on twitter at cspanhistory. it is february 25, 1999 and we are in titusville, florida with guenter wendt. we're going to ask him some questions about his career with the space program. let's start with something real basic and really a long time ago. i'm curious when you were growing up in germany as a kid, did you ever imagine what was ahead for you? >> no, not that line.

but ever since i was in grade school i started with building model airplanes. then after that i graduated to flying sail planes. and i always was interested in flying machines, so to speak. so i actually signed up to learn to manufacture aircraft and at the same time i went to evening classes to make a degree in mechanical engineering. though didn't have much of a fun youth, but nevertheless then after all of that was pretty much done, we had something that they called world war ii. and with my background i had an offer from the air course to go into as a second lieutenant if i would sign up for 12 years which was detrimental to my outlook on life because i didn't want to sign up for the military for 12 years. so i said, no, i don't do that.

they said, okay, we come and get you and you become a private. didn't take long and they sent me the typical postcard greetings, we like to meet you. but nevertheless, then after basic training i end up in a fight fighter group flying with 88s as flight engineer. then end of the war i wound up as a parachute -- in the parachute division, the 5th parachute division. at end of the war turned out there was no need for anybody who knew anybody about airplanes because there was no industry whatsoever. so after that since my parents -- my father deserted the family but he was an american. i said, oh, let me use the last known address and see if i can maybe make it over to america. and sure enough he had moved so we got in contact and eventually he sponsored me to get over there and then in '49 i arrived in the united states. so by that time he had already

talked to the j.s. mcdonald and told him that he had a son that does this and this. he said, oh, we'd gladly like to have him. so i interviewed this mcdonald but then found out that since germany was still legally at war, even in '45 and '49 with the united states, that they couldn't hire me. i had to take all kinds of jobs until i finally wound up working for an airline, started up as a start-up airline like ozark airlines in st. louis. we had all dc-3s which was another good experience, again. after five years i was a citizen and then i immediately changed over to mcdonald at that time and started off in the design department and had various jobs there. and rather intriguing thing that

happened -- you know, when you have these things with confidential and secret things, i designed a lifting mechanism at that time to carry in the b-52s, the decoy missions. they were little airplane type things that would fly formation around the b-52 bomber to attract enemy aircraft or missiles. the final review by the air force, i was supposed to make the presentation of the system and found out they wouldn't even let me in the room because i wasn't classified secret and only had confidential clearance. so even i designed the system, i couldn't present it. so then after a while i heard the rumor that mcdonald was trying to bid on a civilian program called mercury. so i looked into it and it sounded interesting be, all kin

of fantastic things but no one had ever done anything like that. so i talked to the project engineer and i says, you know, you actually need somebody who can do both things engineering wise and all of the hands-on. since i know the thing, i had made a practical apprenticeship in aircraft manufacturing, i knew how things were put together and i had a mechanical engineering degree. they said, okay, that sound like a good idea. so i wound up on project mercury. so then we built the stuff, but before we ever got done with that one we had another program where mcdonald had contacted the air force to design, develop and proof test a boost glide vehicle. so again i start to get experience in rocket launchers. i transferred over to these people and i became responsible for the launcher of that booster which was actually a solid two-stage rocket that we had

modified a launcher and launched it from the cape. now if you want to compare prices these days -- now this is in '58, '59 -- mcdonald agreed it design, build, test fly and deliver the data to the air force for three complete missiles for 5 billion bucks. and we did that for 5 misdemeanor buck-- 5 million bu. now compare that to today's prices. anyway, this was the first exposure to cape canaveral at that time. on one of the flights they permitted to us take our family down. we stayed in an old sea spray motel in cocoa beach. 30 days. i had two girls at the time, they were with me there. really liked the beach. the wife liked the beach. and i said now if i would get a permanent job down here, would you like it down here?

now coming from st. louis, you know, the beach and seeing orange trees and things like that was fascinating. they said that would be a good idea. though when mercury came along i managed to get down here as one of the first representatives for mcdonald. we were five people and we opened a shop down here. >> did you know what -- i mean at the time did you know that you were basically talking your way on to what was really probably the most exciting place to work at the time? i mean did you know that or was it -- >> no. actually, it was always my idea -- i wasn't made to do competitive joshs. i always said look what you like to do, then find out what it takes to get the job, and then convince the powers that be that you are the man they need to do. so i always started out to say, okay, what do i need to do. and then i said, okay, here is what you need and here's what i

have. i always would go after the job i liked to do and anything new, fascinating, was it. but then all through the years, i took 42 extension courses in order to stay on top of it because then after mercury, john yeardley was my boss at that time -- i said, i tell you what -- i'll go with gemini. he says what the heck do i need you on gemini for? and i said, look, you need this, this, this. i have all these things. so i had taken extension courses and though again, he said, yes, that sounds great. by that time i had somewhat established a way of operations that -- as a matter of fact, glen delivered me a picture, he said i reminded me of someone he

knew in history who was someone of a dictatorial side. i indicated, i said, no, it is not really that bad. you see us on the picture. you just do what i tell you and you have no problem. so that's when actually it wound up that i later was labeled the dictator on the pad, which wasn't really true, but then again, you had to realize you are playing these things which can go wrong in a hurry and i spent many, many nights on the river in my boat playing the "what if" game. because there were many, many things we didn't know and we did dumb things, we did things we didn't know. i remember one thing from mercury, we had an explosion at the cape at a spin test facility where a rocket ig nilted because of the plastic static electricity there was. i found out our escape rocket in mercury was wrapped in the same plastic that blew up in the spin

test. so here again, you learn things that you didn't know existed. so then you think, okay, now if we go out later on when the vehicles are flight pressurized or things like that, your chances of survival are relatively slim. and in the early days when you talk about the late 50s, early 60s, the average rockets here, 3 out of 5 didn't make it. so then we got to be -- when you all of a sudden said all of a sudden you have a human being up there, somebody you know, then the picture changes drastically. so you sit down and you play the "what if" game. what if you see this? what can you do if you see that? and so on. i spend many ungodly hours, like i said, the best place to be was sitting in the boat on the river and just playing the "what if"

game. >> when you first dame down here, in what year was that? >> in '58. i came in '58. >> you were with mcdonnell. it wasn't even mcdonnell douglas at the time. it was mcdonnell aircraft corporation. what was your first job for them here? >> now that was -- again, i was the -- we had an interesting thing. i was supposed to be responsible for the pad operations for the spacecraft. you will realize throughout my active career i had very little to do with the boosters or the rockets itself. in other words, i knew the basic fundamentals of it but i had no input as to what they did, how they did or when they did. essentially i was responsible for the spacecraft preparations for launch. in other words, once the spacecraft hit the cape, then we had to coordinate who wants to do what or who must do what from

the time it got here until we launched it. >> this was mercury. >> this was mercury. same thing went on with gemini. that was my job to go ahead and coordinate all these efforts. so in the beginning then i worked with the -- i interface with dr. davis. we were doing something that hasn't been done before. that was essentially my job to shepherd the spacecraft through that and i was going all the way through launch. now once the thing lifted off, that was the end of my responsibilities and i didn't have anything to do with it. and the chachb command actually is that i reported strictly to the test conductor.in of comman actually is that i reported strictly to the test conductor.

it was a little bit interesting in that somewhere in the chain i would change allegiance. in the preliminary stages each test has their own conduct you are, mike mcdonnell, north america had the capsule, the first stage of the test conductor, at then at some point they merge to the cvts -- or nasa test director. then i would report to nasa test director. and the unique position was that even through all this time, i did have the ability to stop the count if i saw something wrong, but i couldn't make it go again, because then somebody else had to make that decision. so that was that was the basic concept that we had. early in the game one time, abny, john glenn's wife, asked me can you guarantee me a safe return of john?

and aunts usstronauts used to b to our houses. i told annie, annie, anybody who would guarantee that is a liar, because there are so many unknowns that nobody can really guarantee a safe return. i said the only guarantee i can give you is that at the time when i say it is go, there is nothing that i know that could be detrimental to a safe return. beyond that, i cannot give you any other guarantee, because what happens after that we do not know. there was another little interesting sideline, if you want to have little stories. while we were working on mercury, john was a presbyterian. i had been to presbyterian church there on the beach in cocoa beach. at that time they had about 30 young people staying for two weeks at the church, going to the beach and using the church as the kitchen and to sleep there. they asked if i could give them an update on space. i said, yeah, i'll do that. i asked john, i said, hey, john,

wednesday night, 7:00, you got free time? he agreed to go over there. at that time he wasn't that very well known so he called me and said i'm going to be a little late. said okay, so i started the meeting off. i said i got a friend, john, he comes from the langley center. an engineer. and let it go as such. then when john came up, i said here is my friend, john. then i got a little devious about it and we were talking about space and i explained to them that if we re-enter in the wrong way we will skip off the earth's atmosphere an we never see the astronaut again. i said now if that happens, should we cancel the space program? and one young fellow said -- he looked at us and said, no, why would you do that? take another one. you got seven of them, don't you? so i looked at john, i said, i wonder how 1 of the 7 would really feel about that. i said let me ask john because he happens to be 1 of the 7.

and it became hilarious. he was supposed to be there between 7:00 and 8:30 but we got out of there close to midnight. >> what did he tell them he felt about that? >> no. he said that this is a chance that you take but you try to avoid taking it. in other words, i mean, you know and you try to get away all the things that could leave you in that predicament. by the way, the boys that when they found out john was 1 of the 7 -- oh, well where's a hole i can climb into. but this is, again, john was very, very much people oriented. i mean he was great, as a matter of fact. he had the patience i wouldn't have had. we went to dinner with his family and it was at the holiday inn. a fellow came up, during the dinner shoved the picture under his nose, hey, sign this. i was going to tell the fellow what he could do with the picture. but john says, okay, and he

signed it. i said, john, i think i could have told him what he can do with the picture. he said guenter, that goes with the job. sew was always that way. and it was interesting to work with him. the other astronauts thought that time was precious and you have to use every minute of it for whatever comes along, but not john. >> well, as pad leader, in charge of pad operations, i'm curious, because this is a job that no one had done before. it didn't exist before to be responsible for launching humans into space. so how did you kind of create your own job description? >> okay. now it was really interesting. to begin with, when we were sitting at mcdonnell and so on, we said, okay, now officially what do we call that position? is it started off as pad manager. no, manager didn't fit into the mcdonnell organization. okay, then let's call it a pad

director. no, nasa said it wasn't nasa at that time. they said with being we can't have a director because that doesn't fit in our organization. so we had to come up -- we kicked all kinds of names around. finally i think i came up and said, why don't we just call it the pad leader. that's how the name was created. because it was a unique position. if you understand, here is a civilian employee. i worked for mcdonnell. i had people working for me. i had a nasa inspector. i had air force technicians as suit technicians. i had a nasa astronaut as a back-up man. you know? and sometimes i had had a nasa technician or somebody else. i had really different categories. but i actually was in charge of the whole thing. though that was a unique position that we created.

and for that purpose it work out great because at the same time later on i was always accused that i worked for nasa because -- but you can't look at a badge. if you have a job to do, you have to go with what the job requires. not what some organizational element will put on paper as being it. essentially, i knew one boss and that was the test conductor. okay? if anything had been wrong, you know, test conductor would need to know it and he would make the decision. i could tell him what it is, i would tell him what my recommendations were, but the final decision was the test conductor. and at sometime it was a mcdonnell guy, in the early stages of tests, you know. then later on when we got to into greater tests then it become the nasa guy. you have to realize -- and it was actually later on the fine

psychiatrist told us that you have to be able to laugh at yourself every once in a while or you go off on the deep end. because 10, 12, 14-hour work days were in the early stage of the game. like one day i went seven weeks without a day off. so you had to be able to laugh at yourself or make a joke and at other times there wras no room for that so you had to have a good dividing line. >> what were some of your favorite jokes from the mercury? let's kind of go through program by program and i'm going to ask you a few things about the program itself but let's start on the lighter side of mercury. what were some of your favorite funny things that you all did to lighten the serious mood -- >> you tried all kinds of different things. you know in the early stages. as a matter of fact, one of my very favorite ones which i like very much is because as a sideline where i was located on the launchpad, and so on, i

always was elected to escort v.i.p.s and other people around. and you run into all kinds of people. and some of my not-so-favorite people used to be politicians. so here we were in the early stages and were launch iing fro hanger s. the air force was controlling the chains. here comes what i thought was a little bit obnoxious congressman and he said i want to see the apes. insaid, okay, they are not really apes but we'll see if we can get there. i got down there and i talked to the handlers, air force kept -- i forgot his name -- and he said, you know, enos came back from a training session and is pretty much kicked off and went into it. he said you know what he does? i said, yeah, i know what he does but i got somebody who wants to see him.

he says, i would rather not. i said, okay. i go out, i says, congressman, i said we only got one ship that came out of training and his disposition isn't that great. i'd rather not that you go in. he says, you are telling me i can't see the apes? i said, no, sir, i'm not telling you you can't see the apes, but sometimes it might be better not to do that. he says impea a congressman, if i want to do that, i like to do that. i said, okay, go ahead, sir. so he went in and i kind of had an indication of what was going to happen. he went ahead of us and knowing enos, he was on the left-hand side in the cage. he saw us coming and he saw he training which he didn't like. so he hunches down and had something in his hand and he hit that guy from 15 feet square on the chest and was dripping down on his nice white shirt and tie. he says, oh, i guess -- i know now why i didn't want me to go in. i said, sir, i didn't know that

was going to happen but these are unpredictable animals. these are the lighter moments when you can sometimes get to these people -- >> so you were secretly laughing about that. >> oh, most certainly. i thought it was going to come. i said, there's one of those guys that won't take no for an answer. he'll really let him have it. >> what about some of the jokes you and the mercury astronauts would play on each other. >> checker was a great guy. he disliked public relations people, though once there was a big photo session or camera session set up and what he had done was at that time, they had these old buildings, old school-type fuses and electrical circuits. he got cardboard washers and put them all on the screw-type fuses. needless to say when all the people came up to do their camera interviews and so on, none of the electrical circuits

worked. he did that. then you had the famous story with dee o'hara who was our nurse there having a problem. she complained to dee and he heard about it and what wally did, a we got in big fight, got water jug, filled it with tea, put a little detergent in it, made it foam, and then set it on his desk. one urine sample in the morning. we always had little things that we would do for each other and shepherd was great for that, too. i mean one time we were on the pad and he was there and gus was there and the chief engineer for nasa at that time got a call, you need to go to cocoa beach for press conference but he didn't have a car. so he said, oh, man, i need to get to cocoa beach. shepherd says, heck, take my

corvette. the astronauts were having all the great corps vetvettes. he said i ride with grissom. he had one. they give him the keys. next thing i notice is here goes shepherd to the window, watch roy take off, picks up the phone, called security. he says some s.o.b. has took my gray corvette. he is heading for the south gate. the south gate had four guards. they didn't even ask the question. they lifted him out of the corvette, slammed him against the wall and they didn't talk to each other for four weeks. these were some of the neater things you did. you had to make do with lots of things that some were funny. some other times, like i mentioned the long hours, mcdonnell was very good for us. i mean in the management, we could do lots of things. like i could buy things with

petty cashfy needed it. so one evening we were there testing. we had about another hour to go. the troops hadn't eaten anything since lunch. but if i powered down, we would lose at east six or eight hours' time because you power down, it shuts off, it takes two hours to get back, you power up, another two hours. i asked them if they could make do with ham and cheese sandwiches and coffee. yeah, do that. i called ramon's and i ordered 100 ham and cheese sandwiches and two your honors urns to be the south gate. i asked my tech supervisor can you send somebody to the south gate to pick up this stuff. we were doing that and within one hour we were finished. and i paid out of petty cash for the ham and cheese and things like that. later on i mean "apollo," i couldn't do that anymore because they wouldn't allow you to expend petty cash like that. it was neat. if i needed a guy and he was in

a car pool, i could offer him a taxi and say i pay you four hours overtime because you need key people. and we did lots of things that we are not maybe in the rule books but you expedited what you needed to do. the same way you would call boeing or you would call martin and say, hey, i need 24 an-4 fittings. do we have any on hand? yeah, i got a whole box full. come and get them. by the way, you got a half a sheet of stainless steel? yeah, we got some. i said, hey, have some stainless or if i didn't have anything he still would give me the fittings and we didn't have any paperwork or anything like that. see, at that time, and that's what deteriorated later, especially now today, your word was good as gold. in other words, if you promise something, you delivered. you didn't need 15 pieces of paper or 20 signatures. and that was really the success of the early program. everyone -- you didn't care what

kind of a badge you had. somebody needed something, you had it, you gave it to him. >> well, one of the things that george page said to me was, you know, guenter had a reputation for being such a tough guy. but he said my feeling always was that if i was the test director and guenter was in charge at the pad, i rest assured knowing everything was going to be done right and that if he told me things were go, he meant it. which i guess plays on what you were just talking about. i mean that sense of -- that fine line between guenter, the dictator, and your word counts for something. >> i mean in this situation, you cannot lie to people. you cannot give them a bunch of baloney. but in other words, you say, hey, i know or i do not know. and there's nothing wrong with saying i do not know. you say i need to find out. but they knewfy said, yes, you are ready to go, any knew it was ready to go. but at the same time, if

somebody was going to fake it, you wouldn't tolerate it. in other words, at one time i had another contractor who -- in front of a whole bunch of people told me that the contractor, he was a government employee. he said, all you guys are out is to screw the government. and i said, now if that was a joke, it was a very bad one. and if that's your attitude, i said i don't need you on the bad. i have you replaced. he said you can't replace me, i'm government employee. little did he know, i already had the reputation of knowing quite a few people who knew me. within 15 minutes he had left the pad and never came back. in other words, you know, you have to maintain your reputation. you cannot jeopardize it. and whatever it takes, you have to deliver. in other words, i was very, very conscientious of that. so were other people. if it