Trichel, Gervais

Trichel, Gervais

Dr. Trichel's account of post-WW2 V-2 Rocket acquisition, roles of British intelligence, importance of General Electric and Dr. Porter, Askania theodolites, the hiring of Operation Paperclip German scientists, the selection and establishment of White Sands Missile Range, and Ordnance acquisition.

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

1972-04-28

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Interviews

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ohc_crst_000027_A

Christensen, David

Trichel, Gervais

Birmingham, Michigan

[00:00:07] David Christensen: Testing. This is an interview with Dr. Trichel in his home in Birmingham, Michigan on April 28, 1972. Dr. Trichel has been telling me of his background in rocketry prior to the time that the V-2 rocket was fired and landed in Sweden. He has gone into an extensive detail of his activities, particularly in the early Army Ordnance Rocket Program.

[00:00:40] Gervais Trichel: Well, to start the V-2 at the beginning, I would have to go back to about February or March of 1944. At that time, I visited England in connection with some of the rockets being produced for the invasion.

[00:01:22] DC: So, the smaller rockets?

[00:01:23] GT: Smaller rockets. At that time, Dr. Alwyn Crow was head of rocket work in the Ministry of Supply in England. And on one of my visits with Dr. Crow, he showed me a photograph taken by a reconnaissance airplane of what appeared to be a large rocket on the island of Peenemünde.

[00:02:06] DC: I see, you were keenly interested, I guess. In seeing something like that.

[00:02:13] GT: I asked Dr. Crowe what they made of this, and he laughed and said it's a ‘Trojan Horse’. He said that from our computation of the thing, the size – we can get very accurately off of the photograph — its weight would be over 100 tons, and by no means that we can visualize, would you be able to get it off of the ground.

[00:03:02] DC: Yeah, I see. [chuckle] That was the official opinion at that point.

[00:03:06] GT: Right. Now, I don't know whether you have heard this, but this was not hearsay, this was an actual conversation between myself and Dr. Crowe. One of the, of course, reasons, [as he would often say?] for his belief that it was a Trojan horse, was that it was left so conveniently out where it could be photographed.

[00:03:39] DC: Too obvious.

[00:03:40] GT: It was obvious. It had been left out there.

[00:03:48] DC: He was really thinking it was being done to the psychological – ?

[00:03:52] GT: Yes. Of course, the British were much more likely than the Americans… Long before we were in the war, I was in France as an assistant military attaché. The airfields were camouflaged, and they went to a great deal of trouble, the Germans did then, to actually build some dummy air drones out of canvas and cardboard near where the fields, which had belonged to the British before Dunkirk, were located. The British, however, knew full well where these airfields were. And at one time when I was there, they came over and raided one of these camouflaged fields, and bombed the hell out of it, and then dropped a wooden bomb on the cardboard target that the Germans had created for them.

[00:05:27] DC: A wooden bomb.

[00:05:28] GT: So… that actually the British sense of humor, you might say, of going to the trouble to drop a wooden bomb on a make-believe [peel?], thought that maybe the Germans were doing the same thing at Peenemünde.

[00:05:52] DC: I see. Until the summer of ‘44, you mentioned, when the Swedish...

[00:05:56] GT: That's right.

[00:05:57] DC: That was a burning point.

[00:06:02] GT: The next thing that came to my attention about the V-2 was that sometime in the summer of 1944, when this rocket escaped and accidentally went into Sweden. Dr. Sorensen was at that time visiting in Sweden, and he was able to persuade the Swedes to turn over to him certain pieces recovered from this rocket. These pieces wound up in my office.

[00:07:01] DC: Really?

[00:07:02] GT: In Washington.

[00:07:05] DC: I guess the British somewhat resented this, didn't they?

[00:07:07] Well, I don't know. But anyway, we had the propulsion motor for the pumps. We had enough pieces of the framework to realize that it was not a solid structure, as Dr. Crowe had suggested, but an aircraft type of construction. Anyway, we then decided that we should have someone studying this thing. And because of our knowledge of the thing, we didn't want to interrupt Caltech. Instead, we went to the General Electric Company and got them to undertake a contract to investigate and correlate the information we had about this rocket. This they did. They set up a project under Dr. Porter. And they built in the room there an artist's conception, if you will, of this rocket, where we put together all the things.

[00:09:11] DC: Were the British doing something simultaneously similar to this?

[00:09:15] GT: I don't know.

[00:09:16] DC: I see. This is—

[00:09:17] GT: What we did. I believe it was about September when the first V-2 came across in England. We then very rapidly accumulated the parts missing and what have you from these recoveries in England.

[00:10:02] GT: So that long before the invasion, General Electric and Dr. Porter had, under his group there, had a very good idea of what the V-2 was like.

[00:10:22] DC: Now were you aware that the British were also in Poland – about that same time – trying to piece together, from the Blizna firing area, pieces of rockets? About the same time the first rockets were hitting England. They were doing this similar activity. You weren't necessarily informed.

[00:10:43] GT: I don't know how much information we had on that. We got very good information and very quick from our own military people in England, who supplied us with a constant stream of records.

[00:11:04] DC: Were the British aware of what you were doing? Were they also trying to keep a close liaison, and see what you came out of from your investigation of piecing all these pieces together?

[00:11:16] GT: Yes. I had a British officer attached to my...

[00:11:23] DC: So, they were feeding US data back to England too.

[00:11:26] GT: Yes.

[00:11:27] DC: So, you were getting across as part of the [invasion?].

[00:11:29] GT: I had a British Lieutenant Captain, I’ve forgotten. Anyway, the officer attached to the rocket development division.

[00:11:40] DC: I see.

[00:11:43] GT: As liaison. But anyway, when the invasion the following year was coming about, the Ordnance Department were directed to set up teams, scientific teams, to investigate all sorts of things.

[00:12:25] DC: All kinds of weapons and tanks...

[00:12:26] GT: Weapons, tanks and other things. The problem of getting such a team for the V-2 rocket – also for the buzz bomb — and the V-2 rocket team was assigned to us. And since we had had General Electric do that, we had been doing all this other work on it, but they were also contracted for such a team. Which incidentally, did a very good job.

[00:13:17] DC: The GE team.

[00:13:19] GT: The GE team.

[00:13:20] DC: Very professional.

[00:13:21] GT: Not only professional, but they did something that no one else before, as I know, bothered to do. As you know, General Electric for a great many years at least, had had manufacturing facilities in Germany.

[00:13:49] DC: Through their international operations.

[00:13:51] GT: Through their international operations. And they had in their organization, technical people who had either lived or otherwise been assigned to these projects and who spoke German fluently. Henry Sayler complimented me – he was the Chief Army Ordnance officer of the expeditionary force— complimented me once and he said that, “Your people were the only ones that came over there that didn't have to be spoon fed and hand carried around.” Because they not only spoke German, but they knew where things were in Germany because most of them had lived in Germany at some time or other.

[00:14:43] DC: That was a tremendous asset to the success of the whole mission.

[00:14:49] GT: And that spoke volumes for GE's organization.

[00:14:55] DC: Well, it explains a lot to me over the success of the whole mission, I think.

[00:15:00] Of course. Because they knew. Not only knew how to ask and find them things, but they knew a lot of people to ask about.

[00:15:13] DC: Right.

[00:15:14] GT: To find out what was going on.

[00:15:16] DC: They already had contacts.

[00:15:18] GT: Had contacts.

[00:15:19] Now, I see that's not particularly germane to your inquiry, but it is.

[00:15:25] DC: It certainly is. I think it's one of the key factors that needs to be brought out in the story as to the success of the whole operation.

[00:15:35] GT: Well, anyway. Porter's group were well organized and of course it had five or six months. Well, no, more than that. Nearly a year from the summer to one summer to the next. Working on the reconstituting the V-2 problem.

[00:16:05] DC: When did you first get involved with the interest in the people behind the V-2? I think that's the story we really need to investigate. [inaudible] — that Paperclip Operation?

[00:16:24] GT: Well, after the capture of Nordhausen, we got a message from Sayler's office saying that they had this factory where the V-2s were. And that they could get samples of the material for one. And that they had a large group of the people involved. And that it was their opinion that this group ought to be brought to the United States. We immediately, and myself and the General Barnes, sent cables to Sayler's office [inaudible] to get at least 100 complete missiles. And enough to assemble another 100 in the form of spare parts. And to ship them to the United States.

[00:18:08] DC: Of course, we were still at war with Japan, so that was one of your motivations, I think.

[00:18:12] GT: Well, our motivation was, I don't remember too well, except that we agreed with Sayler's office over there. And I guess that Toftoy and company had told him, because I don't know whether, but anyway, that it should be done. Well, anyway, pursuant to his offer and our request back from the Chief of Ordnance to the Chief of Ordnance [office?], Toftoy got 1500 French railroads, or European railroads, carloads of stuff out of there. And he got all this stuff going before either the British or the Air Force found out about it.

[00:19:05] DC: What do you attribute this to? Just getting out of there fast?

[00:19:08] GT: That's right, just fast is all. When they found out about it, and I think the British found out through their mission in Washington that we had this stuff coming. They made a very strong plea that this stuff be shipped to England and that it be test fired and whatnot over there. Well, we were equally of the opinion that it should come to the United States. And meanwhile, the Air Force found out about what we were getting, and we said yes, that we were getting some of these. We didn't tell them how many. And so, we immediately agreed that we would give Wright Field one of them, which they thought was very generous until they found out how many we had. [laughing] And we gave five to the British, which satisfied them, or at least seemed to. In the meantime, the Toftoy and company were busy getting these things down to the port and getting them sent back to the United States.

And then correspondents, people, not concerning the civilians, personnel, and whatnot. And we were having difficulty there. The reason being that a lot of people were very much opposed to bringing these people in the United States. They were German. They were thought to be indoctrinated Nazis. They had been engaged in this project over there. And they thought it, at least one very high-placed scientist in the United States said that they will not be able to teach us anything that American science can't do. So, rather, the State Department were very unwilling to grant visas to bring these people in. And the employment people said, how are you going to pay them? How are you going to hire them? They're enemy aliens. Well, I knew this, that we were employing Germans, civilians in Germany, by the thousands. It's true that we were employing them as laborers and mechanics that we were employing. So, when this objection was raised, I went over to the Secretary of War's office and got a hold of personnel people and said, how are you able to hire these people in Germany? If we can't hire them over here? Oh, they said, [when they got the regulations out?], the Secretary of War has authority to hire enemy aliens in the combat zone. But we got the actual act or directive, whatever it was, and it said nothing about combat zones, but they'd give them authority. So, when the matter got up to Mr. Patterson, Judge Patterson said that I can hire them in the United States or any other place.

[00:24:21] DC: So, it wasn't restricted then?

[00:24:23] GT: No. There was no legal reason why we couldn't hire them over here.

[00:24:33] DC: So, of a keen interest, I guess…

[00:24:35] GT: The State Department were much more difficult. And we finally through... who was the Assistant Secretary of State there, or the Assistant Secretary of the Army… He was the Assistant Secretary of the Army and was on this so-called SWAN committee, State War and Navy committee. And he was on our side trying to get them, and actually, they had to get to the Secretary of State himself to get an order issued to these immigration group there to let these people in. And we had to agree in turn that we would bring them in under the condition that they were to stay together, be held together, and on a military reservation. And that they would not be allowed to travel from this island except with special permission and for special purposes. And that they were not to be immigrants, but they were under contract. And that if they violated that contract, that we would return them to Germany. And that when our need for them was over, that we agreed that we would, at our expense, return them, repatriate them to Germany.

[00:26:40] DC: So initially it was all just a temporary...

[00:26:42] GT: That's right.

[00:26:43] DC: ...a temporary right.

[00:26:51] GT: Then the decision was that we would take them to White Sands. Now, this is the first time I've mentioned White Sands. But White Sands Proving Ground came about again because of the Caltech Project.

[00:27:19] DC: The same program you mentioned earlier?

[00:27:21] GT: Yes. The initial so-called Private A was fired on the dry lake range. The succeeding models, though, did not... they didn't have any range that was sufficient. And General Barnes agreed that we ought to have such a range. That firing over the water was unsatisfactory for two reasons. In the first place, at that time, nobody knew how accurately you could track with radar. It wasn't even certain that you could transmit through the heavy side layers to a missile in flight. And there was strong need that you have some method of checking optically. And correlate the radio observation, radar observation, with optical observation. And this brings in, then, the Askania story, which you probably know.

[00:28:53] DC: [Eh, you tell me?].

[00:28:56] GT: Before the war, Aberdeen had made a contract with Askania in Germany for some very large theodolites, recording theodolites. Photographs, bombs in flight, particularly.

[00:29:26] DC: That was a German firm?

[00:29:28] GT: German firm, Askania. The war came along. And by the time that Askania had these things ready for delivery, we were at war with Germany. Technically, they were not war material. Theodolite is a surveying instrument. And I don't know how. You can probably find out. We arranged through the Swiss to trade with the enemy. And legally brought those theodolites into the United States. The Germans got them into Switzerland, and we got them out of Switzerland.

[00:30:25] DC: There was a lot of this interchange going on.

[00:30:27] GT: Oh, yes. It was this trading–

[00:30:29] [recording malfunction]

[00:30:45] GT: Uh, anyway. These Askania theodolites were available. And they were far better than anything either the Army or Navy had for that purpose, because they had been specially designed and built for the war. And we wanted a land range where radar tracking could be correlated with theodolite data from these Askania theodolites. So...

[00:31:24] DC: So, what year did you get those?

[00:31:28] GT: Well, yes, it was in ‘44. They were available in 1944. General Barnes’s suggestion, we got, from the Department of the Interior, maps showing all the public domain in the United States. And we were looking for a range that would be 100 miles long and 50 miles wide. And then we got an aircraft and started looking at these areas.

[00:32:18] DC: Aerial surveys.

[00:32:32] GT: Well, we had the map, but we went and looked from the air. The three areas that immediately seemed to offer some chance, with the area in Nevada south of Winnemucca. The range was there, but the impact area was very mountainous, very rugged. And it might have been jeepable in the summertime, but certainly when the snow fell, it would be impossible to [get?] land transportation in there. The other large area that had only a small installation in the middle of it was the Ajo area in the southern part of Arizona. Ajo had two disabilities that we couldn't do much about. One was that the area lay along the Mexican border. And remembering what happened to the Swedes, although we didn't know about it at that time, our fear was that we would have an international accident, an incident because of an accidental missile going into Mexico. The other one was a main transcontinental railway in the southern Pacific runs across that thing, the northern boundary. We were also afraid that we would have a large public outcry about firing any place along those tracks. And the tracks ran parallel to the direction we wanted to fire.

[00:34:48] DC: And that made it even worse.

[00:34:53] GT: The area that we finally started on was the one that [lay in?] White Sands. It wasn't as long as one, but at that time we had 85 miles by using part of the Fort Bliss elevation. In fact, we started out that Fort Bliss was to be the base, the firing point. And I'm not sure, but the firing point isn't on the Fort Bliss reservation today. But there were about 4 million acres, only 47,000 were the only privately owned property there. Well, 47,000 acres is a lot, but—

[00:35:48] DC: Not out there.

[00:35:50] GT: Not in that area. The White Sands National Monument, which was already a public…lay in the middle of it. The north end, the Air Force had the Alamogordo bombing range, which at that time was being used by the bomb people. The principle of all this public land were under grazing permits. And we had a terrific outcry on the part of the ranchers there, we were taking their grazing permits away from them. And they were up on the governor's doorstep. And the solution to that thing, credit must go to John Howard, who was my executive officer. He had been down and talked to the people in the governor’s office. And the political situation was pretty hostile. So, Howard came up with the idea that [if] you can't lick them, join them. So, he says the thing is wrong, he told me, he says the thing is wrong, is that the Texas Project is going to take all of those things. He says that actually it isn't any further to Las Cruces, New Mexico, than it is to El Paso. So, let's change the…

[00:38:21] DC: Make it a New Mexico Project.

[00:38:22] GT: Make it into a New Mexico Project, which is what we did. And immediately we got the Chamber of Commerce in Las Cruces behind the thing. And they had apparently as much political muscle as the ranchers.

[00:38:48] DC: So, you got the [inaudible]

[00:38:49] GT: So, we got the political objection to the thing. And then we had authority to condemn these grazing permits and to condemn and buy the 47,000 acres of land there, which was that. The range we wound up with was neither as wide nor as long as we had set out to, but it was reasonable. Actually, some places 40 miles wide, and I'd say it was 85 miles in length, which looked like it would satisfy our immediate needs.

[00:39:50] DC: Now when that was selected, that was prior to the awareness of the V-2 project?

[00:39:55] GT: Oh yes, that project was all going on with the idea of providing a place where it was part of the more advanced vehicles from Caltech. And also, the mountain area around that thing is far up a valley. And these surrounding mountains gave an excellent place to locate both radar and optical control system. The whole area is jeepable, so we could recover.

[00:40:34] DC: And it's not that much of a weather problem.

[00:40:36] GT: No, the weather is excellent there. Anyway though, we had the land and the money to buy the equipment that we needed initially was nothing like what we have now. Like $4 million I guess was the only estimate for the communications equipment and camera installation. We had the cameras.

[00:41:14] DC: You did get your deadlines from the government, under wartime…?

[00:41:17] GT: Oh yes, we'd gotten them in the [name?]. In fact, they were on hand when we got them at the range. They belonged to Aberdeen, but that's Ordnance too. Well anyway though, the next step was to build a firing point, because this was just opened. And there goes the credit that ought to be given, more measure than you ever got to a rather unusual man, Colonel Turner.

[00:41:55] DC: Turner?

[00:41:56] GT: Turner, yeah. Colonel Turner came to me in the Rocket Development Division from the Ammunition Division. And General Barnes, at one of our luncheons, said that the Ammunition Division Chief, I forgot what his name was anyway, has got a lieutenant colonel that he would ask me if I would take off because he's difficult, he's causing trouble. And he said they don't want to fire him, but they've got to get rid of him. Of course, they could use a reserve officer so they could [award him?] back for life if they wanted to. But anyway, he was, as Barnes said, difficult. So, he said could you take him? And well, what could I say? I said, yeah. Well, Turner was one of these very aggressive people. And he was certainly an advocate of ‘do it now’. Anyway, this happened at about the time that we were going to build White Sands. So, we decided the thing to do to build White Sands there was to get some temporary barracks that had been built at Fort Bliss and move them up there. And so, we set out to get permission to do that. In the meantime, I decided that Turner might be just the man for this ‘do it now’ job to get out there. So, I sent him to White Sands to build a place, and he did. The next thing I knew, I was called up to General Clay's office, because my man Turner down there had charges prepared against him by the area engineer for stealing— [laughing]

[00:45:14] DC: Just grabbed everything? [chuckling]

[00:45:16] GT: – these buildings without authority.

[00:45:20] DC: When he went up to Bliss and got buildings and moved them [inaudible]?

[00:45:23] GT: He moved them out there apparently without waiting for the paperwork. Anyway, I was able to… General Barnes to persuade them not to actually court-martial him on the grounds that here was a man who was getting something done and for God's sake –

[00:45:48] DC: Don't stop it!

[00:45:50] GT: Don't stop it! It needed to be done and everything. Actually, the paperwork was in the mail. There was no reason he couldn't. Anyway, Turner built White Sands literally out of nothing. He was accused of stealing. If the truth was known he probably did. But he actually took stuff without having the paperwork completed.

[00:46:23] DC: That seems to be the whole story of the rocket program. You always had to scrounge, make do.

[00:46:32] GT: We had no money for construction. The Ordnance money was not at the will to construct barracks. With Ordnance, we couldn't build barracks out of an Ordnance appropriation. Anyway, White Sands was in operation and was an ideal place to move the Germans when they decided to bring them in. That was the place. The first place it was isolated. There was probably no better place we could have picked for him that would have that. We had a range there where they could fire the V-2 missiles. Not full range but far enough distance to do what we wanted to.

[00:47:35] DC: When did you first meet some of these people? In Washington? Did you ever get out and visit with them out there?

[00:47:43] GT: No, I never laid eyes on them. After these arrangements were all made, I went to the Philippines as Deputy Ordnance Officer of the Western Pacific.

[00:48:00] DC: I see, what was the month and year was that, if you will?

[00:48:06] GT: I left the United States in June or July of ’45, after the fall there and so on. This thing was all arranged with these things on. I left and we had agreed. Again, I had [inaudible] Toftoy, so Toftoy was brought over to succeed me. And I was ordered to the Philippines.

[00:48:42] DC: Would you mind telling me a little bit about how you first met him and a little bit of his story from your viewpoint because he's not here to tell himself? It would help me to get a little background of this relationship and how he...

[00:48:58] GT: Toftoy was a coast artillery officer, which I had done too. At the time that I was an instructor in the coast artillery school, Toftoy was in the mine command at Fort Monroe. That's when I first knew him.

[00:49:19] DC: When did you get acquainted with the rocket program, again? Reacquainted. When did he…?

[00:49:27] GT: Not at all until he — I never laid eyes on him. Oh, I guess I had seen him in Europe as far as having any dealings with him. But when we were looking for someone to take my place, because of his connection with this thing in Europe, he seemed like an ideal man to bring back for that purpose. And he was brought back because he had, as far as I know, been the moving spirit in getting the actual man on the spot over there. Of course, Sayler's office, if you want to say, was responsible. After all, Henry Sayler had a lot of other responsibilities. Toftoy was actually the guy...
[00:50:18] DC: How do you spell Saylor?

[00:50:19] GT: S-A-Y-L-O-R, [Sayler is correct] Henry Sayler, he was Major General.

[00:50:28] DC: There was another fellow that I want to ask you about. Staver, Bob Staver, did you ever meet him?

[00:50:36] GT: Yeah, he was at Caltech, but he was stationed out there. I guess he had been liaison officer with this [part of work?] that was in the [RC?] we’re doing.

[00:50:58] DC: He also got involved in the same activity in Europe too, I understand.

[00:51:02] GT: Well, I don't know. He was not a part of my group.

[00:51:09] DC: I understand that.

[00:51:16] GT: See, our dealings were actually with Sayler's office, and Toftoy was, as far as I know, was the guy that was actually in charge of the local [on the spot?] level. I’d say I left the United States before any of this stuff arrived. Now though, in, ‘46 though, we had the war shut off from under me in the Pacific, so I came back in – no, not forty[six] – in ’45, of course. Yeah. When the war ended, my boss, who had been out there the whole four years, General Davis, was immediately returned to the United States. And I became Chief Ordnance Officer in the Western Pacific, and [half-west back?]. The job there was one of tearing down, and a big job of disposing of the ammunition.

[00:52:53] DC: Mopping up.

[00:52:54] GT: Mopping up. And the new development division back in the War Department now, which was the division of the Special Staff, not the General Staff in the War Department. The Special Staff, was headed by an ordnance officer, a brigadier general, who had known me very well. And he wanted me back there as his deputy. And I didn't want to leave. I had a job that if I stayed on for six months would promote me. And General Styer was… agreeable to keeping me, and when they requested my return, he objected. And then they came back and said that the Secretary of War, which of course probably never heard of me, but anyway that wanted me back to this new development division. And that they would replace me with the list of three officers that they gave, including Davis, who had been Chief Ordnance Officer. In other words, they agreed they would send him back. So Styer said, “I don't want to make Davis come back out, but I've got to let you go.” So, they took Colonel Hoff, who was [inaudible] [officer’s course?], and said he'd got me on the airplanes and sent me back. So, I came back to the War Department Special Staff in December of ‘45. And by that time, because of new developments in this rocket work and so on, in fact all of the [inaudible] staff supervision of it. We had no control over it. Staff job. And then they decided to reorganize the general staff and create the research and development division in the general staff. And my boss decided to retire, so that left me at least temporarily in charge of the – I was the senior officer presently in the new development division. I fell in the job of organizing and getting started for this new development research division of the general staff. And I was the acting head of that for about six months. The general staff division.

[00:56:59.] DC: I guess you still kept an eye on guided missiles.

[00:57:02] GT: Oh yes, of course. I was very much interested in them, but I had no control over it. I did though, at that point, have considerable to do with keeping guided missiles in the Army.

[00:57:24] DC: Oh really?

[00:57:25] GT: Yes, because the Air Force, by that time we were trying very hard to get…

[00:57:35] DC: That’s the [wing controversy?].

[00:57:38] GT: – the long-range missiles turned over to them. And my old friend Ben Wilson was still there, and General LeMay at that time, the major general, was head of that development group inside that. But anyway, several times I had the order all gotten up to turn it over, because they too were part of the Army at that time, to transfer all this missile work to the Air Corps. But by that time, I was an acting deputy chief of staff, so it required my consent.

[00:58:41] DC: So, you moved up into that [?].

[00:58:47] GT: I didn't have any weight, but sitting across the ground force there was Jakey Devers, who had four stars on his shoulder and who did have a lot of weight. So, every time these things came over, I trotted over and stirred up Jakey. [Laughing while speaking] He immediately got on his horse and came over to the Pentagon and got with…
[00:59:11] DC: You were the watchdogs there.

[00:59:13] GT: That’s about all I did there, of course, exercising influence. But all I had to do was to alert Devers and he was able to get over on Tom Handy's level and say, nonsense, these things are artillery. The action of course is correct, I can say. They bear no resemblance whatsoever to an airplane except they fly through the air is all.

[00:59:43] DC: Guided artillery shell.

[00:59:52] GT: In the light of the things that have come to pass afterwards, maybe I was wrong. But because the Air Force of course did win the war, but it took them a long time. It was 20 years I guess, pretty near, before they actually got the thing from the Army.

[01:00:18] DC: I was somewhat involved in that. I was in the Jupiter program which was turned over to the air force in…

[1:00:30] GT: I was up to my ears in 1946. And I say nobody paid much attention to me, but they would pay attention to people like Devers.

[01:00:45] DC: That's certainly given me a much better overall feel of how these things come about. It pulled me out a lot of good [chances?].

[01:00:55] [interview ends]

[01:01:05] [recording repeats first 30 minutes]
[END]

1:31:48

At 1:01:05 recording repeats first 30 minutes of recording