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Rockets and People
the other. We checked the time—only thirty minutes remained before the
prearranged deadline. We needed to get back! We asked the miners to carry the
two cases to the elevator and leave the other six behind. Our Jeep would not hold
them all in any event.We decided we would pick them up on the next run.When
we reached the surface our driver was smiling. “Five more minutes and I would
have raced over to the commandant’s office.”
We explained to the director that this material was now the property of the Red
Army. We left a receipt for the two cases, asked that the others be stored, and promised
to pick them up the next day. As a precaution, we said that there might be
explosives there, and therefore other specialists would be coming for them. The next
day, per my request, two officers from the division, including a sapper, brought back
the remaining cases. An examination at the institute showed that we had received
sets of Viktoria-Honnef radio-control equipment for lateral radio correction and
range control. It was the first contribution to the equipment of our radio laboratory.
in spite of these adventures, Isayev was dying to investigate engines, and
soon thereafter he left Bleicherode and went to Lehesten.
Abramovich, whom we had last seen in Nordhausen, kept his promises. At the
time of his departure, after a cursory familiarization with Mittelwerk, he had promised
that when he arrived in Moscow he would persuade Bolkhovitinov and
everyone else that he could to have reinforcements sent to us. I did not even have
time to miss Isayev before a vigorous team arrived, headed by Nikolay Alekseyevich
Pilyugin, the future two-time recipient of the Hero of Socialist Labor award
and future academician, director, and general designer for one of the most powerful
Soviet space electronic instrument firms, NPO Avtomatiki i Priborostroyeniya
(Scientific-Production Association of Automation and Instrument Building), the
company that developed the control systems for many combat missiles and space
launch vehicles.
Pilyugin flew in with the rank of a colonel, despite the fact that his military
service record stated that he was a non-combatant. He was accompanied by
Leonid Aleksandrovich Voskresenskiy, who had risen from the rank of private to
lieutenant colonel.Voskresenskiy, who had the astounding ability to sense and foresee
the behavior of a missile system during the most diverse off-nominal situations
and failures, subsequently became Korolev’s legendary deputy for testing.
Semyon Gavrilovich Chizhikov flew in with the rank of first lieutenant.
Designer Chizhikov was my long-time comrade from the Bolkhovitinov OKB,
Factory No. 22, Factory No. 293, and also the factory in the distant Ural village of
Bilimbay where the BI interceptor was built during the difficult war years.
Among the new arrivals there was only one real service officer—Engineer First
Lieutenant Vasiliy Ivanovich Kharchev. He was the youngest member of our group,
having graduated from the N.Ye. Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy in 1944. I had
been his adviser when he was doing his diploma project, and at that time I had
been convinced of his exceptional abilities and impressed with his penchant for
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