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Transcription: [00:33:35]
{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
-- after Fort Bliss. No, he was a short time at least, also here in Huntsville, but not very long.

[00:33:41]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
His name was S C H A - ?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
E U - S C H - E U F E L E N -- Klaus.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
OK. Scheufelen, Klaus.

[00:33:55]
So he was an air force officer? Connected to --?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Yeah, and he, I think had the basic idea of the Taifun.

[00:34:02]
And in a way of course it was a response to the Russian Stalinorgan. You probably heard about the Stalinorgans? And this was a similar system, launching a lot of --

[00:34:15]
-- in some cases solid-propelled, but Scheufelen worked mostly on liquid-propelled rockets, which didn't have a great accuracy, so they were really a target area weapon, with which you could combat an army that was approaching you.

[00:34:36]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
The Taifun was supposed to be launched against bomber formations, right?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
No, it was really against army, it is a ground-to-ground vehicle. It was not a ground-to-air vehicle.

[00:34:50]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Because I've seen it described as a ground-to-air vehicle, in some of the things I've been reading.

[00:34:55]
{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Maybe some advanced Taifuns in this country. The Taifun was picked up again. And I think the Taifuns developed in this country were used, were intended for use, for that purpose.

[00:35:07]
But in Peenemünde, as far as I know, it was just like the Stalinorgan, ja? No accuracy, it had no guidance system. It was a very simple weapon. It just carried a payload over a certain distance.

[00:35:23]
And having no guidance system, it would be awfully difficult to use, at least the old Taifun from Peenemünde, as an anti-aircraft vehicle. You need a fairly sophisticated guidance system for that.

[00:35:34]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah. Well, I got the impression that they were pressing that into production and never was produced.

[00:35:40]
With the idea of just shooting masses of them at a bomber formations, with the kind of random idea that you would explode them in the middle of --

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Well, if you had enough bombers coming at you, you might be able to succeed in that area.

[00:35:53]
On the other hand, the bombers are normally so high, the Taifun does not have a very great height of its trajectory.

[00:36:02]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
It gives you the definite impression of being a desperation move.

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
It was.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
At the very end of the war.

[00:36:10]
So you can't tell me much about Wasserfall, unfortunately.

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
No, I can't.

[00:36:15]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
If you ever think of anyone here who might have worked on Wasserfall, I'd be interested in talking to them. Because I don't have much information.

[00:36:25]
Now, Dornberger, I never asked you about Dornberger, and some of the other army people - Did you have much dealings with them?

[00:36:33]
{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Well, not too many. Between Dornberger and myself was of course von Braun and sometime even Thiel, on top of that, so I never dealt too much personally with him, in Peenemünde.

[00:36:45]
I had probably even more contacts with him here in this country. Of course he came often here to Huntsville, visited often. I visited him at Aerospace a few times. I visited him there.

[00:37:00]
And of course, normally his decisions were passed on to me through von Braun. I was in a number of staff meetings with him, after the bomb raid, for example, I remember that meeting, ja? When we had to decide - where do we go now from here? What do we do next?

[00:37:17]
And then of course we decided, we really have to disperse the whole facility. And as I mentioned earlier, we were finally spread all over the island of Usedom and even over the mainland.

[00:37:29]
And of course Dornberger came to many of the firings. He was normally there for any important firing, whenever a new system, a new vehicle was being tested, he was there on the launch site and also very often on the test stands.

[00:37:43]
But again at that time, you don't have too much chance to really talk to him, ja?

[00:37:46]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Okay, so for you he was always kind of a fairly distant figure.

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Right. He was really the boss, the boss in Peenemünde.

[00:37:54]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And you got the impression of him as what? As a-?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Well, he was certainly a good engineer, I think. He had the basic idea of using rockets for artillery purposes.

[00:38:05]
I think he gave a lot of good inputs into the V-2 system.

[00:38:10]
Of course he was more involved with the final deployment, to make it mobile, and to use it not only from the bunkers that were initially scheduled.

[00:38:21]
In fact, I even think he was always opposed to that idea, because he saw coming what finally happened, that these bunkers would be bombarded and they are gone, you don't have them any more.

[00:38:33]
While for mobile deployment, of course you have a lot of flexibility. And I think he was the one who really recognized that and pushed it quite a bit. And also von Braun was in favor of that.

[00:38:43]
And one of the fellows who really pushed that was Klaus Riedel, the other Riedel. And he was initially, before he died - he had an automobile accident - and before he died he was really pushing the mobile deployment of the V-2.

[00:38:59]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Do you recall whether in the beginning that von Braun was in favor of the bunkers?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Well, of course, in a way it was a military decision - von Braun could give his consultative advice and could tell them, well, that's really not the way to do it.

[00:39:17]
I think, as I said, I think he was never too much impressed with it. I think he always preferred the mobile concept.

[00:39:26]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Who was pushing the bunkers? I mean -?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
That was basically the army and maybe even the party to a certain degree, but I think that was basically an army decision.

[00:39:37]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Because I got the impression, I mean, I certainly know that as some people have said, Hitler was in love with gigantic concrete structures.

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
He may have been the one who finally pushed it and finally made the final decision, that's definitely the possibility.

[00:39:53]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
But I had the impression that perhaps early on, earlier on, before the mobile system was really demonstrated it could work, that some people at Peenemunde, too, felt that with such a complicated vehicle, you had to have some kind of preparation underground, or some, under protected shelter, to prepare the vehicle for launch.

[00:40:20]
I gather you probably were not involved in those issues at all?

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
No, that was a separate group, and the Hueter - and he died in the meantime, he's not here any more -

[00:40:29]
And they worked on these concepts - after Klaus Riedel had died, he was really in the beginning the one who was really pushing it - and then Hueter took over from him after he had died -- and he was in charge of 'ground equipment', as we called it.