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Transcription: [00:29:32]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
I do not know if you are interested now in the details what all was wrong on that test stand, and which we tried to repair, umm—

[00:29:41]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Let me just ask this question— this is about what time? '44?

[00:29:45]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
'44. '44.

[00:29:47]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
Uh, you know when they wanted to produce 800 V-2s per month—

[00:29:53]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
There you could only say— man how, how the hell do you want to do that? We had then, just two tests stands to calibrate it, may I express it this way, the combustion chambers—

[00:30:05]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And, you had this one test facility in Schlier which was absolutely dangerous, and, which you wanted to correct,—

[00:30:17]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
—but you could only correct if you didn't lose time in doing that. So that made it extremely difficult. And I had one master mechanic with me and when I left I told that new boss,—

[00:30:32]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
I told him, and a friend— if you do not listen to him when it is dangerous, he should leave.

[00:30:40]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And, there was the danger and that man told him— we have to close it down.

[00:30:50]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And the new boss said— okay, let's go all into it and check it during a test.

[00:30:59]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And that was the last test where the explosion occurred, and they all were killed. So the whole engineering staff on that test stand was killed.

[00:31:08]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And then I got that telephone call— You have to get Oberth from the middle of Germany because his daughter was killed too in that test stand, and, OK.

[00:31:23]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Umm, you were just assigned to go there for a short time.

{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
For a short time.

[00:31:28]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
To look into the—

{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
Right.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
MmmHmm.

[00:31:31]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And then we had a bomb raid and one of our test stands was bombed out and we took the whole crew of that test stand—

[00:31:39]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
—and put that into that test stand in Schlier for the rebuilding after the explosion.

[00:31:48]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
And uhh, that was just finished when the war ended.

[00:31:53]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
OK, I'll have to come back to that, um, when I come to the end of the war, in the uhh— chronology.

[00:32:01]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Um, so you came to test N7 in 194-, sort of, August 1942 approximately.

{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
Yeah.

[00:32:10]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
And, um, you remained there for how long?

[00:32:15]
{SPEAKER name="KARL HEIMBURG"}
I remained there until— at the end of 1942 that anti-aircraft rocket was started, and I was put in charge of building the test stands for this anti-aircraft rocket.