to the state program. And that's when unless you have a fighter like him behind that's going to. And I'm afraid the next best fighter is going to be Dr. von Braun himself, because he fought all along with my husband on this whole deal. Whatever he said would go or he would have suggestions. And then then Toftoy would go along with Von Braun and they worked together very beautifully. And I think that Wernher kept the team together a lot, too. [00:28:27] DC: I guess there are a lot of… [00:28:28] HT: Yes, there are a lot of, you know, sidelines to this thing. And actually, I think Von Braun, most of them wanted to work on space. They didn't want to work on these little missiles. That was not their job. They wanted to work on the space. [00:28:48] DC: So, there was no NASA then at all. [00:28:49] HT: So there was no space program. And it took all these years to build up to it. [00:28:57] DC: Did Toftoy mention space very much? Is that sort of in the back of his mind? [00:29:01] HT: Back in ‘46, you know, that was the one thing he said, “In this decade, we’re going to space.” You got a clipping, I’m sure, of that. And he… [00:29:11] DC: There were some raised eyebrows, too, when a military man started speaking about space so much. [00:29:16] HT: I mean, he thought he was a lunatic. In fact, they said, “The white coats are coming to get you any day.” That was really told to him. “Are you cracked?” “I think your husband's cracked.” I get that kind of and all these things thrown at me, you know. “I think your husband's had it. You better take him to the hospital. He's cracked.” And I said, “Well, if he's cracked, Wernher von Braun’s cracked, too.” Oh, well, that's different. He's a scientist. They're all cracked. [00:29:49] DC: [laughing] That was understood! [00:29:50] HT: Yeah, that was understood. But an army man, should stick to his army guns, you know, and things like that. And not bother with all this space. I mean, this space stuff. And of course, it was the same way when they began on the missiles. “He was cracked.” And, “What do you want a missile for?” “How do you know Russia has missiles?” We… you know, and all this stuff. And in the meantime, I'm sure that general staff or intelligence in our army or someone has looked into it and knew they did. But they just didn't want to give money for it. [00:30:39] [recording cuts] [00:30:41] HT: I was at Redstone Arsenal, and I've been in this missile work. And I've gotten as far as space. Now that I've gotten a little further on to heaven. Couldn't I come in? Or do I have to go the other place? And he said, “My dear, here's your orchid. Step right in. Your angels are here. Your mermaids are here. Your missile people are all around you. So just have a good time. [00:31:16] DC: Thank [Peter Lutton?], again. [00:31:17] HT: Yeah, thank [Peter Lutton?]. [inaudible] tell a new story. Of course, every time somebody adds a little bit, something more to it beside the angels, you know, I added the missile men. But they said your whole crowd's here. [00:31:35] DC: You made it. [00:31:35] HT: So we made it. [00:31:38] [recording cuts] [00:31:39] DC: I ask you what were some of his personal feelings when the von Braun team finally switched over to NASA. Since he was an army man, I'm sure he had mixed emotions. Do you recall what some of his feelings were at that time, about 1960? [00:31:54] HT: Well, let's see, that's the year he retired. [00:31:58] DC: But the army, of course, was still trying to keep the von Braun team and do things in space. By the same token, I'm sure he wanted to see them go on. [00:32:08] HT: What hurt him the most, and this was, of course, the feeling, was when they put General Medaris into the job as top. [00:32:18] DC: Oh, the Jupiter project. [00:32:21] HT: And he was the head here at Redstone. And that, he felt, the General felt like he was having a demotion when he ran the whole program. And then they put the man from General Staff in Washington in, who knew, really — well, he knew something about it, of course – but he was not in on the beginning. And he wanted to be at the top. And that, a little while after that, he went to the hospital. And I think in my own mind, this is just my own opinion, that he just, you know, kind of went to pieces. [00:33:06] DC: Hurt him inside, yeah. [00:33:08] And then, let's see, well, I think NASA, he knew it was getting to be a big program and that the army, I mean, as small as it was, and Ordnance couldn't hang on to it. They had to. And they'd rather have NASA, he'd rather have NASA take it over than give it to the Air Force. [laughing] That's about the size of it, even though the Air Force… [00:33:36] DC: Lesser of two evils. [00:33:38] HT: Because there was always that little bickering and I don't believe that. [END] 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_crst_000026_A Title A name given to the resource Toftoy, Hazel Description An account of the resource Experiences in the early days of Gen. Toftoy's career in Huntsville from his wife. How he fought to keep the Army missile programs, how Toftoy almost resigned, Toftoy's involvement in the creation of Redstone Arsenal, and the transition from Army to NASA. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972 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/3d47ba90a2b76b51f3cf37dc4df9ea93.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/21ccd561f7d3a8aed611b1f45ad7f0bd.mp4 6b94b574bac5d13a101ea6cf4915a00b 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 Thomson, Jerry Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:56:40 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:07] Roger Bilstein: I wonder if you could, from your recollection, make some comments about where the porous injector face got started and how it got into Pratt & Whitney and how the transfer occurred from the RL-10 to J-2 and stuff like that. [00:00:21] Jerry Thomson: Oh, good. I might be able to make a few [thousand?] comments about that because I was involved in this area quite a bit back in the early days. The J-2 procurement—I'm sure you've already determined—took place in about 1960. That procurement—the specifications and so forth—were all prepared here in the lab at that time. When we prepared the procurement on the J-2, we visualized it as being somewhat advanced engine relative to the RL-10 because we had already been working with the RL-10. So when we made the solicitation—why, I can't remember now whether it was four or five contractors bid on that J-2 engine—but the winning contractor, who was Rocketdyne, did not offer an injector type like what we ended up with. As a matter of fact, they offered a self-impinging injector or it might have been an unlike pattern—you know?—where fuel was impinging on a LOX stream—I can’t remember exactly—but the man at Rocketdyne that was in charge of that effort then was a very good friend of mine that I’ve known since about 1952 was Bill Mower. Bill Mower… [00:02:23] RB: How do you spell that last name? [00:02:24] JT: W.W. Mower: M-O-W-E-R, and he is still there with the company. After Rocketdyne won the procurement, won the contract, then we began to interface with them to discuss in more detail what we liked and didn't like about their design. My discussions with Bill Mower there at Rocketdyne, we decided that we would go and investigate at Lewis Research Center work which had been done up there by Bill [Tomaszek?]. Bill [Tomaszek?] in the rocket propulsion division up there had for a number of years been experimenting with a coaxial injector pattern about fifteen thousand thrust size. He had investigated this particular injector configuration even prior to the design of the RL-10 engine. [00:03:44] JT: It was dated back a good ways, as I recall. But their design at Lewis was a flat-face injector with coaxial elements, then the LOX through the center with a fuel curtain around it. During the course of that experimental work up there the first basic information was derived that led then to the RL-10 engine design injector. And, you know, when the Pratt & Whitney people saw that data, they took it a few steps further, and they put a convex shape to the injector face and focused it so that the focal point of all of these elements then was right at the throat of the motor. They did that for reasons like that if you have a flat face, the LOX springs when they hit the converging section of the nozzle cause overheating problems in there, so by focusing it so that everything was aimed right at the throat they took a little bit of the load off the converging section of the motor. [00:05:20] RB: I'm glad you explained that because I noticed that on the injector, and I didn't know really what the reason was. Why didn't they use a similar thing then for the H-1 and F-1 injector cases? [00:05:30] JT: Well the H-1 injector preceded the work at Lewis, and the F-1 was based on the H-1. It wasn't really anything back in those days that we could use like experience on it, the RL-10 and so forth. But anyway, by converging those elements at the throat, they took some of the problem off of the—and these are improvements that Pratt & Whitney made to the concept—but the Pratt & Whitney injectors or their thrust chambers start tapering as soon as you leave the face. There's no straight section and then a converging section. They start tapering immediately. So they made some [very?] good improvements over the original work that we done at Lewis Research Center. This was a great deal of interest to us when we started the J-2 program because we said, “Well, gee, that thing has turned out so well.” I kind of pressed Rockedyne into taking a look at it. [00:06:42] JT: So then Bill Mower and I and another guy who worked out there named John Campbell who worked for Bill Mower, all three of us went up to Lewis Research Center to visit Bill [Tomaszek?]. That was about 1960 we went up there. We sat down and reviewed what the Lewis work had been and made some estimates of how this then could be translated into a J-2 injector. But initially the J-2 program started off with an unlike triplet injector or a doublet—I can't remember—but it was flat-faced and no Rigi-Mesh. We entered the test program with that kind of a configuration. Bill Mower was a very practical sort of fellow. He said, “Jerry, we hadn't got people at Rocketdyne that we think can consistently build that high quality piece of equipment”—which is a Rigi-Mesh concentric orifice injector. He says, “We don't think we can build that high quality equipment,” and so he says, “It would be a shame to go into that at Rocketdyne and spend a lot of money and then have two-thirds of them rejected during the course of the manufacturing.” So he still favored the flat-face, no-face cooling, multi-element pattern. Again, I can't remember whether it was like-on-like or whether it was unlike-doublets or something triplets or what, but I believe it was one stream of LOX with two fuel streams impinging on it. I think that was Rocketdyne's initial approach. But when we entered the test program at Rocketdyne, which I don't know, came about 1962 or something along like that, we had a lot of problems. We had face heating problems. [00:08:57] RB: Mower was right then. [00:08:59.] JT: What? [00:09:00] RB: Mower was right. They had a lot of problems, didn't they? [00:09:02] JT: Well, they had problems, but they were design problems or they were development problems. He was forecasting problems in fabrication of a high-quality injector like a coaxial. [00:09:18] RB: Oh, I see. [00:09:20] JT: But when they had these problems, they were both face heating problems, and some of these streams were getting out through the wall, causing wall overheating problems. We had some instability problems with that injector configuration that they initially chose. It was good that there had been a little bit of work started at Rocketdyne on this coaxial approach, that is, the Rigi-Mesh faced coaxial approach. They had sort of taken that along as a backup, hoping that the solid-face injector would have been good enough. Since it didn't turn out that way in the course of the development testing, then they were forced to go back and take a look at the coaxial Rigi-Mesh face, and we gave them a lot of money to give that a real…a lot more emphasis. As a result, then Rocketdyne began to have more success in the course of their injector development. It still had a lot of problems, you know, there were distortion problems—the Rigi-Mesh face would expand and contract, and this caused a little problem as far as the LOX [posts?] are concerned. We'd get straight LOX springs into the wall. But Rocketdyne kept making improvements, and finally, did come out with a real high-class injector. [00:11:07] RB: Was Marshall at this time doing parallel injector studies here in Huntsville? Or was most of the actual hardware dirty hand work going on out at Canoga Park? [00:11:17] JT: It was going on at Canoga Park. We had a little bit of model injector element testing going on here in the center, but it was not on any kind of a scale to give valuable inputs into that Rocketdyne design. That Rocketdyne design was really a result of, first of all, having this Lewis research knowledge. We did make all that available to him. Then we turned over to Rocketdyne all this knowledge that had come out of the RL-10 program. Then Rocketdyne just simply took a couple of approaches and made it even better. [00:12:03] RB: Well, given Pratt & Whitney's experience with Centaurs, with liquid hydrogen technology, and given this injector face work they’d already done, why didn’t they get what became the J-2 engine? Why didn’t they get it, and why did Rocketdyne get it? [00:12:19] JT: Why didn’t Pratt & Whitney get the job? Because that isn’t the only criteria for contractor selection, you know? Injector design is just one of hundreds. The reasons Pratt & Whitney didn’t get the job are all in the evaluation files. [00:12:49] RB: Rocketdyne seems to be pretty successful at getting engine contracts. [00:12:52] JT: Yep. I think in the case of J-2, the biggest thing that drove Rocketdyne in was the fact that they offered a program for about thirty-eight million bucks. Their competition was quite a bit in excess of that. [00:13:10] RB: Did Rocketdyne's association earlier through the H-1 program, did that make it a little bit easier for them, you think, that they knew the people and knew Marshall's philosophy? [00:13:23] JT: No, I think that wasn't very significant there because the evaluation was a NASA thing. It wasn't limited to Marshall. The evaluation was done in Washington. The guy who headed that was Del Tischler. [00:13:42] RB: We tried to get to talk to him, but we couldn't. We talked to John [inaudible]. [00:13:45] JT: Yeah, Del ran the evaluation. I can't think of who the second man was on that. But there were a few of us at Marshall up before that. Of course, a great number from Lewis Research Center and various places. I think even the Air Force people were involved. [14:08] RB: Could you tell me a little bit more about this Rigi-Mesh material? Its origins, where it came from? [00:14:15] JT: Porous Media is one of the companies that… [00:14:24] RB: Aircraft Porous Media Incorporated is the name I've got here. [00:14:27] JT: Yeah. I don't know how they ever came about that darn stuff, whether it was used as a filtering material in some of their other projects—you know?—and they just simply found out that, hey, maybe injectors, or maybe thrust chamber people would be interested in this product or just how it came about. The company did go through a number of development processes and finally coming to a real high quality product. I don't know whether it was just largely their own doings or whether the government sponsored them in this activity under some research contract or whether some other agency was interested in it or just how it came about. But by the time it got utilized in the RL-10, why, it was a pretty good high quality product. There may have been some further improvements in its application to the J-2. But if there were, they were minor because it had already reached the plateau as far as maturity is concerned. [00:16:04] RB: I'm realizing there are lots of parts and subsystems of J-2. I wonder if you could say that Rigi-Mesh was really a significant part of the J-2 success or it didn't have anything to do with it. Just how important was the Rigi-Mesh to the injector face, injector material? [00:16:26] JT: I'd say it was rather important, but it wasn't essential. The job could have been done without that Rigi-Mesh material. You could have gone to a whole lot of drilled holes in the face for it, let the gaseous hydrogen come through it. There's a lot of other principles that could have been employed, but this stuff not only gave you a lot of small weep holes for the fluids to pass through but it provided a pretty good structure. All those tubes that came down to bring the LOX from the top of the injector dome, they were all fastened to the Rigi-Mesh material. [third person talking Jerry Thomson, inaudible] [00:17:40] RB: There was something else that Dave was talking about. He said that he remembered or heard some story about the fact that when Von Braun was out at North American and was watching some of the experiments with J-2 injectors before they were using Rigi-Mesh, and he was also talking about the RL-10, urging them to go into the Rigi-Mesh that had been used by Pratt & Whitney. Do you remember or hear that or do you remember anything about it? [00:18:06] JT: No, I don't. That most likely did happen or something. I'm sure that those of us that were, you know, more intimately involved with that thing were considering the application of Rigi-Mesh to the J-2 all along [laughs]. [00:18:32] RB: That’s what struck me as you were talking, it had to happen long before that. I know you've got to go to this meeting, but there's one other question here, and maybe you can't answer it. But early at one point where they're still talking about a propulsion system for the S-IV stage, they were considering using the LR-119 engines—Pratt & Whitney—and they ran into some kind of trouble, and so they decided to go to the LR-150. This was back in 1961. Do you recall what the difficulty was, and why they went from the LR-115 to the 119? [00:19:17] JT: It escapes me for a minute. [00:19:19] RB: They finally wound up with the RL-10. But I just came across this reference that they had some trouble, and I haven't found out yet what they were. [00:19:28] JT: Well, we had trouble with the development of the RL-10. We had very serious development problems in terms of starting the engine and one problem in terms of igniting the engine. We blew the test stand down a couple of times down in Florida. It was a horizontal light versus a vertical light. You light it horizontal, the oxygen accumulated in the motor and provided a nice, smooth ignition when you brought in hydrogen. When you turn the engine this way, why, all the way in the LOX ripped out. Therefore, when we started, we got no ignition until the diffuser filled with hydrogen, and then she lit. [00:20:20] RB: [laughs] And then she really lit? [00:20:21] JT: Yeah, then she went. Twice! Well, I don't know about that 119 thing, because it don't ring a bell. [00:20:35] RB: I’ll have to go back and find some documentation. We talked to Rod Stewart, and he's forgotten almost all about that. It's been so long ago now, twelve years practically. [00:20:42] Yeah. Well, I remember a little bit about the J-2 injector thing because injectors are what I trained in back when I was in the industry. [00:20:58] RB: Do you have any more comments to make about the J-2 injector development, and some of the problems that Rocketdyne had, and the Marshall inputs to that program? [00:21:12] JT: Nope…make some comments about the F-1 if you ever get interested in that. [00:21:18] RB: Ok, you got time? You want to do it? [00:21:21] JT: Well, if you ever really want to hear a good story, back about 1963 or 4 [sic], we ran into this F-1 combustion instability problem. We had such a terrible thing there on our hands until there was sort of a national ad hoc committee created to do nothing except to concentrate on the solution. [00:21:57] RB: How do you mean a national ad hoc? [Inaudible] people from Lewis and other NASA…? [00:22:02] JT: Yeah, and universities. I hated the thing, and it brought in people from all over the whole country consult and assist us in the solution to that problem. It took us about a year and a half, spent thirty something million bucks solving that problem. [00:22:22] RB: How would you summarize then the problem as it originated and how you worked it out? How would you… [00:22:32] JT: Well, we were going along fine in the F-1 engine testing, we all of a sudden began to destroy engines. We destroyed seven—or at least we blew up seven times—due to combustion instability. It was obvious that the injector system that we were using was not going to do the job. It was a flat face, unlike, doublet with a LOX ring and a fuel ring—copper ring—it was…After about a year and a half or two years of real intensive investigations and trying every kind of a concept you can think of, we finally converged on a solution that was basically the adaptation of baffles to the injector face. [00:23:35] JT: Still that wasn't good enough because the additional baffles caused performance degradation, caused baffle heating problems, local accumulations of fuel and even them themselves caused perturbations and instability. So it was just a laborious step-by-step fix this and fix that and fix something else and go back and refix what you had fixed using a lot of theoretical ideas and a lot of barnyard philosophy and whatever else we could. [00:24:19] JT: We finally got an injector system that was not only did it exceed the requirements that we had started the program with but it set the pace for all the future programs. All the future injector programs both the Air Force and NASA require a dynamically stable system—you know?—where you can bomb artificially and what you see how long it takes for the disturbance to quiet down. The Titan program adopted the procedures and the techniques that we worked out in F-1. [00:25:01] RB: Well, did this bombing begin though with the H-1? There was some instability with the H-1. Did it begin there or did it begin with the F-1? [00:25:10] JT: The experimental bombing and watching the recovery times did start in the H-1. [00:25:22] RB: Did the techniques differ very much from the H-1 to the F-1? [00:25:26] JT: Yeah, they advanced quite a bit from the H-1 to the F-1. [00:25:32] RB: And what were the differences then? [00:25:33] JT: Well, in the H-1 we did use black powder charges as the source of energy, but we didn't understand just what was going on in there when these charges would go off. During the course of the F-1, why, we built these two [inaudible] motors where you could photography see exactly what happened when we set a bomb off near the injector face. We soon learned that the bomb was like a detonator. It was just a…then the real energy came from the reaction of the kerosene that was accumulations in the injector face during the preparation process. [00:26:30] JT: Whereas the H-1 used seventy or hundred grain bombs, black powder bombs. The F-1 we only needed about a nine grain bomb. The location of the bomb we determined during the course of the F-1 was real important. In the H-1 program we set off the bomb at the center of the injector, it would cause the wave that went to the wall and then came back. We found in the course of the F-1 testing that that was the most favorable place to put the bomb. If you really want to create a disturbance that's difficult to damp, you need to put the bomb near the [engine?] wall. I think that all of our today's criteria and procedures for bomb testing engines really go back to what came out of that F-1 program. It's true that the H-1 had done some, but it wasn't near as significant. [00:27:41] RB: When you finally began to solve the F-1 problem, was it, I think you said, just a convergence of ideas and people? Was there anyone, though, that maybe took the lead, the university or Marshall or Rocketdyne? Was there somebody or someone, you yourself? [00:27:57] JT: I tell you there was about four or five guys that were really involved in that. One was [Dan Klute?], who is dead. [00:28:08] RB: I've seen the name, yeah. [00:28:10.] The other one was—he was at Rocketdyne—the other one was Paul Castenholz at Rocketdyne; and then another guy was Dave Harrje, who's H-A-R-R-J-E; at Princeton University; and Professor Luigi Crocco, at Princeton University. [00:28:33] RB: How do you spell his name? [00:28:34] JT: Luigi? How to spell Luigi? [00:28:41] RB: Yeah, I got Luigi. [00:28:42] JT: Crocco. C-R-O-C-O or C-R-O-C-C-O. And then I was one of the contributors. And the other one was Bob Richmond, here at Marshall. The other one was Dick Crane, at the Lewis Research Center. D-I… [tape cuts out] [00:29:26] JT: [inaudible] interesting…that J-2 Rigi-Mesh injector was a kitten compared to that F-1. That was terrible. [00:29:49] RB: Well, what would you say then was the final fix? These injector baffles? [00:29:53] JT: That was just one step. It took about three or four major steps to solve the problem. First, we put on the baffles. The next step we did was we slowed down the burning rate in the first few inches of the injection process. We had a LOX like-on-like and a fuel like-on-like, and we went to a smaller inclusive angle so that we spread the fuel out. And, you know, if this is the combustion process down here, the fuel was on about, say, 93—I don't know if that's quite what it was, 97—but anyway, our barnyard philosophy told us that if were we to slow down the burning process, we might desensitize the injection process, so that when these [ratings?] came back, we weren't really in the critical process up near the injector face. We decreased that angle, spread out the burning time. That was the second major step. [00:31:28] JT: The third step was that we found that we wanted to change the response time between the LOX and the fuel system. We opened up the diameter of the fuel holes, so that when you, you know, perturbate the system, the LOX system would recover quickly. It was stiff. But the fuel system would recover at a slower rate because it was soft. That's what you want to do. You want to have them recover at different frequencies because if they are recovering at the same frequency, you're putting out a lot of energy. Whereas if they're recovering at different frequencies, you're damping the process. So that was the third step. [00:32:19] RB: So you opened the diameter of the fuel holes in the face of the injector? [00:32:34] That's right. And then the fourth step was that we went in around the edges of the baffles where we knew that there were accumulations of fuel, we modified the injection patterns to try and eliminate these fuel accumulations because if you've got a fuel accumulation there, then it's a source of explosion, you know, and perturbation source—triggering device if you want to call it that. That was the way that the thing went. [00:33:22] JT: I recall one time when Brainerd Holmes was running the Saturn program, he called some of us up to Washington into his office, and he was so concerned about this problem that we weren't able to solve. He told us all that he was ready to go to Congress and tell them that we wanted to have a backup propulsion system for the S-IC. He was prepared to go ask for a solid motor for the backup. He went around the room, and he asked those of us that were there what our own personal feelings were about whether or not we were going to solve this problem. It's pretty dramatic. He was the top man saying that he was ready to go ask Congress for a backup if we told him that we couldn't solve the problem or if we told him we might not solve the problem. He says, “I want you to tell me truthfully how you feel.” So everybody, I guess, expressed ourselves. He says, “Well, I'm going to take your advice and continue the program assuming that we can solve the problem.” Fortunately, we did. It was really something that always sticks in my memory. [00:34:41] RB: Was Von Braun involved in any of this? [00:34:43] JT: Nope, he sure wasn't. It was…Hermann Widener was up there with me. It was Herman Widener, myself, and a man who was the project manager at that time [for the F-1?] Sonny Morea. But I was the chairman of this ad hoc committee to solve this problem, and that was the reason that I was there. The other man was there from Rocketdyne—or two men were from there from Rocketdyne—it was Paul Castenholz and their vice-president Joe McNamara. [00:35:20] RB: Do you have any papers or reports, AIAA things that help summarize this? I've seen some documents we have, but I don't think of any really specific documents at this time that we've got. [00:35:37] JT: The only thing I have ever done is written minutes of all the meetings that were held with a small working group to solve a problem that I had. But I've never published any papers on it, and I don't think any of those that were key in the solution ever published any papers either. But I've seen a whole bunch of papers by people who were not directly involved, but expanded on what I was thinking to solve. Some of them are far from the way it actually was. [00:36:18] RB: Would it be possible to get a look at those minutes? [00:36:25] JT: [Inaudible] I think that they were classified at that time, but I’m sure desensitized [sic] now. Hey, Phil, don't we have the old ad hoc committee file on the F-1? In that red, red…? [00:36:43] RB: I'll tell you what I could do is—if you don't mind—I could take it over to the historical office over here—Akins' office in 4200—and work on them there and leave them there then when I'm done. When I'm finished with them all, I can bring them back to you. Would that be acceptable? [00:37:03] JT: That's the only record that exists as far as what took place. I saved it all these years. But what it is, I figured I’d write how it really was. [laughs] [00:37:14] RB: [laughs] Yeah, I wish you would. You got to do that. Well, I really feel guilty I'm keeping you from this meeting. [00:37:22] JT: I know they're not getting too far on solid motor materials. [both laugh] We don't know what it would look like yet. [00:37:34] RB: Do you have anything else you'd like to throw in here? [00:37:37] JT: Let me ask you, what are your objectives? Is to fish out maybe significant happenings during the course of the Saturn program? Or are you just going to simply cover the whole waterfront? [00:37:53] RB: Well, I'd have to say yes to both of those that way we're trying to, you know, cover as much as we can along the waterfront, and... [00:38:06] JT [speaking to third person, third person is inaudible]:I think it's a whole series of folders, aren't they? Yeah, how many is it? [00:38:16] RB: As time goes along though we find certain things. We've got an opportunity to do it, to dig down, you know, here and there. It just depends kind of on what we stumble across, even the documents in an interview like this one [inaudible] we can maybe go into it in more detail, but… [00:38:34] JT: The reason I was asking that, I do a little writing myself [inaudible] ASI line, the augmented spark igniter. [00:38:46] RB: I talked to Jerry Pease about that. [00:38:48] JT: Who? [00:38:49] RB: Jerry Pease. Or Bob Pease. Bob Pease. What really strikes me is that for all the vacuum tests, etc. that were supposedly done on the J-2 up to that time, why that, you know, still happens. As I understand it, it was because the environment of the vacuum chamber—I'd forgotten what he told me now—was different just enough so that it allowed some of this moisture to collect. When they finally purged the environmental chamber down to a really cold, hard vacuum, they found out what the problem really was. [00:39:26] JT: Yeah, that one was exciting. But you know that ASI line problem had to be not only did we have to understand what failed, we had to understand how it had failed and why it had failed. And then we had a [inaudible] requirement, and that was to reproduce the process here on the ground. In about a four month period, why, we went through all four of those things, and I happened to have been the chairman of that investigation. [00:40:17] RB: I didn't know that either. [00:40:19] JT: When you told me you had talked to Bob Pease, I was kind of wondering a little about that because... [00:40:23] RB: You know, some of this stuff, we're re-writing a lot of this stuff, and I've gotten off engines. Now, I'm into logistics recently. I've kind of forgotten really because I haven't written up that interview yet, what we really got into now. Because I think about it, I think that maybe he did, you know, mention your name in several others. Wasn't Sonny Morea in on that one too? Or was that the F1? Maybe it was... [00:40:46] JT: Sonny was the project manager of the J-2 at that time. [00:40:48] RB: Yeah. Or maybe that's…he just mentioned it in that context then. [00:40:54] JT: But we had about a two hundred man activity going in NASA and the industry combined. We had a test stand going on at Rocketdyne, firing engines trying to re-create the problem, testing components, and so…But Rex Bailey who works over in the propulsion division and I and Karl Heimberg set up a thrust chamber over here in Bill Grafton's test stand, and that's where we recreated the failure was over there. [00:41:28] RB: Okay, so right over here was really the critical discovery point then? Right here on this test stand? [00:41:34] JT: Yeah. Sure was. We recreated the failure. As a matter of fact, I had a thing on the wall, but that thing right there, we simulated the failure right over here. We fired at about eight o'clock one night. [00:42:00] RB: Now did you have a vacuum condition out there? [00:42:03] JT: No, because it wasn't necessary to have a vacuum to recreate the process that, you know, where the engine progressed to the point where it quit running. First of all, you had to create a vacuum here in the outside of this line so that there was no moisture condensation taking place. Then this line would fail due to convolution fatigue. These convolutions there, you know, failed in the [inaudible] due to fatigue, and a crack opened up, and the hydrogen shot out this way instead of going into the ignitor. When the hydrogen didn’t go into the ignitor, then the face of the injector was under-cooled [sic] and it got a hot spot on it. Then like blowtorch it started to consuming itself and the failure worked back until the injector face sort of caved in. Well, it's that part of the recreating of the series of circumstances that we've performed over here. It was Rocketdyne who, during the course of the investigation, stumbled across the fact that the environment was very important in terms of life of this convolution here. [00:43:36] RB: Okay, so let me try and get this straight then. Rocketdyne first discovered the environmental factor. [00:43:41] JT: That's right. [00:43:42] RB: Okay. And then you recreated the environmental factor out here? [00:43:46] JT: Well, we recreated the failure process. You know, to go back first, General Phillips says, “You gotta prove what happened.” So we showed him this happened: that line failed. He says, “How did it fail?” It failed due to fatigue. He says, “Why did it fail?” It failed because of the environment around there. It caused high frequency vibrations in it. Then he says, “Now you recreate the events like that engine saw in flight.” Well, it's that fourth thing that we did over here. Rocketdyne stumbled across the fact that the environment was critical to the fatigued life of those [bellows?]. That two hundred man operation was, like I say, active for about four months, and we got the solution. [00:44:54] RB: That was both Marshall and Rocketdyne, the two hundred man crew? [00:44:57] JT: Yeah, it was Marshall, Rocketdyne, North American, and Douglas—all four combined effort—was 200 men. [00:45:07] RB: Sounds like it was, you know, getting to the stage of another crunch like Brainerd Holmes might have called you back up again for another session. Of course, it was a little late then. [laughs] [00:45:18] JT: Well, we had something nearly like that because during the course of that four months, we had these things called [inaudible] what they do now, but the Boeing building down in the Research Park, they had a room that would go in and sit down, and TV shows all over the country to other groups. We'd have to go down there about once every three weeks or something and give a briefing on where we were in this investigation. That darn thing, I don't know, I mean, it must have been a thousand people on that hookup, because they had people at Boeing Seattle; people at out on the west coast of Los Angeles within that; people down at KSC; people in Houston; people in Washington. It was like a Walter Cronkite news broadcast. [00:46:18] RB: Why did they have such an extensive hookup? Was it just to let other people know in terms of their own scheduling or because of the inputs they could make from a technical standpoint? [00:46:26] JT: No, it was a management review, and all the management should know was, you know, was very concerned, because we were trying to, you know, go manned flight on 504. [00:46:43] RB: Yeah. 503, wasn't it? [00:46:46] JT: 504. [00:46:47] RB: Okay. [00:46:49] We were trying to go manned flight on 504—502 had messed up. They were kind of wondering whether to delay the flight of 503, until we had absolutely proven the solution. And if they delay 503, they delay 504, and then they delay the whole lunar program. So that's why all them people were interested. But it was on that same flight—if you recall— we had the first pogo problem on S-1C. [00:47:20] RB: On 502, yeah. [00:47:22] JT: So we had Erich Goerner, who was in charge of the pogo investigation. He had a whole team, and all over the country and I had this ASI line [inaudible]. [00:47:36] RB: How do you spell…is it G-O-E-R-N-E-R, Goerner? [00:47:41] JT: G-O-E-R-N-E-R. Erich Goerner. [00:47:48] RB: Yeah, I think there was…503 was the first manned flight—that was Apollo 8. [00:47:53] JT: I didn't know it was. [00:47:54] RB: Yeah, 504 was the manned suborbital flight. 505 went back to the moon. 506 [inaudible]. [00:48:00] JT: Well, if it was, then the whole bet was, do we dare put men on the bird that lost three engines and had POGO on 502. That's why they were all sweatin’. [00:48:13] RB: Were you sweating when that man launch finally came then or were you pretty sure that it was going to go? [00:48:19] JT: I sweated every time it flew, hoping nothing happened with propulsion system. [both laugh] [00:48:28] RB: As far as the Saturn V missions, that was the only really big problem that you had that was on 502—as I recall—POGO and the ASI line. They both happened at the same time. [00:48:40] JT: That's right. And of course, those all fell heavily in the propulsion area, so we had plenty of activity. POGO problem, you know, goes back to what the F-1 compliances are the F-1 engine gains, and we had a program going on night and day to run the F-1 turbo pumps and engine [inaudible] factors and all that's going on here looking at the inside line phase parallel for it. It's really exciting. [00:49:18] RB: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. [00:49:20] JT: That's the part that really I think people would enjoy reading more about if I were looking into the Saturn...I mean it's great to read about how you land on the moon and all and the [chariots?] run around all over, but good lord they got miles and miles of film about that. The thing that isn't really documented is all of the daily excitements and things that went on during the course of getting there. [00:49:56] RB: That's what struck me about writing this history: it's that the manned part of the mission is so visible. It's easier to relate to maybe because there are men in it, but the development of the Saturn V and all the testing, static tests, dynamic tests, systems tests and so on, which is such a huge part of the program, is basically unknown. I mean, I take visitors out here to the Space Center and they didn't realize it was the Saturn I and I-B were a bunch of Redstone and Jupiter tanks, you know, hung together. A lot of people just really don't know that much about the Saturn story itself. So I agree with you. [laughs] I hope we can do a fairly good job with it. [00:50:39] JT: Another one that was really interesting too. One time we were concerned about the H-1 engine and its dynamic stability, perturbation, you know? We'd been running tests up at Joplin, Missouri... [00:50:55] RB: Neosho was that? [00:50:56] Neosho. Trying to bomb the H-1 engine and determine if it was truly dynamically stable and everything. And the engine wouldn't really damp in the time that we had laid down for ourselves that it should. So we began to wonder if the test stand up there may have contributed, you know, to lack of desired damp time. So we—Bob Richmond and myself—were working in the area there. We decided that, by golly, the only way you'll ever find out is to put the engine in a stage, then bomb the whole dang stage. We had an AM-11, [inaudible] be blown today—it’s an S-1 stage. We had it over there on the test stand. We had eight engines in it. It was ready for its acceptance test. I made the proposal that we put bombs in there, and then, of course, during the acceptance fire, we'd get data on the stability characteristics of the vehicle as well, and it'd be a real live flight vehicle, and it ought to be surely good. So we put bombs in four engines. We ran the stage one time, and we had said we wanted three tests, you know, three burns, and we'd bomb every time. Fired the first time, we bombed four engines and watched the damp characteristics. That was good. For the second time, we bombed four engines, and we blew one engine flat out of that stage over there, and it was on the day before George Washington's birthday. A year, I don't know, two, three, four years, five years ago. Boy, you're talking about a bunch of sick people. So the next day was George Washington's birthday, the holiday and all. But I was over there crawling around in that burned up back end where that engine had burned out. Dan Driscoll was in there, and Karl Heimberg was in there, and Lucas was in there, too. We were all four crawling around up there trying to see what the damage was, see how much delay, and how much expense and everything it was going to take. And it was that day, George Washington's birthday, that a congressional group was touring here. So naturally, when they hit town, they won't know what had blown up because you don't dare let a congressional group go through here having had an explosion without telling them we had one. So late afternoon, about three o'clock, why, we finally got a story well enough to give and explain to them what had happened and everything that would settle it all. So we began to clean up the mess, of course, we had to put in a new engine, replace all the hardware, and Chrysler was under contract with us. They fixed everything back pretty good. But we still had one more test to make, you know, because I wanted three. Somebody came to me and said, “Jerry, what about it? Are we going to get that third test?” [both laugh] Not on your life. [both laugh] I got all the experience and all the data that I need. [00:54:34] RB: What stage was this you were testing? It was an S-1 stage? [00:54:38] JT: No, it was an S-1. [00:54:40] RB: Oh, an S-1. Yeah, okay. An S-1 then. [00:54:44] JT: Yeah. With H-1 engines. [00:54:47] RB: Okay. [00:54:49] JT: But it was a funny thing, the explosion had not come though anything having to do with stability characteristics. What had happened is when you perturbate the thrust chamber, you know, causing a bomb explosion down there, the flow rates and everything change, and then they have to recover. The LOX pump on one of the engines had a carbon nose ring in it, and when you perturbate the engine, the [inaudible] naturally reacts. And of course it's going at—I think a H-1—around 5,000 or 6,000 RPMs. Carbon being a hard material with these shock loads like that, it cracked. When that cracked, the oxidizer shot through and came in contact with the fuel drain from the other pump. That's where the [explosion?] chain just popped right open. But we've got some good data from the stage from the combustion stability [panel?]. We proved without a doubt that the H-1 has required dynamic stability characteristics. But I never did get that third sample. [both laugh] [00:56:23] RB: Well, I still feel guilty about your meeting up here. I'm afraid I'm keeping you.. [00:56:26] [inaudible] what it’s like…this is these porch… [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_000048_A Title A name given to the resource Thomson, Jerry 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. Description An account of the resource Jerry Thomson recounts the evolution of the J-2 engine injector, explaining how early coaxial injector research at NASA Lewis Research Center influenced Pratt & Whitney’s successful RL-10 injector design, which was then adapted and further refined by Rocketdyne during J-2 development. Although Rocketdyne initially pursued a simpler flat-face injector due to manufacturing concerns, persistent problems with face heating, wall overheating, and combustion instability ultimately led the company to adopt and improve the rigid porous mesh coaxial injector concept. Thomson emphasizes that this success resulted from combining Lewis research, RL-10 experience, and Rocketdyne’s engineering refinements rather than any single innovation. He also discusses the broader technical challenges of the Saturn propulsion program, including the F-1 engine’s severe combustion instability, whose solution required a nationwide collaboration involving NASA, Rocketdyne, universities, and industry. Through iterative changes—including injector baffles, modified spray patterns, altered fuel response characteristics, and elimination of fuel-rich pockets—the team developed stability techniques that became the standard for future liquid rocket engines. Thomson concludes by recalling later investigations into the J-2 augmented spark igniter (ASI) line failure after Apollo 6, describing the intensive multi-organization effort that identified environmental fatigue as the root cause, successfully recreated the failure on the ground, and resolved a problem critical to keeping the Apollo schedule on track. 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 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sweat, Sidney; McKay, Therman; Hayden, Joe; and Powell, Luther Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:46:16 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:00] RB: The story concerning the delivery, I'm not exactly sure, of the first instrument unit, flight unit, floating down to Tennessee and all that…would you care to recapitulate that for me? Which unit was it? Which IU was it? [00:00:23] Sidney Sweat: I've been trying to forget that ever since it happened, Roger. [00:00:25] RB: I get this chuckle over here. [laughs] [00:00:27] SS: Lou was very much a part of that too. Let me kind of set the stage for you. We were running behind on the delivery of that instrument unit. One of the reasons that we were behind on it was because we were having to make a significant number of changes in the instrumentation—the instrumentation also which fed into the flight control computer, the LVDA, and the LVDC. We were rapidly approaching the point that we could not accommodate the stack schedule—that's the schedule where they put the IU on the stack at the Cape. Center management called a bunch of us together and said, “How are we going to accommodate this?” The idea was presented to center management that, you know, it takes quite a bit of time in transit to go all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans and around the Cape. Why don't we look at these modifications and do them in transit? We got quite a bit of reluctance on it. Luther and I and some of the people in the [inaudible] office sat down and developed the details with IBM and found out, yeah, it's feasible. But to make it work, we were going to have to continuously shuttle hardware along the Mississippi to meet the barge at various points as the hardware was literally built and as the drawings were finished. [00:01:55] RB: This is one of the enclosed barges then? [00:01:57] SS: Yes. To make a long story short, we pulled all the data together and worked out a detailed schedule on it. We assigned two people that would, in fact, we'd be in constant radio communication with them, “Hey, fellas, we need these bolts, we need these transistors, diodes, capacitors, and so on. We'll meet you at Biloxi, Mississippi tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock.” Well, we made one of our airplanes available and a bunch of guys in pickup trucks and so on. They kept replenishing our supply of parts, and as the mod kits were built from the drawings, they would deliver them to us. We worked on the barge and successfully completed that darn thing by the time we got to New Orleans. [00:02:43] RB: Okay, but now in all the stuff I read, there's a great detailed explanation about the IBM clean rooms and the global clean rooms and all this quality control. Now, did you guys rig up some special polyethylene rooms inside? How did you do that? [00:02:59] SS: Absolutely. On the enclosed barge, there is a built-in environmental system. [00:03:05] RB: That's right, I'd forgotten that. [00:03:07] SS: We'd built, fabricated, a polyethylene shroud that went around that we could have a positive pressure in the area for the technicians to work in. That way we were able to maintain the cleanliness level. Now, we did set a ground rule when we started out. We did not break into the ST-124 pneumatic system. That's the one that has the most stringent environmental control. But we did open up and go into the environmental—the ECS system as we called it—the environmental control system, the water-methanol. [00:03:44] RB: Right, right, right. [00:03:46] SS: So, in fact, we were anxiously waiting for KSC to run their first test specimen to see if we had maintained the cleanliness level, and we had maintained it right within spec. [00:03:59] RB: But you were also replacing, you say, diodes and capacitors, and everything else in the memory banks? [00:04:04] SS: No, no, no, no, no. These were just in the electrical distributors. [00:04:09] RB: Oh, okay. So, in other words, the flight computer and the launch vehicle digital adapter were never [inverted?]. Okay. That's the other thing that bothered me because the story was vague, and it's outlined. [00:04:22] SS: Yes, well, we had to be very selective on those components, which we could, in fact, open. Of course, we had a very limited capability on board the barge from our ability to put in transistors and diodes and then our ability to test them. [00:04:39] RB: There's one other thing you may not want to comment on. Somewhere, too, in the back of my mind, part of the equipment that was put on board was several cases of beer. Is that correct? [laughs] [00:04:51] SS: No. That's totally erroneous. No way. In fact, they didn't even have beer in the galley on the barge. [00:05:02] RB: Is that right? Dry barge? [laughs] [00:05:04] SS: Dry barge. But the food…I've got to tell you about this. You know, usually when you're working sixteen, eighteen hours a day, you lose a lot of weight, but the chef on board that barge was something else. I literally gained 12 pounds on that trip. [00:05:27] RB: One of the things that I've tried to do, and I've been working on a revised draft of, is go back and treat the development of the unit logic devices and triple modular redundancy and all this kind of stuff. But the one thing that really grabs me and trying to get a hold of the instrument unit story is how much input Marshall made on this thing up to 1964 when I think is when IBM took over the full contract and how much input IBM was making before and after that date. Can any of you help elucidate that problem? [00:06:02] Joe Hayden: I can, I guess, start on it. Marshall was responsible for the design of the IU in the early stages. I believe that IBM took over the maintainability of the design starting with 501 and 205 as I recall. The checkout of 201 to 204 was a Marshall responsibility, and the design was a Marshall responsibility. Marshall in effect turned over a design to IBM then IBM was responsible with continuing with that design and maintaining the design. [00:06:46] RB: Okay. Excuse me, before going further, could you identify yourself for the purposes of my microphone here? [00:06:53] JH: I am Joe Hayden. [00:06:53] RB: OK, thank you. Now, so my question is this, who really came up with the TMR and ULD concepts, stuff like that? [00:07:04] [inaudible due to overlapping speakers] [00:07:26] Luther Powell: ULDs is based on the technology that was used in the 360 line. That’s what it was an early application of what IBM called the SLTs: Standard Logic Technologies. Now, the ULDs [per se?] the circuits in the ULDs were Marshall designed. In other words, they did not take off the [shelf?] SLTs. They had to be designed specifically for the Saturn application. They required the defining a certain number of types. I don’t know how many types we had…fourteen, or something like that, types of ULDs, Unit Logic Devices. The mechanical aspects of it was completely different because the SLTs were pins. They had pins that plugged in sort of like. We went with a new design with what we called C-clips. They go around and clipped them on. [00:08:22] RB: This is interesting then. So in this instance could you say that there was a departure from some original constraints that you only use off the shelf hardware? [00:08:31] LP: Well, at that point in time, there wasn’t technology in off the shelf hardware. It was a question at that time whether you went with integrated circuits or whether you went with the so-called ULDs, the clip chip type of technology. [00:09:00] SS: Roger I don't understand your statement there—the departure from the ground rule to use off the shelf hardware. [00:09:07] RB: Okay, well, these are just kind of general things that on almost every stage including the IU, there were documents that came out, and they all said for a general term “One of the things we want to do is use the existing components, take off the shelf hardware. We don’t want to get involved in using new technology that’s not really tried and tested and get into a hassle.” This is what I was getting at. [00:09:34] JH: [Inaudible] find gold. There were very few components which were off the shelf. In fact, the only ones that come to mind are maybe some TM components. But the majority of the hardware was designed and built for Saturn. [00:09:43] SS: And some plumbing maybe. [00:09:49] RB: TM components? [00:09:50] JH: Telemetry. [00:09:52] RB: Telemetry, okay. [00:09:53] JH: Instrumentation. Like Motorola had some equipment that could be used, but very little off the shelf hardware for Saturn. [00:10:01] RB: Okay because that’s one of the things that struck me about using the magnesium-lithium for the chassis. Apparently that was a fairly unique thing to be doing for the application in the instrument unit. Now again who made the decision to go to that? Was that an IBM decision or was that Marshall decision? [00:10:17] JH: All of the decisions were made by Marshall. Again, there were contractors involved. You and I know when it came time or maybe there were recommendations proposed by the contractors, but the decisions were all Marshall before the final decision. Even when IBM had the responsibility for maintaining the design, Marshall still had the final authority. [00:10:42] LP: It was a bigger question in that mag-lith [inaudible] cooling [inaudible] [00:10:51] Therman McKay: One of the [inaudible] on mag-lith, [JB?] had mentioned to me earlier that Herman Gilmore and Marshall had done a lot of work in the area of mag-lith, and it had sort of become an accepted alloy to be used. Using mag-lith, [inaudible] they were able to shave some sixty-five pounds from the weight from the DA/DC. Plus it didn’t have toxicity problems. Beryllium, which was used by the way in the platform system, remained a part of its strength and its stability for use in gimbals. But I think… [00:11:33] LP: You said weight on the cold plate too. If you’re going to cool the thing, you gotta move weight from the cold plate. So all that… [00:11:41] JH: But again the thing you said that IBM has been the contractor that recommended that approach. I don’t know. I don’t go back that far. [00:11:50] RB: Let me ask, let me explain why I’m on this because as I said I started out on this covering somebody else’s tracks, and there is a lack of documentation. The only thing I had to go with was a bunch of stuff from Aviation Week and Space Technology, and they’re kind of vague. Of course, I got the impression that the reporter had gone to IBM, and the feedback that comes back was this was a great thing that IBM did. This is what I’m trying to find out: where did IBM make inputs, and where did the Marshall design input? [00:12:19] SS: To really answer that, Roger, you’re going to have an understanding about a change control system. As Joe pointed out, IBM assumed design responsibilities for the instrument unit for 501 and 205. All the instrument units prior to that time, Marshall had designed and developed and turned over to IBM under prime contractor’s award is what was referred to as a technical baseline. [00:12:48] RB: Okay. [00:12:49] JH: Excuse me, Sid, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I guess we need to make the point here though that even prior to that time, LVDA/DC were [GSE?] but still made by IBM at Owego under a contract that we had with Owego. IBM was a corporation still building the DA/DC for the government even prior to the contract. [00:13:14] SS: The change control system that I’m going to allude to was applicable even back during that period of time. The contractor is limited in the type of change he can make a decision on and implement. We had various classifications of changes. Now any change that involved a material change of this significance—we’re talking about the mag-lith—or any other change that would have affected some compatibility of a component’s ability to integrate with another one, all of those decisions were passed on to Marshall who made the ultimate decision. Some of them were recommended by the contractor. He’d come through with what we referred to as an ECP—Engineering Change Proposal—but that’s all it was. He proposed the change, but the government made the decision as to whether or not that change would be implemented. [00:14:13] JH: I think that what he’s getting at is even prior to that time, we had to have a unit. Who came up with all the original ideas of just how the unit could be built? [Inaudible] these fellas [inaudible] specific case was done, the government would propose to a contractor for a proposal to build a black box to the government’s requirements and specifications for that black box. The contractor would build that black box. Most of the details of how it be built would be left up to the contractor, again, with the government’s approval. I would expect IBM had a major role in recommending or determining just how the DA/DC would be built. [00:15:04] RB: Including the mag-lith. [00:15:05] JH: I don’t know about the details of that. [00:15:09] LP: I don’t know the details either, but as I recall there was a major input from [inaudible] materials. [00:15:18] RB: IBM? [00:15:21] TM: No, Marshall. [00:15:22] JH: I guess we’re all kind of guessing that far back. It’s really before our time. [Inaudible] I thought we were going to talk about the normal process that we go through. [00:15:36] LP: Talk about the technology, and we kinda drop back on some of the research IBM had done previously. As far as owning the ULDs, the government paid for setting up lines up in Fishkill to do those things. [00:15:55] TM: It’s a hybrid system. [00:15:58] JH: I think his thing though is “Who thought it up? Who decided this is the way we ought to go?” [Inaudible] with the government, but did IBM come up and say, “Hey, this is a good idea. This is the way to go”? I don’t know what kind of recommendations. [00:16:14] LP: We talked about this yesterday. One good example—I don’t know whether you were in the program or not—was the debate about how many memory modules we have. We had the monthly design—Luther, you might have been there—they designed the back panels with a maximum of six memory modules. This was on one of the engineering models. We sat there and told them, “We wanted eight memory modules in that machine.” They said, “Well, you don’t need eight.” [Inaudible] requirement, we told them we want eight. We went up there a month later, that back panel was laid out for six memory modules in there. It hit the fan, we had to get that. We accepted that machine because of schedule problems. Later on, we had to send that back and retrofit it. But the design changed, right there. So that’s the type of thing that you get into. [00:17:12] RB: You wanted the extra two on there for test purposes and testability and mission [inaudible]? [00:17:18] TM: It turned out that Saturn IB could use six memory modules, but the Saturn V had to have eight. [00:17:29] LP: Seven, seven and a half. Whatever it is. [00:17:30] TM: All boxes were designed to have eight, but only used six in the IB. [00:17:38] JH: [Inaudible] program information [inaudible] [00:17:46] RB: As long as we’re on that too, in the instrument unit for the IB and Saturn V were both identical? [00:17:53] JH: The IUs were identical with small differences, one being the number of memories. [00:18:05] [LP?]: Do you want to stick with the DC? [00:18:07] TM: I think that’s what he’s talking about at the computer data adapter interface [inaudible due to overlapping speakers] [00:18:14] RB: There were variations in terms of the overall IU for the 1B and the Saturn V, but not that much as I understand. Basically, a kind of similar thing. Maybe I’m going back too far, but the other thing that gets me, I’m very, very [on query?] as to when the change was made in the early Saturn Is from the kind of tubular cruciform guidance system they had to the [slice?]? [00:18:45] JH: Well, vehicle-wise 201 and 501 were the first ones of the present configuration. [00:18:53] RB: Yeah, but I thought there was also Saturn I instead of having that… [00:18:57] SS: SA-10 was the last crucible we had. SA…. [00:19:01] TM: SA-1, 2, 3, and 4 had an instrument compartment for the IU equipment. Then in SA-5 we flew the first tubular canister type, which had…The reason I remember because that was the ST-90S platform flying in control, then the ST-124-1 being a passenger, and that fed into a guidance signal processor at that time rather than a DA/DC. For the last five Saturn Is, you had that. They were at ninety degrees. It had its own…It was pressurized because at that time it was felt the environment was needed. [00:19:54] [LP?]: First flight was 201. [00:20:04] JH: First IU in the present configuration was 201. [00:20:10] RB: Another question, very simple. What does the ST stand for? [00:20:18] TM: Platform? Stable table. That’s the old terminology. That’s just uh… [00:20:25] SS: [Inaudible] very sophisticated. [00:20:30] [LP?]: They coined the name stable table, and they just tried to give [inaudible] started calling it ST-80. [00:20:36] RB: I ran across it, and all of a sudden, I was doing all this writing, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know what ST stood for. I made calls around Houston, and this guy said, “I’ve been working on it for twenty years and never gave it thought. I don't know what it stands for.” [00:20:50] TM: It’s a stable reference or a stable platform. The early term they used was table. It means a reference point. [00:21:01] RB: Now there’s another question here, somewhere apparently early in the definition of the instrument unit, there was a decision to go to digital as opposed to analog, and that’s about as much as I know about it. [00:21:14] JH: Again, that’s only with the guidance computer. The control computer is still analog. [00:21:20] RB: The guidance computer, okay. [00:21:22] JH: The guidance computer [inaudible]. [00:21:24] RB: Can you explain to me the logic and the trade offs involved? [00:21:38] [LP?]: As opposed to some of the earlier flights like Jupiter? Basically, because they went to a different guidance scheme. They went from a delta minimum to [inaudible]. The thing was [inaudible] polynomial expansion was about thirty terms in there somewhere. It was [inaudible]. [00:22:05] RB: So was that not really a big decision or was it a very large decision? [00:22:11] : [LP?]: I think to have adaptive mode was a big decision but then [inaudible] hardware in a number of areas. The computing system or the guidance [inaudible]. [00:22:23] TM: It was a necessary decision to do what they wanted to do. [00:22:27] [LP?]: The decision was a direct derivative the mission requirements. [00:22:31]: RB: Can you expand on that a little bit for me? [00:22:33]: [LP?]: Take the LOR concept. The big discussion with all of the agencies, “How will you get [inaudible]?” [Inaudible] or whether you go to...I think it was about three concepts that had been discussed. [00:22:47]: RB: [Inaudible] mode and so on. [00:22:48] LP: [Inaudible] LOR because of the size of the vehicle, the capacity, fuel, [inaudible] so forth, they [inaudible] have adaptive mode. [Inaudible] calculations and speed of that in order to economize on fuel [inaudible] primary [inaudible] fuel economy. [Inaudible] We’ve been looking at that thing for a year or two years until we really thought it was going to [inaudible]. We were looking at the time of developing the Pershing. [Inaudible] Pershing [inaudible]. [00:23:39] JH: There was the other thing though [inaudible]. [00:23:44] RB: Okay, another question now. After going through all this stuff of getting the computers and everything and so on, they weren’t even used in the boost phase. Can you explain to me why then? As I understand anyway, there was no active guidance system used in the first stage boost phase for either the Saturn IB or the Saturn V. [00:24:07] JH: Let me tell you what I recall. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. The main concern, of course, you’re going to Max Q [inaudible] boost phase. I think they wanted to be sure they didn’t have any attitude [inaudible] Max Q. In other words, you’re trying to correct, pick the best path, and you may have an undesirable attitude as the way I recall it. I’m sure that’s one reason. [00:24:33] RB: An undesirable attitude would create sloshing problems or bending moments? [00:24:38] JH: If you have too large angle of attack going to Max Q, you’ll have vehicle break up. Does anybody else… [00:24:49] RB: So in other words, that thing was set just to bore straight up? [00:24:52] [LP?]: That’s right. [00:24:53] RB: Was there any gimbaling at all? [00:24:54] JH: It goes up straight and then it rolls to the proper attitude, then it pitches over and flies on a preset trajectory through the boost phase. [00:25:07]: RB: After the roll and tilt then there was no gimbaling of the engines? It just bored straight on up? [00:25:13]: JH: It was gimbaled to keep it on course. [00:25:17] TM: Keep attitude. [00:25:22] RB: As I understand it then, if there were any perturbations or deviations or something occurred that the computer sensed those and stored them up and the changes and corrections were made then during the S-2 and S-4B boost phase. [00:25:37] JH: The vehicle stored up the information to know what its position was and knowing its position and knowing after that its attitude and its velocity and acceleration because they [inaudible]. [00:25:51] TM: The guidance mode. It would enter the guidance mode, and it was shooting for one spot out there. [00:25:58] RB: This brings me to another…I don’t know, maybe you guys didn’t get a copy of this, but I’ve got a list of questions here. One of them, and I’ll be very humble about it, an explanation of inertial guidance that I can understand. [laughs] I really need that I’m afraid. I’ve tried to write some stuff. I’ve got some general ideas, but I’m really not sure. When I talk about inertial guidance… [00:26:19] SS: I think Luther has the book there that… [00:26:22] RB: Is it a star reference guidance system or an internal reference guidance system? Can somebody help me on this? [00:26:32] TM: Inertial guidance is not a star reference. It’s a reference that you establish on the ground prior to lift off where you have the platform oriented to the local vertical in two axes, yaw and pitch, and you have it aligned an azimuth to a theodolite reference, which is a first order geodetic survey, which is shot into the platform system to align in it in roll or azimuth. The other two axes are aligned to a plumb line through the center of the earth by pendulums mounted on the platform system, air bearing pendulum. Now that’s your reference. That’s where you’re starting from. You know exactly where you are when you start. Once you lift off, you drop the alignment system, and the platform goes inertial or space-fixed. It just maintains the reference. It has three stabilizing gyros that gives you this stable table or stable reference that you operate from. Throwing out any errors due to drift and what not, theoretically the platform system is always exactly in the same position from the time you start to the time you end the mission. Now that’s attitude. Those signals are fed from resolvers. You have resolvers on the gimbals of the platform that’s [keyed?] out through the computer and detects errors between the platform system and the vehicle. Then those signals are fed back to the control system to make corrections to keep the vehicle on the proper attitude. It’s an instantaneous thing though, and you’re constantly maintaining the vehicle and the attitude relative to the platform system with these pre-programmed tilt programs and everything factored in too. But the whole purpose of the stable reference there is it didn’t allow you a way to navigate, so then mounted on the platform, you have accelerometers, integrating accelerometers that produce the acceleration and velocity data that eventually becomes position data to tell you the point that you want to hit out there. [00:28:59] RB: But these are being constantly compared are they not with a program stored in the guidance computer? [00:29:06] TM: Yeah, you’re looking at where you are versus where you ought to be. So inertial when you limit your question to just “What is inertial guidance?” is your talking about platform. The platform is a pretty straight forward part of it. It’s just a reference you set up using gyros that you can operate from. Then you use accelerometers to [cinch?] your accelerations in all three axes. [00:29:36] JH: It helps you to navigate, but then your computer has to come up with guidance calculations and send signals to the control system now that has to send signals to the actuators on the stages to direct the thrust so that the vehicle is going in the right direction. By the way, I’ve just taken some pages out of one of our technical manuals that’s on navigation guidance and control system, and I think this will give you the information that you need. I do want to come back to your other question though that you had. It does say here that “During the first stage flight of either the S-1B or S-1C,” which of course is the first stage of either one of [inaudible], “the vehicle transverses the dense portion of the atmosphere where the high aerodynamic pressure occurs to avoid excessive structural loads caused by guidance maneuvers, no guidance constraints are applied during the flight phase. Open loop guidance in the form of a timed tilt program is used. Path adaptive guidance begins with ignition of the second stage, either the S-2 for the…” [tape cuts out] [00:30:46] RB: …Consider the instrument unit as a stage? What is the… [00:30:51] JH: A non-propulsive stage. [00:30:52] RB: A non-propulsive stage. [00:30:54] JH: That’s my own opinion of it. [00:30:55] [LP?]: Von Braun coined a good phrase [inaudible] it’s the brain inside. That’s the way he referred to it quite often. [00:31:07] JH: You can always get that debate. There’s a project office for the IU just like there’s a stage project office. You look at [inaudible] no propulsion system. [00:31:22] TM: We didn’t have any de-tanking problems that we had to scrub. [00:31:31] RB: [laughs] There’s another question I’ve got now. Again, I’m getting into the same murky waters as the origin of the mag-lith chassis, and this is the ST-124 itself. Was it a Marshall concept? Did Marshall give the plans to Bendix and say, “Here, build me an ST-124”? How did that come about? [00:31:48] TM: They didn’t give them the plans. Bendix people are packaging experts and platform design. They built the ST-120 that’s still flying in the Pershing. ST-124 evolved from that to some extent, but Marshall in the form of ABMA was involved in the development of the Pershing platform ST-120. I’d have to say that Marshall was very actively involved in the design of the 124. When I say design, I’m talking about basic concepts for what it will do, that it will have dual prism alignment to allow you to maintain a reference and drive your platform to any firing azimuth as opposed to the way ballistic missiles had to be aligned and shoot right over [the San Juan?]. Those were all things that were concepts that were worked together with Bendix but Marshall had a very heavy hand in designing the 124. When they went into production, and Bendix got the contract, then Bendix had the job of actually packaging that concept into the hardware, which is what they did. But if you look at the ST-124 platform and go down to the museum and look at an SG-66 platform that flew in the V-2, you will be amazed. The SG-66 wasn’t designed by Bendix, but some of the people that worked on the SG-66 also worked on the ST-124. I'd have to say that… [00:33:40] LP: [Inaudible] designed it. Look back at the old ST-80 and ST-90 and [LVDC?]. [All the way back?] [00:33:46] RB: I was going to say [inaudible]. [00:33:50] TM: The point I’m trying to make is when you talk design, I’m talking about basic concepts. When you get into packaging, Bendix may have come up with a good idea on how the servo end should operate. [00:34:03] JH: The packaging is very similar to the V-2. [00:34:08] TM: I’m saying if you go look at that old SG-66, then look at a ST-124, it really strikes you as strange to see the two sitting there, one of them 1930 something and one of 1960. [00:34:27] RB: What’s the difference between the ST-124 and the ST-124-M? [00:34:32] TM: Well, the ST-124-1 and -2 were the first 124 platforms built, and they flew in the Saturn I vehicle. It was a predecessor to the dash M, and the M only means modified. The platform that flew in Saturn I had a redundant pitch gimbal built in. The yaw and roll were 360 degrees of freedom, and pitch was limited to [twenty-three?], but it had a redundant gimbal that had its own servo loop that would then program as you had to pitch over. They changed this in the dash M to make yaw the axis that was limited to plus or minus forty-five degrees. The other two axes had 360. That gave you full freedom in pitch, which is helpful when you’re in orbit, you know, and you’re maintaining attitude of the vehicle, you just rotate around the platform. But with a platform like the dash 1 and dash 2, [inaudible] you’re constantly having to program [inaudible]. So there was a difference, it was just updated and modified to the present configuration. Those flew in 201, 501, and… [00:36:06] RB: Again, I’m thinking about the structure of the ST-124 and the computer chassis. They’re both integrally cooled, right? [00:36:19] TM: Yes, in a little different form. The DA/DC actually had drilled passages within the mag-lith to allow the coolant to flow through the body of the system. In the 124, the way they adapted it was to form the covers such that on the covers the ball had coolant passages through them. The actual frame in the platform has no coolant through it. The covers—see you can see the lines there—it was formed by taking two layers and putting graphite in, and you press these together and then blew it up—actually inflated it. That’s the way the coolant passages were made, one on each side. [00:36:41] RB: Oh okay, I never understood that. [00:37:10] TM: The frame of the platform system, which is beryllium, did not have coolant passages in it. It would have been real difficult to do that like it was done in the DA/DC because it’s not a symmetrical box. [00:37:27] RB: Beryllium is lighter than the mag-lith, correct? [00:37:31] TM: It’s strong too. It’s very stable. It has high strength. It has that toxicity problem, which was considered when they built the platform system, but they elected to go with it. I think… [00:37:49] RB: That’s why I’m trying to find out why they decided to go with beryllium in one case and not in the other one. [00:37:56] TM2: One reason is you had two different groups of people working. I don’t know how that fits, but I think that has a lot to do with it. [00:38:10] RB: The beryllium decision you think maybe came out of the Bendix shop as opposed to the Marshall shop? [00:38:15] TM: A lot of the beryllium on the platform was going to be buried into the platform where you made the casting of the DA/DC, both of them. You [wouldn’t?] have had all the beryllium showing. The covers on the platform are not beryllium. [00:38:32] RB: The whole thing is just a big ball as I recall seeing it… [00:38:34] TM: The covers—the main part of it that shows—is not beryllium. There’s a lot of beryllium inside the platform, see? All of your gimbals are beryllium. [00:38:47] RB: Is this necessity for the rigidity and accuracy then that made beryllium much more attractive for the ST-124 as opposed to mag-lith? [00:38:55] TM: It’s a very good material to use for gimbals. It’s very light weight. It’s very strong, and they wanted accuracy. They’re able to machine it and mount it and know that later it’s right where you put it. It worked out real good. I don’t believe the toxicity problem turned out to be as bad as... [00:39:20] RB: But it’s a fairly small thing. It didn’t weigh all that much. What was it, 196 pounds? That doesn’t sound right, but… [00:39:25] TM: The platform? 117. Well, that’s for the inertial assembly. [00:39:31] RB: Why not use steel? Does steel weigh that much more? [00:39:35] TM: Let me give you a good example of why. If everybody thought that way, the weight would go up in a way you wouldn’t have a payload. There was a statement that was made that if every solder joint in the Saturn V was over-soldered to the point that it had as much solder as you’d do in your shop at home—instead of dressing it down to the point where it’s a neat and lightweight joint—if every solder joint in the Saturn built up too big, it would take away the entire payload capability of Saturn V, which was 37,000 pounds. [00:40:20] RB: And the other thing too, in the upper stages, it’s a one-to-one trade-off, as I understand too. So you save thirty pounds, that’s exactly thirty pounds that you put on the payload. [00:40:28] TM: It's 117 pounds for the inertial assembly. If you asked the question, “Why go with 117 when you could’ve gone with 140 or 50?” Well, it’s just a… [00:40:39] JH: Also, back when all that was designed, I’m not so sure how good a handle Marshall had on the [capability?] of the vehicle and what the other parts were going to weigh too, see? Like the structure. We went all out on the honeycomb structure to make it lighter and all of this for [inaudible] necessary [inaudible] payload capability. [00:41:04] RB: Okay, well, I’ve kept some of you gentlemen beyond your time. I’ve also got to go off now myself, go back to an interview that was interrupted. Is there anything you could add to help the poor historian here, you think? Any comments you’d like drop in here before I turn this thing off? [00:41:23] LP: I got a document here. [Inaudible] I think it’s a pretty good document on the guidance, navigation, and control that goes in the platform. Got pictures in here. Computers… [00:41:35] JH: What’s the date on it? [00:41:36] LP: 1964. [00:41:38] SS: That’s also an antique. [00:41:40] JH: I was just thinking I had pulled some pages out of I think it’s a more current [inaudible] out of the astrionics handbook [inaudible]. [00:41:52] RB: Anything will help. [00:42:05] JH: Here’s some pages that came out [inaudible]. I don’t know your specific question. [00:42:09] RB: This was just kind of pulled out of a hat. I had a very limited group of documents to work with. This is just one of the things I came across. That particular event occurred while 501 was in the checkout, so there was a momentary flap about it, whether the flap was really large and created horrendous problems or just one of the many things that happens during checkout. I didn’t know, so I stuck it in there, maybe it would jog somebody’s memory. [00:42:42] JH: It was a pretty large flap that the problem was revealed during the checkout of 503 at IBM. There was a failure of the flight control computer, which was traced through a cracked solder joint in the FCC. Because of the nature of the problem, there was a concern about all of the critical hardware, not just the FCC. There was a requirement to recycle the FCC for 501. In fact, they disassembled it, inspected it for cracked solder joints, and reworked it by actually providing what’s called [inaudible] to strengthen the joints. There was also a requirement to inspect other critical hardware [inaudible] details on those. The problem, of course, there’s been a lot said about cracked solder joints before and after that. What happens is that because of the design—the way the components are mounted on the board, the [inaudible] fuse, and the differences in the thermal coefficients—you build up stresses on the joint. Because the joints are stressed, that causes the crack. Even though you’ve got a good solder joint, it cracks within the solder. That was a rather expensive exercise. In fact, I have just three documents associated with that activity. There was a lot of [scurrying?] around, a lot of rework activity that was necessary before 501 got off. You also mentioned questions about testing. I’m not sure what you’re after there. [00:44:25] RB: That was just a general question because I wasn’t able to find out a whole lot about testing. I wasn’t really sure what all was involved in that. I didn’t have any information about it. I know the propulsive stages went through all kinds of testing and checkout at MTF and everywhere else. [00:44:43] JH: That’s the thing that bothers me a little bit. If you look at that document, there’s just volumes and volumes of the other stages in there, and the IU is almost nothing. As far as the test program, well, of course, I didn’t bring the book…Here it is. Here is the test plan for the IU. This is a very high level, but there were many tests at the IU level, not to speak of all the qualification of the hardware etc. We have quite a bit of detail on that. This goes back to ‘65. Now what I’ve done—again not being sure just what you were looking for—I have taken some pages out of the general test plan that list the various IU level tests that were performed. I’ve also identified on a separate sheet some additional IUs that were scheduled and tested after this plan was written, and I’ve given you the reason why. I haven’t counted them up, but there must have been ten or twelve IU level tests. [00:45:50] RB: That sounds like it will give a base to start on some of this thing again.. [00:45:55] JH: I would like to see it if the history of Saturn comes out, I would like the IU to get some recognition, you know? Like [inaudible], it’s the brains of the vehicle, and without it, you’re not going to go very far. [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_000047_A Title A name given to the resource Sweat, Sidney; McKay, Therman; Hayden, Joe; 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. Description An account of the resource The transcript captures a wide-ranging discussion among Sidney Sweat, Joe Hayden, Luther Powell, Therman McKay, and interviewer Roger Bilstein about the development, design, and operation of the Saturn Instrument Unit (IU). The participants recount the challenging delivery of an early flight IU, describing how engineers completed critical hardware modifications while the unit was transported by barge using improvised clean-room facilities and coordinated deliveries of parts to meet launch schedules. They also clarify the division of responsibilities between NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and IBM, explaining that Marshall established the IU's original design and retained final authority over major engineering decisions, while IBM manufactured hardware, maintained later designs, and proposed changes through a formal engineering change process. The discussion explores the origins of technologies such as Unit Logic Devices (ULDs), digital guidance computers, lightweight magnesium-lithium and beryllium structures, and the ST-124 inertial platform, emphasizing the collaborative but government-directed nature of the program. The interview concludes with explanations of Saturn's inertial guidance system, the rationale for open-loop guidance during first-stage flight, the extensive testing and qualification of the IU, and reflections on the IU's essential role as the "brains" of the Saturn launch vehicle.