ECKART LEMBERG. Born 1928. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1747V A-C
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ECKART LEMBERG. Born 1928. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1747V A-C This interview was recorded on November 8, 2011, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Sara Wright. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Jenna Woods. The interview was transcribed by Janna Plant. ABSTRACT: Born in Germany in 1928, Eckart Lemberg and his family fled to Australia after his father was incarcerated in and later released from a concentration camp in 1938. In Australia, he studied aeronautical engineering and embarked on a career in aircraft design and testing in Australia, Canada, and the United States. He has lived in Boulder since 1960. In addition to discussing his family history and his career, Mr. Lemberg tells stories about his avocations of climbing, skiing and running. After taking up running at the age of 47, he went on to compete in many mountain races, such as the Pikes Peak Marathon, the Imogene Pass Race, and the Everest Marathon—the latter being the highest marathon in the world, with a starting line at 17,000 feet. Mr. Lemberg completed the Everest Marathon three times, the last time at the age of 69. NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. [A]. 00:00 (Today is November the 8th, 2011, and my name is Sara Wright. I am interviewing Eckart Lemberg, who is an 83-year-old Boulderite who came to Boulder in 1960, and who was one of the early blazing trail-runners in Boulder—culminating, or at least a high point of that, literally, was doing Everest—the Everest Marathon. He’s going to tell us a little bit about that, but he also has a rather harrowing early childhood story, as well—that we’re going to get into. This interview is being recorded for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. This is interview is being filmed by Jenna Woods. So, Eckart would you please tell me where and when you were born?) Okay. I wasn’t very conscious at the time, but I was born in Breslau, Germany. It’s in the state of Silesia, which is close to Poland. It joins Poland in the southern part of Germany. (And what was the year?) 1928. [pause] (Okay, so we’re going to skip ahead just a bit. Why don’t you tell me what led you to move to Boulder in 1960?) Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 1 [pause] I got a job while working in Canada, and the program of design—We were a company called Avro Aircraft—an English company. They had designed a supersonic airplane; they were in the finishing stages of that, and they hired me from—I had been working in Britain, in England—working on various airplanes, and testing airplane components. It was just at that stage—I’d been there for three years plus, and the—I saw that I was getting—it was a wonderful company—Bristol Air—Aeroplane Company, okay. [pause] They had actually—stop a minute, would you? (Mm-hmm.) So, you see I have to reverse it now. (So, you worked for Bristol Aeroplane Company—) Company, yes. Okay. (—in England.) In England. (And then you went to Canada?) Yes. (To—?) Yes. (To Avro.) Yes, and the reason is we were in a test lab—[aside] are you okay now?—I found my way into a test lab to test—the wings of the Bristol freighter were failing in service. It’s a relatively small freighter, but big enough to take an automobile. They had a wonderful reputation of designing fine airplanes, and they were beginning to fall and suffer fatigue cracks in wings and things. In England, what they decided to do is to set up a fatigue test for a wing of a freighter, and that was my job. To create this test, I was given a wing, and you figure out how to jack it up and down and get the loads that you have to apply to it. Then, just pump it up until it fails. I did that for a whole year. (Was it—you’re mechanical engineer, right?) Aeronautical engineer. Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 2 (Aeronautical.) There’s a difference. (It was your father who was—no, okay—) 05:01 The aeronautical degree is probably the hardest degree you can get out of mechanical engineering that goes up at—we were the first group in Australia, in Syndey—where I graduated—the first group that went supersonic in training. This was 19—finished in 1950. So, I was able to get jobs in various aerospace companies throughout the world really just by watching as to who was hiring or maybe etcetera. And that’s how I got to England after I got married. Simply because we wanted to do a tour, I had grown up in Australia—after coming from Germany—and I had graduated in Aeronautics, and then because Australians are encouraged—particularly the engineers— to go overseas to get further training, they do encourage that—and then come back to Australia, hopefully. Some do, and some don’t. It took me many years, but eventually I did, for a while. (Okay.) This airplane wing—I got it set up, etcetera. We got experts to tell me how many loads to apply to the wing, depending on flight and depending on landing, and so on and so forth—whatever the loads were—applied to the wing. I did that, and filmed it with my own video, which I have actually, somewhere at home. Much to the surprise of my engineering bosses, who said, “You’re the first guy that’s ever been interested enough to film your own stuff.” [laughs]. And it wasn’t classified. We finally found out I couldn’t break the wing with the known loads— We finally found out that these airplanes were crashing in Spain, and when they checked the details they found that they were traditionally overloaded by about 30% above the maximum load, and they were being flown off plowed fields. The aircraft is not designed to fly off plowed fields [laughs] because what happens to the wing—the wing gets these consistent upwards and downwards load, which in normal flight—on a standard runway— would only be once, when the wing droops down when you hit—you know— your running gear hits the—your landing gear hits the ground. We found out that the constant reversal on a plowed field means that this wing was subjected to far bigger reverse loads, and they are bad for airplane wings. So, it wasn’t Bristol’s fault. They had produced a fine airplane. At the end of that, I was a bit tired of testing this and looking for cracks. We didn’t find any cracks [laughs] until—at the end of it, I handed it off to somebody else to do something else. About two weeks afterwards, when he continued my existing testing, the wing did develop a fatigue crack [laughs] under these extreme loads it was subjected to. Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 3 At that stage, I was getting a little stale. I wasn’t earning enough money in England. Canada came up with a job offer, and that’s how I got to Canada to help them finish the calculations and the testing on their wonderful airplane. I was only there for a year-and- a-quarter. The reason is that the Prime Minister thought the airplane was too expensive for Canada. I think it’s Stephen Baker [?]. You can check the history. It was about— we’ll get the dates together. 10:11 I’d been there a year-and-a-quarter suspecting that I was last person in, pretty much, I was going to be the first out, if they lose the contract. I actually went to meetings and found out that _____ had sent a design team—not a design team—a personnel guy to interview people who could work for Stanley Aviation, which was a classified program testing ejection seats for supersonic airplanes. It turns out that eighty of us went for these interviews, all of them knowing that this probably would fail the contract we had in Canada. About twelve of us got job offerings, and I was lucky enough to get one of those. Stanley Aviation—then they applied—I had to get a secret clearance for a foreigner. I don’t believe in walking across borders illegally [laughs]. It’s very hard to get in, be a foreigner, and then immediately jump into a classified program. It took three months to get—there was another Australian on board in Canada. Both of us—he’s a friend of mine—we applied. But he found out, as an Australian by birth, they had so few immigrants coming from Australia to the U.S., it would take him eleven months if they ever lost the contract. Because of my German birth, since most Germans—we had a high percentage of Germans coming to the United States—it took three months to get my clearance. One day, I got a call from a personnel manager. It was a Monday. He said, “Eckart, you’ve got your clearance. You’ve got the green card. Quick! Put in your notice. We need you right now.” I think that was a Monday or Tuesday. On Friday, the government cancelled the contract, and put out 14,000 people—right out by an announcement over the loud speakers, they said, “The government have cancelled our contract.