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{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Dr. Walter Haeussermann, Tape 1 - Side 2.

[00:00:10]
Now, before I go on to talking about Darmstadt, and maybe if there's anything that I haven't thought about that's important about, sort of your period at Peenemünde which was, except for a brief period, March '40 to May '42, that's what I understand.

[00:00:29]
I want to ask you just a couple of questions about organization, personality, so forth. And so you came the first time, you met Dr. Steinhoff would have been when you got there, right at 1940?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Right.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
What was your, or 1939, at the end of '39.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Right.

[00:00:46]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
What was your initial impression of him? What did you think of him as a manager, leader, so forth?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Well, I considered him right as a very dynamic leader...

[00:00:56]
...who himself had a lot of ideas, but just in the field of let's say, electrical engineering, he did considerable support. He had good basic background in physics.

[00:01:09]
But, what the practical response is, for instance with respect to time constants on, that's where he needed help. And he was aware of this, and got the necessary manpower to fulfill the requirements we had, and to investigate what should be done.

[00:01:32]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So, was he energetic in building up your laboratory?... Do you think he did a good job?...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—Oh yes, yes. —Yes, I think so.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
...in building that up.

[00:01:44]
{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
And he also wanted others to understand completely what is going on, and gave his own inputs.

[00:01:53]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And as far as you're concerned, he was, became very competent in understanding other people's problems.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Oh yes.

[00:02:01]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Because I know that, that one person has told me that he did not get along with Steinhoff, but...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
I had never had a problem with him. Of course, I had to make it clear why I had a certain opinion, and stand up to this and tell him, if he had a different opinion, why I have another opinion. And then we always went very well along.

[00:02:27]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah. I want to say here of course that I don't think anyone should shy away from occasionally talking about a conflicts or whatever, because...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—No, no.—

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
...that's a natural part of any organization that people disagree sometimes, and sometimes you have to change your mind or the other person has to change their mind. So arguments happen. That doesn't necessarily reflect on somebody.

[00:02:52]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Did you meet Dr. von Braun?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Oh yes.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Immediately? — When you got there?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—Immediately. —I think the first or second day, I met him.

[00:03:00]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
What was your impression of him then?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
Well, I was astonished that a man two years older than I, who was at that time 27, had the full responsibility as Technical Director of such a tremendous development. But very soon, I understood why he was selected for this.

[00:03:22]
On one of the first days, he invited me -- he had at that time already been a pilot -- and so he invited me on a flight over Peenemünde and over the Baltic Sea, where we had to observe one bomb release from a high altitude bomber, and he wanted to observe how stable it went towards the target area, and as soon as it was released and he had it in eyesight, he dived with his airplane -- which was quite a new experience for me! -- to follow the bomb, caught up the plane in time, and gave then through command through radio, the information to the boats, where in which area to find that green spot which was produced by the bomb.

[00:04:22]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So this was a bomb test conducted by Luftwaffe, or was a, one of these drop tests with A-5 models ... or something like that?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—I think it was a drop test in connection with the A-5.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So he was looking at that drop.

[00:04:38]
Yeah, because I know that -- I just saw an article of Dr. Hermann's where he mentions that they had, in order to look at the stability through the transonic region, that they had dropped iron models of A-5 to look at that.

[00:04:52]
{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
It reminds me-- Dr. von Braun particularly, he, as big as at that time the group of engineers was, he wanted to know exactly what everyone was doing. He dropped in into your office and checked what you were doing, and you had to explain to him. For instance, I had at that time evaluated -- it was of course somewhat later after I returned from Berlin-Zehlendorf -- I evaluated the records from which were taken in-flight about the attitude control system, and evaluated those. It was not easy because at that time the recording was very very poor, and he wanted to know how I evaluated it and how I understood the various signals.

[00:05:45]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
This would have been recorded only on a strip chart recorder ... was it?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—That's right, yes. —Which was of course recovered.

[00:05:56]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
He... A strip chart? Or they also had an oscillograph in-flight, right? ... that they, the movie camera...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—Actually it was, it was an oscillograph, with I think five channels at that time.

[00:06:08]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And you would be looking at a movie? ... Photographs of the oscillograph?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—No, I had copies directly of the strip chart.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
OK, so you had strip charts on that.

[00:06:16]
'Cause I remember...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—Oscillographic chart.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
...I remember Dr. Reisig telling me about the...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
—Ja, he was deeply involved in that.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
...the oscillograph that was lofted with the rocket.

[00:06:28]
So you had those things. When he gave you that, was he in effect also testing you to see what your command of the thing was?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
He wanted to see how far I am aware of the dynamics and the response, and could explain the behavior of the signals.

[00:06:47]
And well, there was anything which could not be explained in order to draw conclusions for further investigations in the laboratory. —See, we had also sometimes a failure, and we wanted to know what the failure was, and so far was important to know what is normal and what is not normal, and we had to see what happened first from the chart, and if you didn't have enough channels, you had to do a lot of guesswork.

[00:07:16]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Now, you said that you rapidly saw why he was picked to be the head. What were the particular management or leadership or what other skills that he had that rapidly came out?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSERMANN"}
It impressed that he...