The stone was inscribed simply “1946.” As the cement hardened, binding it in place, Secretary of the Navy Forrestal turned and addressed the large group of notables gathered in the rustic Maryland suburb of White Oak.
“This laboratory will be the largest research center of its kind in the world,” he said. “Broadly speaking, its mission will be to keep abreast of, and we hope, ahead of the best scientific developments of the present time.”
Under normal conditions, White Oak’s 3,000 men and women might have paused in their work on August 15, 1951, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. But because of the paucity of “normal conditions” in the world today the scientists, technicians, and their fellow workers had to remain on the job, instead, striving to fulfill the charge made to them some five years ago by the late Secretary.
That there should be a Naval Ordnance Laboratory, much less one of the best equipped scientific centers in the world, is a tribute to a handful of naval officers and scientists. These men realized many years ago that the Navy would some day have to rely heavily upon its own scientific acumen to provide the service with weapons which were destined to stagger the imaginations of even the most rabid push button enthusiasts.
Long before the Missouri steamed into Tokyo Bay, they were aware that factories, which in wartime were engaged in an all-out production of depth charges, would some day be mass producing washing machines. When the last Kamikaze had been shot down, assembly lines which had been carrying VT fuzes would instead be turning out an endless supply of electronic gadgets.
This, of course, was as it should have been. But, in the headlong rush to retool for peace, what chance would the Navy have to maintain a semblance of its weapons development program, even on a very limited scale? From past experience Bureau of Ordnance officials knew painfully well that weapons development cannot be turned on and off like a faucet. Furthermore, in any type of scientific research, time is one ingredient for which no substitute has yet been discovered. Had the Nazis been able to develop the V2 rocket one year earlier, the results of the war might have been completely altered. Yet, Hitler’s aerodynamicists had plans for the V2 on the drawing boards as early as 1939! Notwithstanding all of their scientific genius and governmental encouragement, it still took the German scientists five years to make the transition from paper to hardware.
It is axiomatic that wars are won with the weapons either on hand or on the drawing boards at the start of hostilities. If ordnance development by industry was to give way completely to products of more peaceful applications, then BuOrd officials had every right to be concerned as World War II reached its final stages.
Certainly few civilian firms could be expected to devote a major share of their efforts to ordnance making. The peacetime market for torpedo exploders, for instance, is a highly limited one, at best. Who, then, was to undertake a program for a systematic ordnance development program?
In part, the answer to that knotty question had existed since 1918. It was in that year that the organization was created which has since evolved into the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Its original purpose was to oversee the Navy mine development effort in this country. However, before much in the way of new knowledge could be added to mine design the armistice was declared. With the advent of peace came a drastic cut in appropriations and a resultant cut in the development of naval mines.
The Laboratory continued to operate, although on a shoe string, devoting its limited resources to mine and fuze development. By 1940, less than a year before Pearl Harbor, its roster had reached the staggering total of 67 employees, of whom only 11 were engineers or physicists.
Then one day, while German and French troops were still taunting each other from the comparative comfort of the Siegfried and Maginot Lines, a Luftwaffe pilot made a run on the English channel and planted not only a hitherto unknown naval weapon, but also the foundation of the new $40,000,000 Naval Ordnance Laboratory.
What this German aviator had dropped from his bomb bay was a magnetic mine. The instant it hit the water mining passed from a principally defensive measure to an offensive operation. No longer could mining be relegated to a secondary role as a last ditch effort to prevent the enemy from striking close to home. In World War I, only the Germans had developed offensive mining to any marked degree, using surface and submarine mine layers. Now, with aircraft, mines could be used to carry the war to the waters of the adversary.
The Bureau of Ordnance was quick to realize the threat posed, as well as the tremendous possibilities opened up to our own Navy. Accordingly the Naval Ordnance Laboratory was authorized, early in 1940, to make a complete study of ships’ magnetic fields in order to devise methods of neutralizing these fields, and at the same time to develop mine exploders which would be set off by such fields.
This proved to be one of the truly monumental research problems encountered during the war. Its successful solution required specialized equipment of the highest order along with the services of topflight scientists and technicians.
By dint of a herculean effort the problem of devising a defensive countermeasure for the German magnetic mine was, for the most part, solved by 1942 (thanks in large measure to preceding and concurrent developments by the British). In the process, however, the Navy had built up the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) to an organization numbering nearly 2,000 persons. To NOL, with its newly created reservoir of technicians and scientists, the Bureau of Ordnance was able to assign problems of perplexity equal to that of the magnetic mine: the development of new type depth charges; the redesign of the British 40 mm. fuze which was to prove the most effective of the war; the expansion of the airborne mine program to a point where, together with the submarine, it was to hogtie Japanese shipping completely.
The outstanding wartime achievements of the Laboratory, coupled with the certain continuing need for such an institution, convinced the Bureau that to disband it, or to curtail its effectiveness, would be a serious mistake.
But if the Navy had intentions of maintaining NOL there would have to be some drastic changes. The Naval Gun Factory, home of the Laboratory since its birth, was bulging at the seams. It simply could not accommodate the Laboratory in its expanded condition. Then, too, the Gun Factory was essentially a manufacturing plant, not a research and development agency. The problems facing two such organizations are, for the most part, completely dissimilar.
If NOL were to continue its mission as an idea factory for the Bureau of Ordnance it would have to have a home of its own—a place where an earnest young scientist could devote his full time to screen grids and cathode ray tubes and similar technical matters, without interruption or distraction.
After considerable deliberation a site for the new Naval Ordnance Laboratory was selected near Silver Spring, Maryland. A rolling, wooded area of 873 acres, it was given the nod because-it most fully met the requirements which had been stipulated for the laboratory. The area was situated in the center of an educational and scientific heartland. Surrounding communities could be counted upon to provide homes for most of the Laboratory employees. And finally, because it was only twelve miles from Washington, D. C., there was no problem of communications with, and access to, various other governmental agencies.
There was a run on the aspirin market when the construction firm began to break ground. Novel engineering problems were the rule rather than the exception. For example, the heart of NOL wind tunnel laboratory is a giant 130-ton hollow sphere, 52 feet in diameter. The constructors first had to weld together sections of the ball, next set it in place, and then erect a three story building around it.
The same technique was employed in constructing a building around the mammoth 140-ton NOL pressure tank.
The NOL X-ray laboratory placed an order for the largest mobile X-ray generator in the world, a leviathan capable of generating 10,000,000 electron volt rays. The problem here was twofold; a building had to be constructed which would not only house the monster but also have contained within its walls a system capable of protecting workers from the devastating effects of radiation. The challenge was met by a structure rigged with an incredibly complicated system of bells, buzzers, flashing lights, and concrete walls 36 inches thick.
After the nightmare of conducting research in a factory, NOL planners vowed that their scientists would never again have to carry on meticulous experiments in spare broom closets or refurbished pipe compartments. Now, when visiting scientists are ushered through NOL, they look longingly upon the spacious, fluorescent-lighted lab spaces. They note the many rooms bounded by steel partitions easily moved to increase or decrease the size of each room as required. They see, too, that workshops are equipped with outlets for compressed air, gas, steam, water, AC and DC electricity, and, with an eye towards the thermometer during a Washington summer, air conditioning.
The visiting scientist notes the fully equipped auditorium—one of the most modern in the Washington area—with a seating capacity of well over 500. It was designed specifically for scientific seminars and forums. The spacious lounges, reminiscent of those found in the most modern hotels, and the sparkling cafeteria are a few of the many niceties so foreign to most governmental service installations.
Lest the above cause eyebrows to be raised by members of a traditionally purse-string conscious service, it might be pointed out that in its brief history at White Oak, NOL has served as host to hundreds of meetings and seminars involving technical, scientific, industrial, and educational societies of national and world wide reputation. By offering its excellent facilities to these organizations, not only does NOL enhance its own professional reputation among organizations of this type, but it also doubles in brass as an agent of good will for the Navy in general.
To the working scientist, however, laboratory equipment is considerably more important than the size of the cafeteria. And the instruments of science which the Ordnance Laboratory offers its workers are unrivaled: the most complete wind tunnel laboratory in the world, the world’s most complete industrial X-ray laboratory, a complete plastics laboratory, a magnificently equipped explosives laboratory, the world’s most modern soundproof chamber, the world’s most fully equipped environmental test facility—the catalogue reads like a page from a Hollywood press agent’s description. But even the most cautious and precise scientific mind could hardly avoid using superlatives when describing the White Oak institution.
The question might naturally arise: Why should the Navy sign a check for $40,000,000 to assemble this scientific cornucopia under one roof?
The answer is stated briefly in the official NOL manual: “ ... to produce and develop ideas for naval ordnance, and to apply them with maximum efficiency to the needs of the Navy.”
In order to amplify that quotation, we might best illustrate the role NOL plays in the scheme of naval ordnance by tracing roughly the case history of a single weapon, from a gleam in the eye to an explosion in mid-ocean.
Let’s take a look at a mythical airborne mine. As recently as the days just preceding World War II, a mine was little more than a barrel stuffed with TNT. In a sense it was symbolic of the “good old days.” Its existence was not complicated by magnetic fields, pressure waves, or acoustic nodes. It was simply a matter of blowing up when it was struck by another object, preferably an enemy ship. That, however, was before various test tube technicians decided that a mine might very well be exploded even if it was never struck by a passing ship; that it might be caused to detonate by a pressure wave, by a change in magnetic field, by noise, and, yes, even by light waves.
Furthermore, somebody decided that it was time for the mine to be endowed with an intelligence of its own. If a column of ships were to enter the area, the mine should know when the surrounding waters had been combed by minesweepers, and explode only when an unsuspecting merchantman or man-of-war came charging through the “cleared” channel. This accounts for the presence at NOL of a group of experts who do nothing but think up new methods for causing a mine to explode and to “decide” when, and when not, to explode.
Let us assume these experts have decided to detonate the new mine magnetically. To do so requires a thorough examination of the magnetic characteristics desired to be inbred within the mine. Here is where the Laboratory’s wondrous non-magnetic buildings are brought into play. These structures house giant electrical coils, some of them two stories high.
After the mine mechanism undergoing test is placed within the area bounded by these coils, technicians send electrical current pulsing through them. By regulating the coil inputs, engineers can duplicate magnetic fields found anywhere in the world. With the introduction into the system of the magnetic signatures of various types of ships, NOL scientists can determine the effect of each upon the mine, and whether the proximity of the mine to the ship will cause the former to detonate at the desired distance.
In order to make these magnetic tests as accurate as possible it was first necessary to eliminate from the buildings themselves all possible sources of magnetic interference. The material which went into the structures was screened to eliminate all traces of iron filings. Copper nails and piping, bronze gussets, and plastic and brass fixtures were used exclusively. Every precaution was taken to prevent the violation of the non-magnetic requirement of the buildings.
The first such structure completed was used temporarily as an office. When the office equipment was finally moved out and the scientific equipment moved in, the scientists found, to their consternation, that their gauges were reacting in a completely unpredictable fashion.
Some ingenius genius, obviously a family man, solved the problem, however, when he suggested the flooring be ripped up. From under the wooden boards hundreds of bobby pins were pulled out, deposited there by secretaries who had little regard for the hallowed theory of magnetism.
Perhaps, instead of being exploded magnetically, the mine is slated to be an acoustic type—set off by the noise of passing .ships. The NOL “anechoic,” or non-echo room, is a huge cubicle which resembles a porcupine turned inside out. It is proving an invaluable aid in the study of sound. Measuring roughly 50 feet on a side, the room has mounted in it approximately 30,000 fibre glass wedges designed to absorb all sound. Any noise produced in the anechoic room produces much less than one tenth of one per cent echo, thus making it possible for scientists to study raw sound undistorted by echo or other sonic disturbances.
There are other vital links in the explosive chain besides the mine exploders, however. NOL maintains a large staff of experts who are concerned only with the problems of bigger and better explosions. To keep them in business calls for more than thirty buildings, most of which are of special construction which minimizes the effects of accidental detonation.
Then, of course, there are the hundreds of “gadgets” such as clocks, linkages, bellows, and other “Rube Goldbergs” which must be developed before the mine can assume a personality of its own.
Even after all of these items have been hooked up into what NOL scientists hope will represent a gaping hole in an enemy hull, there still remains the most important question of all: Will it work?
To provide the answer NOL makes use of its $4,000,000 Ordnance Environmental Laboratory. It is among the most modern, and in many respects, the most spectacular of all of NOL’s facilities.
Most of White Oak’s scientists create. Hut not the environmental testers. “You make ’em, we break ’em” is their motto. They get paid for destroying, or at least, attempting to destroy. It is their job to test the ruggedness, durability, and ability of the mine to operate under conditions far more trying than any which it might expect to encounter in normal service life. More than one aspiring young engineer has seen his shining new answer to the snorkel submarine emerge a pile of twisted bolts and shattered tubes after a trip through the Ordnance Environmental Laboratory.
The place is literally a torture chamber. If the new device can pass through relatively unscathed, Laboratory officials have every right to place a high level of trust in its ability. Hut, in order to get a stamp of approval, it has to undergo a routine that makes Marine boot training seem like a Girl Scout outing.
First, this hypothetical new mine would be mounted on a huge vibration table. The table, and others like it, can duplicate every shake and shimmy found in any mode of transportation—truck, train, ship, or plane.
As has been known for some time, vibration plays havoc with the delicate “innards” found in modern ordnance. To eliminate this source of failure, technicians were dispatched to the field armed with recording machinery which faithfully transcribed vibrations found in anything which moved. The technicians rode in flatcars, PT boats, trucks, and in bomb bays. Upon Completion of each bone rattling expedition, they transplanted the vibrations recorded on their machines to the vibration tables. Now, by strapping it to one of the tables and pushing a couple of buttons, the NOL vibration experts can send the mine from Silver Spring to Norfolk, on a freight car having one wheel slightly out of alignment.
When it arrives at Norfolk the mine must be loaded aboard ship, perhaps by a working party of disgruntled sailors who have just had their liberty canceled. Even the unhappy bluejackets can be simulated in the laboratory. To do this requires the use of the rough-handling tester, a machine which pummels the mine with the same indelicate treatment which it might receive on the wharves.
Once loaded aboard the ship the mine would be exposed to the damaging effects of the elements—salt spray, in particular. To simulate the mine’s encounter with the North Atlantic the environmental testers bring into play the spray cabinets in which many weeks’ exposure to salt air can be condensed into a few hours.
After an ocean voyage, the mine would likely find itself slung into the bomb bay of a large bomber, and in a short time, negotiating the wild blue yonder, thousands of feet above its natural habitat. It gets cold, upstairs ... 65 degrees below zero. How will delicate mechanisms react under these frigid conditions?
To find out, the mine is wheeled into the cavernous Ordnance Environmental Laboratory temperature chamber where its performance under all kinds of temperature conditions is carefully checked. By a flick of a switch technicians can create an arctic blizzard or a Sahara drought. Temperatures within the chamber can be controlled from 100 degrees below to 200 degrees above zero. To add to the realism technicians actually enter the chamber during these extreme temperatures and conduct work On the mine to determine a man’s ability to make vital adjustments in any type of weather.
From the stratosphere to a dip in the ocean is the routine which the mine would normally follow in service life, and that’s what happens to it at NOL. White Oak scientists have their own private ocean in which both the water temperature and degree of salinity can be controlled.
After dropping thousands of feet, however, the shock of hitting the water would hardly be a gentle caress. Any tyro diver knows that a poorly executed swan dive can be tough on the tummy. NOL has the answer to that one, too, in the guise of giant air guns just waiting to go to work on the mine after it staggers out of the sea tank. The long, tubular air guns can exert forces of up to 30,000 G’s on clocks, tubes, and other delicate components which are most likely to crack under the tremendous shock of impact.
During the shock tests, the test pieces are bolted to a cylinder which is loaded into the breech of the air gun. A sudden burst of air pressure exerted on the face of the cylinder sends it hurtling down the gun barrel some 100 feet. The sudden action of the applied air pressure on the cylinder imparts the same shock which is experienced when the mine strikes the water.
If the mine has survived its ordeal to date there is still one more obstacle to be hurdled —the deep sea pressure tank. The world’s largest, the NOL tank was constructed by Babcock and Wilcox and weighs 140 tons. It is so unwieldy that it took many months to transport it by rail from its home in Ohio to Silver Spring. The tank holds 60 tons of water, a shade over 2,000 gallons.
The mine is wheeled into the vessel, the 40-ton hydraulic door laboriously slides into place, the water is pumped in, and the squeeze is on. If necessary, a force of 1,000 pounds per square inch can be applied, comparable to the force exerted one-half mile below the surface of the ocean. Obviously no mine need yet withstand that pressure, but NOL planners have their eyes on the future.
These, then, are the major tests which the new mine would encounter before NOL would concede that it might make a pretty fair weapon. But even after it has passed, bloody but unbowed, through the Ordnance Environmental Laboratory, the mine would undergo a full syllabus of field tests before the Laboratory would place its full stamp of approval on it.
The preceding case involving a hypothetical airborne mine is by no means a complete one. It is, as a matter of fact, only an outline of what would actually happen during the course of the development of a new weapon, whether it be a new mine, depth charge, rocket, or guided missile.
The facilities used for missile development at NOL should rightfully be the subject of a separate treatise. Briefly, they consist of six tunnels and two aeroballistics ranges. Two of the NOL tunnels are the same used by the Germans to develop the V2 rockets. They were captured by American forces near Kochel, Bavaria. Dismantled and shipped to White Oak, they are the largest of the tunnels now in operation in the NOL, measuring 16 by 16 inches in cross section. The other four NOL tunnels are smaller and of American design and construction. One more tunnel is tentatively scheduled for installation at White Oak. It will be the largest of the group and will measure 32 by 32 inches.
The big hollow ball, mentioned earlier, is the heart of the wind tunnel system. One end of each tunnel feeds directly into the sphere. The other end is open to the outside air. Models to be tested are mounted in the tunnel facing the outside entrance. The air is pumped out of the sphere. A quick-opening valve which acts as a dam between the outside air on one end of the tunnel and the evacuated sphere on the other end is unseated, allowing air to rush from the outside, through the tunnel, past the model, and into the evacuated sphere. By decreasing temperatures and pressures within the tunnel itself, thereby making use of the principle that sound travels slower in cold air, at low pressures, it is possible to create within the tunnels Mach numbers of up to 8.3 or velocities up to 8.3 times the speed of sound. This corresponds to almost 5,000 miles per hour. Cameras and other types of recording equipment maintain a constant graphic presentation of the wind’s effect on the model during the test.
In the wind tunnels, the model stands still while the wind does all the work. The opposite is true in the NOL aeroballistics range. Tiny models of guided missiles are actually propelled at terrific speeds through the range. The range is a long hollow tube, known as the “plumber’s nightmare” by White Oak hyperballisticians. Again the speeds obtained in the range are difficult for the layman to imagine, ranging up to 10,000 miles per hour. Pressures within the range can be varied to simulate conditions found in flight from sea level to 150,000 feet altitude.
One of the major problems encountered in erecting the range was the absolute necessity for keeping the tube perfectly level. Although it is 345 feet long, the only curvature in the tube, to within plus or minus .001 inch, is that caused by the bend of the earth. As is true of most of NOL’s equipment, the ballistics range is used not only by the Navy, but also by the Army, Air Force, and civilian ordnance contractors.
So much for the Laboratory’s facilities. To describe them all would require a volume many times the size of this one.
However, there is one more facet of the NOL story which is too important to gloss over. Without it, the machines and equipment of which NOL and the Navy can be proud would be just so much hardware.
The working philosophy which has characterized its early years at White Oak has become as much a part of NOL as the cornerstone which Secretary Forrestal put in place in 1946. Many a layman who would not know an electron from a cosmic ray has sensed the sense of mission which seems to surround the very walls of White Oak.
And for good reason. The laboratory’s methods are just as modern as its spanking new equipment. Top management has instituted any number of time-saving ideas and progressive procedures which civilian industry and laboratories have openly admired: small but fully equipped branch shops where engineers and technicians can do their own shop work rather than wait for it to be turned out of the main shops; a “super market” electronic supply room where scientists can select necessary items from more than 7,000 parts, in the same manner that their wives select groceries, but in less time. The Laboratory often convenes scientific advisory boards made up of some of the country’s top scientific minds, who meet with NOL leaders to suggest various methods of improving and expediting Laboratory administrative and scientific procedures. Under plans worked out with the University of Maryland and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, junior NOL scientists can work towards advanced degrees in Laboratory classrooms after hours while being instructed by senior Laboratory scientists acting in the dual capacity of university professors.
Although there is only a handful of military personnel sprinkled among NOL’s 3,000 civilian workers, White Oak’s high command never loses sight of the fact that the Laboratory is “ ... an integral part of the Naval establishment. Its staff members, military and civilian, are equally a part of that establishment.”
That there has never been anything but harmony between the military and civilian components of the Laboratory is a tribute, not only to the officers selected to head NOL, but also to the Technical Director and his aides. For, together, these men of the Naval and scientific professions have offered the nation proof positive that the federal government can operate a scientific laboratory second to none; that civilian scientists employed by the Navy can work productively with the world’s finest equipment and with recognition for outstanding service; that the scientist’s work can be administered without being bound up in red tape; and that promising young men and women of science can find in NOL and similar laboratories an opportunity to contribute not only to the world’s fund of scientific knowledge, but also to the security of their country.