Wormser, Eric

Wormser, Eric

This interview discusses discoveries and integration of German scientists into US Rocket sciences at the conclusion of World War 2. Mr. Eric Wormser discusses how he was drafted, what his technical specialties were, how the US received V2 rocket documents from Peenemünde, the German scientists he worked with, and his career with the Army.

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

1971-10-26

This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.

.MP4

en

Interviews

Audio

ohc_crst_000029_A

Christensen, David

Wormser, Eric

Stamford, Connecticut

[00:00:05] David Christensen: Interview with Mr. Eric Wormser in Stamford, Connecticut, October 26, 1971.

[00:00:20] DC: Mr. Wormser will now relay how he first became involved with the German rocket program at the end of World War II.

[00:00:33] Eric Wormser: I was drafted in January 1945, after having been previously deferred because of having been employed in essential war work in the field of optics and fire control.

[00:01:04] EW: After receiving six weeks basic training at Fort Belvoir in January 1945, I was assigned to a special army unit which operated out of the Pentagon and assigned drafted specialized technical manpower to various high-priority technical projects in the army.

[00:02:02] DC: So, you had [inaudible] industrial experience primarily why they –

[00:02:09] EW: Yes, I have a degree in mechanical engineering at MIT in 1942. I had three years of industrial experience in the field of optical fire control instruments.

[00:02:31] DC: And you also spoke German at that time?

[00:02:34] EW: I was born in Germany –

[00:02:38] DC: Oh, I see.

[00:02:41] EW: and educated in Germany up to my twelfth year so that I speak German, you might say fluently, but do not have great technical depth in German.

[00:03:08] DC: That was a key consideration in this assignment, I guess, that you’re German in your background.

[00:03:14] EW: Right. I was assigned first by the army to Frankfurt Arsenal for a brief period of time to work on problems on army optical fire control instruments.

[00:03:46] DC: When did you meet Toftoy? In the Pentagon, said you were assigned there to him?

[00:03:58] EW: I believe in the spring of 1945; a request was made by the Office of the Chief of Ordinance for a field grade officer to be assigned to the – I think it was then called the Office of Rocket…something – in the Pentagon.

[00:04:50] EW: The qualifications of that officer were to be that he had to have a fluent knowledge of German and good broad technical background.

[00:05:06] EW: My superior at Frankfurt Arsenal called me in and said – I was at that point a private first class working, in a technical capacity, at Frankfurt Arsenal. He said you have the technical background and you know the Germans. German, but you're not a field grade officer, but I'll check and see if they want you in Washington.

[00:05:47] EW: I think within a week or so word came back: send PFC Wormser to Washington. And I reported to Colonel Toftoy's office and worked for – actually Lieutenant Colonel James G. Bain, who was Colonel Toftoy's assistant.

[00:06:26] EW: My function in Washington from spring of 1945 until the arrival of A: The German documents which have been found in the salt mine in Germany. And B – well really until the arrival of the big bulk of German documents which had been captured out of the salt mine – my function was to digest documents and intelligence reports which were beginning to come in from Europe in drips and drabs, indicating some technical details of the activities of Peenemünde.

[00:08:14] DC: I think you mentioned there were some British intelligence reports trickling in about that time too, which you [reviewed?].

[00:08:20] EW: To the best of my recollection, we got some British reports which related to the fact that the British had identified Peenemünde as a rocket test station.

[00:09:15] EW: Then we got word that a V2 had mis-fired and landed, I believe it was on the island of Bornholm. Which is a Swedish island.

[00:09:59] DC: And you were getting these reports some time after the fight but at least getting the data.

[00:10:04] EW: Right.

[00:10:06] EW: So, we were beginning to get, in the Pentagon, we were beginning to get, you might say, a partial picture of what was going on at Peenemünde and in the German rocket effort.

[00:10:39] DC: Was there much excitement when you found out that the Von Braun team and the documents had been captured and were coming over? And also, the V2 hardware? I guess you were aware of this before they –

[00:10:55] EW: Right. Well, I think I can relate it to you about this way. I think I was by then a sergeant. And I remember Colonel Bain coming to see me sometime in the summer of ‘45 and saying, ‘Sergeant Wormser we've got two big truckloads of German documents coming with a captain on the trucks’ and with instructions to not leave these documents out of his hands and ‘where the hell are we going to put them’ and ‘what are we going to do with them.’

[00:12:20] EW: I don't remember anymore but I think it was several tons of paper. It was I believe two trailer trucks.

[00:12:33] DC: These had already been shipped then across the Atlantic and were arriving in –

[00:12:40] EW: I got word… Colonel Bain got word and I got word that two trailer trucks were on their way with German documents pertaining to the Peenemünde effort and they were on their way to Washington presumably. The first thing we had to figure out is where the hell were we going to put them and what were we going to do with them.

[00:13:21] EW: Well, the next thing I knew is, we commandeered an empty warehouse at Aberdeen.

[00:13:35] DC: Why was Aberdeen figured? That was available? That warehouse was available? Is that why they ended up there?

[00:13:42] EW: I assume, number one, because it belonged to the Army Ordnance and, number two, because it was close to Washington. I assume it was the place that somebody could find an empty warehouse. [chuckling]

[00:14:04] EW: The next thing I knew is that I was sent to… I think I went to Aberdeen with Colonel Bain and then a major – I think his name was Bergman.

[00:14:34] EW: Major Bergman was assigned just administratively to the program, and we found ourselves with a warehouse with 20 or more huge crates…

[00:15:12] DC: Wooden? Crates? Were they wooden crates?

[00:15:14] EW: Wooden crates. 20 or more huge crates containing all of the original drawings and all of the original reports in reproducible form from Peenemünde which had been captured in the Harz. The Harz salt mine.

[00:15:52] DC: Were they marked on the outside to know what was inside of the boxes? In any form? Or did you have to open them to see what was in them?

[00:16:02] EW: As far as I can remember, they were not marked on the outside. We had to start opening the crates and start figuring out what to do.

[00:16:33] EW: Now at that point, I first, I believe to the best of my recollection, I went to Aberdeen several times while still stationed in Washington. Then I was transferred to Aberdeen and then a number of other German speaking GIs were selected.

[00:17:17] DC: Do you recall any of them, off-hand?

[00:17:25] EW: No, I will give you a name later on.

[00:17:36] EW: I don't remember any of the guys at Aberdeen. I don't think they, might say played a very major role. They were just helping to uncrate the stuff and try and sort it.

[00:18:08] DC: When did you first meet the group of Germans? [inaudible]

[00:18:13] EW: I'm trying to remember now… which happened first.

[00:18:21] EW: We realized very soon that the task of cataloging the German documents and figuring out what we had on hand was an unbelievably large task.

[00:18:58] EW: I don't remember in which order this now occurred, but what we did next was… we had, the United States had a large number of German prisoners.

[00:19:31] EW: At Fort Eustis, Virginia, … I can't remember anymore which sequences went, but we selected from amongst these German prisoners, we selected well-educated German officers and got them to volunteer to help sort the documents. I don’t remember anymore as to the –

[00:20:34] DC: Who was in overall charge of the task? Was there any one individual that had the total responsibility to select people, to catalog and supervise and coordinate the thing [inaudible]?

[00:20:51] EW: Well, I suppose it was this way. There was a major, an Aberdeen major, I believe his name was Bergman. Is that correct? Does that check out with your –

[00:21:10] DC: No, I haven’t heard of him. That’s what you mentioned before…

[00:21:13] EW: I think he was nominally in charge, but I think in fact, you might say I was in charge.

[00:21:25] EW: I had been told by Colonel Toftoy's office, mostly Colonel Bain, ‘try and get these documents organized.’

[00:21:46] EW: Now by this time, the Army had also retained Richard Porter of General Electric.

[00:22:13] EW: I am not entirely sure when I first met Porter. I think I met him first in Washington, but then he also came to Aberdeen.

[00:22:36] EW: Essentially, I think much to our complete astonishment, we, as far as we could tell, found that we had the complete, what was called the archives, the complete library of documents of Peenemünde.

[00:23:15] DC: You didn't really know what you had until you opened up everything in order?

[00:23:19] EW: No. We didn't know what we had, but as far as we could establish, we had the complete library of documents of the Peenemünde project in our possession in this warehouse in Aberdeen.

[00:23:44] EW: Now, I'm trying to remember the sequence of events. And maybe you can help me. I believe the first group of Germans, which I believe included von Braun, arrived together with Major Hamill from, they had come through, I believe, Boston, come through Boston, and they arrived at Aberdeen, I would guess in September, is that correct?

[00:24:51] DC: Yeah.

[00:24:52] EW: September 1945.

[00:24:58] EW: Now, Hamill and von Braun, I believe, went on first to Washington and then to Fort Bliss and White Sands.

[00:25:25] EW: But they left behind, I think it was approximately ten fellows, six to eight fellows they left behind, including, I remember, Schulze, Tessmann –

[00:25:54] DC: Poppel?

[00:25:56] EW: I think Poppel.

[ 00:26:03] DC: Jungert? Well, I’ve got their names anyway, yeah, I know. I have them listed.

[00:26:13] EW: We had six to eight Germans. Oh, Schwidetzky was one of them.

[00:26:03] EW: [muffled] Excuse me, sorry. [inaudible] [tape scratch] [shuffling]

[00:26:42] EW: And lived in barracks in the secluded section of Aberdeen.

[00:26:47] DC: You had pretty tight security?

[00:26:51] We had tight security.

[00:26:54] EW: And you might say, sort of, I was their personal liaison man as well as their supervisor, as far as organizing the documents went.

[00:27:24] DC: What was their reaction to this country and this project and the work?

[00:27:30] EW: Well, I can tell you several things that I think are sort of human-interest type things.

[00:27:41] EW: First of all, when they first got here, they were terribly thin and undernourished, number one.

[00:27:57] EW: Number two, they were in very bad need of dental work.

[00:28:12] EW: So, I'm trying to remember, but I think we fed them in one of the regular mess halls at Aberdeen to the best of my recollection.

[00:28:35] EW: And we started getting their teeth attended to and their health looked after.

[00:28:54] EW: They were, when they realized that we had the entire collection of documents from Peenemünde, which they referred to as the archives of Peenemünde, they were astounded.

[00:29:18] DC: Well, now I understand that Tessmann, who was there working on the archives, also was responsible for putting them in the mines. So, he should have been aware of this, shouldn't he?

[00:29:29] DC: Didn't he know what was in there? Maybe not. Maybe he didn't package them. All he did was put them in the mines, not knowing really what they contained.

[00:29:39] EW: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think.

[00:29:44] DC: So, the Germans were somewhat surprised at the contents of the crates as they opened them, is that correct?

[00:29:53] EW: Well, of the warehouse, I think if I remember correctly by the – I can't remember the exact time sequence anymore – but I think we had been working on the documents already for probably something of the order of a month before the Peenemünde Germans arrived. So, we had essentially already uncrated the documents and began to store them and organize them.

[00:31:03] DC: Saying that you had already cataloged for about a month?

[00:31:06] EW: To the best of my recollection, we had already started to organize and catalog and try and put into some order the huge number of drawings and reports.

[00:31:35] DC: Did you work on big tables basically and spread this stuff out? See what’s in there? How did you go about physically handling all these things and tagging them in the right holes more or less?

[00:31:49] I think we got drawing cabinets and files.

[00:32:03] DC: What was your personal reaction when you saw these things? Being an engineer, I guess this was somewhat amazing to you?

[00:32:13] EW: It was amazing and astounding to me.

[00:32:31] EW: While I was fluent in ordinary German, there were contained in these documents obviously a large number of special technical expressions that were unfamiliar to me. So, one of the first projects that I personally undertook and which we published later on as an internal report was a glossary of German guided missile terms and trying to find the equivalent English word for the German word.

[00:33:58] DC: Were translators established at this time that helped convert this to English?

[00:34:04] EW: We had personnel and our effort was to abstract rather than translate.

[00:34:21] EW: I know we got help from German prisoners at Fort Eustis, Virginia and I remember going back and forth. I think if I remember correctly, we left the German prisoners down at Fort Eustis and took the documents down there, and had certain selected documents abstracted and then they would get them back. That's the best of my recollection. I only remember that I went back and forth between Aberdeen and Fort Eustis.

[00:35:05] DC: Was there pretty high priority on this work? Did you work long hours or was it just the writing?

[00:35:09] EW: Yeah, yeah. The task of trying to organize the documents was a very large one. We worked very long hours and made only slow inroads into getting the documents organized.

[00:35:37] DC: Were you instructed to look for any particular type of data or information that you might turn over to Toftoy or someone in particular? A high priority item? [inaudible]

[00:36:02] EW: To the best of my recollection, General Electric then became involved through Project Hermes and General Electric engineering personnel, such as Dr. Porter [and trying to remember a guy, that was a short little guy… up in Boston?]

[00:36:44] DC: So anyway, they became the first – [inaudible]

[00:36:46] EW: Yes, General Electric started coming in and we gave them an idea of what was available.

[00:37:19] EW: I think I had met Major Hamill, oh then Major Hamill, when he escorted the German group to Aberdeen in summer of ‘45 after they arrived in this country. And I had conversations with both Major Hamill and Colonel Bain, and Colonel Toftoy, to the extent that as soon as the task of organizing the documents at Aberdeen was reasonably underway and the documents were in some reasonable shape where they could be handled by others.

[00:38:38] EW: I could be useful at Fort Bliss and White Sands if I was interested to go out there. And I expressed an interest in getting out there because I was interested in getting involved in the hardware as well as –

[00:39:02] DC: Oh, you wanted to see some of the parts out there?

[00:39:04] EW: – as well as some of the documents.

[00:39:06] DC: Your appetite had been whetted, I guess, over these documents.

[00:39:11] EW: Right. So, I…trying to remember exactly when, but I believe and I remember I drove – I had a small car – I drove from Aberdeen to Fort Bliss around Christmas ’45, I would guess.

[00:39:58] DC: How were the documents? [inaudible] – [ a truck?] or what? [Your thoughts?]

[00:40:04] EW: I think…I’m trying to recall this now…I think the documents stayed at Aberdeen for some time beyond that point.

[00:40:26] DC: I see. Did they ever come to Bliss then, or?

[00:40:31] EW: I know certain documents or copies of certain documents went to Bliss. I am not sure whether all the documents ever went to Bliss or not. I just plain don't remember.

[00:40:57] EW: I think there are a couple other – you might say – human interest type things that you would like to know about the stay of the German group at Aberdeen.

[00:41:19] EW: I distinctly remember it included Schwidetzky, Schulze, Tessmann, I think Poppel.

[00:41:35] EW: I don't remember who else.

[00:41:44] EW: First of all, I asked the Germans what they knew about the involvement of slave laborers in their project.

[00:42:23] EW: I think at first, I got the answer that they didn't know anything about it.

[00:42:40] I remember that I arranged to get some captured German movies from the – I assume I got them from the post library — on slave labor activities.

[00:43:13] EW: I remember I took the group of Germans at Aberdeen to the movie theater and had the movies shown to them. By sheer coincidence, I had not previously seen the movies.

[00:43:46] EW: – included scenes of showing Polish and other slave laborers employed in the Nordhausen V2 factory.

[00:44:07.680] DC: Do you recall where that film might be? It might be [something worth to check out.]
[00:44:18] EW: I just requested a bunch of German documentary movies on concentration camp and slave labor camp activities because I felt that since these men told me they knew nothing about it, I felt they ought to know something about it.

[00:44:48] EW: I arranged to show these movies to them. I still don't, to this day, know whether they really didn't know anything about it or I suspect they didn't want to tell me about it.

[00:45:06] EW: I think for the next ten days there was hardly a word exchanged between the Germans and myself because they were so, I suppose, embarrassed about the involvement of the slave laborers in their project.

[00:45:37] DC: Of course, they were in engineering and Nordhausen was production. So, it's possible they weren't personally involved. And maybe they – [didn’t know about it?]

[00:45:45] EW: It is possible. I really don't know the details. The attitudes of the different Germans on this varied greatly.

[00:46:07] DC: And you were in a uniform during that period?

[00:46:09] EW: Yeah, I was in uniform.

[00:46:13] EW: Now, we had the group at Aberdeen for, well, certainly several months. I don't remember how many months.

[00:46:30] EW: They expressed the desire to see something of the United States. I remember taking the group, myself, to New York.

[00:46:54] DC: The whole group, was it?

[00:46:57] EW: I think it was?

[00:47:02] EW: I remember taking the group and I know they stayed with some relatives of Schwidetzky’s, I believe in Jersey, and some of them stayed, I think, at a YMCA. I'm not sure whether I stayed with them or how it all went.

[00:47:29] EW: Anyway, I took them to New York and I brought them back. And I think I took them to Washington and brought them back. If I can remember correctly.

[00:47:41] DC: What was their reaction?

[00:47:44] EW: They were certainly very pleased and interested to get to see some of the country.

[00:47:58] EW: We operated, at that point, on instructions that we were not to divulge their identities to anybody.

[00:48:10] EW: I think we were taking certain chances in doing these things, but we had to draw a fine line between keeping the guys happy and keeping them as prisoners.

[00:48:34] DC: What did you then do at Bliss?

[00:48:36] DC: Did you work with that same group anymore or was that the end of your relationship, more or less?

[00:48:42] EW: No, I worked with the same group. Well, by the same group, certainly.

[00:48:47] DC: I mean the same document group.

[00:48:49] EW: I really worked with the entire group at Bliss.

[00:48:54] DC: You met some of them for the first time when you went out there then.

[00:48:58] EW: Yes, as a matter of fact, at Bliss I got to know von Braun well, I got to know Stuhlinger well, I got to know Riedel well, Steinhoff, Schilling.

[00:49:15] EW: At Bliss I really worked, you might say, essentially with the department heads.
[00:49:28] DC: The lab directors?

[00:49:29] EW: The lab directors, department heads.

[00:49:33] DC: What was your function then?

[00:49:38] EW: Well, I suppose my function was interrogation and technical liaison.

[00:49:46] EW: Major Hamill was in overall charge. And I suppose I was sort of his, what you might call, technical liaison assistant, you might call me.

[00:50:06] DC: Were there any other German speaking military people there besides –

[00:50:10] EW: We had other German military – we had other US military guys that spoke German but of limited technical background.

[00:50:34] EW: We then got, I think I was by that time a top sergeant, whatever it is, technical sergeant.

[00:50:47] EW: You know, I got progressive [vehicle?] knowledge.

[00:50:51] EW: And then came on board Jim Fagan.

[00:51:02] DC: Yeah, I've interviewed Jim.

[00:51:07] EW: Jim Fagan came on board and he was a GI. And while he didn't know as much German as I did, he had a very good technical background.

[00:51:28] DC: Even in rockets, I guess.

[00:51:30] EW: In rockets and in propellants.

[00:51:33] EW: So, Jim Fagan became kind of, at first, sort of my assistant and later on took over from me.

[00:51:48] EW: And then in addition I think after a while we got, a fella of a name of Tom Moore.

[00:51:59] DC: [Yes, that looks like it?].

[00:52:01] EW: Tom Moore.

[00:52:06] DC: How was his German?

[00:52:10] EW: Oh, somewhat limited.

[00:52:15] EW: But, of course, as time progressed the Germans started to learn some English.

[00:52:32] DC: What was your reaction when you saw the V2 hardware after seeing the documents for many months? Did you feel the need to study the turbo pumps and thrust chambers?

[00:52:43] EW: Yeah, I went from Fort Bliss to White Sands fairly frequently with von Braun and others.

[00:53:03] EW: And I was present for the first static firing. I was present for the first two launches.

[00:53:21] EW: I was generally employed as a technical liaison type person helping to maintain liaison between von Braun and US personnel.

[00:53:44] DC: What about industry now? Were they coming in for interrogation?

[00:53:48] EW: Yes, yes. We got at that point in time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Caltech began to come in to Fort Bliss to interrogate some of the Germans. And generally, I would sit in with people who came in. I would be an intermediary. I would sit in with jet propulsion people or I would sit in with navy people or North American Rockwell people.

[00:54:43] EW: And I would act as, in part, as interpreter and sort of liaison man between the visitors that came to Fort Bliss and the German group.

[00:55:03] DC: Do you think these interrogations were transcribed and might still exist somewhere? Is there a formal –

[00:55:13] EW: I issued, I myself issued a series of reports on various subjects of interrogation.

[00:55:34] DC: They could be at Fort Bliss still?

[00:55:38] EW: They could be at Fort Bliss and I will search and see if I can find.

[00:55:50] DC: Oh great! Give me a reference number or date maybe I can locate it.

[00:55:54] EW: I will search and see if I can find, I think I have copies of some of them. Some place.

[00:56:07] DC: That would certainly help complete the story to show how this transfer of knowledge took place.

[00:56:13] EW: I can give you an example which I vividly remember.

[00:56:27] DC: Great. Please do.

[00:56:30] EW: I remember a navy officer coming to Fort Bliss. He was a fairly high-ranking man, probably a commander or something of that sort.

[00:56:54] EW: And I remember that the commander, I was assigned to help the commander interview von Braun or some of these people to interrogate them. Had they considered launching V2s from submarines?

[00:57:29] EW: And I remember that we were told by, I think von Braun and Riedel and others, that they had considered towing a second submarine behind a first submarine and having a V2 rocket contained in that second submarine or some modification thereof.

[00:58:17] EW: And then directing this second submarine and launching a V2 rocket out of it.

[00:58:31] DC: Right, and how did the officer react?

[00:58:35] EW: He was fairly amazed.

[00:58:38] EW: So, you might say that some of the elementary concepts of what later became the Polaris Project, at least in proposal or idea form, had been considered by the Germans.

[00:59:09] DC: In what year did you, when did you finally leave the [inaudible] until then?

[00:59:16] EW: I left Fort Bliss I think it was September of ‘46 because my tour of duty in the army was up and I was due for discharge.

[00:59:45] EW: There was some brief discussion as to whether I wanted to stay on as a civilian employee at Fort Bliss.

[01:00:00] EW: But essentially, I preferred to go elsewhere.

[01:00:13] DC: I guess by that time the Germans were learning American anyway or learning English. So, this role of interpreter wasn’t quite as critical –

[01:00:23] EW: Yeah, I think the role of interpreter wasn’t as critical anymore.

[01:00:25] EW: And Major Hamill had acquired Jim Fagan and Tom Moore and had some beginnings of a technical staff to assist him.

[01:00:51] DC: Well, you certainly played a key role in the transfer of that knowledge. [And that was what I think your interest or specialty is?] [We’re about to run out of tape. Oh, there’s a little more, do you think you – ]

[01:01:08] EW: I certainly recognized von Braun as a tremendously capable, you might say, technical administrator and technical promoter. And I also recognized –
[END]

1:01:39