 For most people, if not everyone, the name Wernher von Braun brings to mind the majestic Saturn V rocket, launching off the earth with Apollo astronauts on board en route to the moon. That's how pop culture has preserved von Braun, the smiling engineer behind America's moon rocket. But long before he worked for NASA, von Braun worked for the German Army at a site called Krumersdorf West. And at one point, he was the expendable member on any rocket testing team. Wernher von Braun reported for duty with the German Army on October 1st of 1932. On December 21st, he assisted in his first rocket test, an engine built under the guidance of Walter Dornberger. The test was a fairly simple one, very much in line with Rocketry's immaturity at the time. The test stand was the first purpose-built one in Germany, made of three concrete slabs with a set of folding doors to complete the enclosure. A tar paper-covered roof over top was rolled back for the test. Adjacent to the back wall was a control room. The rocket engine was mounted over a pit in the floor designed to direct the exhaust safely out of the enclosure. The test engine was a 20-inch-long, pear-shaped block of dirt aluminum designed to generate 650 pounds of thrust. The test was fairly simple. Two technicians, Walter Reidel and Heinrich Grunau, sat in the control room monitoring the thrust recorders and manning the fuel tanks. They manually introduced the fuel, alcohol, and oxidizer into the combustion chamber. Outside the safety of the back room stood Walter Dornberger taking shelter behind the tree and Werner von Braun holding a 12-foot-long pole with a can of gasoline on the end. Von Braun's role was to light the gasoline and introduce it into the stream of oxidizer and fuel once Reidel told him that the tank was adequately pressurized. This is just what happened. Reidel pressurized the combustion chamber with alcohol and liquid oxygen and von Braun lit the gasoline and introduced it into the environment. But then the test came to an abrupt end in an explosion. The test stand and engine were reduced to burning rubble and pieces of twisted hot metal. Reidel and Grunau, having been safely in the back room, were unscathed. Dornberger and von Braun, however, were exposed to the blast, but miraculously neither was hurt. It turned out that in the seconds before von Braun had introduced the flaming gasoline into the combustion chamber, an explosive amount of alcohol and oxygen had built up in the environment. All it needed was a spark to ignite and explode, and von Braun gave it a flame. This problem of delayed ignition was one that the Army Group had to deal with a lot in the months that followed, but they eventually figured it out, as evidenced by the success of their V2 rocket launches.