Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–20GOODSTEIN: Well, I thought maybe you would tell me some about that.OPPENHEIMER: Well, I don’t know much about it, and in some ways, I could have forgotten. Hewas an engineering student, and then he was a member of the Royal Danish Sharpshooters. Andhe rejected the army life and deserted essentially and went first to Florida, and then lived at LakeOkeechobee. I remember the story in which he would catch fish at Lake Okeechobee and takethem down and sell them. But the last time I saw Sigrid, she said no, he had a perfectly good job.[Laughter]GOODSTEIN: Do you know why he rejected the sharpshooter’s life?OPPENHEIMER: I think he didn’t like the military in general. Although, when it came to the warhere, I think he saw …GOODSTEIN: Certainly he was very involved with the military after the war too.OPPENHEIMER: Yes, but it was my impression that he just didn’t like the regimentation of it orthe reason for it; it didn’t make any sense to him.GOODSTEIN: Is that the reason why he emigrated?OPPENHEIMER: That’s what I learned. And then, during the Second World War, he went and didwork for the military. It may be that the Danish military was too close to Germany in spirit.That’s what I suspected, because as soon as World War I ended, he changed jobs. He had this jobduring the war of helping launch a Koprony bomber from a sea sled.GOODSTEIN: Is that what he did?OPPENHEIMER: Yes. He had stories about that. The first time it took off, it hit the captain of thesea sled, the tailspin knocked him down. So from then on, it wasn’t that the captain learned, buthttp://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F