Steihoff, Ernst

Steihoff, Ernst

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.

University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama

1971-08-19

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Interviews

Audio

ohc_crst_000025_A

Christensen, David

Steihoff, Ernst

[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]

1:30:14