40 10 544 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/a705cea94f8c6307cccef6cdc4bff6a1.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/28765d82f28cf7deaad8093921ff2a56.mp4 4ea317de21e262d8c4ff1c6d19f7a693 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 Shettles, Mack Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:31:32 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:07] MS: This mission thing is just a good example of the functional part again. Let's see, I don't want to hang up on these charts too long. Of course, all this required a great deal of travel, and it was about that time that headquarters recognized—and we all recognized—the need for communicating, not just by writing and not just by telephone, but by having our conferences together. That's when the idea of this [inaudible] center network…We have diagrams over here. This is the way it is today. It wasn't this extensive when it first got started. [00:00:54] MS: [Inaudible], all NASA communications are contracted for and managed by Marshall Center. [Inaudible] We had a Saturn [phone?] control center...Let’s see, we had NASA headquarters, we had an Apollo…See, this has changed…We had an Apollo Center. [Inaudible] We had two different buildings. [Inaudible] At the Cape, we had an Apollo Action Center, and at Houston, we had an Apollo Action Center. These are tied in by the so-called [full?] wire network. All that meant was we had a [inaudible] wire that was both transmitted and received voice simultaneously, unlike many voice-activated circuits. Again, this seems to be something of a minor detail, but actually that's so important. You have written this up very nicely too, by the way. I'll just repeat it though. [00:02:05] MS: [Inaudible] people can sit in this conference room, the conference room at the Cape, the headquarters; make a presentation; and people anywhere in the room, by virtue of these overhead microphones—[they’re tuned so they don’t have feedback?]—anybody anywhere in the room can speak equally well to any other control room. This greatly facilitated communications in a free-form type of conference. It enabled…See, what you usually had was managers sitting around this main table here—project managers, functional managers, typical conference let’s say—then around the room, they would have invited guys, whatever the problem was—let's say S-II [structures?]—they would have guys from R&D labs, contractors, local representatives, systems engineering perhaps, whoever happened to be involved, maybe the quality people, they would always be sitting around the room. They were secondary characters in the act. However, they were fully observers, and they didn't have to go up to the table or anything like that to speak. They could speak from their chair. This psychologically made them more likely to speak up. [00:03:30] MS: In other words…I don't know what you call it, managerial wise, I guess it's…You know, you’ve ever heard of Douglas McGregor and Theory X and Theory Y, the autocratic versus democratic, participative type of management? The idea that you usually found in Saturn V was not autocratic, it was participative. No matter who the engineer was or where he was, they were going to get a chance to talk. He said, “I think the so and so valve when we put this hydrogen in this thing, I think that valve's going to start closing slowly.” He said, “I know it acts fine in regular temperatures,” but if you thought that for any reason that you thought it was going to close a little slowly, a few milliseconds slow, it looks a little [mad?]. That's the reason this thing was done like this. There wasn't one [inaudible] leader at the front that said, “I speak for the Marshall Space Flight Center!". Everybody spoke. Well, that's a hell of a way to run an organization. What it did was it felt like a [weeding?] machine. What do you call it, [inaudible]? [00:04:41] RB: Did you get into a situation where too many people were trying to speak at once, or was there just a natural inclination to control, self-control? [00:04:49] MS: You could get into it, especially if they got a little excited about the subject. At that point, the chairman of the meeting in the control room had to get the thing under control. That was the [trip up?]. He didn't dictate what was said, but he said, “Okay, fellas, everybody gets a chance to talk, but [inaudible], and we'll all get a chance. [00:05:09] RB: I'm noticing these signs on the table—teleconference tips—warning you that the mic picks up every word and every sound. Did I remember correctly, once you said that you had problems with that, because people started making, you know, not snide but sharp comments about people elsewhere, and they found out that it was picked up? [laughs] [00:05:28] MS: That’s right. [00:05:30] RB: And it would override the major speaker. Some guys making a presentation, these things tended to override sometimes. [00:05:36] MS: Yes, because if a man speaks louder in the back of the room than the man in front is speaking, then he'll become the guy that everybody hears in all these other places. Most people think because they're sitting in the back of the room that there's a microphone in the front of the room. It’s a hold over from the 1930s. You're used to it. The lectern had a microphone. You see Franklin D. Roosevelt, you know? They got all these microphones up here. If you're out in the audience, you can do all the talking you want and nothing comes through. That wasn’t the case here, but people still had this in their mind. They kept seeing FDR, and all these microphones up on the lectern. That wasn't the way it worked. So it did have to be controlled. In fact, that is the problem even today. That’s why you have these little signs around here. You just can’t get…Battle them continually…[Inaudible] [00:06:36] MS: Okay. As an organization to this thing—you’ve written this up too—a long distance [xerography?] system was installed. As you well know, all that was the [LVX?] system was a way of transmitting paper data to other locations, and it could be so-called broadcast [inaudible] all the centers at one time or they could send it to selected centers [inaudible]. We made our view graphs, and you were very well described how you could have a simultaneous conference. All the centers would have copies of the charts. They already had view graphs, so they could show them on their thing. It was not as good as television. We couldn't afford television. This was suggested and looked into that we have live television. This gets a little hairy because you have to have a television camera operator. You have all these wires. You have to have special lighting. You‘d be shifting the camera from one man to the other frequently. Finally we decided that’s just not quite… [00:07:46] RB: This is your problem too if you have got all that equipment in here, create a lot of heat in the room too and become uncomfortable. [00:07:51] MS: We have had television activities in this room, but it has to be limited, you see? You have to have your action [inaudible] take place up at forward front of this thing like a stage. All this back here becomes lighting and assistant directors and sound men. They’ve got all their jazz rigged up. It wasn't really practical. [00:08:19] MS: That saved a lot of airplane flights, I'll have to say. I thought it was one of the best things that anybody ever did was to have this network conference room set up. In fact, I was briefing some people one day and happened to have this guy from an airline there. I said, “It saves you the trouble of physically removing bodies from one point to another. You can get the [fall?]. He said, “Well, wait a minute now!” But at about that time, in the same audience, was a man from Bell Telephone, and he says, “Great idea!” [both laugh] [00:09:02] RB: I'm glad you reminded me of this conference center network because I had forgotten that. I don’t think I brought that out as clearly as I should have in the rough draft that I’ve got. [00:09:14] MS: I think that was a very important thing because it was an instantaneous thing. If you wanted to follow something, you had it right down the hall or in the next building over. A lot of times they'd go dig these things out while the meeting was in progress. Roger, do you think there’s any need to go through all these charts? Let me just… [00:09:38] RB: No, I think that… [00:09:39] MS: I think you see what we've got here. [00:09:41] RB: [Inaudible] Right idea of what the charts were about, and the fact that you could single thread things down to a small detail. I'm glad you brought out too that there were functional charts as well as hardware charts, and I should bring that out in writing too. [00:09:57] MS: Here’s a really complicated chart… [00:09:59] RB: The [spec tray?] [00:10:01] MS: The [spec tray?] I had to keep that up. Dr. Rudolph…At a Christmas party, and he always referred to himself as a simple blacksmith. You ever heard that term? Nobody's ever…Well, anyway…That was his little technique of getting people to come down out of the esoteric technological terms, which was sometimes used simply to cloud the issue. He’d bore in until they could explain it in simple terms. He played dumb. He said, “Well, I'm just a simple blacksmith.” Here’s this guy, a veteran of the V-2 program, the Pershing program manager. “I'm a simple blacksmith.” So I wrote him a little thing, a parody on Longfellow, “Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands…” I wrote a parody on that. It’s called, “Under the specification tree, the Saturn smithy stands.” [both laugh] Went on and on about that. He thought that was great. He got a kick out of that. Specification…under the spreading specification tree…There you go. And this did tie in all specs real well. The specification, of course, is what does a piece of hardware have to do? If you don't know what it has to do then it almost becomes a person's own interpretation. He says, “Well, I think it ought to do so and so.” Once you write down and have to get somebody’s approval, it solidifies. [00:11:43] RB: That sounds so obvious, but it strikes me…It's always the obvious things that can hang you out because if you get a guy and say, “We want a valve that will withstand 500 PSI under certain conditions.” He said, “Okay, I can do that.” He builds a valve that will do it, but that valve may not do the job that it's really required to do in terms of interfacing some place else. So you've got to do the spec, you have to design the valve to do this and such and interface some place else. Is that what you're getting at here? [00:12:13] MS: One time—I think I mentioned these charts to you here—at one time, the program manager says, “We have so many documents in this thing, I don't think everybody understands what takes precedence.” You see, if you work in the mission operations area, you tend to take a document called “Mission Operations Plan,” which is put out at headquarters and signed off by some really high ranking cat up there, and you say, “Well, that's the Mission Operations Plan. I'm going to follow that. See, I’m in the Saturn. I follow what the Manned puts out.” But you may find out that there's a document that supersedes the Mission Operations Plan. It might be the Apollo Program Development Plan. That is the case here. Their Configuration Management Manuals, R and QA manuals, test requirements and all these that had…Were very official. The program spec, the Saturn V project spec. And how do all these relate to each other? [00:13:27] MS: I spent weeks and weeks sifting through every document I could find in a whole Saturn program and tried to relate these things and finally divided them into functional groups. You see, like this: manning and finance, technical description and systems engineering, liability and quality assurance, test, mission ops, logistics, procurement and contracts, schedules and showed what document required what other document and how this thing flows. Some of these are planning documents and some reporting documents. This is a fairly obvious thing too, you say, “Well, heck, everybody knows that.” But the funny thing is all these documents arose without any plan. People saw the need for a document, and they would go ahead and produce this thing either at the Apollo program level or Saturn V project level. Sometimes the center would turn out plans. They’d turn out the regulations for inspecting [hulk bolts?] The specifications for inspecting [hulk bolts?]. You say, “Well, that's it!” That's a very expensive process, and maybe the program manager didn't want to follow that. Well, do you have to follow that? I don’t know. So what this was was trying to sort out what document took precedence over what other document. It's a very dull looking two pages here, but every time we explain this to somebody from headquarters or somebody from the Senate or the Department of Defense, they thought this was a terrific idea because it gave a visible coherence to the documentation. [00:15:13] RB: It strikes me you can never write that thing logically in a narrative. But, you know, you could never say, “This takes precedence over that except in instances where…” because that's what you get into. If you can visualize it like that and see the lines of coordination, you can read it readily [faster?] it seems. [00:15:33] MS: I thought it was sort of a dull thing when Bill Sneed first told me to do it, but then as I got into it, I began to see what the problem was. Nobody knew what was really the ruling document, and which ones were co equal, and so forth. Oh, here's a chart on incentive contracting. See, we're converting to incentive contracts—you mentioned that. Here we got Ed King. He's a staff member, and he's following this on all the stages. By the way, [inaudible] happening on all the stages. Here’s a thing on reliability on all the stages. [tape cuts out, restarts at Roger Bilstein saying “But if you can visualize it like that…”] [00:17:07] MS: Let's see…I know I’m not covering everything I should cover, but…This is qualification of all the components—stage by stage and total and total after Rudolph. Now this is something. Each project manager had to get up and tell about all the components. You see, I think the publicized figure was there were six million parts in the Saturn V vehicle, and these things all had to be so-called “qualified.” That is, they had to undergo certain tests and meet these specifications and all these conditions. Once they had done that, then the component was qualified for flight. They had a little certificate and sign this thing off. Let's think about that for a minute. [00:17:55] RB: That's a lot of parts to... [00:17:57] MS: That’s a lot of parts. Then you got the additional problem of deciding whether to qualify the resistors in a small electrical relay system or you just certify the relay system itself. Because many times, the resistor or transistor of some sort would be a failure point. Or a little bit of printed circuit board inside this little black box, it would be a failure point. Something would happen. The thing would short circuit during operation. Do you go down and qualify the printed circuit boards or do you qualify the whole black box? That all had to be worked out. At any rate, it was. Dr. Rudolph had a chart here in his room which showed him the total summation of how component qualification was coming. He not only had to track the big stages, he had to track all the little bitty parts, but he didn't want to get bogged down in detail. This is really a summarization—number of components that had to be qualified, the number that were at that given time and then he had a lot of other data underneath here [in digital form?]. Then he has the total vehicle. It's like a typical business chart. Right here you see that. [00:19:21] RB: Okay. This is the total vehicle and this is by state. [00:19:24] MS: By state. [00:19:25] RB: One for the IU and one for the subsystem. [00:19:28] MS: So you have GSE. GSE was a horse of a different color because it was a bunch of piece parts almost. They had a lot of trouble with GSE on the Pershing program, but Dr. Rudolph put a lot of effort on that thing. He had had problems before. Here's the chart on reviews, assessments, and certifications. They have followed nothing but that. All the stages of all the vehicles: 501, 502, 503. [00:20:15] RB: I'm just curious, why was all this considered so confidential? Was it because of the…Was it considered national security or terms of contractual relationship with the contractor? [00:20:31] MS: Well, I didn't know it was considered so confidential. [00:20:33] RB: No? I just noticed on the back of one of these things here. [00:20:36] MS: Oh! Those were confidential. Oh, I can explain that. All launch dates were by decree of NASA headquarters, confidential. That was the only thing that was confidential. So every chart that showed a launch date had to be classified. [00:20:56] RB: Why was that, do you think? [00:21:01] MS: I'm not quite sure unless it was just a holdover from the Department of Defense missile launching days. Might have been a thing by NASA headquarters just to keep the launch dates away from the public so that people weren't, you know, if we had a slippage and we weren't under the gun, so to speak. They could change the dates without anybody getting all on their backs about it. I don't know. But eventually the launch date…That's the only thing I know of the launch date…Oh, there was another thing I think, but we didn't…Something about engine specifications. There was some engine technical data which was confidential, which may have been because they were considering using the engines on some DOD project or something. I'm not too familiar with that. I do remember that the engines had some kind of a technical classification problem, and we had this launch date problem. [00:21:58] RB: I suppose you get into the same thing in certain aspects of construction if DOD was going to use certain types of construction, something like that, that could be confidential. They're classified kind of… [00:22:13] MS: Here's a good old S-II stage. They had their problems. They switched from one kind of material to another in midstream, different thicknesses, and they had to go to different welding techniques. They had a common bulkhead which was thirty-three feet in diameter. Now a common bulkhead had been built before on S-IVB stages, but not a thirty-three foot diameter job. Boy, they had their problems. You can see this chart right here, there are…one, two, three, four, five errors indicating major problem areas on that given date—tenth of March ‘66. All kinds of slippages. See all these anticipated slippages. Every time you see a diamond that goes out like that from some place back here where there's a little triangle indicates an estimated slippage. Things look like bad, bad, man. [laughs] And then you have to find out why this was slipping. This is where you go into these backup charts and all. [00:23:24] RB: Okay, and these red arrows—the problems—have numbers on them? [00:23:28] MS: Yeah, those were related to these written problem sheets. [00:23:44] RB: Okay. Boy, they were slipping on the transporters. Transporters were slipping [inaudible]. It almost…It gets to be a real problem because if you're building a transporter, for example, and the word comes down that the stage itself is slipping, you’re inclined to say, “Okay, there's no big rush on this thing. Let’s cool it.” You know? [Inaudible] [00:24:07] MS: That's right. [00:24:08] RB: So the result was that they would begin to slip. [00:24:16] MS: We're trying to locate a cartoon which shows each stage as a racehorse. It's got a finish line up here by the [inaudible] program manager headquarters, losing the finish line back and forth. [00:24:31] RB: That's the cartoon that Sid was telling me about? [00:24:33] MS: Yeah. [00:24:34] RB: Okay, yeah. And Rudolph was on an operating table [inaudible]? [00:24:38] MS: Well, I thought it was about that. That's a different cartoon. I thought that was on the same cartoon, but apparently that was a different one. But that was one of the tricks is to get all these stages like your biscuits and your jelly to come out even. You have to put your time and attention to the item that's required. These tiger teams…You know, they established the tiger team. The S-II got so bad off that they just got a whole mass of people, including the project manager and a whole bunch of experts. They just went out and jumped on North American Rockwell's doorstep and says, “Here we are, fellas. We want to help you. Is there any way we can help you? And we better be helping you quick because you guys are holding up the show.” [00:25:26] RB: Yeah. [00:25:27] MS: This tiger team...I’m sure you’ve… [00:25:30] RB: Is that when they got started? With S-II? They really weren't…Were the other periods of time? [00:25:35] MS: That's the first time I recall a tiger team. In fact, it was the big tiger team effort. [00:25:43] RB: You know, one of the things that still gets me is why this thing is so much different from other control rooms. I just want to kind of recap that again. One of the things is, as far as the charts are concerned, the people around. That makes a big difference. [00:26:00] MS: Right. [00:26:01] RB: But that's backed up too by the matrix, management matrices. [00:26:04] MS: That's right. [00:26:07] RB: And the other thing that strikes me—I think it reflects the managerial intent of the Saturn V program offices—you've got charts, you say, for hardware, the project managers. But it's very significant, you've got a separate set of charts for the functional managers. They were writing, you know, just as many problems and just as much importance as anybody else. I understand that too, that was unique kind of with the Saturn V program office. In fact, the functional managers had as much muscle as anybody else in the organization. [00:26:39] MS: Yeah, I've never seen it really carried to that degree before. Nor has it been to that degree since. [00:26:50] RB: Would it have been necessary in some place else, like for instance the engine program office? [00:26:56] MS: No. Because they had a single operating unit, I think. Engine didn't require all this integration business, you see? That's one reason that I don't believe that the Saturn management approach is transferable simply saying, “Okay, use that system on this project here.” See, because what we had, and I'm going to pump this handle one more time, was a number of major hardware units being built at a number of locations throughout the whole country. All this had to be brought together to perform a given function—that is a launch on a given date—and they had to succeed technically, and they had to not exceed their budget. It all had to be coordinated. Now, I don't know of any other project except going to the moon that's ever really required quite an effort like this. Usually, I mean, even building a B-17 in World War II, I wasn't there, but I had a feeling that Boeing could almost do that thing up in Seattle. They would just buy parts. I think that was a different concept. You just buy parts and bring them in. The biggest deal might be buying an engine from somebody like Pratt & Whitney or the like. But never anything for each unit in itself was so important. [00:28:38] RB: One of the other areas where that would have been included was the Saturn I-IB office. But there you're dealing with only two stages. [00:28:50] MS: Yeah. Two out of the three were developed in-house. [00:28:55] RB: In-house, yeah. [00:28:57] MS: They really were out on the S-IVB as it was a case unto itself. They said, “We will buy this stage.” They didn't need all this…They just really had one big stage coming from one place. [00:29:20] RB: And even though Chrysler wound up with the contract, that technology for building the basic S-I, S-IB first stages had been pretty well [inaudible]. [00:29:31] MS: The whole thing was designed, tested, and they [were flown here?]. [00:29:36] RB: The tankages were taken out of other Redstone and Jupiter programs. There really weren't the multitude of problems they had with the Saturn V. [00:29:46] MS: I believe we built fifteen S-I and S-IB stages here at Huntsville. I can't swear to that, but I believe all the S-I stages were built here. I believe the first five S-IB stages. [00:30:02] RB: I thought they'd shifted that down to Michoud though. [00:30:05] MS: Maybe the last three S-Is were built in Michoud. [00:30:08] RB: Chrysler took it over. [00:30:10.] MS: Maybe you're right. [00:30:12] RB: Chrysler built the last two of the S-I stages. [00:30:15] MS: Was that what it was? [00:30:16] RB: I don't really know for sure. I was under the impression they had all the S-IB stages [and if they did?][inaudible] Michoud. [00:30:21] MS: Oh, did they? Maybe you’re right. [00:30:24] RB: I'm not really positive about that so...But in any case, the point is, you say the basic design work and stuff, those two stages for the Saturn 1 and 1-B, the first stages, are basically similar. [00:30:39] MS: Right. [00:30:45] RB: The only thing different were the upper stages. But even on the shuttle or the Skylab, you don't have the staff functions having the similar muscles as they did in the Saturn V program. Is that an aspect of managerial preference or just the logic of the program account for that? [00:31:11] MS: Well, I think number one, you hit it is managerial preference. However, I think that in certain programs, the manager's preference would be outweighed by the necessity of doing it that way. [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_000040_A Title A name given to the resource Shettles, Mack (Part 1) Description An account of the resource Michael Shettles describes how NASA’s Saturn V program relied on innovative management and communication systems to coordinate the highly complex effort of building and launching the rocket. He explains that Marshall Space Flight Center developed an advanced teleconference network that connected NASA Headquarters, Marshall, Kennedy Space Center, Houston, and other locations, allowing engineers, managers, contractors, and specialists to participate equally in real-time discussions without extensive travel. Shettles emphasizes that the Saturn V program fostered a participative management style in which any engineer could raise technical concerns, regardless of rank, while meeting chairs ensured orderly discussion. He also discusses the use of document management systems, specifications, and visual charts to clarify reporting relationships, establish document precedence, track schedules, monitor component qualification, and identify problem areas across all stages of the program. These management tools enabled leaders such as Arthur Rudolph to oversee millions of individual parts without losing sight of critical issues, while "tiger teams" were assembled to resolve major development problems, particularly on the troubled S-II stage. Shettles concludes that the Saturn V management approach was unique because it integrated multiple contractors, NASA centers, functional organizations, and hardware elements into a single coordinated program, a level of organizational complexity he believed was unlike any other aerospace project of its time. 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/be75e253d311cf5b317f036eb0808639.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/d82ff524e723c178da82fa20efdbaa39.mp4 a43cd4d8a8bcbfa6d1137a21683eaf6f 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 Sieber, Werner Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Christensen, David Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:22 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:05] Werner Sieber: So, my name is Werner Sieber. Today is the 22nd of July, 1971. I'm talking to Mr. Christensen and Ms. Heimburg. [00:00:20] David Christensen: And you would tell a little bit about how you got involved with Peenemünde starting in ‘36. [00:00:27] WS: That means starting in 1936 again. That means being an assistant, a scientific or engineering assistant in the Institute for Technical Physics or Applied Physics at the University of – Technical University of Hanover. I got involved for the first time, I did hear about the Peenemünde project for the first time about ‘36, ‘37. And Dr. von Braun and Dr. Thiel were having a discussion with Professor Hase, who was the boss of the Institute. I'm not quite sure if this was the first time that Dr. von Braun had discussions with Professor Hase. But at that time, I accidentally became witness of it since I was running a special experiment in the large room of Professor Hase’s. And when Dr. von Braun came, I was asked to sit on the table and participate in the discussion. And from this developed at first a cooperative type of work with Kummersdorf at that time. We had to develop flame temperature measuring instrument based on the line reversal method. And it was supposed to be an automated one, since it was supposed to sit close to the rocket engine and to measure the temperature. And from there more involvement, especially later when the project moved to Peenemünde resulted. The Institute was about 50% engaged with their work to work together with Peenemünde when the war arrived. [00:02:30] WS: I personally was still at the Institute at that time to finish my thesis, my PhD thesis. And actually, I made my PhD before the war started in ‘39 and had a contract with Zeiss Jena. But when the war arrived, I was civilian type drafted together with several of the Institute to work for the Peenemünde project. So being drafted as a civilian for the Peenemünde project, I had from there a massive contact with Peenemünde. I did live in Hanover and did mainly work in the Applied Physics Institute to develop instrumentation. But I had to do many TDY trips up to Peenemünde, normally staying for several weeks there, trying out the instrumentation and coming back and improving it. My personal contact essentially was during the first two years with the wind tunnel and Dr. Herrmann and Mr. Ramm of the wind tunnel at that time. But I had to develop was the temperature measuring method for the wind tunnel and we choose to use the Schlieren method and having upstreams of the wind tunnel arc which would create a shock wave. And this shock wave going through the field of view of the Schlieren apparatus would be illuminated from the Schlieren apparatus with two other arcs, the time difference between was known, the distance on the picture was known, so this way the velocity and out of the velocity the temperature was derived. Now this one was only one of 40 different research contracts which the Institute of Applied Physics in Hanover under Professor Hase had to accomplish for Peenemünde. The arrangement was very similar, in a way actually, as nowadays the government is contracting with universities. I, in the meantime, became chief engineer of the Institute and as such had contact then also with the other research contracts and personally also was not only supervising but working on some of them throughout the next few years. And they were not so much for the wind tunnel anymore but actually for the test division, if I may call it this way. I don't recall the proper name under Dr. Schilling at that time. Mr. Heimburg was part of it and my main contact in the test division was the instrument development lab under Mr. Albert Schuler. [00:05:51] DC: He was directing with Peenemünde and you were working closely with Schuler. [00:05:55] WS: Schuler was in charge of the instrument development lab. He was developing instrumentation up at Peenemünde but most of it contracting it out to university institutes. They were in Dresden [or Traisen?], in Darmstadt and in Hanover. They were the three main ones I recall at that time. And our main contact with Schuler was to develop level gauges for liquid oxygen and for alcohol. And those ones mass producing also for all the first charts and all the first V-2's had our level gauges in it. [00:06:43] DC: Did they become flight hardware? [00:06:45] WS: So, they became flight hardware, and we had to come up with a certain production of it involving local industry in Hanover. And developing it, manufacturing it, checking it out and then taking care of all the mishaps which normally will come about. It was one of the works which I had to do for 20 years, ‘41, ‘42, ‘43 and so on. [00:07:17] DC: So, in other words the university was the prime contractor, and you had to go out and sub out the hardware and all these other items? [00:07:25] WS: That's right. [00:07:26] DC: It was a little bit of a unique situation. I guess you don't really have that in this country, do you? [00:07:32] WS: I do not really know how the contracting part was done right now if you ask me. I was essentially behind the quality control to get the materials together, seeing that this part is done for the check out and so on. The contracting could have been done — I do not know. Professor Hase actually had a unique position. He was professor and director of the Institute for Applied Physics but at the same time he also had a private company, the so-called Pyro-Werk where he developed temperature and radiation sensing instrumentation. [00:08:19] DC: [He got to wear two hats now?]. [00:08:21] WS: [Two hats?] and also part of the contracts or the contacts with Peenemünde were with the Pyro-Werk and part of it was the Institute. Both being together so we did do some of the research, which then was manufactured through the Pyro-Werk. So, the Pyro-Werk, the small one, let’s say 50 to 100 men per year but a very specialized instrumentation company. And Dr. [Schitting?] who I had later made contact in the fundamental which he became the boss of the test division so to speak. That means he was deputy director of this Pyro-Werk right at the start of the war. That means the deputy to Professor Hase, at the company. Whereas I was the counterpart at the Institute and was called over engineer at that time. So that is how we worked together. [00:09:22] DC: Would you talk a little bit about some of the problems at the end of the war, materials, quality control. I am sure things deteriorated there. Did you keep production going pretty well on these instruments? [00:09:34] WS: No, we surely had problems. The longer the war lasted, the more difficult it became to get the proper materials for our instruments. Especially the level gauges having them manufactured and competing with other contracts those companies had. [00:09:54] DC: Who had the priority in other words? [00:09:55] WS: So, the priority deal and continuously our priority either did go down and then there was another one, I forgot all the code names, but whenever the new priority for Peenemünde or if they had a good shot and it looked like it was a good deal then we got a good priority and also could get something. [00:10:16] DC: It would shift occasionally. The priorities would shift. [00:10:18] WS: Through the so called Rüstungskommando, that means the local military installation who was governing what the companies whom they were working for and watching the priorities for. [00:10:32] DC: The military government was overseeing all these different things. [00:10:35] WS: It was a military production type agency in Hanover for… [00:10:42] DC: For that area. [00:10:43] WS: For the area. So, we had to work for them and getting the men on our service for the instruments. Now out of the 40 research contracts which we were doing some of them were for the warheads. One of them was for example developing a special ‘feeler’ which was the very front of the V-2 would be the one touching ground first and exploding at the back. So that was something half a meter long and an electrical device. And this one surely had to be developed in a way that it would not explode the warhead already while getting warm during the heating period during reentry. [00:11:38] DC: Was it ever developed and used? [00:11:43] WS: It was used. It was then mass produced since it was a quartz type tubing deal with electrical contact was produced by the OSRAM in Berlin. [00:12:01] DC: And your group developed it? [00:12:03] WS: It was developed and all the heating type of experiments if they would withstand the heat of what we essentially did is, we were dipping this [worry?] and it was called the Elefantenrüssel part. The nose part of an… the trunk of an elephant. It was the sensitive part which was in front of it. I personally was involved in it. We were dipping it in hot melting metal which would have the proper heat transfer like it would see during reentry. Simulating this type of – and seeing that it would not ignite it but only after it is down there. But on the other side keeping it mass-wise and as light so that most of it could be warhead. [00:13:02] DC: Did you ever consider putting a timer that would only activate the warhead after a certain point in the trajectory? [00:13:10] WS: I did. This one was… [00:13:12] DC: That way too. [00:13:13] WS: – that way too. But I do not recall right now when it was made active. But anyhow it was the main heating part during which time it was made. [00:13:27] DC: Was it a more effective warhead then? [00:13:30] WS: It was more effective – [00:13:32] DC: More blast area? [00:13:33] WS: – more blast area, that means for certain applications that’s why it was made. Then the warhead, as such, surely had to be temperature insulated also during this reentry period. But this one had to be done with a minimum of mass and coming up there with the thickness of the layer and the proper material was also a part of my job. Another one was to determine the heat conductivity and the heat capacity of the TNT, if I may call it this way. I do not recall right now the proper name of the stuff in the warhead. And in doing this one, I guess, during war time you are not watching safety too well. But anyhow, I was doing this myself. I had to come up with a kind of a size of a hand grenade. Heating that from the outside had its temperature instrumented and then measuring the heat increase. [00:14:47] DC: You made like a model study then? [00:14:50] WS: Taking part of the proper stuff. But if the temperature would go too high it actually would go off. And in order to prevent that others were involved, that means I had to do it in a certain part of the building. But my safety precautions were not too well at that time. I still struggle a bit if I think about it right now. [00:15:16] DC: Did you come up with anything to help improve the thickness of the warhead? What was the result of this? [00:15:23] WS: We came up with a recommendation that means how many millimeters of insulation there ought to be so that the warhead just would not ignite it. There would be a few seconds time in order to come up with a maximum of warhead [inaudible] Not too much of the protection of it. [00:15:50] DC: You were pretty well in the direct loop then. Problem areas, they would throw these problems out. [00:15:56] WS: Since Professor Hase was a specialist in temperature measurement, radiation measurement, heat, that's why those problems came to pass. These are just a few of the ones which we were doing there and which I recall right now. [00:16:11] DC: Was this part of the so-called ‘wisdom day’ effort where they would throw all the problems out on the table and people would come and look at them and select the ones they were interested in and take them back to the university to work on? Were you familiar with this? [00:16:24] WS: I know that those things were coming about and at that time there was also other Peenemünde problems being picked up by the Navy or by the Air Force. How to overcome the [inaudible], the anti-[radar?] screens, the shaft and so on. We picked up a few then from the Navy also. But our main involvement was with Peenemünde. And I personally was mostly involved in the Peenemünde deal. [00:17:07] DC: I understand that these wisdom day events, they would have these things and maybe give you two years to come back with a solution. [00:17:15] WS: But that means we had enough problems with Peenemünde. So, we actually were more or less forced, I might say so, also to go to this type of meetings and to look at them and say – well, Professor Hase was essentially the one that was in judging who should work on it and if he would see something which maybe he could work on it. I remember I had to make a study once also out [inaudible]. For the flak, that means the anti-aircraft projectiles, in order to detonate them if they are not hitting the airplanes, could the change in the earth magnetic field which an airplane has, due to the fact that it has a lot of iron with it, could this one be used to detonate the anti-aircraft projectiles? And out of a few small experiments to support it and so on. And at that time, [inaudible] the amplifier deal, there was no miniaturization and so on. And in order to withstand shocks and so on, our conclusion was it is not enough. [00:18:34] DC: This was for proximity fuze to Wasserfall? [00:18:37] WS: Yeah, proximity fuze. [00:18:38] DC: To Wasserfall, I mean. [00:18:39] WS: No, not for Wasserfall. That means normal anti-aircraft. That means it was for the air force. It was not a Peenemünde type deal. But a proximity type deal. It's just since you mentioned those special projects that have been picked up. This one was one of them. [00:18:58] DC: One basic question here. Who would actually originate these problem statements? Who was your contact coordinator at Peenemünde? Was it a technical man or administrator? Who were you dealing with? [00:19:12] WS: We dealt with the technical. Like Mr. Schuler, for example, all his limitations for test stands. [00:19:21] DC: Right. So, he would originate the scope of work, give you a contract and then you would come back. [00:19:26] WS: Or Dr. [Steurer?], if it came to the field type deal. We had a few contracts, for example, to determine. He had certain materials which were treated at the outside for special projects coming up with special radiation coefficients. Alpha or epsilon type deals. And in order to find out if this one was right and up to which temperature it could descend and so on. So, we were working in the materials research to speak [inaudible] in this respect. [00:19:58] DC: Well, let's see. Just to move it along now. Maybe we could go on down towards the end of the war. [00:20:06] WS: Yeah, no. [00:20:07] DC: Tell a little bit what happened to you and how you ended up with the group that came here. That might be interesting. [00:20:14] WS: Now, towards the end of the war, one of the problems, let's say during the last six months, was that due to the bombing, some of the companies who were delivering raw material or such parts for the level gauges, it fell out. So, we had to look for special ones. I recall for example that in January of [’35?], I had to make a trip to Thüringen up to the glassblowers. [00:20:45] DC: January ‘45? [00:20:46] WS: Yeah. In order to find out if we could use for the level gauges where we were using certain ceramics at that time. It was a two-legged type, having electronics inside and having certain ceramics which were subbed in, so to speak. It was maybe making it out of glass since we could not get the ceramics anymore. I don't know. There was some problem in that. It didn't get too far since before they really could deliver [the things?]. Just a few weeks later, that means everything started to deteriorate. But anyhow, the last few weeks before being overhauled, I still was at Hanover at the institute. The bombing raids were practically every night, so I was spending most of my time. I was privately bombed out already twice, so my family was not in Hanover anymore. I was most of the nights at the university and in the shelter there. Quite a few bombing raids did hit the university and we had a firefight on those nights. Also, the laboratory I was working in was bombed out, I guess it was February of that year with all the… everything which I had written up and so on. So, I didn't get afterwards anything, no photos, no nothing. [00:22:21] DC: Oh, really? You lost all your – [00:22:23] WS: There was the part where this lab was situated. There was just empty air. This part of the building was just level. [00:22:32] DC: [In that day?] you had nothing? [00:22:33] WS: Including the apparatus which I had in there and all the instruments and so on. I had also there my last private books and let's say what you have from your studies and PhD and whatnot. The other part, a year prior to this one, I lost in a bombing rate on my private place. I was living at the fourth story of an apartment house and this one was completely demolished. So after having lost all this one, I didn't have much left in Hanover besides my working place. And so, when then the American forces were approaching Hanover from the west, they were about 20 kilometers to the west when according to instructions we were making, destroying certain things at the institute, certain paperwork. [00:23:34] DC: Were these things classified as secret primarily? [00:23:37] WS: Yeah, everything which was in a safe we had according to instructions to destroy. So, for example one of those igniters I talked about, those [Elefantenrüssel?] and so on, all those ones in the [Pyro-Werk?]. And then after doing this one, we were freed to do what I wanted. [00:24:02] DC: Turned loose. [00:24:04] WS: Turned loose at least, since it was already in the status of disorganization. There was more or less continuous bombing of Hanover and artillery you could hear to the west moving in. So, what I did was I still had a bicycle so I could take the little things I had which were just a briefcase full of things. And with the bicycle during a bombing raid, I left Hanover. Actually, against the instructions, since we had to work with so called Volkssturm. Everybody was supposed to get a gun and to shoot and so nobody was supposed to leave Hanover. But it was a nonsensical deal anyhow. So, I was convinced I couldn't help them there so I was using a bombing raid to leave Hanover where everybody was in the... I disappeared on my bicycle and did go north and my family lived about 120 kilometers north of Hanover in a small place called Rotenburg which is right in the middle between Bremen and Hanover and I tried to reach them. And in going up, that means fleeing German military groups were continuously crossing the road. I was, I guess, more in the ditches beside the road with my bicycle, since continuously [keep flying?] … [00:25:57] DC: Was this around February? [00:25:59] WS: That was in April. In April, I guess. I can't point the date right now. I guess the final day was the final day was 8th of May and it was three weeks prior to the final end when Dönitz or somebody made a final entry. Anyhow it was still three weeks to go. Hanover wasn't overhauled yet. Hamburg wasn't yet and they were just about approaching Bremen, I guess. So right in front of the front the … through the fleeing German groups I did find my way through the roads, not the main roads but still continuously keep fleeing airplanes were shooting at anything that was moving. So, it did take me a long time. I left fairly early in the morning. I guess it was a morning attack on Hanover at 6 o'clock and I arrived at midnight. A thing that I could have done in six hours easily. But there were quite a few hold ups and one of the most dangerous ones besides being shot – getting a bullet from anywhere, was that means in advancing quite a few prisoner camps and upper camps and so on were opened up and the prisons were opened up. So groups of those poor fellows they were just roaming around and I had to go with my bicycle just on my own through them and they all had sticks in their hands just to walk on and so on. So, they could have hit me but apparently, they were just marching somewhere like I was. Just like doped. Anyhow somehow, I made it to Rotenburg where my family was and I was glad. Actually, they were living in a hospital. My wife, I had her going to her brother, who was the chief medical fellow in a big hospital in Rotenburg. Not a military one, it was actually for retarded folks and so she was fairly safe there. And there it did take another two weeks before the, since it was far north it was the Britishers before they came to Rotenburg and those were also a few days especially one very bad day that means when they finally moved through Rotenburg. And then afterwards being under British occupation I had to report to the marketplace everybody who able bodied men between 15 and 65 had to report for clean-up work, and so on, under 40 Britishers. So, there was an airfield, former German airfield close by about 20 kilometers to Rotenburg which was completely destroyed due to air raid and so on. And this one was supposed to be made the place for a tank division or something like that. [00:30:09] [recording cuts] [00:30:20] WS: Werner Hans Sieber, again. [chuckles] I just mentioned at the other side that from Göttingen I was going to Witzenhausen signing my contract and going back to my family who didn't know anything about it. I arrived the next day late and told them that I signed up with the Americans and had a contract with them. They just didn't believe it but… Quite a few got crazy during this time. So, the first deal is contract surely you have something to show. My brother, who was where my wife did stay, he said, “He surely would have something to show!” No. Now I have to mention that he was a doctor in an institution for retarded and for…damaged… what do you call that? [00:31:21] DC: Unstable. [00:31:22] WS: He was, anyhow, not a psychoanalyst, but anyhow, knowing this type of deal. So, he was questioning that maybe I got crazy in the meantime or if I still was on my feet. Anyhow, yes that's what it is. And I even told them that I had been told that at a certain day, the Americans would come with a truck and pick up a few things which my wife had and picking them up my family and me and would bring us to Witzenhausen. This day would be so and so, and I guess that was about a week later something like this or maybe two weeks at the most. Anyhow they said alright we will find out. So, the day came closer and the few things we had we packed. Next morning at 6 the truck was supposed to come and it didn't come. We were ready, the kids were ready. No truck. No information either. The day did go by alright something might have happened. We did try the next day again. Sorry, no truck. We tried I guess a third time and then gave up. But now my credibility was completely gone. That means that the day prior to it we still had a big party. They brought out their last wine and so on. “Goodbye and see you in the United States,” and you know all these nice deals. [00:33:07] DC: Sendoff party. [slight chuckle] [00:33:09] WS: So, the credibility was definitely gone. And later I did find out that this doctor talked to his sister, my wife, privately and said, “I guess see this war had [inaudible]. Don't believe it too much. That means we just play along with him a little bit, but let's try to get him back on his feet,” and so on. [00:33:37] DC: No one would believe you, if you had nothing to show. [00:33:39] WS: Nothing to show! Now surely comes the following. That means every two weeks you had to get your ration cards in order to buy anything to live. Now I had worked at first in Rotenburg for the British then in Hanover and I closed it out in Hanover in order to go to Rotenburg and just to wait two weeks. I had enough ration cards to live. But now I didn't have ration cards and I would have to work again, show some work before I would get them. So, in order to get ration cards I didn't get them since I wasn't working. I did go to the burgermeister and said I wanted to talk privately with him. My name is so-and-so and so on and the following is the case. The Americans want to come and pick me up and have a contract with them to go for half a year over there and work with them and so on. He said, “That is a good story. Where does your paperwork?” I said, “There isn't.” Not even a piece of paper. I said “No, nothing at all. I'm not even supposed to talk about it. I can't give you.” Since now it's a small place and my brother-in-law was known I got for the next two weeks ration cards just to a special deal from the burgermeister. But unfortunately, after those two weeks still I wasn't picked up and no news. [00:35:14] DC: You were getting a little mad by then. [00:35:16] WS: I did go mad and somehow by some tricks, I just didn't want to start working again since they could come any time. And if I was 20 kilometers away, they wouldn't find me. I would miss it. So, I wanted to stay around the house as a matter of fact. I never did go away any further than my wife would know where it is so that within a few minutes we could be brought together. To make it short, they didn't believe me anymore. [00:35:51] DC: How long did you wait there? [00:35:53] WS: It was about four weeks and one day suddenly a jeep came up. Lieutenant Wheeler. I guess I recall his name. Lieutenant Wheeler came. “You are,” so and so. I never met him. “Yes I am.” “I am sorry that we couldn't pick you up.” Now, my English was even worse than it is now. I had some school English but still I could make out with him. Although he also could talk some German. We already did it in English. And he said the time now came and that they did not pick us up was due to the reason that Witzenhausen was not the place anymore but Landshut. Landshut would be. And in rearranging and making those preparations that means they didn't pick anybody up. But on the other side, they could not give us a message. So, they were very sorry. But now it's such and such a day and that was just three or four days later they would be coming. Now after he was around, they all believed us again and we finally moved down to Landshut. [00:37:09] DC: You finally have a final going away party? [00:37:11] WS: Now there was a final one, but there was no wine left. [Laughing] So we were moving by truck to Hanover and in Hanover we were put in a special car together with Dieter Grau and, I guess, his wife. He probably told you the same thing. And Millinger was in there and two or three others. Actually, it was an old car and this one was attached to a kind of a fast train. Which in the meantime, now they even had train connections going all the way that means down to Munich. And so, we did go with the train in an unheated car, it was freezing and so on. And finally, it showed up in Landshut. And there we were supposed as the third shipment. Dieter Huzel, and then Grau, and Millinger, and so on. About 30 of them, Angele and so on. And you probably heard from Angele what happened. He did show up there, Dr. Henning did show up there. He came out of a concentration camp, an American one and so on. They all did show up finally down there. And we were supposed still to go to the United States before Christmas. And probably somebody else told you already it did not quite work out this way. We had to wait until a very few days after Christmas. I really don't recall the date. And we were moved then from Landshut to Le Havre. In Le Havre we did stay several days, I don't know, maybe a week in the fortress there. Always being very well kept from contact with any American soldier or the population or what have you for our own protection, I guess. During this time, it still was needed. We were living underground in the Kasematten, that means the protected places. [00:39:37] DC: Did you get another piece of paper this time or a contract? [00:39:40] WS: No, no. [00:39:41] DC: Still nothing more? [00:39:43] WS: We didn't have anything in our hands. We did get sea ration on the trip and then did get, while we were in Le Havre, we were eating in the mess hall after all the other troops had eaten. And we were eating like hogs. I recall, there was many eggs in the morning. I personally, my weight was 124 pounds at that time when I arrived in Le Havre. And I started gaining very heavily from there on. Since we could eat as much as we wanted to, actually we were overdoing it, unfortunately. If you are hungry, you first eat and— [00:40:29] DC: the [weight?] will catch up. That's what Angele said too. He was quite slim. Found out he could live on very little when you have to, you know. You still have a lot of energy. [00:40:39] WS: And I recall, you know, cigarettes were something really scarce. And I guess a little piece of paper was given to us, you are right. One piece here that said that we were entitled to $6 a day. And from those $6 in Le Havre, I guess we got the first time $6 in our hands or something, we could buy cigarettes. So— [00:41:06] DC: It’s like Christmas almost. [00:41:08] WS: The cigarettes we could buy was Zipper. They were called Zipper. They were as bad as you can think of. I don't know why they were even made and for whom they were made. But anyhow, as soon as we could get a hold of better ones, we couldn't even smoke them. Although we were used to smoke [peppermint tea?] and [inaudible] during the war time. So, in Le Havre we were put on board of a Liberty ship. Actually, I'm following now completely the Angele story. So, he probably told you the 32 fellows of us we were brought in a room, let's say it was twice as big as this one, four or five on top of each other. And the weather was very rough and the captain prided himself one day to say there's no ship between the French coast and New York. Everybody could go back to the harbor. And that last day, we did make some progress. We could keep before the wind. Unfortunately, we were drifted back half a mile. So, we didn't make any progress. And it was really very rough. It was so rough that the ship made the funniest noises. And Dr. Henning who was a specialist in welding who was with us, he inspected some of those places. [00:42:47] DC: Getting worried, yeah? [00:42:49] WS: Just out of the fun of it. But we didn't feel too well. Actually, the whole ship was full of, I don't know if it had a division, it was about 2,000 soldiers, I don't know why it is. All of them negroes. [00:43:05] DC: Oh black, [inaudible]. Do they know you were on the ship? [00:43:09] They were not supposed to know it. So, we were kept in our room 24 hours a day. We had an adjoining place where we could – toilet, you know, this was the shower. And there was one hour a day where we could go on deck at a certain part. Just going up and standing there. So surely, they were aware of it. It was a prisoner group. That's how it was known to them. And whenever they left the mess hall, then we could go down and try to eat. Very few could eat. We were not allowed to bring any food to anybody who did stay back. So, some of them being very sick like Angele, we couldn't even bring him something back. So, he didn't eat anything. And he couldn't walk on his own anymore so we had to carry him to the medical [inaudible]. We were checked three times during this trip by the medics. They wanted to make them sure that we were not sick. Maybe they also did find it interesting that we used to check us out. Anyhow three times we had complete checkouts. And finally arriving in New York several days overdue. I guess it was 17 days. There was food on board only and water for 14 days. So, there was no drinking water left anymore. So, they started the machinery for converting sea water to drink water. There was a dark brownish steel which means you didn't want to do anything but wash your hands in it. Drinking, I don't know if they still had something for coffee or tea or something. I don't know how we were. Anyhow with the last sea rations, we finally made in New York. And there we were kept underneath in our room until six hours after the troops disembarked and nobody would see us. And then it was dark in the evening and then we did leave the ship and we did go on board of a bus and we were brought to Fort Belvoir near Washington, Alexandria. And there we then did stay for, I guess, two weeks or something. Being interrogated by the CIA, or what all these organizations are, about all our connections with Hitler and the Nazis and what we did. I guess we were fingerprinted 50 times. I recall one whole morning a whole stack of cards. I had to repeat fingerprinting after fingerprinting. And they were sent around all across the world. They wanted to make sure. And I can see that. The lie detector tests were then done later in Fort Bliss. They were not done there. I do not recall it. But anyhow, there were quite a few truth interrogators who talked very well in German. They tried to find out if the history or the story of our life which we had to write down – but this was all the details – whether this was true or not. And then from there, we boarded a train all the way to Fort Bliss. [00:46:58] DC: What about New Orleans? [00:47:00] WS: Well, to New Orleans. It would take two days and two nights or something like this. Anyhow, so we had a special car for us. And then at special times we were permitted to go to the diner. And at that time nobody else was in the diner. And on our way to the diner, we were not supposed to talk at all so that nobody would find out that funny talk we had. But still we were looking very funny with our clothes. [00:47:37] DC: Just what you had on your back? [00:47:3] WS: After all the bombing raids and so on underneath you had funny shoes. So, we looked like a funny [pack?]. Everybody looking, “What's that?” But in a way, apparently lots of things can happen over here. Even a funny group like this can go across country. [00:48:02] DC: Nobody says too much, eh? [00:48:03] WS: No reporters. That was the main deal. No reporters were supposed to come. We were not supposed to talk to anybody. [00:48:09] DC: How many American soldiers were with you at the time? Were they in civi— [00:48:12] WS: Civilian. Civilians. [00:48:13] DC: Civilians. How many were there? [00:48:16] WS: To be Frank, I don't know. Let's say three. [00:48:19] DC: Three? [00:48:20] WS: Four. [00:48:21] DC: Thirty people. Three soldiers. [00:48:24] WS: Yeah. Yeah. Just among us. [00:48:29] DC: Were you surprised at what you saw in America? Did you expect what you saw? Or what was your impression? [00:48:37] WS: Oh, I was surely very eager to see what was going on. So, at first, we were beefed a bit that incoming into New York Harbor we couldn't be on deck and look at it. [00:48:47] DC: See the skyline. [00:48:48] WS: Skyline. And at the other side, that means our cabin did not have any port hole. We couldn't look out at all. So, it did take several hours until we finally could go on deck and see the skyline. But at that time, you were already anchored. You didn't see how coming in or the Statue of Liberty or all that you normally expect to see. So, we had to be under deck at that time. And then going with this train, it's very interesting. It's going through small villages and seeing how the train stops in a village that is right close to the roadway that is without the big railroad station. We did find out that most of the road crossings did not have to [pass standard?]. [00:49:46] DC: Looked pretty primitive, I guess. [00:49:44] WS: It was just a completely different deal. And then the wideness of the country. You could ride for hours without seeing much on cities or heavy stations. That was very interesting. Then in New Orleans we had an hour overlay so we could go out of the car and just go around the block, so to speak, without contacting anybody. So, we didn't see anything from New Orleans besides going across the railroad from the Mississippi. So, it was a very interesting trip. Finally coming to West Texas and the desert and then finally winding up in Fort Bliss by there where there's not much green. [00:50:32] DC: When you got to Bliss, did you go out to the launch stands much? Or did you stay right at El Paso? [00:50:39] WS: I personally did stay very much in Fort Bliss proper. I belonged to a group which was supposed to plan for test stands for the ramjet. It was this project which we were supposed to work on. So, we had to look through catalogs and discussing it also with certain company representatives on what type of instrumentation we would be using to build up test stands for ramjet development. And having the test stands built in a way that they could be put, either built right away on it or could be put on flatbeds in order to move them up— [00:51:30] DC: So you started looking through catalogs and instruments? [00:51:34] WS: Yeah. All right. So, I was supposed to head up the instrumentation group for the test stands of the ramjet development. So, I was not in the design group for, let me say, it was just the test stands. So that's where most of my assignment was for. We then were building up in Fort Bliss test stands, as you probably had heard from others already, a small wind tunnel, blow down type wind tunnel, which was a unique deal also. Because at that time we were very few and we did not have much help. So, for example, the little wind tunnel, it's a blow down one of these bottles which had high pressure air and then blowing it down and having Schlieren pictures and making, I was building up a little Schlieren apparatus for it and having three pressure measurements on the models, which was the intake type nozzle for the run track. It was supposed to be a supersonic one. So, all the shock waves should be shown here. And building up the instrumentation for it, that means I personally was my own designer and technician. I was cabling it up. I was doing the test running the test. [00:53:01] DC: It was like the old days at Peenemünde; starting from scratch all over again. [00:53:04] WS: So actually, during the test of this little, I guess it did take us two years to build it up. It was a little shed where the test stand was in, the [bottles?] outside and a measuring trailer connected to it is about 25 [?] in the oscillograph. All remotely to be controlled. And we were actually three fellows running the test stand. Max Novak was one. In charge, was Herman Weidner and myself. So, the three of us were running the test. We were inside of the test stand and taking the manipulations. Max Novak opening up the big valves. We sent him to turning and so on. And Weidner being in charge of it. And it was a tremendous noise in this little shed. And the roof was nearly falling in. I recall only that when at that time Colonel Toftoy was supposed to visit us, he was not permitted to be doing the test inside of the shed. [00:53:22] DC: When did you first meet Toftoy? What was your experience with him? [00:53:26] WS: To be frank, I personally did not have too many contacts with him. I surely met him it was quite... [coughing] Sorry about the interruption. You were asking when I met at that time Colonel Toftoy. Actually, was during some meeting in Fort Bliss, not prior to it. We had what was called certain [?] room, main assemblies where everybody was coming together. At that time Major Hamill was telling us how things were going, what we should do and should not do. He was our commanding officer. But surely Colonel Toftoy came for a visit once in a while. [00:55:16] DC: Hamill was more of the [inaudible]. [00:55:19] WS: Hamill surely was the one whom we had practically daily contact with. That Colonel Toftoy was actually in Washington or somewhere else. What other names do you recall of the Americans or GE people? Any other people there? [00:53:37] WS: All right, we had quite some contact with the GE people. A fellow, unfortunately, not remembering too well the names. I surely remember Dr. Porter's name. I really do not know when I saw him or if I saw him at all. But there were certain other ones with GE and we were working together with them very closely. But I am sorry that after 25 years and I am getting old, I am not shaking with my head yet, but the memory of the names is always something bad. [00:56:13] DC: Well, what were you doing with GE? Were they taking your sketches and making drawings? [00:56:17] WS: Yeah, that’s right. They were the design group. They were the ordering group. They were just like a support group. What mostly like a support group does. I do not know if this one was supposed to be the role or the proper designation for it. Actually, you could call it they were in charge of it and we were helping them. That is more how it looked like. But they were the ones really behind it, building up and seeing that things were built up and also providing the manpower to others. [00:56:52] DC: Were there a few people out there at that time from GE? Where did they come from? Did they come in from— [00:56:58] WS: They had a special place where they did stay at in Fort Bliss. But… I am sorry. At that time, I was more in the planning work. I did have certain contacts, but maybe I did not care that much or I forgot about it. How that was organized. I left it up to the Schilling [center?] and the Heimburg [center?]. I was worrying about it and I heard about their problems. [00:57:28] DC: Then you worked on this ramjet program for quite a while, then you eventually came to Huntsville. Did you work on anything else at Fort Bliss besides the ramjet? [00:57:38] WS: No, it was essentially this ramjet program. We finally did build our test stands. The low-down wind tunnel was a local one. The other test stands, the ignition test stand and the compression test stand, were built on flat beds so that we could move with them. We actually did. I do not know if it was ‘48 or ‘49. We did move up in the California mountains close to Bishop, up to 10,000 feet high. The purpose was to run the ramjet at a higher elevation. The test stands were made movable and so we were spending a late summer. It was not no wind, but at least there was no snow. [00:58:30] DC: What part of California was this? [00:58:34] WS: Bishop is the closest part of it, the closest city. From there I did go up, let's say, 10 miles up in the mountains, close to the King's Canyon. There was a lake. Unfortunately, here again, remembering names is something bad for me. Maybe I can point it out over here. [00:59:01] [recording cuts] [00:59:03] DC: Like the Navajo program, did you have any contact with any other [inaudible]? [00:59:08] WS: I personally did not have any. Thinking back, there might have been a few other things. Especially during the first year, once in a while, a [wizard?] was announced coming from somewhere across the country wanting to know what we were doing. For example, I recall that one fellow was very much interested in servo and this line reversal machine which we were building for Kummersdorf. Or how the level gauges were built up. This type of thing. We were trying to get information from it. There was some scanty type of literature available, but most of it they did try to get out of the discussions. [00:59:53] DC: What was the final conclusion of the ramjet program? Did it really work out? It was finally cancelled? [00:59:59] WS: It was finally cancelled. Now don't ask me. Mr. Heimburg probably could answer the question or somebody why it– [1:00:08] [recording cut] [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_000024_A Title A name given to the resource Sieber, Werner Description An account of the resource Early German rocketry in mid-1930s, especially wind tunnel research. Role of technical universities in such research on V-2 Rocket systems. Life in days leading up to and after the end of WWII. Coming to America through Operation Paperclip. 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. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 22, 1971 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/b5d0670da24978745ec9e86365127fda.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/7ff5cd4f71b09914c1fe3028eda9616f.mp4 ae6df47cf5edab432e8f6a8caa273c99 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000041_A Title A name given to the resource Sloop, John L. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-12-02 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ed1bb3c89bb63d941b811b4ebb814cb0.pdf cfd58e225dfdefc7a7773859c8cda894 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000041_T Title A name given to the resource Sloop, John L. (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-12-02 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/0bd0a0517854aec2ebafcfae7a821be0.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/54cdd3c5587bb4e45de7eff6bb27747a.mp4 43f7405297e74f43314ab4afba80a0cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000042_A Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/12a260c93f56882444684c51b46203ca.pdf 7d02ecc5b50c9a5f3cdc96022f0df03e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000042_T Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill (Transcript) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/fbabe34f6a2efc60059baf242e4b782e.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/7d0b2604b9e5b85b883cdce4eba0b28e.mp4 3c3a5b7ff2d14ce4d90639fa0771dd95 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 Steihoff, Ernst Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Christensen, David Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:30:14 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:05] David Christensen: Interview with Dr. Ernst Steinhoff. The date is August 19, 1971. Dr. Steinhoff, would you tell a little bit how you got into the rocket business when you first heard of Peenemünde? And prior to that, what you were doing? And then the first exposure to the rockets at Peenemünde, and what happened after that? [00:00:36] Ernst Steinhoff: I was one of the scientific staff members of the German Institute for Pilotless Aircraft for Unpowered Aircraft Gliders at Darmstadt. And I had a colleague of mine, Dr. [Sterling?], who was working with me on flight measurements, flight performance measurements, development of telemetry and other endeavors to improve our capabilities in performance measurements. One day he told me he had received an offer to come to a location. He couldn't really tell me very much about it because it was highly secret and he hoped to see me again sometime in the future. I didn't hear anything for several months from him, and then one day he sent me a telegram that he intended to visit me with a gentleman with a name of Dr. von Braun, whose name I had never heard. [00:01:58] DC: This was about what year? [00:01:59] ES: It was in 1939, early in ’39. And so, I was quite impressed by Dr. von Braun and he told me a little bit about what was going on and what we were all involved in but he couldn't tell me too much. He told me that we were developing new propulsion systems, and the operation was actually sponsored by the army. So, we had some test facilities and systems to test it. He would invite me to a personal visit to get a little bit more acquainted. I thought okay I have to fly in a flight contest which will bring me in the general area sometimes in May. [00:03:03] DC: You were competing in gliding contests? [00:03:06] ES: No, it was a powered contest. I had the plane of our institute, which I flew there. [00:03:17] DC: Was that a specially built plane for competition? [00:03:21] ES: No, it was a national contest which actually evaluated pilot skills. [00:03:35] DC: Oh, yeah. Like a – [00:03:41] ES: After I had completed my mission there, I decided that in agreement with our discussion I would visit Dr. von Braun and Dr. [Sterling?] at Peenemünde. So, I asked the local flight service to give me clearance for a flight plan to fly there. They kind of looked at each other and said, “You know, young man, we don't know of anyone yet who ever got permission to fly to that place. We can try it, but don't have too high hopes because we have never gotten clearance yet. We have tried it many times. We were interested too to find out what's going on there.” [00:04:38] DC: What did the aerial map show of that area? Nothing? [00:04:40] ES: Oh, it was a – [00:04:42] DC: Restricted area, maybe? [00:04:48] ES: It was a typical dot of a military German air force – air base, and this was it. To the surprise of the flight operations people who came with word back, said I was expected to come there. [00:05:06] DC: Fly right in! [00:05:08] ES: Then they asked, “Who are you? Can’t just get there on a telephone call.” I just don't know myself. [chuckling] So I flew there and, probably, von Braun had forgotten the day already when I would come there. We had some VIPs coming there. When I came, he said, “You know, it's kind of a coincidence but I have visitors there. We have a big test run going on a new engine and I'd like you to see it. But really everyone who comes here needs a clearance. I have even been able to talk to my boss. I have used my own, so to speak, executive privileges to determine you could be a bona fide guest here. You are working for the government anyhow too. If we want to get you to work here, we might as well show you all of it.” [00:06:11] DC: I see, go all the way! [00:06:13] ES: Then he said, “Unfortunately, I cannot take you up to the block house out there because everyone would see that I have someone there who no one knows.” This probably kind of would set up things before I’ve talked to my commanding officer. This was, of course, Dr. Dornberger. He was a colonel at the time and hoping to be promoted to general, what happened. Apparently while the test was going on, von Braun he kind of hid me behind some bushes. I was probably twice the distance of the people sitting in the block house, but I got all the incidentals to the test. The tremendous roar, the tremendous flames and smoke, as you know. Also, the dust which was kicked up, everything. I was standing there and then after the test, von Braun and Dornberger and their guests they walked around the still steaming and red-hot tail end. This was the first test of a real complete V2 engine. It was the first – it was not the final engine, but it was the one which reached – [00:07:42] DC: Long duration test. [00:07:43] ES: Yes, a long duration test. There was no failure and so on. Everything worked like the book describes. I said, “Okay I will just wait until someone gets me and don't come out behind my bushes. I don't want to embarrass Dr. von Braun.” After they were all through inspecting, they all turned towards that bush and came slowly walking and von Braun took about two steps back. Dr. Dornberger and von Braun called me and said come out here – [00:08:22] DC: Hop up! [chuckling] [00:08:24] ES: And I would like to meet you here my boss, Dr. Dornberger. And so, he said, “How did you like it? It was really something wasn't it?” I said, “I was sure impressed.” He said “How about working here?” I said, “Okay I will accept.” I didn't ask for any amount of salary or anything. He could have told me a day later you work for a dollar a day or something or a dollar a year. That is it. You accepted here. But I have never in my life really rejected. I have never asked for a salary. I have accepted or rejected but I have never told anyone what I think I need to earn. This, of course, led to a pretty, I would say, jokeful experience that von Braun and I had later. A few years which you probably also have read in his book or in Dornberger’s book. [00:09:37] DC: One basic question, before we continue where you went from there. When you were flying into Peenemünde, did you see any of the facilities? [00:09:45] ES: Oh yes. I could see. I flew inside the, I would say, danger area, so the people restricted area, and I could see all kinds of strange types of buildings there which I really had no idea what they were used for, until I knew more about it. Of course, that first test gave me quite some impression. [00:10:14] DC: And then what happened? What was your first responsibility? [00:10:19] ES: I went back and told my boss that I really had decided to leave. I have been there for three years. This is normally the time, if you are an engineer or scientist employed in the German industry or university or research institute. It didn't make any difference. You are expected to change every three to – early three at the latest four years. Unless you have given up to become promoted. [00:10:56] DC: This is normal procedure then. [00:10:58] ES: Yes, normal procedure. If you don't have, I would say, a major promotion not just the salary raises, which I had several, but a major promotion in these three years to move on to broaden your background. Everyone expects you to do, and you can come back again after a number of years. Then they make you, maybe, a much better offer than you had before and so on. From that point of view, the boss couldn't say much. He made me a salary offer and I said “It's too late now. If you would have done it before I would have come. I wouldn't have even suggested to resign and leave.” But I think in retrospect, I wouldn't change my mind. I found that I never regretted this position. I came up there, and I was actually put in charge of the development world – remote control included, and so on. This is something which I had done over the last three years besides flight performance measurements, more as a hobby. I realized that if you wanted to really progress into commercial aviation, then we needed autopilot. Much better than we had at the time. We had, I would say, rudiments of autopilot. That’s the Model T, yeah. I felt that there was considerable gain. When I went to Peenemünde this was my test. There were quite a few departments. I had the boss who had the much larger department who had all the electrical devices and so on. [00:13:01] DC: Who is that now? [00:13:03] ES: I have to try to remember again. He did not stay with the team. He was actually a man who felt that this whole business of rocketry had something which included a lot of lists for conservative engineers or scientists. He did not really feel at home beyond his more narrow confines of education. I had been much broader educated. While I was still working toward my master's degree, I took a lot of electronic courses. I could have at the same time gotten my degree in aeronautical engineering or aeronautics in general, in meteorology or in electronics. [00:14:03] DC: Much more of a systems background. [00:14:05] ES: I felt that flying would never amount to much unless you could really deal with the weather. Secondly, I did not think that it would really amount to much until you had radio communications, and you had autopilot, and you became independent of the weather. You had – [00:14:26] DC: Self-contained. [00:14:27] ES: to know about the weather to become self-contained. This was what I felt I wanted to bring as background into my profession. How I would get into that profession? I had the faintest idea. After I graduated, I went to an airline and I developed a real health problem because I had some chronic eye inflammation. I was told by a doctor that I could not get rid of it. I was living at Königsberg in East Germany. Which is now actually not even Polish. I think it's partly Polish but partly Russian. We were living right at the Baltic Sea. This was an area which was really wind swept all the time. All these little salt particles were in the air and got in my eyes. I had this chronic eye inflammation. There was another thing. I had no relatives, nothing there. The only people I really was together with all the time were these old salty flight captains. When they came there, they had a day away from home. That was when they descended on the town. They at times took me with them. I got very little sleep. I had a lot to work on. I think one of the reasons that I could not fight this infection was the fact that I really didn't get the rest enough either. One day, I saw in a periodical that in one of the political institutes there was the position of an assistant to the professor. So, I didn't think much. I just said, “Okay, maybe it was really the tail end of the depression.” It was in 1933. Unemployment in Germany was sky high so to speak. I decided at least to give it a try. I sent a letter there that I would be interested in being considered for that position. I had a lot of qualifications for it. I was a pilot, and I knew aircraft and so on. I worked for heavy gear in an airline and knew how the airline operations worked. I was the number two technical [mainsail?]. [00:17:32] DC: You did have a certain background in commercial aviation and aviation. You thought Peenemünde offered you an opportunity to advance the state of the art? [00:17:33] ES: I didn't know anything about Peenemünde at that time. [00:17:36] DC: I mean later, when you got into Peenemünde. You saw this as a way to feed back into commercial aviation. [00:17:42] ES: So, what happened on this application, first I heard for at least two months nothing. Then suddenly I got a telegram whether I could not give out a [lecture there?]. I was very successful and I talked about aircraft instrumentation and aircraft instrumentation design. So, I went to my old organization [inaudible] I could get some of the [background material?] told my old professor about it. He told me, “I would like to keep you here but my funds are so low that I really can't hire anyone unless someone resigns.” So, I went there, gave my lecture and did my thing for a while again. And suddenly I got a telegram in which I was offered the position of the lecturer for the aeronautics department. I really had not applied for it. I was kind of scared about it. So, I said, “Okay, I would take that only if so and so would be hired as my assistant.” Because I didn't think I could do this without having an assistant. This was a colleague of mine who had gotten his master's degree about half a year after me and he was also working in some aeronautical enterprise there. It was not very highly paid at the time, because no one really could pay. [00:19:30] DC: What was German aviation, commercial aviation like in the 30s? [00:19:35] ES: It was two times flight from where I was located from Berlin to that location and then on to Moscow in both directions which was considerable. And since [inaudible] I will say German airline also flew there and returned back again and stopped in several places, I would say, which were in the order of magnitude of populations of 100,000 to 300,000 - 500,000 between there and Berlin. [00:20:11] DC: Were people eager to fly or a little reluctant? [00:20:14] Yeah it was not anywhere near [here?]. I would say the airplanes mostly at that time held somewhere between 8 and 16 passengers and they were not at all time full and the German government had considerable subsidy on it. We had the… coming in in that year, actually last year I would say, the He 57. Which was the first airliner with a retractable landing gear. It was a really big aircraft. It flew at that time around 220 miles an hour or so. So, I sent a telegram back that I would only accept that this former colleague of mine would become my assistant. And I did not think that he ever would accept it. But 2 hours later, I got a telegram that he had accepted and therefore my conditions were met. So, I had to accept it. That really ushered in the time in my life where I worked hardest ever. I probably did get only 4 maybe 3 to 4 hours sleep at night, except maybe on the weekend when we really slept through one night until we kind of felt we’d caught up. Unfortunately... [00:22:01] DC: Well, I've been told you were pretty much that way even in the Peenemünde days. [00:22:06] ES: Oh yeah, I was in the Peenemünde. I sometimes was only 3 or 4 hours at home. I had a bed right in a test stand. If I got tired, I took a nap. And an hour or two later, I was there again. I was there by all the major tests we had. So that was the way I got into Peenemünde. And then this [upper-chair?] decided that or he felt that I probably was much more qualified for the position than I was. And he said, “you never know what happens here at Peenemünde.” So, he’d tell Dr. von Braun, said, “I'm resigning here and appoint you as my successor and have him sign it right away. He may think of someone else and I think you’re the one who should take it.” And that was the man. He was a really solid citizen and he had principles. He was a very cautious operator and most of what he was doing was really outside his domain. He felt that I had really penetrated things really into his area of responsibility. [00:23:25] DC: Did he go back in the industry? [00:23:29] ES: No, he went back to [inaudible]. He became actually a [?] company chief electrical engineer. It was everything he knew; he knew the power plants and so on. There was nothing which was fundamentally dependent on the results of research which had been done. This was really what the issues there was. [00:23:59] DC: This was about what time when you took over then? [00:24:02] ES: That was about half a year after I came. It was around the end of... I think it was about November of 19[39?]. [inaudible] I had in the meantime the responsibilities to organizing things. Von Braun charged me with setting up the ‘day of science’ that you had read [inaudible]. [00:24:30] DC: The wisdom day. [00:24:33] [talking over each other] [00:24:35] ES: We invited all the other people [to come and?] tell us what all of our problems were. This was like an industry briefing of the Air Force or Army. [00:24:45] DC: You were sort of coordinated then to get these people in. You gave them a couple of years to come up with solutions? [00:24:52] ES: No, we told them we like to have [sequences?] done. I had one test which likely led to the inertial guidance system. I told them I wanted to measure the speed of rocket to [110 to 1?] percent. They looked at me, “Is this fellow out of his mind?” Some knew me. “You know Steinhoff, this is an area where we really don't want to [stain?] our reputation.” [00:25:22] DC: You were trying to advance the whole state of the art in the guidance control. [00:25:26] ES: This was something that couldn't be done. They tried to measure the level of the rocket to [110 to 1?] percent. It was so easy for anyone to get lost. They didn't think that something like this would be resolved. Now that gentleman, you had come back in three months and would have told me you really thought it over, and it couldn't be done. Then I would accept your ‘no’ for an answer. But I don't think that what you said here is [inaudible]. So, you go home and do your homework and then we'll talk about it. You find it still impossible. I don't think it is impossible. [00:26:12] DC: What was your term for this? I said wisdom day. [00:26:15] I think we said it. Tag der [Wissenschaft?]. This was more a joke. Tag der [Wissenschaft?]. [00:26:22] DC: Which means? [00:26:24] ES: It means a day of science. [00:26:26] DC: Day of science, I see. [00:26:27] ES: We had all the professors there. We had a very mundane problem all day long and all week long. We wanted to know whether there were people [inaudible] could overcome our problems, let’s say, in the most speedy fashion. [00:26:45] DC: Were these people given the VIP treatment? Shown firings to get them enthused or something? [00:26:47] ES: Oh yes. They were. We were like if you had your Air Force SAB coming in. [00:26:56] DC: So, you were trying to get them enthused about all this. [talking over each other] [00:26:58] ES: [inaudible] We showed them all this. Some got more scared than… [00:27:03] DC: Really scared them when they saw them! [laughing] [00:27:07] ES: Some made good suggestions and some made suggestions that we realized only much later that they were good. We couldn't really at all times properly judge how well visitors understood what we were doing. For instance, the five, I would say, all real outstanding professors – real outstanding people – said it couldn't be done. I didn't accept this. They came back again. They all became my best buds; I can tell you. [00:27:40] DC: Was most of the science day efforts related to guidance control? [00:27:45] ES: No, no. We wanted to know how we could measure temperature, combustion chamber and so on. Instrumentation. We wanted to improve telemetry and so on. [00:27:57] DC: That was always one of the big problems was telemetry, wasn’t it? [00:28:01] ES: We had it already solved but it wasn't good enough. We had a pulse time system and we could not measure two values at the same time because we had only one electrode. We projected the results. We had discriminators. We had, I would say, a delay at the presentation. We saw seven curves. They were all going slowly. But it was all one electrode [beam?] doing self-writing and so on. So, we couldn't make any vibrations. These people wandered off and came back after three months. They had all the fundamental solutions to how I measure velocity on a moving body. Some of these solutions were quite ingenious. [00:29:06] DC: They're still being applied today, I guess. [00:29:08] ES: They're still being applied today. The ones we don't use, the Russians probably use. [suppressed laughter] This is about where it is. Of course, the last 25 years have increased the accuracy of the system by the factor 10 to the 4 to 10 to the 5th. We had put the precision mechanics but I would say none of these systems were optimized in the same way today. We discovered in the last few years all the fundamental control laws which we needed to consider, and how we could optimize them without getting involved in extremely long developments. What could be done short to demonstrate these things? We had only about four years to really demonstrate. The fourth year was there. We had to bring production up of these inertial and fly-by-wire systems to about 1,050 sets a month to supply 900 missiles plus the necessary spare parts. It was all in our responsibility. In my area, I was absolutely responsible for all of it. [00:30:50] DC: R&D, production… [00:30:52] ES: Production yeah, field testing, and so on, everything. [00:30:55] DC: Delivery, logistics– [00:30:56] ES: Really, the data [inaudible] taught me a lot. [00:30:59] DC: I can imagine. [00:31:01] ES: Then I saw that in order to get everything the way we needed it, the theoretical data, which we had the strongest demand for because our work required much more accuracy than any one of the other divisions. I was also charged with doing all the test measurements and ballistic measurements and so on. I asked a colleague of mine, who was an independent division chief, the same level as I was, whether he would not join my organization. I would give him all the support he would need and he would work on our problems. He was very delighted about that. He was not an administrator in the sense that I now had to administer another 50 to 100 people or so that did not make much difference to my organization. [00:32:09] [recording cuts] [00:32:12] DC: Continuation of interview with Dr. Steinhoff concerning his experiences at Peenemünde. [00:32:19] ES: This was the A-7, which was a guided missile, which actually was a test vehicle for the anti-aircraft missile. [00:32:33] DC: [To do what with a –?] [00:32:35] ES: With a pilot, yeah. [00:32:37] DC: With a joystick? [00:32:39] ES: We wanted to get it a lot of flying time and test it and so on. [00:32:44] DC: You were the test pilot? [00:32:46] ES: I was the test pilot and had my crew on it. When we were up ready to release the missile, we got word from below that the [inaudible] were not online yet because they had some problems there. And they were working on it and we should just go to sleep until they were ready. Then I noticed that I wasn't getting enough oxygen. On the other hand, I was not busy or in immediate danger of an accident. So, I did… my crew chief, immediately offered me his mask and I said no. We would, I would say, interrupt the flight, return, abort it if things get critical. So, we continued to fly at 18,000 feet and I stayed at 18,000 feet about 20 minutes with no oxygen. Then we dropped and immediately I dove down. [00:34:04] DC: You were following the vehicle? [00:34:06] ES: We tried to follow it but we couldn't see it. Something must have happened that very probably a parachute or something came loose and it was decelerating. [00:34:16] DC: In one of those tests, didn't the stray frequency interfere with your test? [00:34:22] ES: This was probably another one. Something happened. It was never really cleared up. It was decelerating so much., the [other lights?] were error control, displacement control. So, I followed them and suddenly the thing that we just saw for a short while was out of the field of view and they couldn't recover it. Also, the operator followed the aircraft which was flying over it until he realized he had lost it and so on. So, we didn't get the result and I landed the aircraft. At that time, I really had a severe case of [hypoxia?]. I brought it down and I laid down when I came to flight operations for a while. It took me about three or four days to really recover it again. [00:35:22] DC: This was the first attempt – [00:35:25] ES: The first attempt of a [power-controlled pilot?] – [00:35:29] DC: Remote controlled. [00:35:31] DC: Could you talk a little bit about some of your experiences again on keeping the production going, the A4 parts? I think your pilot experience came in quite handy. [00:35:43] ES: Oh yeah. Now we also, if necessary, went to planes and picked up parts which would have taken too long to get and buy a railroad or a truck or so. We also, whenever we were on the test area which was in southern Russia in the Ukraine area, if something was missing, we couldn't really... [00:36:13] DC: Oh, you had a test area besides Blizna then? [00:36:15] ES: Yeah. [00:36:18] DC: What was that located? [00:36:20] ES: That was in southwestern Russia. [00:36:26] DC: I don't know much about that. Could you talk a little bit about what the purpose and activity… R&D? [00:36:31] ES: We had two test areas. One was along the Baltic Sea coastline, the instrumentation stage. It was very similar now down along Florida coast, along the islands. [00:36:50] DC: There's one in the Ukraine you're saying? [00:36:52] ES: Yeah, that was one in the Ukraine. [00:36:55] ES: That was, let's say, set up about in... must have been in ‘43, late in ‘43, in which we made our troop testing and our production – product testing at the same time. We had some real serious problems. We had missiles breaking up during the entry. [00:37:26] DC: Oh, was this the Blizna test? [00:37:29] ES: Yeah, full on. [00:37:31] DC: Oh, it’s the same. Yeah, okay. [00:37:33] ES: Yeah, it's actually… now I think how you call it, it was... it actually was already to Ukraine, not Poland. [00:37:50] DC: I see. [00:37:51] ES: It had to go through Poland. It was piled into an area which was in southern Poland. But actually, [Landscheid?] was in Russian territory. So, what we found was that some of the vehicles did impact alright with the payload nose cone, so to speak, still attached. And some others came and we found that they had lost parts of their skin. After a while, after looking all the parts, we concluded that those which actually reentered intact actually would have broken up too if they would not have reached the surface. And we found on meteorological measurements that the reason for this was, I would say, a different degree of turbulence which changed the transition from laminar flow, as it comes in height to turbulent flow at different altitudes, and it was a fatigue problem. You had oscillations and this caused, of course, flutter. If you had an angle attack on one side, the flow was actually still attached on one side, but separate on the other. Since the vehicle was oscillating somewhere between 3 and 12 cycles per second, there were enough fatigue cycles on the spot welds to break them loose. So, when the spot welds started breaking loose, then there was no hold anymore. Suddenly a whole section of the skin came off. In the first, I think it was about 10 vehicles in that order of magnitude. We had everything riveted, but the vehicle was too heavy. [00:39:57] DC: Did you ever try to fly in the reentry area to get up high enough to see – [00:40:01] ES: We did that, and we had also Dr. Dornberger and Dr. von Braun in the reentry area, which was about – [00:40:12] DC: On the ground, though? [00:40:13] ES: On the ground, 200 miles further north. They decided that the safest point was right to be at the endpoint. Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you call it, that one came in within 1500 feet, which is still for, I would say, today's ballistic missiles. Nothing too uh... [chuckle] [00:40:46] DC: Did you actually observe any from aircraft as they broke up? [00:40:50] ES: No, I have not done that. You can't really see those unless you are either in the rear or in the front. Of course, they were sitting there with they knew what and what elevation angle it would come in. Sure enough, there was a point beating right to the endpoint. Then just shortly before, because of the increase of the drag, increasing density, it kind of bent over and landed 1500 feet. I still remember that they were looking for a [mound?], they couldn't climb on quickly. [laughs] Then of course it came in with much above Mach 1. The highest speed was about Mach 5, but then it slowed down coming in. The nose cone alone would have come in slower, but the whole project still had quite a ballistic coefficient. As impacts, the ones which had no explosives in the warhead had much more terrific impacts than those with warheads. The reason for that is that the explosion blew most of the missile off and destroyed it. [00:42:24] DC: It took away the kinetic energy. [00:42:27] ES: It took the kinetic energy and so to speak increased the density tremendously. While the one without an explosion just bored in. Then the power plant in the rear, going at still in the order of Mach 2 and a half or Mach 3, impacted, compressed the tanks. [00:42:58] DC: It's like a shaped charge coming in. [00:43:00] ES: It compressed the tanks and then the tanks blew up. But at the time when the projectile still had penetrated somewhere between 15 and 30 feet. That means all that compressed air flew large amounts of dirt around and so on. The craters with which the warhead hit were only about 10 feet deep and maybe 15 feet in diameter. We had craters here 30 feet deep up to about 50-60 feet in diameter. But then they dropped [hell?] in again and filled it partly up like we see in the lunar craters today. Then of course after it was all through, we still had the crater somewhere between 20 and 25 feet deep. [00:43:55] DC: Was there any consideration to dropping the warhead and just letting the things go without it? [00:44:00] ES: Yes, it was so really when they broke up, they had already so much speed, it wouldn't really change the course of the warhead in any way. The warhead kind of oscillated and wobbled along. Probably they came a little bit more short, maybe another 1000 feet or something like that. But this was about, all wind was much more critical. Displace of warhead was more than I would say just a breaking up. And then there's another thing that at the reentry they start to spin. And then of course if the spin rate is relatively high, then there's no oscillation anymore. Then they came right, so to speak, they even didn't bend over. They were spinning enough and they just went straight in. So, there was no more dispersion. We had few which had zero or very small spin rates, but most of them had. These were just caused by manufacturing instabilities, differences and so on. And those which actually spun, they impacted much less dispersion than the others. They were really going on maybe 50-60 revolutions per minute or so, 1.8 per second… actually over 100. [00:45:32] DC: Well towards the end of the war, when you started moving south and so forth, you still tried to keep production going at all these different universities and production points. Could you talk a little bit about some of the experiences there? I guess it was quite difficult. [00:45:51] We relocated quite a number of production sites. The amazing thing was that actually... [00:45:57] DC: Were you the coordinator for all these things? [00:45:59] ES: For all the electrical things, I was. [00:46:01] DC: What was your system to keep up with all these things? [00:46:04] ES: I had the responsibility that technically the production was going. And then we had people of ours who were attached to the plan. [00:46:16] DC: Right, liaison man. [00:46:18] ES: Yeah, it was one of my men in charge who then did all the coordinating for the plan. So, the plan told all people how many they had to bring in so to speak to have enough. [00:46:33] DC: You had your feedback right there from each other. [00:46:35] ES: Yeah, right there. Oh, I still have in my stored records at Holloman. I would say quite a bit of our test results. We had one man who later got to the Russians, who maintained all the statistics on it. This was quite interesting. We kept the statistics of each individual plant. We had no [power to?] build in only one plant. Because an air raid could destroy the production right there. So, we built, I would say, in the order of about 300 to 450 pieces each. Of each individual part we needed on three different plants. [00:47:18] DC: You went redundant then so you always had a choice of supply. [00:47:22] ES: And then we also in the quality control checked which one was the best. Which had the least amount of rejects. And we checked then whether the quality tests were really proper. We did not buy 40 tests to produce more useful parts than was really justified. So, we found that where good quality control was and where the production numbers were dependable and so on. [00:48:04] DC: I read there was one plant in Denmark making precision parts. Did you have even plants – [00:48:10] ES: Yeah, we had – [ 00:48:13] DC: – from other countries too? These were all over the map. And you had to personally visit these, occasionally? [00:48:20] ES: Mostly I went around with von Braun, one of the general officers. And then of course I was with members of my staff. We had two bailed aircraft all the time available. [00:48:37] DC: And even in field operations when the troops had a problem you still had to go oversee? So, you were moving around a heck of a lot. [00:48:45] ES: Much more than I do today. People think I'm traveling a lot, but uh… [00:48:49] DC: Back then that was [very?] moving. [00:48:51] ES: I had a big operation going. In 1944, I had in my directorate 550 engineers with masters [inaudible], doctors, and scientists. Out of 1144, there were more than 1000 actual engineers and technical personnel. And I was a high-grade technician. And actually, that was less than 100 good people. And then the other was clerical and administrative staff. We had actually, if you look at today, we had various, I would say, administrative staff. But we were all highly motivated and worked hard and so on. We relocated the whole organization and the secretaries, everything stayed with us. When we evacuated before the Russians came, we could not take our secretaries with us and so on. They still partly followed us or even warned us that the Russians were about to kidnap us and so on. So, this was quite some experience. Then again, we had to leave our families and everything in an area which was supposed to be occupied by the Russians. All our technical people went to South Bavaria. And when the war was over, we learned about that the Russians were coming to occupy that particular area. So, we asked the Americans to not forget our families and so we were promised this would be done. So, Dr. Schilling and I, we were in charge to relocate all the families. So, I had to relocate all of Peenemünde. And then I had to relocate the families. And Dr. Schilling and I, we were on the first large shipment of the Paperclip people here to the United States. So, we kept our people together. [00:51:24] DC: Who was the first American you recall having contact with and where were you then? [00:51:28] ES: Oh, let's see. [00:51:31] DC: Were you there with Magnus von Braun when he bicycled down to meet the Americans? [00:51:38] ES: We were actually in a place in Bavaria. And we had some real problems here. The German troops were retreating and released all the prisoners of war. And we had a number of prisoners of war who apparently went after the train. We had our instruments and everything in our lab equipment. So, what we did is we, in spite of the fact that this area was not occupied yet, we went to a place which was occupied by the Americans and told them that we had a train there with irreplaceable equipment. We were asking for guards. So, they sent guards there, occupied that area with the guards. [00:52:34] DC: I see. Did you recall a Major Staver? [00:52:40] ES: Oh yes, I know him very well. [00:52:42] DC: Could you tell a little bit about what his role was in this whole thing? I think he was involved before even Hamill and Toftoy got involved. [00:52:51] ES: Yes, he was with a certain intelligence team. I think probably you might be interested to talk to him. [00:53:02] DC: Yes, I plan to in California. [00:53:03] ES: I know where he is living and so on. Los Altos. I met him when we came up to [inaudible]. When Dr. Schilling and I came up to evacuate the families, we met him. We left a group of people there to stay with the family. These were mainly administrators. We had nothing to do with the technical part of it except one of my people, who was actually the head of our quality control and one of our experimental stations. We left him there to have someone of our technical people there. When we came there, this was just on the birthday of my wife, and I came home and saw her again. She didn't think that we were [anywhere probably?], because the radios reported that this area where the German scientists had retrieved from Peenemünde had been bombed and all the leading people had been killed. [00:54:21] DC: Who announced that? The German radio? [00:54:23] ES: It was in the radio. I don't know whether it was German radio, but this was what came through the radio. It was really dangerous that this could have happened, but we were so much experienced in what precautions we had to do during the war. We convinced immediately the military organization that we should not actually have all our people in one location. They wanted us to go into one of these big mines and work underground. There was one big mine which actually Messerschmitt had part of its fighter production. [00:55:10] DC: Really? Do you know where that is… [00:55:11] The other one was near, let's say, what's the name again? Kloster Ettal. E-T-T-A-L, Kloster Monastery. K-L-O-S-T-E-R. I convinced them that this was the biggest nonsense that people do here, make here, because any aircraft company, even any aircraft production is currently [inaudible]. Even if they just can't get into the mountains, there are some big mountains in the Alps, but just if they destroy the gates going in, they will destroy the villages around, because the people are living there. This is nonsense. What I did, I arranged that all our people will [disperse?], some 500 people over about 50 different villages. [00:56:20] DC: Dispersed. [00:56:21] ES: Yeah, really dispersed. This way we didn't lose anyone. We had only one case where two people were injured during a fighter attack, and the reason for it was the two people had left two briefcases with important valuables, like gross certificates and all kinds of things, bank account statements and so on. They ran back to the train because the train was under fire, and so they were afraid that if the train would burn up, they would lose their most important documents. One was shot in the foot, the other in the leg, and so it was the only injuries we had. It was absolutely unnecessary. They were lying in a trench, and if you fly you know it's extremely difficult to see someone unless you move. You see a moving target, but if someone is leaning against the tree, you can't notice him because you move so fast. [00:57:51] DC: You're moving. [00:57:52] ES: Yeah, and you also scan the whole area because there may be someone shooting at you. So, you can see a moving train, you can even see a standing train. In many cases, I would say, on a standing train, if it was not smoking, the pilot would assume that the engine had already been shot up and he didn't need to go after it anymore. [00:58:21] DC: Speaking of air power, of course, the Allies had Germany pretty well pinned down from the air. When was your last flights? Did you ever run into any fighter planes moving around? [00:58:36] ES: Oh, I flew a JU-52. We said I landed on the day when the big attack was against Schweinfurt, against the ball bearings. I landed at the airport of [?]. There were about four or five fighter planes refueling and going after the American bombers again. [00:59:09] DC: You were flying around at the same time? [00:59:12] ES: I was called to immediately land on the cause of the air battle going on. I decided this was the wrong thing to do. I would go to where the fighters were. So, I flew right over the treetops to avoid that the fighter would come underneath me. So, I flew and landed there and then took off again. I did most of the time, I just did head-dropping and so on and listened to what was going on the radio. [00:59:51] DC: You never got attacked while you were flying? [00:59:54] ES: No. I got bombed in a hotel several times, and things like that. And my house. We lost our house, we were living in Peenemünde. [01:00:06] DC: What finally became of your plane that you were using? You left it at Peenemünde when you finally went south? [01:00:12] ES: We turned it over to the German air force when we evacuated. They flew the planes away to locations where they were needed. [01:00:29] DC: I guess gasoline was getting to be a critical problem. [01:00:33] ES: Yes, in some place there was gasoline stored, which couldn't be taken unless a special order was. Much of this gas actually was lost. There was one interesting area. We had to go to the area where we had the people, I would say these [girls?], we could not get a single [inaudible] to stay without the people having 180 days food with them. Because they had to have food to harvest to be taken up by this community. So, we got some order to get food out of depots. Most of these depots were already evacuated. The enemy forces had not arrived yet but our forces had already retreated. [1:01:38] DC: They were vacant? [1:01:40] ES: We had trucks there and we loaded them up during the night and brought them to the various villages where the people were to satisfy the mayors of the cities and villages that we had food for the people. This was a real problem. We had some young people. You probably met one of them, Lindner, who was at Huntsville. He died a number of years ago. [01:02:08] DC: I think I missed knowing him. [01:02:10] ES: He was in charge of the [inaudible] from [Cape?]. These two and another number of young first and second lieutenants with their drivers, overnight they got all these trucks loaded and came back home again. The next night they went out again. [01:02:32] DC: Midnight requisitions. [01:02:35] ES: This is a way that we could really, I would say, win over the situation. [1:02:46] [recording muffles and cuts] [01:02:51] ES: – at that time. We had asked for skyscreens to be, but there was never money really to provide skyscreens. [01:02:59 DC:] We're talking about White Sands, right? [01:03:01] ES: White Sands, yeah. [01:03:05] We had several cases where we had runaway missiles and so on. There was one. We had a lot of spectators all around the block houses and so on because there were only a limited number of people in the block houses. One just took off and headed for the block house. My policy in these cases was I was not cutting off as long as the engine was running and there was no immediate danger. One impacted, I would say, in sufficient distance from the block house and there were no people in the immediate area. [1:03:50] [recording cuts] [01:03:52] DC: Continuation of interview with Dr. Steinhoff and some of his experiences at Fort Bliss. So, you arrived with the first group? [01:04:01] ES: I was with... No, I did not arrive with the first group at Fort Bliss. I was supposed to go first together with von Braun to the United States, five or six of us, to prepare things and send... [01:04:17] DC: Documentation and so forth. [01:04:19] ES: Yeah, I think Mr. Rees was there and Dr. Schwidetzky was there, I think. And so, this group was split up. Then Dr. von Braun and Mr. Rees came to Fort Bliss and then Mr. Neubert and others came to... [01:04:36] DC: William Schulze, I guess. [01:04:38] ES: Schulze, we came to Aberdeen Proving Grounds. So, we stayed from our arrival date, about 15th of November to Christmas at Fort Strong in Massachusetts, and then about five of us were brought to Aberdeen, Maryland to sort captured documents. [01:04:58] DC: Oh, you were involved in that. [01:04:59] ES: Yeah, and secondly... [01:05:01] DC: Poppel was there. [01:05:02] ES: Then Walter Riedel and I, it was Riedel III, we were asked to give lectures, so to speak, to the first U.S. Guided Missile School. [01:05:17] DC: Oh, really? [01:05:18] ES: We started out there. So, we... [01:05:20] DC: At Aberdeen. [01:05:21] At Aberdeen. We gave lectures there, which were put in report form and were for first, I would say, teaching material and textbooks used in Fort Bliss. Of course, again, people put a lot of effort in as time went on and we got some very, very good textbooks. But the first ones, we just wrote down from our memory and we could write them mathematically quickly and presented them at debates with Dr. Kent at Aberdeen, Maryland, and how we did this and how we did that and so on. It was a very enjoyable time. We had one of the officers who was a captain who gave us, I would say, American colloquial lessons and so on, because we had all, I would say, either had seven or nine years of English in school, but we didn't have, I would say, so we did the routine which comes from using it or we could read it and so on. There's one thing which helped us quite a bit was reading the Readers' Digest. This was, I think, presented in a way, everything, and edited in a way that we had no problems to read or understand it. But every now and then we got newspapers and particularly the southern part of the country which generally contains more French, a lot of French roots, like the difference between storm and tempest. The French word is tempest, French is tempête, and English is – the German is storm or Sturm. So, these types of things were newspapers, we'd say, coming from Louisiana and New Orleans, we hardly could read, yeah? That's why we could read the New York Times and so newspapers had no problems. Of course, the longer you are here, you get also acquainted with the other words more and more so it doesn't make any difference, but in the beginning, it was a problem. And then we had difficulty to follow [this?] [inaudible] told us something, we understood the English, but then we had to think, what did he say, what did he mean? In the meantime, the individual started talking on and then we didn't get the next sentence or so. But these things, after a quarter of a year, are mostly overcome, so we had no more problems. So, in March, and I arrived in Fort Bliss on the 21st of March, and we rode in the train from Aberdeen, Maryland to Chicago. And then we went on another train from Chicago to Kansas City, and then I saw the first time Kansas City – Kansas into Oklahoma – [01:08:30] DC: Wide and flat? [01:08:31] ES: – the flat areas and so on. We rode the train all day long, and we saw a few houses on the way [inaudible]. [01:08:41] DC: You wondered where you were going, I guess. [01:08:45] ES: Then we came to Dallas, Texas from Oklahoma. And then on the train from Texas to – no, it was, it was another trip later. It was from Kansas to Oklahoma City and then also the Panhandle down to Alamogordo. The Alamogordo was the first place I saw the first green trees on the 21st of March. You could see really on the day the springs break out. Then we came of course to Fort Bliss, and we were in a former station hospital annex. And the whole area was fenced in, and we were told the fence was not for us but to keep people who were undesired out. The army was very much afraid if the population would find out that we were Germans up there that they would lynch us after the war. But we haven't really found any hostility or so. [01:10:04] DC: That was all just conjecture. [01:10:06] ES: So, we needed a few things which we couldn't get in the PX. So, there was a lot of times we had the group divided. We had about 120 people in groups of five, just in six days. [inaudible] About, let’s say, four groups of people every day other way, [inaudible]. So, there was no concentration and the guards were told or the accompanying GIs they should never lose one of us. So, whenever we were somewhere they told us, “Okay, stick together,” [inaudible]. – the GI then said “Okay, now go in here buy whatever you want and be down here again in, let's say, half an hour and now I'll meet you here again.” Oh, he probably had a date there somewhere. So, we did our shopping and some of us got out to a restaurant and had a beer or something. Then most of the time people said, “Okay, why don't you buy us lunch here in the [path of the north?] hotel and then you go and do your shopping and then you meet at five o'clock here again and so on. So, the people in [our path?] they saw all the time these, I would say, barely English-speaking strangers there accompanied by one GI. [01:11:51] DC: They didn't know what was going on. [laughing] [01:11:54] ES: So, we went and bought all kinds of things also for our wives because they couldn't get anything in Europe or [inaudible]. So, we said and actually we were on a Per Diem our salary was paid in Germany to our families. We had a Per Diem, so half of our Per Diem we spent on packages we sent home. So, it was from this then we were called to White Sands when the first V2s came in. [01:12:28] DC: Were you involved in getting those set up for launch? [01:12:31] ES: Yeah, yeah. [01:12:32] DC: What kind of shape were they in? [01:12:34] ES: Some were really beaten up they were put on a truck and then brought from Nordhausen to Le Havre in France. These people who drove and never had driven a missile and so on. I think we could of out a hundred of them – I think we could out of the hundred we disassembled and repaired and we could get about 40. And the rest was, I would say, damaged beyond repair. We even ordered in Germany from the plant for duty and [inaudible]. [01:13:13] DC: So, you went back to some of the old – [inaudible] [01:13:17] ES: The American occupation forces arranged all this. [01:13:21] DC: Did you go back yourself to coordinate any of this? [01:13:23] ES: No, I was not. There were a few others going. [01:13:25] DC: Who did go back on that? [01:13:29] ES: I think Rees was one. [01:13:31] DC: Rees? [01:13:33] ES: Rees knows much better who was with him. There were actually people at our assembly plant, foremen and so on. One got all these professors who needed to get the oxygen plants going and so on. So, this all worked out really well. [01:13:53] DC: So, you were physically at White Sands at that same group? [01:13:57] ES: We had normally lived at Fort Bliss but there were some barracks where we could sleep in. We had our rooms there so we could come anytime. Of course, I got the charge for the range safety and we had one case where a missile was heading right towards where we had our observation post for the range safety. They had given a Navy man – an enlisted man, sailor – who was supposed to push a button. He had to push a button only at my direction. When this missile came, he said, “Shall I push?” I said, “Keep your hands off.” “Shall I push?” And so on. We had the VIP standing around and the thing was really looking like it was heading right for, I would say some of it 100-150 feet. I knew it was spinning wildly and that keeps it in the same direction because whatever the control system does it's neutralized and that one spins right, it doesn't get concerned at all. So, when I looked around there was only that sailor standing there who wanted to push a button and I said, “For heaven's sake keep your hands off.” And it impacted on the end of the airfield. Didn't do any damage and so on but then all my people who were with me on the stand they came back again there was one, I think it was a Navy commander, he said, you know I've never seen such a cold-blooded [inaudible]. I knew what was going to happen if it would fall down and if it would blow, we couldn't get away fast enough anyway. [01:15:58] DC: Hang in there! [01:16:02] ES: So, I think it was a good thing that the man I could tell him don't push it and so on. This is the same was when this was going to Fort Bliss. There the control system did fail maybe after it was flying for maybe 15 to 20 seconds. It was already through sonic speed and we had tilted the trajectory such that it hit, I would say the flight path angle had burned out of about 5 degrees which brought it about 40 miles far and was impacting again the at White Sands range I would say in the near field. These things looked like they go really straight up and there is no point which is the azimuth here. So, if you have stood there for a while, you really don't know if it's really in the scene so then I suddenly felt it was moving really towards the other direction up here towards here [inaudible]. Then I decided if you can see this already it's moving that way it's really building up speed. So, my conclusion was you can let that thing burn out and nothing can really happen anymore. It produces a big hole but it does not I would say put the whole city blocks on fire. [01:17:40] DC: You wanted to get rid of the propellants. [01:17:42] ES: I figured out by the time I really evaluated the trajectory. At the time when I really thought I was going to have seen it, yeah, and I would have pushed the button the nearest point that the missile would have fallen [inaudible] with all these wooden barracks and so on. You would have seen a fireworks there you couldn't really – [01:18:08] DC: You made the right… [01:18:12] ES: Then if I would have pushed it a little bit later it would have been it was still going very steep. So, the impact point was moving at probably some maybe during the burning period maybe five miles a second, south. [01:18:36] DC: You were doing some quick calculating. [01:18:38] ES: So, I decided I’ll let it burn out. And of course, I realized that it would just possibly go into Mexico. I hoped if it ever gets into Fort Bliss there is no – no more fuel in there. I could not have saved the house but I could have saved the city block that way and it just went over Juarez. And Juarez it is half wood and I would say that would have burned like timber [01:19:17] DC: It actually went beyond Juarez. [01:19:21] ES: Beyond Juarez and impacted on the corner of the cemetery. And we got into cars and so on and got down and by the time everyone was notified an American… people from Fort Bliss got there what did they find? The Mexicans were all collecting pieces of tin around, skin and so on and had a hamburger stand there and were selling, I would say, souvenirs and hamburgers there. [chuckling] I said one day to some reporter you know that was the first commercial use of space. [Laughter] I think they sold – the whole empty weight of the vehicle was about 4 tons – 10,000 pounds. But I think they sold maybe 10 to 15 tons of relics of it. [01:20:23] DC: Did you bring the engine back across the border? [01:20:27] ES: No, the engine was impacted… it was only small pieces. [01:20:31] DC: So, you didn't bring anything back? Just let ‘em have it? [01:20:33] ES: No, no, they sold everything. Everything that was metal was sold as pieces of it. [01:20:41] DC: I wonder if any of that still exists. I guess someone must have… [01:20:45] ES: Probably the engine is still in the hole and you can't see it because it really has penetrated and goes right in the dirt [hole?] later on it, unless you dig it out. And it will be completely flat the whole engine compressed to about 4 inches thickness [01:21:08] DC: The rocket that landed in Sweden still had a pretty good chunk of engine didn't it? [01:21:14] ES: Yes, but that was where the warhead came off and it fell down by itself and the missile came in a flat spin and it comes down like a parachute so large parts are undamaged, really slightly damaged. [01:21:30] DC: What was your reaction to that particular flight? [01:21:34] ES: Oh, this was quite interesting too I noticed right away, this was actually a V2 missile but with a Wasserfall control, a prototype control in it. And we in order to test it we had worked out a program and we told the man who had the stick control to memorize it so we had to go we computed this all so and so many seconds to the right and so and so many seconds to the left. We had all figured out that, so to speak, it would then fall down again in the line of fire after maneuvering. And this man was so excited that he applied all the corrections the wrong way. This way it did not come there, and there is earth rotation involved it is displaced by so and so much by earth rotation it goes the other way it is heading the other way and so on. So, I told the man, “You know what you did! You just did all the signs with all the commands with the wrong sign!” There is some real, let's say, suspect first that the man probably did this with intention, but I noticed he was so excited that it couldn’t have been done. So, I said, “Okay it can’t have fallen into Sweden.” We set our target so close to the Swedish coast because we could then determine the impact against landmarks and so on. [inaudible] We said now it has gone too far we could also not aim it, let's say, the normal rocket in any, I would say… anyway but we had to go let's say with certain points on our launching table. And we did not actually on that day change the azimuth. We only rotated it by 90 degrees to go over in that direction instead of falling along the Baltic seashore because it would have strayed the changes that fell on land with this, let's say, test was much larger than do it the other way and just fire past these islands here. And so we decided to do that and so I told my people you make an immediate evaluation of all the data it fell and let me know so I said I can report if something happened here. So, when I got the data people said it looks like it has fallen into that canal between Karlskrona and these islands just in between there was about 10 mile wide… [01:24:52] DC: Hoped you hit the water? [01:24:52] ES: No, we hoped… the water was the main… our uncertainty is about 6-7 miles so it can’t have fallen on land, it hit right on the coastline just about 2 or 3 miles inside [01:25:12] DC: Did you immediately know from Sweden that this had happened? [01:25:16] ES: – there was immediate feedback to the German let's say foreign ministry they called immediately and I was… while I had asked my people to check [more accurate?]. Because I felt I could not really get anyone excited and we had not really hit something and if we wouldn’t get anyone excited no one would have noticed and no one would ever know about it. We, of course, would tell our bosses and tell them where it is we would have submarines and divers going there to try to get it. But for heaven's sake, don't say anything. So, I was flying in one of these [ – we stole?] aircrafts. We had these [inaudible] over to that little island which we had to go over to that little island which we had also some pilots there and when I was there the commanding general said, “Steinhoff, did you fire into Sweden?” I said, “Sir it might have been. I had all the analysis done and it looked like that the impact was in that water area but of course the uncertainty is so much if we don't get more data, it's there and there.” He said immediately, “No it can't really be,” then he went back to the telephone and said “Yes, we had had that case. It is possible that it has come down.” In the meantime they had learned that it had actually landed near Karlskrona. [01:26:57] DC: Someone heard the impact, I guess [01:27:00] ES: They probably had the case when it broke up it's quite a sonic boom. Then of course the impact more, you get like an earthquake you can't say the sonic boom, if it's near it's so sharp, I really don't know what happened. [01:27:22] DC: Were you aware that the Swedes turned the parts over to the British? [01:27:28] ES: Yes, we were aware of that. [01:27:30] DC: Did you try to make any attempt to get them yourself? Before the – [01:27:36] ES: I know it's actually they brought them past Bornholm. [01:27:48] DC: Was there some plan to maybe try and grab them or recover them? [01:27:52] ES: No, actually there's a problem with this there was a 50% chance that the vehicle impacted as a whole and then you couldn't say anything of the parts then if it broke apart. Then there were several parts that couldn’t be flown or anything we didn't think we should interfere with Sweden's neutrality in a sense. [01:28:22] DC: Of course, that was a key link for the British bombing of Peenemünde later, I guess. [01:28:29] ES: We counted after this was known, if the British got any word of it, we really were expecting it. [01:28:47] [recording distorts] [01:28:52] ES: – of course we knew for the actual vehicle Wiesman was in charge of the documentation and people working for him [01:29:00] DC: Walt Wiesman? He just retired [01:29:04] ES: Oh, he's much too young to retire [01:29:06] DC: Only 50 years? [01:29:08] [inaudible] should not retire. But I want to finish a number of books, if I don't – [01:29:15] [recording cuts and distorts] [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_000025_A Title A name given to the resource Steihoff, Ernst Description An account of the resource V-2 development in war time Germany, German aviation in 1930-1940s, Operation Paperclip after WWII, and adjustment to life in America as German immigrant. White Sands V-2 launches. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-19 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/0147c7bbd908216522886b86a83b19da.pdf 86ffcea82f7a6b395d7793b2e6a1834f 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_000025_T Title A name given to the resource Steihoff, Ernst (Transcript) Description An account of the resource V-2 development in war time Germany. Participation in British Operation Backfire and American Operation Paperclip after WW II. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-19 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/d953f7b1f7716f2ed2046beb0baa779e.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/0d040045c33de88955df07c14f3a498e.mp4 21ebc05be88f85e316d1e7ff6b03c047 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:38 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 1 [00:00:07] Roger Bilstein: Let me begin…I'd like to verify a couple stories before we start. One of them is the story that Conroy was getting a little bit low on money and didn't have a NASA contract yet. He shored the inside of the pregnant guppy up with wooden timbers and flew it out here to Huntsville and landed out here at the Redstone Arsenal airstrip, and Von Braun got in and flew around with it. [00:00:35] Donald Stewart: I thought I might have some pictures of that. Well, it all goes back quite a bit further than that. There was a guy by the name of Lee Mansdorf that had bought all of Pan Am and I believe TWA's C-97 Stratocruisers. C-97 is the military designation of them, and Stratocruisers is the commercial designation. He stored all these in the Mojave Desert because he didn't have any real big problems with corrosion. He had a young guy that was working for him or with him or a friend who also worked with Hughes. I don't remember his name. But Jack Conroy came in and wanted to start a commercial airline with his Stratocruisers. So this young guy—this is in 1960—this young guy just off the top of his head says, “Well, a way to start something to get to the commercial airline end of it would be make a missile carrying stage out of these Stratocruisers. [00:02:13] RB: This is not Mansdorf, this is the other guy you’re thinking of... [00:02:16] Bill….I’ll think of his name…I want to say [Schuman?], but I don’t believe that’s right. Then Conroy thought about it and still hot to make this commercial airline, non-scheduled commercial airline arrangement. This kid, there was a guy name of Walters—a retired Boeing employee who worked with Mansdorf—that took this idea and said, “That’s a pretty good damned idea,” and made up some sketches and drawings, and I think I have most of those here…He and Mansdorf came to Marshall to talk with Marshall because we were responsible for all the stages. [00:03:20] RB: What year was this? Do you remember? [00:03:22] DS: 1960. [00:03:25] RB: That was really early on then that they were doing that. [00:03:28] DS: I said there's some history on this. A lot of people don't really know, and if you want to tell the whole story, you have to get this in. I was working at Boeing in 1960, and it was interesting—this is beside the point—interesting coming back [to the South?]—I had talked to some people, put in some applications. My application got to Chrysler here. At that time, I came down to interview Julian Hamilton who was in charge of transportation before the Cape split out and became a center of its own. Julian was working with the special transportation group who developed the transportation scheme for the land, sea and air and all this. He needed an aeronautical engineer that knew something about airplanes, so he offered me a job as a [cycling?] man to work for Chrysler and work for Jim. This was in November of 1961. [00:04:41] DS: So about December 13th or 14th of ‘61, I was sent out to Los Angeles and UCLA’s very rudimentary open wind tunnel to observe wind tunnel tests of Pregnant Guppy. These people had a model that I think they had built in Japan that mounted in the tunnel. Really, they didn't know how to run a tunnel test. Instead of observing, I wound up being responsible for running it. We ran—when we had a lunch break that day, they actually showed me what they were going to do—we went out and got about five dollars worth of modeling clay and a roll of thread, so we could make a configuration so it looked like its aerodynamic state. After we got it pretty much concocted so we had fairly good flow with all the controllable air surfaces, we ran the test, and everything looked real good for a tough study, just a preliminary study. I left then and said, “Well, you guys, what you need to do now is go into a surface flow, use chalk or whatever you want to, to get some surface flow so you can tell what kind of surface flow you got and how efficient your laminar flow streams are for your surfaces. They said, “Yeah, we'll do this.” [00:06:54] DS: Conroy had donated I think $200 or $300 to UCLA's aeronautical department, so that we could get the wind tunnel study run while the school was out. In that time Jack Conroy, Mike [Healy?], and Ben [Aziz?] and Kaplan—he was a structural engineer, design engineer—they said, “fine.” I left and came back to Huntsville and made my report. I guess I had [trip reports?]. The next thing I knew, they were calling in after Christmas holiday saying, “Come see what we've done.” Well, they had started the structural modification in January, and the Super Guppy was taking shape. [00:08:03] RB: The Pregnant Guppy? [00:08:05] DS: I mean the Pregnant Guppy was taking shape. Here's a picture of the way it looked around February or March. [00:08:21] RB: This is the original cabin [inaudible] [00:08:25] DS: What happened is they cut at this point here [inaudible] and here’s the original frames. When they brought it in, Conroy liked it so much, he said he was running out of money. He had begged, borrowed, stealed [sic], stoled [sic], done everything he could, just running out of money, so what he needed now is hopes of getting the contract for this thing. He ran—on the original body, on top of the original fuselage—he ran wood and steel frames or aluminum frames to stabilize this thing, so he got an experimental FAA clearance to fly the Pregnant Guppy into Huntsville. [00:09:27] RB: This was when, early ‘62 when he was doing this? [00:09:31] DS: This was...I would say in mid-’62. On the way in, it was a real fiasco headed into Huntsville, he had to fly a certain FAA designated route over an unpopulated area. This was sometime I guess June or July of ‘62. They came through Tulsa. They were so low on money, one of their friends knew a friend that was with [Phillip Oil?] called him, made some personal contacts, filled the airplane up with gas and left. Oklahoma people were hot after him to get their money back for gasoline because he didn't buy it. He didn't give them a credit card or nothing. So he then arrived in Huntsville. I met him at the airport. [00:11:28] RB: This is out here at the Redstone field? [00:11:29] DS: Redstone Airport. This was sometime September…say…sometime around October 1st. Last week of September, first week of October. [00:11:50] RB: How long was he down in Tulsa? A couple of months then? [00:11:50] DS: No, he was just in Tulsa...just over night. [00:11:57] RB: Oh, okay. This is when he flew out. He flew out then in the fall of 1962, okay. [00:12:06] DS: The next Saturday after arriving—he spent some time here during that week—I guess it was the next Saturday, Friday or Saturday, that Dr. Von Braun came back into town. He decided to do a demonstration unbeknowning [sic] to the Marshall NASA people. He had only a very limited amount of gas. He performed his demonstration in front of Kroeger, Kramer, Dr. Von Braun, Rees, Karl Heimberg, Julian Hamilton, and myself. The crew at that time was…Jack Conroy… [00:13:17] RB: He was a certified four engines? [00:13:20] DS: He was a pilot. Co-pilot was…[inaudible] the flight engineer was [D’agostino?]; the mechanic with him was Bill Cuff; and...I can’t think of [inaudible] I might have some cards in here… [00:14:25] RB: Was Goodrum out there that day? [00:14:26] DS: No. [00:14:29] RB: [laughs] In talking to him, I got the impression he was. [00:14:33] DS: Well, the story's been told a number of times. [00:14:39] RB: Were any of the people out there that day very skeptical about it going off? Marshall people? [00:14:43] DS: Oh, yeah, Marshall...I forget the co-pilot's name, but anyway...There’s one other member that was stuck [inaudible] gas in Oklahoma. There was a boy, there was seven man crew. Jack Podesky was the co-pilot. They were very skeptical—Dr. Von Braun, Dr. Rees—were all very skeptical of the airplane, so Conroy told them, "Well, I'll give you a demonstration.” Well, he took the airplane up, flew it around, came back and landed, and then he took Julian Hamilton and Hermann Kroeger aboard the airplane for the next ride. [00:15:42] DS: One way to demonstrate the capabilities of the airplane was if you could put— since the volume of the body was so great—one of his tricks to really demonstrate the people the controllability and stability of the airplane was to cut the number one and two engines on the port side and fly by in a straight line. He was out and Julian Hamilton was in the plane with Mr. Kroeger, so Julian Hamilton said, “Well, I'm going to show you, Mr. Kroeger, how stable this airplane is,” because Mr. Kroeger was an old test pilot from Germany, World War II. He chopped number one and number two engine. Hamilton was standing right behind Kroeger, so Conroy told Kroeger, “See, number one and number two is out.” It was still a straight flight. He showed Mr. Kroeger that he only took a thumb and a toe to hold the thing on a straight flight, which is contrary to most two engine airplanes as well as Boeing’s. Mr. Kroeger kind of wants to see the engines out there. Mr. Kroeger looked out and says, “Good God.” Then at that time, they were flying across the field according to Hamilton's account of the story. [00:17:31] DS: Dr. Von Braun's comment was, “That reminds me of the story of the bee that doesn't fly.” [Roger Bilstein laughs] Then his next comment was, “Aww, it should do that because the airplane is nothing but a [fly and rudder?]”. Conroy came in and landed, so this really stimulated Dr. Von Braun's interest in the airplane then. When Kroeger got off the airplane, he was so excited he reverted back to his native tongue. The only thing you could understand from his conversation was “The thumb and the toe,” “The thumb and the toe.” Dr. Von Braun shook his head and got in the airplane and took off, so then he flew around. [00:18:32] DS: Then Conroy landed and tied the airplane down and went out to get something to eat later that evening. He got together at Conroy’s motel and talked to him, possibility of NASA contracting Boeing. The next day Conroy was talking to Mr. Heimberg, and Conroy had told me and Julian Hamilton that he needed some gas, and we mentioned it to Mr. Heimberg. Heimberg asked him, says, “I understand you need gas.” Conroy said, “Yes, I could use a little bit.” He told myself to take care of it, so I talked to Ken Hill. Ken Hill had the commercial airport send a truck out. Conroy filled the airplane up—24,000 gallons. The last time GAO was here that I remember was still trying to explain how we used 24,000 gallons of aviation fuel in the test stands [Roger Bilstein laughs]. There never was a contract about… [00:20:06] DS: Brainerd Holmes, Dr. Siemens—Bob Siemens is now Secretary of the Air Force. All NASA headquarters was totally against air transportation. They figured out business was missiles and space exploration. Jack Conroy kept telling everybody, Dr. Von Braun and everybody concerned, “The second word in the N-A-S-A is National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and aeronautics comes before space.” So Holmes or Siemens—I believe Siemens—finally wrote a letter—that I've got a copy of—said if Conroy ever developed this airplane and got FAA certification, Holmes or Siemens…the biggest fallacy there was the fact that he didn’t spell out what kind of certification—it said certification so it could safely operate—that he would, that NASA would consider the use of the airplane. [00:21:38] DS: Conroy's idea then was, “Oh you know tell you what,” to develop the airplane and to get a “Part 8” certificate, which was a special certificate that crop dusters and general junk airplanes have. The certificate says that you cannot carry any cargo for hire. We went through quite a battle of six or eight months—maybe three or four months—of working all this out, fighting with Conroy. I was the project engineer on the thing, and I was fighting with Conroy and his people constantly to keep them from cutting corners and making sure that FAA considered the price of twenty-four or twenty-five million dollars, whatever the S-IV lease cost was, was the main consideration in their safety, [because?] we considered to be more valuable than men at this time. One thing that put the push on the Guppy was the fact that the S-IV test stand [blew?], and we had some problems which put the S-IV behind schedule for the Saturn I program. This added a lot of impetus to developing this special carrier. It would take eighteen hours to fly the stage to the Cape instead of eighteen days around through the canal—or twenty-one days. [00:23:28] RB: A couple stages could save you a month. [00:23:30] DS: We never could get the people at headquarters or KSC or any place to agree on what it costs one day of delay at the Cape. But once they started having S-IV problems, they never would say how much it cost but they sure got behind this at headquarters then. They went to FAA and requested that they allow an [inaudible] for this “Part 8” certification to allow Conroy to fly for hire because of national interest, and Conroy was allowed to charge us. I've got a copy here that you can use for his first proposal. In November, he made his first proposal in October of ‘69, Dr. Von Braun, and made his addendum to that proposal November 6th. Conroy was one thing: he was opportunist. He was the kind of guy that if you keep around he's going to keep you real honest because he wasn't an engineer, but he had a lot of common horse sense to some degree that most fighter pilots had. Conroy did hold the F-86 record from flying Los Angeles to New York; having breakfast in Los Angeles; flying to New York having lunch; and then flying back to Los Angeles and having dinner that evening at the [Skyeville?] Festival. He was quite an ego maniac to some degree. [00:25:39] DS: In those days, the Saturn program was not “How you can't do it” but “How can you do it and get it done fast?” We went through quite an uphill thing in Pregnant Guppy. Normally, an aircraft company takes an airplane to the desert to go through flight tests carries at least four spare engines. They take a hundred percent spares. When we went to Edwards Air, we took the airplane. Oh, at that time, Dr. Von Braun thought it would be wise since we were going to the Missile Center, to get Edwards Air Force Base involved. [00:26:38] DS: You've got to mention in this thing, there was a guy named Jackson M. Balch, down at MTF, who we had met with all kinds of difficulties selling headquarters and everybody on this program. Then Jackson Balch came to work for Karl Heimburg,Mr. [sic] Rees’ technical assistant, administrative assistant, who was assigned to test lab to learn the ropes of Marshall. One of the first things Karl Heimburg did was say, “Hey, we've got a real good problem here,” and gave him the Guppy problem. People resented his entering the program, but Balch had a lot of [learning?] and could convince people that—there's a lot of convincing you can’t mention in this thing because we’d all probably be behind bars—but anyway, we finally convinced the people from NASA activities… [00:27:53] RB: Did Balch go to headquarters then? [00:27:56] DS: Yeah, Balch went to headquarters, he had bought…Jack and I went to headquarters two or three times to give presentations. [00:28:04] RB: Who were you talking to? Low? Or Holmes? [00:28:07] DS: Talked to Holmes, once he was with Siemens…I guess…I believe Low at that time. But the thing was, Balch came on the same [inaudible] Conroy first went into this. Conroy started his construction at On Mark Engineering. He had no people of his own, so he let On Mark Engineering in Van Nuys do the structural modification. Then he let this guy he subcontracted with—Kaplan, the Strato engineer—do the engineering and the FAA coordination because he was an FAA designator. He was more or less at the mercy of these people as well as trying to get a contract with NASA. He—as some managers have been known to do in the Saturn program as well as any other program, the C-5A, the F-111—he was too optimistic in his selling and wound up in…Christmas of ’62, I was out helping in Conroy's office, and he got a call from—at this time he had lost all his help and doing work for free. He had his wife working as a secretary, so he got a call. The call was they were going to foreclose on his house. Things got real bad sometime around just prior to Christmas, I guess. [tape cuts out] [00:30:28] DS: This time Jack Balch, Julian Hamilton, William Morrow, and myself, we went to California to see how things were going on. I came back and reported, and we went out there to see how things were going on. I think I made a mistake in that date…It was ‘62… more like… June instead of Christmas. We went out there and talked with some of Conroy’s investors. There was a Jay [Humison?]...no…Jay [Overholtz?] and a guy by the name of Mr. [Humison?], who was a design engineer for the project system on the S-IV stage who…one of the few millionaire engineers you run into. Jay [Overholtz?], who had investments in one of the casinos, and Las Vegas was there. There was one other gentleman that I can’t remember, he was sort of the silent partner…well, I guess it’s Lee Mansdorf. One thing’s got to be said about Lee Mansdorf: he had everything so that if the airplane went, he'd make amends; if it folded, he'd still make amends. He believed in really hedging his bets. But those three more or less went on a [note?], and then Conroy could finish this endeavor. One of the first things to know of Mr. [Humison?] was really a gentleman. One of the first things he said he wanted to do was get Conroy’s debt…house out of hock, so he could stop having all these family problems and things going on. [00:33:09] RB: How do you spell this guy’s name now? [00:33:11] DS: [Humison?]…I don't know who was it. It was [Humison?], Howe, and [Overholtz?]. I may or may not [inaudible]. Howe is the Howe that has [Navajo Truckliners?]…I may can find the spellings of his name, write it down, look it up later. [00:33:47] RB: Okay. [00:33:48] DS: Like I said, this was sometime around, sometime between June and Christmas. Sometime around between Christmas of sixty…one...and June ‘62...because in September of ‘62...the Pregnant Guppy...Boeing 377 Stratocruiser took off from Van Nuys Airport and moved up to Mojave Desert…where we…But then the flight test came after the maiden flight. This is where we really had problems. [00:34:51] RB: Before we get to that, I heard one story that when Conroy had flown to Huntsville, Heimburg or somebody wanted to do some load tests, and so they really filled the airplane up with gas when Von Braun was on it. [00:35:09] DS: FAA requested a load test, test out the structures. That was load test may be referring to, but it wasn't. Nothing was put in the airplane by Dr. Von Braun. [00:35:32] RB: It still had the wooden timbers in it though. [laughs] [00:35:33] DS: Yeah. Well, the wooden timbers was just to load up the [support?] structures. This was prior to going to Edwards for the flight test. I started mentioning before that we went to Edwards and got Edwards involved, so I went in, and I was sent up as a measly NASA peon, and I talked to Jack Balch, Paul Bickle, the director of Edwards NASA flight research center. I went in and explained our problem at the [missle?] center. Dr. Von Braun, I guess, had already written him a letter and explained some of the problems we were running into. He called all of his people together and called in one guy by the name of Bill Gray, who had been a FAA chief of FAA flight tests prior to going to work for Douglas and doing little flight test work, freelance flight test work on his own. He did the Purdue flight test at the flying TV station, the relay station. He had since come back to work for NASA, and he was assigned to the project as knowing the ins and the outs of FAA, things of this nature. [00:37:16] DS: One of the things, to show you the way people felt about Dr. Von Braun, he's in the missile business, he gets all the money from the NASA budget, Mr. Bickle gets whatever crumbs is left over, but he...Bickle was quite an avid airplane fan and gave me a couple examples of him modifying his glider. He held the national record for time aloft and flying it for a long time. Anyway, he says, “Whatever Wernher wants, we'll give it to him, even if we have to certify the airplane, say to hell with FAA.” [Bilstein laughs] So that was a little interesting… [00:38:07] DS: Then Bill Gray came on the scene and started advising me. Let me know where Conroy was trying to undercut, take shortcuts, which I was going to the FAA and say, “Watch that [inaudible] Irishman,” “I don't believe this is right,” “Are you looking at this?” “Are you looking at that?” FAA was rather reluctant at that time because they're one agency that’s liable that I know of by law for any engineering decisions. The man that approves something—structures, systems, anything in FAA—if that's not right, and they have a crash and accident, he pays himself with time in prison. If he can't be proven that some change was made or something he didn't approve himself. He's held liable by law, and CAB and Congress gives CAB the power to put that guy on the spot, and I guess that's the reason FAA, they were reluctant to comment as of this time. They says, “Okay, anything has got to come through Conroy because Conroy is the applicant for the 'Part 8’ certificate.” I just kept saying, “Look…” and the people from headquarters kept telling FAA headquarters, “Stay on this, because this is a momentous thing, something that's never been done.” [00:39:51] DS: So we went through quite a hairy, I guess you'd call it, flight test program. The plane actually performed, it's kind of like the [inaudible] performed better than the original Stratocruiser…be more responsive by adding the seventy inches after the wing at the field splice, after the trailing edge of the wing, which it did. But there was still some concern of the wash off the bubble [inaudible] section. It was always contingent, it would wash out in certain angles of attack, certain roll angles, one of your horizontal stabilizers, which would get in trouble, but we went through all this testing. Conroy—was smarter than I guess a lot of people give him credit for—sold FAA, only checking those things that were critical, which at that time, Bill Gray and I, I guess, still had our doubts that the damn thing would fly and figured that if it does, great, if it don't, great. We really had no control over flight testing. Whatever he sold FAA would do, we had to buy it because that was [inaudible] at that time. I guess it was Siemen’s directive if he had it certified, we’d buy it, we’d use it, consider the use of it. [00:41:45] DS: But anyway, it was a rather hectic thing, trying for Bill Gray's advice, trying to force Conroy to do more than what he had contracted to do with FAA to get a certificate. Through a little coercion here, a little coercion there, we were able to achieve this. One of the big things that I guess that we had, is Conroy had a guy by the name of Sandy Friezner, who was…and I do know how to spell his name…Sandy was an instrumentation man, and he’d done a considerable amount of submarine instrumentation work, oil rigs…you name it, he's done it if it's been needed to be instrumented. Sandy was one of Conroy's close friends, and sort of, thought it was great to be a citizen and try to do some of the [stupid?] things that he was doing. He was the only one that would consider the instrumentation job on this thing, so...Friezner is Sandy F-R-I-E-Z-N-E-R… [00:43:10] RB: Yeah, excuse me, I just know it…I've got another, unfortunately, interview coming up on the hour, which is really unfortunate because I'm enjoying this, I… [00:43:22] DS: …We fed all…[McNamara?] started the C5-A, we fed him information on the guppy. He did his cost-effect analysis on the side, came up with an airplane that was less than the guppy because of some of the structure loads, and some of the other things. We actually fed him information on this airplane. We had two airplanes [inaudible] ‘61…‘69…seven years, seven and a half years, and I still get involved [inaudible] on occasion people call… [00:44:15] RB: Turned out to be pretty successful didn’t they? [00:44:18] DS: Oh, it has its limitations just like the Piper's assessment, 707 and anything else. I think that's where the people in the space business don't understand, don't know is the fact that they try and strive too much for perfection because they’re in an unforgiving environment. In the airplane business, you’re in a pretty forgiving environment. [tape cuts out and restarts] [00:44:54] DS: He could've been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. He could have been out there—I got to thinking about that yesterday—he could have been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. I was observing. What I was giving you was the people were working on it at that time, but he could have been out observing the flight or something. I don’t know. Just knew the people personally involved in it at that time. [00:45:37] RB: Did Karl Heimberg's test lab have a lot to do with the Guppy? [00:45:44] DS: Karl Heimberg? I would say Karl Heimberg probably was the man here at Marshall that pushed it through and more so Von Braun and upper management because everybody that worked on the Guppy from the beginning worked for Carl Heimberg, more or less. All of the development of the Guppies was handled out of Heimberg's shop because he had, what you call, the lab responsibility for special transportation. Heimberg's outfit handled all the barges and did all the design work modifying the barges to haul Saturn stages did all the design work, and design review of the contract for modifying the Guppies. [00:46:54] RB: This was up to ‘63 anyway? [00:46:56] DS: This was up to the Super Guppy. P.M.—John Goodrum’s outfit—P.M. was, more or less, we turned the Pregnant Guppy over to PM, which was formed in ‘63, ‘64—which was called Industrial Operations at that time—to John Goodrum’s outfit. Well, it wasn’t John Goodrum’s outfit then, I guess, it was…nobody had been designated at that time to turn it over, more or less, I.O. to handle operations of it. Heimberg’s outfit handled all the technical design, special equipment requirements for Marshall [inaudible] [00:48:03] RB: There's something I want to ask you a little bit more about too, that was that McNamara used Guppy information for C-5 work analysis. [00:48:12] DS: Yeah, what we did, there was a guy at NASA headquarters who was transportation. There was two of them—there was Earl Barr and…. [00:48:24] RB: Stan Smolensky? Is that who you’re thinking of? [00:48:28] DS: No, not Smolensky. I'm talking about the transportation people that we interfaced with at headquarters—Earl Barr and Jim McCullough—that we interfaced directly with. According to Earl Barr, DOD directly contacted him, and as we developed information and everything, we more or less fed it into headquarters who, in turn, gave it to DOD. [00:49:05] RB: What kind of information were they using? [00:49:09] DS: We fed him wind tunnel data, copies of all the reports, design reports and everything, and requirements for volumetric type airplanes to carry volume loads…a bit of wind tunnel data, flight test data, and quite a…just anything they wanted or were interested in, you know, some copies of this data to Earl Barr at headquarters who in turn gave it to DOD. [00:49:47] RB: You mentioned the Pregnant Guppy, there was some concern about the air flow and empennage, would that have been…Oh, C-5, has a fairly good... [00:49:57] DS: Well, C-5 has a very high tail, it was just…At that time, the C-5A, the information we got, they were trying to determine the actual diameter that the C-5A could sit in, the optimal diameter for C-5A. It fluctuated anywhere from the diameter of this Pregnant Guppy to the present diameter, which is about twelve…twelve…or thirteen foot high, and some ten, eleven foot…it's more or less figure-eight shape type thing. The Guppy, the C-5A, it's not a real drastic, upside down figure-eight shape like the Pregnant Guppy or the Stratocruisers. But anyway, all this information we were able to get. Everything was given back to headquarters who in turn passed it on to Department of Defense to assist them in running their cost-effect analysis, to determine the actual diameter of the C-5A—which in turn, they wound up with an airplanes just like the 141—is good for carrying steel rails, tanks, concrete blocks, and sacks of cement. If you want to really carry a volume such as the S-IVB or the S-IV stage or the Titan, it can get— because of their upper structure, the bubble comes up, and the crew compartment in C-5A—you begin to run into height problems. [00:52:06] RB: Do you remember any particular difficulties or any incidents that occurred during the operation of the first Pregnant Guppy? I'm thinking of that picture you showed me in a day, was it Ellsberg [sic] Air Force Base, you said that was? Where the tail took off or something like that? [00:52:21] DS: No, it was Ellington. Yeah, we had…the Pregnant Guppy has always had…very limited due to the 4360 engine. Engines were the limiting factors. Any time you lost an engine on takeoff, you had to start looking for a damn place to land real quick because the glide of it…opposed to something like jets [inaudible]. One thing I was going to talk about with flight tests, I brought up this guy Sandy Friezner. It's a kind of [inaudible] to make this damn airplane work, you had to go in and clip about six, eight inches off the end of the props. He predicted that—from his non-engineering, swinging a mass like you do a propeller from his knowledge of his basic fundamental flying airplanes, propellers, and helicopters—he'd swing in this mass of the propeller on some wing on the arm at some CG location, and if you started chopping it off, it reduces stresses in its blade, propeller blades. Some of the original history behind the C-97 was a hollowed [derow?] blade the Air Force had used for this thing. [00:54:22] RB: What kind of blade? [00:54:23] They called it [derow?]. It’s an aluminum, hollow-casted…Some of the big problems they had on the C-97 was that the blades would separate, caused considerable problems in the loss of airplanes like they had on the C-133. Conroy's idea was that he had to have eight inches to clear the fuselage, so he said, “We gonna cut the damn blades off and go because if any nut, I'm not even an engineer, I can figure it out, it's going to reduce the stresses of this blade.” The commercial version was a steel blade, which was much better than the Air Force blade that was prepared for him. They cut the tips off this blade and had this guy Sandy Friezner to instrument it. Sure enough, Sandy Friezner’s instrumentation says the stress is reduced by a certain level, a certain percentage. [00:55:30] DS: Well, FAA has a real funny way of operating, and I guess they have to operate this way, but they says, “This is fine and good, but before we’ll accept it and certify it, we have to have the original hand-standard people do the stress survey.” I think this cost Conroy some forty…thirty…forty thousand dollars and upset him to no end because you can set out on the end of a runway and what you do is set out and run that plane through numerous sequences of flying conditions on the ground to determine the stresses and the built up stresses in the blade. You leave them off and pull them up again. Commercial outfits built the airplane burnout three and four engines sitting out there to get all this data that you need, for the prop manufacturer needs, to justify the FAA making these changes because it was certified in a certain way. When you start making changes like Conroy's making to the airplane to the props, you got to justify all this to the FAA. It's up to the applicant to prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that it in no way endangers the crew, the cargo, the people on the ground. [00:57:00] DS: Like I was telling you, we took hardly…we took the airplane and very limited spare parts. [Nose?] we didn't carry oil up there because Conroy had checked in with some of his Air Force cronies at Edwards that the particular oil that is needed for the Guppy was a bunch of surplus up at Edwards, so we just used the Air Force oil as a giveaway type thing. We used Air Force gas about eight…seven…three cents a gallon or something like that. When we got up, and the FAA finally made their thing that “Okay, you gotta run this stress survey on this prop,” Conroy went through the [old bay head?], and he and I had some very rough altercations there. Finally, I told him, “Okay, fine, I'm going to pack up and go home, and I'll just tell Marshall that you're not going to do what is required by FAA.” Finally Conroy blew his stacks and said, “Okay, go ahead and do it! Burn up the damn airplane!” We ran the survey and sure enough Sandy Freizner’s previous instrumentation predicted [the strain gauges?], we did—they did—reduce the stresses in this blade. [00:58:28] DS: [Hamstander?] thought this was so great they suggested to Conroy, “Hey, go and cut off the tips of the outboard propellers,” because they cut it off from the rounded tips which squared it off. Conroy says, “Hell, I can't afford another prop survey. I ain't even got a NASA contract yet. To hell with you!” [00:58:50] DS: Then we had some different flight tests..I think where you were mentioning about water for [ballasting?] and I said, where you’re going through flight tests, you gotta do various CG locations. The way you do this is by ballasting water tanks. You go up and you go up, you ready to fly all morning, and at Edwards, we would take off at about five…four-thirty…five o'clock. You get up [tape cuts out, inaudible] high. What Aerospace did—kind of what people did—they came up with a water ballast system. It was the day, was going out and was checking for flutter, and so we had Sandy Freizner and [Bill Covers?] on the system worked out…I don't believe it was Jack Podesky…Bobby [D’agostino?], flight engineer [tape cuts out] below the main deck. They went up and did their various CG locations by [ballasting?] out the tanks and so finally they was ready to do zero. You have to do all these cal…You’re probably familiar, you have to do all this calibration room… [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000043_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 1) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource In this interview, Donald Stewart recounts the early development of Jack Conroy’s Pregnant Guppy aircraft and its critical role in NASA’s Saturn program. He explains how the concept evolved from modifying surplus Boeing Stratocruisers into oversized cargo aircraft capable of transporting rocket stages, and describes his own involvement beginning in 1961 with wind tunnel testing, engineering oversight, and coordination between NASA, the FAA, and Conroy’s team. Stewart recalls Conroy’s financial struggles, including flying the unfinished aircraft to Huntsville in 1962 with temporary wooden bracing to demonstrate its capabilities to Wernher von Braun and other Marshall Space Flight Center leaders, whose skepticism turned to support after a successful demonstration flight. He details the extensive challenges of obtaining FAA certification, preventing engineering shortcuts, conducting flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base, and overcoming resistance from NASA Headquarters, which initially opposed investing in air transportation. Stewart also highlights the contributions of key Marshall personnel such as Karl Heimburg, Julian Hamilton, and Jack Balch, describes how the Guppy’s success accelerated Saturn stage delivery by reducing transit times from weeks to hours, and notes that engineering data from the program later informed the U.S. Department of Defense’s development of the C-5A transport aircraft. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/fbed9e289d367edaf67db2ea8d6494ad.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ff3feab03b15a3a28709f814dddc8de0.mp4 66027062dc4d69ca561cb7ab5f241fc9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:57:07 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 2 [00:00:16] Donald Stewart: What they decided to do on that particular flight was to go ahead and dump the—since the CG location was out of kilter for this particular test—go ahead and dump the water overboard. Well, this sounded like a real good idea, so they hit the pump to dump the water overboard. Due to the pressure differential, the water didn't want to go, so they just filled up the deck—the main deck. It was running in, and Sandy Freizner was on the mic hollering, “You got water in the deck! Water in the deck!” Conroy [on the cruise?] thought they said, “Flutter.” They almost had a damn conniption. [Roger Bilstein laughs] They came in on an emergency landing, and one guy went back to look to see where the flutter was, and he saw this guy, Sandy Freizner [standing down?] he just [inaudible] down completely with water, just came flowing down that hatch. That was one of the hilarious points. [00:01:22] The other one was we had to…See, normally you have to do, the company has to do their preliminary tests, [turn it on to?] the FAA, and FAA verifies it, and finally FAA will put their people on board and flight test the airplane. Another occasion was that…You have to go through various maneuvers, roller coasters, and check the rudder throw, the [ailerons?]...What you do, you put a pulse in there, in your instrumentation, in your rudder, see? You pulse and you gonna do…You’ve heard people…You say you’re aeronautical, aren’t you? [00:02:08] Roger Bilstein: Theoretically, yeah. [00:02:10] DS: All right, well, you know the old dampening effect? You do roller coasters and see how long you dampen out? It’s quite different than the theoretical thing in the book. All you do is put a pulse and let everything dampen out. Well, they were doing this. What you do with the rudder after you do this dampening-type experiment and check for the instrumentation on to G-loads on things of this nature, FAA says, “You've got the Stratocruiser had the limits on the rudder. You've got to check this test.” [00:02:52] DS: Conroy sold…Any time FAA wanted something, Conroy, it’s just human nature for him to fight it. He says, “Hell no!” and they said, “Hell yes!” and finally they decided we'll do it through some encouragement for myself as a NASA rep. He says he'll get those damn FAA b*st*rds up there and teach them a lesson. They take off that afternoon, they’re doing some [slip?], and they receive rudder effect, and [it's a beautiful thing?] to watch. They’re on board the airplane, and the FAA guy says, “Okay, ready for this particular maneuver?” Side slip to the right, side slip to the left…So what you do is you go into sort of a fixing to fall over and you kick your rudder, and you can get reverse rudder [lock?] on this thing. FAA had never had a [inaudible] like this in the air, so when we kicked it up, started to side slip through the rudder end, and you could just feel the G-load build up. The FAA man started screaming, “Stop this thing! Stop this thing!” So they pulled her on, let her slip on out, get on out of the thing, and then had a rudder limitation of plus or minus seventeen degrees. You never did have to prove seventeen degrees, we only got up to about twelve. [00:04:34] RB: [Laughs] I hope you don't mind backtracking, but did they leave those two outboard engines in with full props? They never chopped the ends on those? [00:04:42] DS: No, they never did chop them. [00:04:45] RB: And I really don't know…How do you…Where do you place your strain gear just on a prop? Down near the hub? [00:04:53] DS: No, you're going to place it at different stations along your axes. Say your longitudinal axis of the prop is just an [airfoil?] just like a wing at certain stations along there. Then you place it at certain [co-ed?] locations. It's just a wing section. So you put it along the—-I can’t think of the terminology now—but along the center line of the [airfoil?] [00:05:33] RB: Of the propeller? [00:05:34] DS: Of the propeller section there, you place it at various stations, so you get a [bend?] increase just like in a helicopter. An airplane propeller tends to make the same actions—lag and lead actions—that a helicopter blade will. An airplane propeller tries to do the same thing, but its rigidity and reduced length, it can’t do that as much. You design an airplane propeller blade to resist all this lead and lag, which the helicopter people found out if you do that you get blades that you can't fly with. Probably you can. What you're doing is you're checking those, as you go through bending and [inaudible], you're checking the strength or stresses of the particular points that collided from the critical stresses limited by the design of the cross sectional area of the blade. All we had to do was one propeller. You gotta do some of this during the flight and a lot of it on the ground. [Inaudible] gets up to 120 in the shade. This can be rather tough on an old engine. [00:07:12] RB: Did you burn that engine out? [00:07:13] DS: No, we never did burn the engine out or anything. We had some other, I guess you’d call, anxious moments of different loadings when we were going through our first load test. We had designed here at Marshall a pallet to carry the S-IV-B basically, and it gave the design to Bob Prentice’s people out at Douglas. They built a pallet because they had to make basic responsibility for it. [00:07:58] RB: It came out of Heimberg’s shop, right? [00:07:59] DS: Yeah. The basic design… [00:08:00] RB: That’s for the S-IV you’re talking about? [00:08:04] DS: S-IV, yeah. So my boss and I—Julian Hamilton at the time—we had, let’s say, a difference of opinion about what you would put on the aluminum to the aluminum. See, the Super Guppy had two [angles?] that served as the rails, and the pallet was an I-beam that would slide directly on this aluminum to aluminum sliding [inaudible]. My boss and I had a discussion about what to use as a bearing, a lubricant bearing, some sort of frictionless bearing surfacing. I wanted to use teflon, and Jack Conroy, being the non-engineer, talked to my boss and says, “You've got to think of the freezing conditions you get with teflon. Teflon will freeze up.” He and my boss decided, well, they would go to nylon. I tried to tell them that due to [porosity?] of nylon, if you let the thing sit there very long, you're going to freeze. The cold flow that they were worried about in the teflon, you had to get something like 150,000 psi to start cold flowing the teflon. I couldn't talk them out of it, so I suggested we put banana peels on it. [Both laugh] [00:09:53] DS: So we put nylon on it, and so we were sitting out at Marshall here, designed what we call the cargo lift trailer, Karl Heimberg’s outfit did. This is a scissor on both ends, steering wheel on both ends, to raise the cargo up to the floor of the Guppies. Like I said, we went ahead and installed the nylon per my boss' direction—Julian Hamilton’s direction. We were sitting out at FAA hanger in Los Angeles going to go do a loading exercise with Dr. Von Braun. Somehow about maybe an hour, hour and a half, two hours before Dr. Von Braun was to arrive, [inaudible] some of the officials from NASA headquarters to show them what we had done, Julian Hamilton and the Douglas troops decide well, maybe we ought to go through just a little halfway practice run. They raised the cargo lift trailer up, get it, you know, proper orientation of the aircraft flow, start up the winch to move the S-IV in, start, and it won't go. Start, and it won't go. I told my boss, I said, “Well, remember that nylon you're going to use?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, I think it's frozen.” I said, “Now, if you take two 4x4s, and put under the end of the pilot”—because it overhung the cargo lift trailer—- “and lower the cargo lift trailer, you'll break that suction you created with the nylon, which teflon wouldn't have done. Now, I'm going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information. I hope you all get done unstruck before Dr. Von Braun gets here.” When I left there was about twenty-five people running around in mad hysterics. [Both laugh] They finally got it unstuck. We were able to carry out because Dr. Von Braun normally is late, gave them an extra hour to accomplish it. [00:12:27] RB: Did they replace it with teflon then? [00:12:30] DS: Well, we…Not really. A couple of Douglas design engineers and myself had to hoodwink all his people, wanted to do what my boss wanted to do. My boss, after that, wasn’t as adamant for nylon. [00:12:51] RB: Is this Heimberg you’re talking about? [00:12:53] DS: No, Julian Hamilton wasn’t as adamant for nylon as he was before. I told the Douglas people that we wanted to put something on there based on the recommendations, which was oil [light?]. Told the Douglas people that's what we was going to put on there based on the recommendations of his design engineer...[tape cuts out and restarts at “I’m going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information…] [00:14:40] DS: I came back to Marshall and talked back to Marshall and said that’s what Douglas wants to do. Through a little diplomacy there, we got teflon [delivery?]. The airplane never had any other problems. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [00:14:58] DS: We hauled [I guess all the S-IV?] [inaudible]. We did another thing one day…Just getting into the operation of hauling S-IVs…So I was on a flight, we were late getting out of Los Angeles, supposed to have cleared various SAC bases, military bases, whatever it might be. On our route from Los Angeles, [USC?], we had to divert [inaudible] because of weather. We had to supposedly [inaudible] supposedly cleared us for all these different Air Force bases. We’re tooling along [inaudible] SAC base [inaudible]. [00:16:10] RB: Is this for emergency landing? [00:16:12] DS: No, we had to re-fuel. The weather [inaudible] landing there. We land on this particular SAC base—I forget the name of it now—tooling up to the hangar, all of a sudden, my God…People’s eyes [inaudible] didn’t know what had landed. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [From outer space?] [Inaudible] guards, slowly but surely and very fast, escorted us out to the boonies. They let us off the plane, guards around there with carbines and M1s [ready?] and 45s, “Where the hell did y’all come from? How did you get in here?” [We’re supposed to get in here?] Finally, this is about one or two o’clock in the morning. [Inaudible] A couple of hours, the crew sleeping on the deck out there, guards surrounding them [inaudible]. Airplane captain trying to locate the base commander. We finally had clearance to go on. [Roger Bilstein laughs] Fuel up and go on. [00:17:30] RB: When you flew from…Where did you usually leave from in California? Some Navy… [00:17:36] DS: No, that S-IV stage [inaudible] Sacramento. [00:17:41] RB: That’s right, directly out of the test area then, yeah. [00:17:44] DS: We’d fly out of [inaudible] airport [inaudible]. [00:18:05] RB: How many refueling stops did you have to make with the Pregnant Guppy? [00:18:07] DS: We did it on the [wind?]. [Inaudible] [...stop in Houston, Carswell?] [Inaudible] [00:18:33] RB: This is about an eighteen hour flight then? [00:18:36] DS: Yeah, depending on the crew or the crew ran out of time. [Inaudible] There was a number of things, I guess, [inaudible]. A lot of other happy experiences. There were [inaudible]. [00:19:18] RB: Did you know a guy at Douglas named [inaudible]? [00:19:22] DS: The name sounds familiar [inaudible]. [00:19:25] RB: Well, I talked to him, and as I recall, he said that they were in the Pregnant Guppy flying somewhere and heard kind of an ominous noise from the back. They said they put down in a real hurry, and a twelve inch gap had opened up. Do you remember anything like that happening? [00:19:41] DS: No…It’s quite a bit of [inaudible]. We had a lot of complaints about it [inaudible] tests to determine [inaudible]. It could’ve happened and [inaudible] reported. [Somebody?] had failed to cinch up the [bolts?]. Well, and there was different kinds…We had a number of rear [axis?] problems, flying different cargo because we had just started [inaudible] a new airline and air transportation of outsized cargo. We [inaudible] Boeing chief flight test engineer and from talking to some of the [Boeing?] people [inaudible] S-IVB visibility test [inaudible] Saturn contract. That’s where a lot of their…The Guppy—based on the information I’ve given to Douglas and Boeing people—the Pregnant Guppy proved that you could extend [inaudible] stretch DC-8. [00:21:22] RB: Is that right? Is that where that came from though? [00:21:25] DS: Whether the Douglas will admit it or not, yes, that’s where it came from because Douglas…Ted Smith, a few others, I’d say [inaudible] preliminary meetings [inaudible]. [00:21:39] RB: That’s really interesting. We talked to Ted Smith… [00:21:41] DS: Ted Smith and a few of his cohorts sat in there [inaudible]. Based on our knowledge of building airplanes since the beginning of time the Pregnant Guppy won’t fly. Afterwards, every time we’d go back to test, at the test we had a lot of film coverage. [Inaudible] real adamant [inaudible]. You know, that son of a b*tch is flying. [Roger Bilstein laughs] He would grin [sheepishly?] [00:22:19] RB: I like Ted Smith. That was one of the best interviews we had. We didn't get into the Pregnant Guppy. [00:22:25] DS: Ted and his people…[Bob Prentice?] worked with Ted, and [we were all done?] with the Saturn contract. Ted Smith's people had to be a little bit skeptical because they had presented a proposal to NASA to use the C-133 and [inaudible] piggyback [inaudible] carry the S-IV and had gotten a considerable amount of [inaudible]. Conroy never got his. [Inaudible] This was all turned down. We had a number of proposals back in those days carrying the S-IV by blimp, carrying it by [towed glider?]. [Inaudible] proposal [inaudible] glider [inaudible] not only used for the S-IV stage, but the S-II stage, [inaudible] all the stages. We had a number of proposals [inaudible] vehicles—you name it, and people had suggested it. It was a comical engineer at Douglas suggested firing the S-IVB [inaudible] to launch it [inaudible] the Cape, so… [00:24:14] RB: Was he serious? [laughs] [00:24:15] DS: Well, [inaudible] talking about the Guppies, he said, [inaudible]. Conroy, I feel [overcame?] insurmountable amount of negative pressure. [Inaudible] got his basic strength to go on when things were [inaudible] down in the dumps again. I think he derived a lot of his strength from Karl Heimberg and Dr. Von Braun. Conroy would come in, I’d meet him, and he didn’t have enough money to pay his motel bill or pay for his car. I’d pick him up and take him to his motel. Mr. Heimberg would come on and have a few drinks. Heimberg would reassure him he was going to this and do that [inaudible]. [Inaudible] pick him up the next morning and bring him out here. One time, he got so broke that he had to spend the night at different people’s houses working on the thing. I always felt that they...in the early stages, they did Conroy…They would give Douglas, North America, Boeing, Chrysler, half a million dollars just to do a study, and here was a guy that [had sold his soul?] and [they wouldn’t?] give him fifty dollars. But it all played out in the end [with the Pregnant Guppy?]. It was really ironic [the way they went about starting?] Saturn V, Conroy had already gotten the Pregnant Guppy running, and [inaudible] he says, “Well, I think I’ll talk to them myself.” [Inaudible] Sky Trails in Van Nuys, and he says, “I think I’ll build another airplane.” [Inaudible] “What kind of airplane?” [Inaudible] “...Carry the S-IVB.” “Sounds good, Jack. I’ll talk with Mr. Heimberg about it.” So I came back and talked with [Jack Balch?] and Karl Heimberg, made a couple of sketches on the back of used envelopes, made up some charts, and talked to Mr. Heimberg and Balch. [Inaudible] [00:27:32] DS: [Fritz?] Kramer could understand how they built this thing because he built the things in Germany [inaudible]. I think [Fritz?] Kramer was very encouraging I think…He went out once to evaluate the way they were going about building the Guppy. [Inaudible] says, “That’s the way we did it in the old country.” [Inaudible] cost a million dollars [inaudible]. [00:28:21] RB: How do you spell his name? [00:28:22] DS: Kramer? K-R-A-M-E-R. [Fritz?] Kramer. [00:28:26] RB: Do you know happen to know what aircraft firm he worked for in Germany? What he did? [00:28:29] DS: He worked for on of the [inaudible]. [00:28:47] RB: Is there any big difference between the Super Guppy and the Pregnant Guppy really? I mean outside of the... [00:28:54] DS: About seven and a half foot plus… [00:28:55] RB: Diameters, yeah. [00:28:57] DS: There's seventy inches added aft [inaudible], rear section [splice junction?], seventy inches there. In the forward section, there’s another fifty inches. Plus the twenty-five foot in diameter. Then there’s a seventeen and a half foot wing [inaudible] section that was added. [00:29:30] RB: So they didn’t have to chop the prop… [00:29:33] DS: There was twenty-five foot internal diameter. I forget how many square foot of area added to the verticals [inaudible] added to the base of the vertical stabilizer. There’s tips instead of rounded off [inaudible] structures. There’s more vertical stabilizers and also more horizontal stabilizers. There’s more area added there. Plus, the fact is…See, the original Stratocruiser was designed basically as a C-97 and a commercial version by Boeing. It was originally designed to carry, to be powered by turboprops. [Inaudible] same basic power as the [inaudible] 133. The airplane reached the final stage where it needed props and engines before the turboprop engine was [certificated?] and ready to go. They went to an alternate R-4360 engine instead of the turboprops [inaudible]. The Super Guppy was Conroy’s idea when he started thinking Super Guppy and the difference in weight and size and all this except he needed turboprops [inaudible] thrust per pound of weight [inaudible]. He knew General [Funk?] and General [Gherig?] had two of these Stratocruisers, turboprop versions that Boeing had developed for them and also knew [inaudible] FAA [inaudible] original design turboprop. That was his selling point there. Finally Conroy found out that these planes were going into salvage. All he wanted was the landing gear because of the 175,000 pound [inaudible]. Some basic structures to the airplane, some [inaudible] put these things in salvage in Tucson. He was able to con the Air Force into buying it at scrap for the national interest of hauling S-IVBs. He used the wings because they had the turboprop fixtures on there. The cowlings, the turboprops, and [inaudible] S-IVB. Super Guppy to work up a bargain with NASA, so we were able to get on the Air Force [inaudible] engines. [00:33:14] RB: Okay, because somewhere said they were on lease or something. [00:33:18] DS: They were on lease from the Air Force. Conroy got a lot smarter, [inaudible]. We got a lot smarter [tape cuts out] [Inaudible] scrap [inaudible]. We went out [inaudible] the airplanes he brought them back to Van Nuys. [On Mark Engineering?] did the modification [inaudible]. Conroy was able to get a better financial deal. [Inaudible] engineering did the design modification. During this time, Aerospace [Lines?] had had some sort of altercation with FAA, and FAA was going to fine the company. You have to know Conroy to appreciate his attitude: “If the FAA had been in existence when Orville and Wilbur Wright started, we still wouldn’t be flying!” He made it in his mind that he was going to take FAA to court, so sure enough he took them to court, and sure enough he won. [00:35:00] RB: [laughs] What was the hassle over? [00:35:08] DS: The court [inaudible]…Conroy used the thing of saying, the Pregnant Guppy is a certified airplane, so we’ve done that part of it, but it should be operated as a public airplane. Public airplane definition is any airplane used solely by municipalities—federal, state, or on a government lease—which the Pregnant Guppy was used solely for that. This is the way the FAA court ruled. The Guppies became public airplanes. When this happened the FAA wouldn’t touch the Super Guppy, so we had to use a different…We finally talked the FAA into advising us as consultants. Bill Gray and I’s job became doubly demanding in the Super Guppy effort because he and I had to do all the reviews the FAA had been doing. [00:36:30] RB: Was this to get away from that “Part 8” certificate kind of thing? [00:36:34] DS: Well, it was to get it into a public airplane operation, rather than…But FAA was wanting to stay away from the Super Guppy was right because to have certified the power plants, the wing structures, the landing gear, and the various structures used off of military airplanes which weren’t certified by FAA would’ve probably cost a million or more dollars. FAA off the cuff, unofficially, advised Bill Gray and I not to push that part of it because it would cost the government too much money. Finally, FAA agreed to serve as NASA consultants on the modifications of the Super Guppy. [00:37:29] RB: Is there one guy in the FAA or a couple fellows that stand out? A number that worked on this, the Guppy and the Super Guppy? [00:37:36] DS: Charlie [Hawks?] He’s retired. [00:37:44] RB: Does he live in Washington? [00:37:46] DS: No, he’s in Los Angeles [inaudible]. [Rocco?] [Inaudible]. L-U-P-P-I-S, you see the spelling in some of the FAA documents [inaudible]. [00:38:11] RB: Is he in Los Angeles too? [00:38:12] DS: All these guys are in Los Angeles. Rocco Luppis, [inaudible]. There’s numerous guys…George [Stevens?] is one. George [Stevens?] [inaudible] real dedicated. There’s numerous other people. After Conroy broke the ice on the Pregnant Guppy, which was very…They were behind him this time, helping him instead of pushing back, trying to hold him off. [00:39:09] RB: What happened to the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy? The Super Guppy is still flying. [00:39:14] DS: Both airplanes are still flying. I guess they’re still under contract with NASA. [00:39:18] RB: Did Aerospace go ahead and build some other mini-Guppy kind of airplanes? [00:39:23] DS: They built a mini-Guppy, and they built the commercial version of Super Guppy. [00:39:28] RB: And they're all still flying? [00:39:30] DS: Yeah. I believe both airplanes are leased: one to France and one to England. [00:39:39] RB: So they're flying on the continent now? [00:39:43] DS: In Europe. Yeah. [00:39:45] RB: Yeah. What kind of cargo do they carry there? [00:39:48] DS: Oh, basic things. Outside cargo is the big thing, other cargo airplanes. [00:39:53] RB: Not necessarily space equipment. Whatever is… [00:39:55] DS: Whatever is needed. The Super Guppy version of Aerospace [things?] carried the SST [wings?]. [00:40:08] RB: In Europe? [00:40:10] DS: In Europe. The Super Guppy we have here carried the L-10. Super Guppy also carried some fighters from [inaudible] San Diego [inaudible] Navy fighters. Jack Conroy left Aerospace [inaudible] own company, and he developed [CL-44?] swing-tail, Canadian [inaudible]. [00:40:57] RB: Really? He was in on that? [00:40:58] DS: Yeah, that was his airplane. Jack [inaudible]. This airplane is being used [leased in England?] Conroy’s outfit was a new company when they made the design, and they took the DC-3s and C-47s and modified them, put turbo props on them to sell them to South American countries. [00:41:32] RB: What’s the name of this new company? Do you remember at all? [00:41:33] DS: Conroy…Conroy Enterprises, I believe. Conroy Aircraft [inaudible]. [00:41:43] RB: How come you sold out to [inaudible]? [00:41:45] DS: Well, they reached…They had some problems with the internal management structure. [Inaudible] bought into Aerospace [inaudible] manufacture [inaudible] type thing. They had no concept of operating airplanes. [00:42:12] RB: They’re just trying to diversify a little bit? [00:42:14] DS: They were attempting to diversify, and in my estimation, bleed the company dry, which they succeeded in doing. [00:42:22] RB: It seems like such an odd diversification direction for them to take. [00:42:28] DS: Well, they pulled a couple of shenanigans on Conroy, and Conroy just [inaudible] and sold out. They brought in the Boeing people—[Rex?] Johnson’s crowd—and Conroy was running the total operations of two airplanes with 150 people. At one time they had about 5000 people running the thing—designing new airplanes. Aerospace [inaudible] stock offer, [Publix?] Market, I believe. [00:43:18] RB: Still part of [inaudible] though? [00:43:19] DS: Still part of [inaudible]. [00:43:24] RB: I’d like to write to them to get more information. [00:43:27] DS: They probably won’t give you any. [00:43:30] RB: No, but I mean just to…for whatever they got. They got an address here. Is that the correct address? [00:43:41] DS: Yeah, that’s the correct… [00:43:43] RB: I’ll just write to them and see what information they might have. [00:43:47] DS: Probably want to write [Joe Andrews?] He’s a sales rep. [00:43:50] RB: Okay, good. Joe Andrews…Should I mention your name? Is that all right? What’s his title? [00:43:57] DS: Yeah. He’s Vice President in charge of sales. If he’s still with the company. They got more Vice Presidents out there than Conroy had total officials in the company. [00:44:22] DS: Another difference in the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy is the swing nose for loading instead of the tail. [00:44:32] RB: Right. How come they made that configuration change? [00:44:38] DS: It was much easier than attaching all this dolly and different [inaudible] tail. Much less time consuming. [00:44:52] RB: Did they get design [info?] from that British [inaudible] cargo aircraft? [00:44:58]: DS: No, that was Jack Conroy’s. Jack Conroy gets credit for having fathered the [maybe?] C-47, C-97 Stratocruiser [inaudible]. He really didn’t do that. That was other people [inaudible]. He just pushed it through [and saw it through the end?]. Conroy did develop, was responsible for the S-IV-B airplane. One time we had the S-IV-B airplane so [inaudible] at headquarters [inaudible]. Conroy came in and started talking to Von Braun about an S-II airplane. [Inaudible] Dr. Von Braun was, he says, “That’s the way to go. Forget the S-IV-B airplane.” We would have run into probably twice as much reluctancy. Everybody [inaudible] did on the Pregnant Guppy. Conroy’s idea was to take the old [inaudible] and modify it for jets. [Inaudible] jetpacks and [inaudible] airplanes, carry the S-II was smaller in size [inaudible]. [Inaudible], a company called Fairchild Strato or Fairchild [inaudible] at that time thought it was such a good idea, they invested a half-million dollars in a study. [00:47:01] RB: For a B-36? Were there any left around that time? I personally thought they were all pretty well scrap. [00:47:10] DS: Yeah. Well, they were in various state of…The one that they were planning to get [inaudible] the basic structure for the airplane was in the desert again, so [inaudible] shape [inaudible] Air Force base. [Inaudible] piece at one of the air museums. Even the Air Force was…Assistant Secretary Charles was quite interested in [inaudible]. [00:47:54] RB: What about the pressurization on the Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy? Were both of them or was one of them pressurized? How does that… [00:48:03]: DS: The Super Guppy never was, and the Pregnant Guppy was never planned to be pressurized. The Super Guppy was supposed to have been pressurized but due to the project logistics office—non-engineering people—trying to make too many engineering decisions, Karl Heimberg says, “That plane is operating and let them people have it and get it.” So we did. [00:48:41] RB: Was the cockpit pressurized at all? [00:48:43] DS:Yeah, the cockpit was pressurized. [00:48:47] RB: Could you overfly bad weather then with both airplanes? [00:48:51] DS: Only with the Super Guppy. We had some…It’s surprising how many experts come out of the wall when you do something like the Pregnant Guppy. We had all kinds of experts in Marshall. Then the Super Guppy, it was quite difficult to overcome some of the expertise at that time. We had experts at headquarters, Houston, Marshall, [Iola?], [inaudible]. When it came down to doing the work, none of them was…They were always gone. [00:49:39] RB: [laughs] Did you overfly the bad weather with the Super Guppy? [00:49:43] DS: Yeah, we did. I think it’s about 18 or 19,000, I don’t think you get over normal bad weather—[inaudible] thunderheads [inaudible]. West of the Mississippi, you got to go around [inaudible], twenty-three, twenty-five thousand feet [inaudible]. [00:50:16] RB: But the Pregnant Guppy then, was this cockpit also pressurized or you just didn’t know? Okay, so you just operated them both. [00:50:26] DS: I’m going to have to retract that [inaudible]. The last I remember, we were still using oxygen at certain altitudes and [inaudible] a mask. It may have finally gotten pressurized at certain altitudes. [Inaudible] oxygen, the same way some altitudes [inaudible]. Both airplanes had to have basic limitations being an airplane, and even the 707 had certain limitations. We had a good…Various people around here to understand that. That’s the reason we had to have real close engineering control, which finally fell apart. We…When Mr. Heimberg’s shop…Finally just washed our hands of the whole thing. When people run into trouble, [inaudible] would bail them out. I guess [inaudible]. The Pregnant Guppy, I would say, is still being carried on a contract, but they haven’t needed a Pregnant Guppy [inaudible] four or five years. The question in my mind now is the Super Guppy [inaudible]. I don’t make these kind of decisions. [00:52:43] DS: I think Conroy’s vision of having outside cargo aircraft would probably have materialized a lot sooner if he had stayed with Aerospace [inaudible]. I think [inaudible]. Of course, now they’ve got [problems?]...A two airplane operation is going to support three or four hundred people. [00:53:37] DS: The Super Guppy is a real good airplane, and it climbs about as fast as a F-86 depending on the load you carry. It was given a thorough flight test with the supervision of Bill Gray and myself. We also after we finished this flight test at Edwards, we had Herman [inaudible], chief engineer of flight tests,[inaudible] Aerospace Lines expert on the job. Once we finished the flight test program, we went over and had Joe Walker of Edwards, the old X-15 pilot. [00:54:33] RB: Joe Walker? [00:54:34] DS: He did the final NASA-type flight test acceptance in the air frame. [00:54:47] RB: Before I leave I wanted to ask again about the Pregnant Guppy, and there was an accident and a picture of it out at Ellington. Do you remember about what time that was? [00:55:00] DS: I believe it’s on the back of the picture. I’m not sure. I believe it was… [00:55:02] RB: Oh okay. I can check it [out?] the picture I suppose. What was it? The wind just caught inside the [inaudible] bay or caught the [inaudible]? What was the… [00:55:24] DS: I think it was a combination of both. It was…What do they call them? Dust devils? Ground twisters? It was quite a [terrific?] wind that came through at the Ellington airport. The airplane was tied down to a couple of [tugs?]. [Lifted the tugs?] right off damn ground. [00:56:11] RB: What was the airplane…It was separated. What was the separation for? [00:56:17] DS: To offload the cargo. [00:56:20] RB: It wasn’t the S-IV stage then? It was a different… [00:56:23] DS: No, we were either picking up or delivering command service modules to test—the ascend or descend stage. I’m not sure…It was back before…I’m looking at some old travel orders here. [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000044_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 2) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource In this portion of the interview, Donald Stewart recounts a series of technical challenges, humorous incidents, and engineering decisions surrounding the development and operation of the Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy transport aircraft for NASA’s Saturn program. He describes memorable flight test episodes—including a water ballast mishap that was mistaken for wing flutter, demanding FAA certification maneuvers, and debates over engineering choices such as replacing nylon with Teflon for cargo pallet bearings. Stewart also discusses transporting Saturn S-IV stages, emergency landings at military bases, structural testing, and the evolution of oversized cargo aircraft concepts. He credits Jack Conroy’s persistence, along with support from Karl Heimberg and Wernher von Braun, for overcoming widespread skepticism and bureaucratic resistance to the Guppy program. The interview concludes with Stewart reflecting on the Super Guppy’s design improvements, certification challenges, operational capabilities, later commercial uses, and Conroy’s lasting influence on specialized cargo aviation despite financial and organizational obstacles.