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Transcription: [00:22:15]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah I've always wondered about it, in part because, also you would have had a guidance problem, would you not, if you could have made it work, in terms of accuracy?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes, yes --

[00:22:23]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Uhh, after all, the flight time would be large and you would need gyros, which did not drift much over that time, so -- it was an idea, it might have worked in the long run, but it the technology was not available to make it really a useful project.

[00:22:51]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Would you say that at most, throughout this period of, beginning of '42 to middle of '43 when you were mostly working on A9 that you only had a handful of people working on that idea?

[00:23:03]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
For the most time?

[00:23:05]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
It was a small group, primarily in the Projeckten Abteilung and there people in the Guide and Control, BSM it was called, who worked on it, we worked on a drop glider, too. The idea was, you might remember the A5 predecessor of the V2 --

[00:23:37]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yes.

[00:23:39]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
This vehicle was to be equipped with wings, was supposed to be dropped from an airplane first as a glider, and as a second step it was supposed to be shot with um, with a rocket motor, to test the aerodynamics, the guidance control and so --

[00:23:59]
and the drop test didn't work. The test vehicle simply lost control, and I think it lost control because its roll control was weak. After all, it had had only the two vertical fins with their rudders as roll control, and, in my belief, it died from the interference with the airplane, at the moment of dropping. It probably rolled enough to make the gyros hit the stops. Then the gyros lost the altitude.

[00:24:43]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Hmm-hmm -- So this was summer of '43 already?, or was it earlier?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
That was in the summer of '42.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
'42?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Well, '42 or '43 --

[00:24:58]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
We made two attempts to drop this vehicle, this test vehicle.

[00:25:03]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
It was called A7, right?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
A7. Right.
[00:25:06]


{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah, 'cause I -- uhh, Karl Heinburg told me this story of his very short passage through your office. He worked on that A7 project, I guess, [[crosstalk]]

{SPEAKER name="Werner Karl Dahm "}
Yes.

{SPEAKER name="Michael Neufeld"}
and then he left. But so, these models were unstable from the moment of drop. Almost virtually--

[00:25:25]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Let's say so -- the model was stable. In subsonic flow, the A9 configuration worked. The model flew subsonically, but it lost control. The control system was disturbed by the too large rolling angle, roll angle.
[00:25:51]