Viewing page 6 of 7

00:23:31
00:35:28
00:23:31
Playback Speed: 100%

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:23:31]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
...you felt that it, that it fitted very well within U.S. Army arsenal system in...?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Oh, definitely, yes.

[00:23:39]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So you had no problems in that sense reproducing Peenemünde's essential philosophy ... of a large in-hou—

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Correct. —And it was a, more or less, I use the term, an organically-grown organization.

[00:23:56]
For instance BSM, which meant -- you had the devices on board, the control system -- B means 'Board', S means 'Steuerung', that means steering, and 'Messtechnik' was measuring what you need in order to evaluate the flight path performance, and not used in this abbreviation was the total electrical onboard equipment which was actually included on-board equipment.

[00:24:35]
And so all this was retained in the laboratory, first headed by Dr. Steinhoff, later by Professor Buchhold who succeeded him. And I took it over that time from Professor Buchold, and we maintained this organization throughout the Apollo program.

[00:24:57]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And the definition of the limits as to what was included in your department, say, onboard electrical equipment, guidance and control, and measurement, the definition of what that included more or less stayed the same throughout.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Right. Right.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
That was part of the organizational philosophy.

[00:25:20]
Was that re-establishment of that central organization, was that von Braun's idea in particular, or can you really say that it's one man's ... concept?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—I think, this happened before my time. I think when Dr. Steinhoff started in Peenemünde he proposed that these things belong together. And from the viewpoint of closely related things, they really belong together.

[00:25:55]
Another thing is, Wernher von Braun was always anxious to see that was, that you have a good communication betwean related fields. As he said, nothing should fall between the cracks. And this is a philosophy that Wernher von Braun maintained throughout the time he has been responsible, that you do not see your limits somewhere and say, "up to here I work on this problem, and beyond that, I don't care, that is the problem of somebody else."

[00:26:33]
He wanted to have an overlapping, so that both sides knew what is going on, and he made both responsible for this, and said, "This has to work so you straighten out your problems here." That was a very healthy situation. I think this was one of the reasons why he maintained the organization that way, because it had proven to be all right throughout the development in earlier years.

[00:27:01]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So that philosophy was obvious from the beginning when you came to Peenemünde, that ... von Braun was insisting on sort of cross-communication, ... horizontally between different departments.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yes. —Yes. —Right.

[00:27:18]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
That he insisted that you talk to each other across the laboratories, as opposed to going up through channels where there might be ... a superior over both.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yes. —And in this way we were so far that we could feel free to watch what was going on in other laboratories.

[00:27:39]
You could get the information what is going on there, especially in these strange areas where you had to draw conclusions for your own work. And this continued throughout the following years.

[00:27:56]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
At Peenemünde, and later, you felt free to walk into somebody else's laboratory ... did you? Often without calling them up in advance?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yes. —Without going to the boss and saying, could I do that?

[00:28:11]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So that you always felt free to do that ... and effectively tread on someone else's turf?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yeah. —Right.

[00:28:18]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And that remained true throughout, did it?

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

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Through Redstone, through Marshall Spaceflight Center...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—And the Apollo Program.

[00:28:28]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And in terms of solving probelms then, you, from a management stand point, you had committees formally? Or ... informally constituted ...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yes. —Wernher von Braun had, for instance throughout the years here, in Huntsville, the habit to call every week our staff meeting and usually the directors were there included, but the directors had the freedom to bring specialists with them when they wanted to present a special situation or problem.

[00:29:04]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Now that's communication at the top -- and certainly that's important -- but also I meant horizontally between sort of departments without going through the staff meeting at the level of the top ... of the scale.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Oh, of course. Then again, we had our meetings -- for instance between the aero-ballistics labratory, Dr. Geissler, and, my laboratory -- and we discussed there our problems, described to each other how our solutions are, in such a way, and felt free to tell our members in the laboratories to go to each other, of course without a formal request, to discuss the problems.

[00:29:48]
And only when they had discrepencies and then they saw [[??]] had to be involved, for a decision, only then they came up and said, 'here we have a problem'.

[00:30:00]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
This may be hard to assess, but do you think that was, first and foremost, a sort of, inter-communication empahsis on constant cross-communication and 'not going through channels', necessarily -- do you think that was von Braun's unique contribuition?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
One of his unique contributions, yes.

[00:30:21]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
That, in effect, that if hadn't been there it might not have worked that way.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Right.

[00:30:27]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Because that's an interesting-- I don't want to stray into the territory of saying 'von Braun did this and von Braun did this', that he did everything himself and that he was sole conceiver of the management system and how things operated, so it's hard, you have to judge, sort of, how much does one person contribute and how much does another.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Well let's say, it was an education we all got through him. And we found it right and pursued it. —That is how I like to say it.

[00:31:03]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah, certainly you learned and contributed from that...

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
[[In this way,]] he modeled the freedom to go more in-depth when usually man in his precision could do. Because he knew, that taking care of the problems and he wanted to see then and inform himslef that all the problems are properly solved.

[00:31:24]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
But he could, what you're saying is he relieved himself of some burden by not having to arbitrate every conflict ... himself, by expecting others to do that.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Right. Right. —Correct.

[00:31:36]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Now the other side of this is the other side of the Peenemünde philosophy that seems to be transfered, is this kind of 'arsenal concept', or big in-house development capability-- laboratories large enough to build things yourself without having to do that.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
At least as a prototype.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah, as prototypes that you could show then to industrial management.

[00:32:05]
It's clear that that's carried over to the United States, and through a fortunate series of circumstances, that fitted into the US Army arsenal concept.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
We were lucky that our superiors in the Army agreed with these matters, because it was basically not a concept here, especially not in the Air Force.

[00:32:24]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Right. And NASA took the Air Force's philosophy largely as its philosophy, at least from Headquarters, [[?]] is that true?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
—Yes. —Gee, the view point, why we were so insistent to handle the situation in such a way, was, we wanted to give our own engineers the capability to learn first-hand the problems, and to be able, later in manufacturing, to give advice.

[00:33:01]
If you have an organization, as it has now been reverted today to quite an extent, those people are just managers, have to believe what they are told, don't have any more the capability to check out whether what they are told is correct or not. And so they have just to yield to the contractor. And it's very unfortunate and very costly, because for any modification proposed, there's almost no limit what the contractor will ask for.

[00:33:37]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
In terms of money?

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Right. Right. And time.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Time?

[00:33:43]
{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Another point, why this in-house capability helped so much-- as long as you are in the R&D phase, generating something in a short time, you always see some shortcomings, some improvements that can be made. If you request in an existing contract, by the contract of-- make some modification --you pay enormously for this.

[00:34:13]
We have done it very often in such a way here, that in our own workshops, we made the modification and changed the system to a higher performance, eliminated shortcomings which should have been foreseen from the beginning, but for time and other reasons it didn't work out this way. And so you are much more flexible if you have such an in-house capability.

[00:34:42]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Now, of course it strikes me, part of that is that, when you have to send the specifications to the contractor and ask them to do something, you have to generate, especially in the current system, such an enormous amount of paperwork to accomplish something that you used to be able to just go into the laboratory and with little or no paperwork, do by yourself.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
Right. True.

[00:35:08]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
This becomes, I think this is becoming a real downfall for the, sort of, 'Pentagon way' of doing things. And NASA had, to some extent, adopted the same philosophy.

{SPEAKER name="WALTER HAEUSSSERMANN"}
One of my first disappointments with industry here had been the following...


Transcription Notes:
29:51 [[?]] 31:04 [[?]] 32:32 [[?]]