Forged in the heat of wartime urgency, a tripartite alliance—the U. S. Navy, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and civilian industry—has continued to make important contributions to this country’s defense. Neither the greatest nor the least of this partnership's accomplishments was the launching in 1952, from the 35-year-old battleship, USS Mississippi, of a Terrier missile, conceived by APL scientists and produced by private industry under the aegis of the Navy.
In early 1941, with most of the world’s navies engaged in a shooting war, the U. S. Navy was fighting a war of its own. The battles were being fought in the fields of science and gunnery, and the enemy was the problem of fleet air defense.
The 5-inch shell of that day was timed by a mechanical fuze to explode at a precalculated spot, hopefully just in front of the attacking plane. The lethal range was only 20 feet, and it was taking our gunners an average of 2,500 rounds to bring down a single aircraft. The Navy was faced with the urgent problem of reducing this average.
In Washington, D. C., the problem was one of many being studied by the National Defense Research Committee, a group of leading scientists brought together under the leadership of Dr. Vannevar Bush to focus the nation’s technical resources on the development of new and more powerful weapons for our armed forces.
A solution had been proposed: develop an influence-type fuze that, placed in the nose of a 5-inch shell, would detonate the shell only when it came within lethal range of an aircraft. The trouble was that the device, which was to be in effect a miniature radar, would have to withstand the shock of being spun at 475 revolutions per second and subjected to 20,000 times the force of gravity upon being fired. And, in an age when the word miniaturization, as it applied to weapons systems, was uncoined, this radar could be no larger than an ice-cream cone.
When war came in December, development of the proximity fuze, also known as the VT (variable-time) fuze, was underway at the Carnegie Institute of Washington under the general direction of Dr. Bush and the immediate leadership of Dr. Merle A. Tuve and Dr. Lawrence R. Hafstad.
While the nation lumbered slowly into its war preparations, the small group of fuze scientists paused for a moment to look at their progress. Yes, the fuze could be made; it would work.
But if it were to be developed, tested, produced, and fired in the 1940s, help was needed. More scientists, engineers, and technicians must be hired. An organization combining the talents and facilities of research, engineering, and production would have to be formed.
The fuze scientists went to Dr. Bush, and he went to The Johns Hopkins University. “Would the University establish a laboratory to be responsible for the development of the proximity fuze?” he asked.
The University agreed and, in April 1942, the Applied Physics Laboratory was established in a converted garage in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D. C.
Working around the clock in complete secrecy, the fuze men battered down obstacle after scientific obstacle. The “garage” became a hub of activity whose spokes reached out to industrial contractors, government agencies, and university campuses across the nation. Soon, panel trucks carrying prototype proximity fuzes were pulling out of the laboratory and heading for the Navy proving grounds at Dahlgren, Virginia. (The Navy Department arranged that the explosive-carrying trucks remain unmarked, in violation of local ordinances.)
A couple of months and several thousand test firings later, APL scientists attained their goal, and the Navy ordered the fuze into full production.
On 5 January 1943, less than a year after the laboratory was established, the USS Helena (CL-50) became the first ship to fire a proximity fuze in anger. The immediate result was a Japanese Aichi 99 dive bomber in the drink. The long-range result was an order-of-magnitude increase in Fleet air defense capability and a sizeable step-up in naval operations among the Japanese-held islands.
The Applied Physics Laboratory continued to develop and refine proximity fuzes during the war. At the peak of production, more than 10,000 workers in 300 companies were producing 70,000 fuzes a day.
Proximity-fuzed shells, shipped to England three months before the first V-1 buzz bomb; combined with British-born radar to render the German missiles virtually useless. Artillery shells equipped with proximity fuzes were used with devastating effect against the Wehrmacht at the Battle of the Bulge. German soldiers, crouching in foxholes and road trenches, had little protection against the shells that burst 30 feet above the ground and peppered deadly fragments over an area 100 by 200 feet.
Lieutenant General George S. Patton, U. S. Army, said of the fuze, “It will revolutionize warfare. I’m glad we thought of it first.”
The termination of World War II marked the end of agencies and organizations whose life-span coincided with the duration. Soldiers and civilians, sailors and scientists were coming home from their battlefronts.
The fuze men of the Applied Physics Laboratory, their secret work now hailed in nation’s press, would have returned to their universities and companies except for one fact. The proximity fuze had become obsolete as a fleet air defense weapon.
High-performance aircraft, improved attack weapons, and radically altered tactics had torn holes in a ship’s anti-aircraft umbrella. This fact, recognized before the end of the war, prompted laboratory scientists to suggest a supersonic, radar-guided missile to the Navy as the best defense against high-speed attacks.
The Navy seized on the idea and, in December 1944, the contract covering the laboratory’s operation was transferred from the Office of Scientific Research and Development to the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance. The Bureau assigned the laboratory the broad task of research and development in the field of missile technology and the responsibility for producing the design of a specific missile to meet the Navy’s requirements at the earliest possible date. The program was given the somewhat ironic code name of Bumblebee after the insect which, although possessing considerable striking force, has been proven by aerodynamicists to be incapable of flight.
The technical challenge was immense: develop a supersonic missile, and a way to launch, propel, control, and guide it. Design a warhead to make it lethal, and produce a whole new family of test equipment. In short, create a new technology.
As a first step, the Applied Physics Laboratory called in associate contractors from industry and universities and organized development teams to make an integrated attack on the problems to be solved. Acting in coordinating role, the laboratory established the first large-scale, supersonic wind tunnel, the first major ram-jet facility, and designed electronic flight simulators and telemetry equipment for monitoring and reporting the action of missile components in flight.
Soon the results began to emerge, each an important milestone in the guided missile field. The world’s first successful flight of a supersonic, ram-jet-powered missile was made from Island Beach, New Jersey, in October 1945. Four terrified fishermen in Barnegat Bay saw a tremendous geyser of water 30 feet from their boat, followed by an earsplitting blast. What laboratory scientists on shore saw was the conclusion of a nine-mile flight at one-and-a-half times the speed of sound. The flight marked the end of nine month’s exhaustive work in the quest for a ram-jet engine that would sustain flight. It is interesting to note that the design was based on the “flying stovepipe” ram-jet scheme which had been invented in 1913 by the Frenchman, Rene Lorin, but never tested.
While the ram-jet group continued their research, missile and guidance teams were achieving important results 3,000 miles away at the Naval Ordnance Test Station, Inyokern, California.
Laboratory scientists at NOTS had developed a supersonic test vehicle, designated STV-3, and were using it to test both control and guidance techniques. The first successful control of a supersonic missile was achieved in August 1947. In March 1948, a supersonic missile was made to ride a radar beam.
The STV-3 vehicle was intended simply to serve as a flying laboratory for electronic packages that ultimately would go into a long- range, ram-jet-propelled missile. But when the STV-3 continued to build up a successful flight history and the Navy’s need for a shipboard missile became more urgent, Rear Admiral A. G. Noble, then Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, ended the research and development phase with the order, “Let’s get it on a ship.”
The laboratory consulted contractors and made plans for production. Ship conversions were started and special crews trained to use the radically new weapon system.
Telemetry packages in the STV-3’s nose section were removed and a warhead fitted in their place.
Flight tests, using radio-controlled target drones, continued in earnest. By 1951, the prototype missile was persistently clinging within 50 feet of the center of the guidance beam out to ranges of 40,000 feet. This dogged tenacity prompted Dr. R. B. Kershner, then supervisor of the development program, to suggest “Terrier” as the name for the missile.
In 1952, the Navy built a weapons plant at Pomona (operated by Convair, now General Dynamics) to produce Terrier. In that same year, the USS Mississippi (AD-128) was outfitted with two dual-arm missile launchers to conduct realistic shipboard tests of the missile. By 1955, the first tactical ships were ready. The USS Boston (CAG-1, ex-CA-69) was converted in November, and three months later, the first operational Terrier missiles roared from her decks.
The Applied Physics Laboratory continued its development of the Terrier missile. Nuclear warheads and homing capability were added. Today, improved Terrier missiles are using early-model Terriers as targets.
With the experience gained in the Terrier program, the laboratory was able to speed the development of higher-performance Fleet missiles. The ram-jet-powered Talos (originally intended to be the first missile in the Fleet) was successfully fired from the USS Galveston (CLG-3) in February 1959. Two years later, a third missile, Tartar, joined the Fleet. The first Tartar missile ever fired from a combatant ship, the USS Charles F. Adams (DDG-2), scored a direct hit on a 450-knot F9F drone.
By May 1963, the Navy had 43 guided missile ships.
The Bumblebee program continues at the Applied Physics Laboratory. Just as guided missiles represented a quantum jump in capability over the proximity fuze, the Typhon system promises to give an even greater measure of Fleet defense.
Typhon, named for the legendary Greek monster with a hundred heads and voices, is a new weapons system evolved out of joint studies with the Bureau of Naval Weapons. The system is designed to counter attacks by air-launched missiles, high-performance aircraft, and ballistic missiles which may be expected in the 1965-1970 era. In this program, the whole system—missiles, radar, fire control equipment, computers, and weapon direction equipment—was assigned to the laboratory for research and development.
In 1942, the Applied Physics Laboratory consisted of 269 men and women working on a single project in a converted garage. Today, 2;400 staff members work on everything from flame physics to flashing-light satellites in a complex of buildings headquartered halfway between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D. C.
The Applied Physics Laboratory is a division of The Johns Hopkins University, operating under a single contract with the Bureau pf Naval Weapons. The laboratory’s program is reviewed twice a year, and more often if necessary, by a standing committee on sponsored research whose membership includes university officials and principal executives of the laboratory. The Chief of the Bureau of Naval Weapons and his deputy are included in these meetings to assure joint Navy-university-laboratory consideration of policies.
As an operating principle, the laboratory has endeavored to maintain a university- oriented approach to research and development tasks and to create an atmosphere in which scientific thought can flourish. Its success can be seen in the fact that laboratory doctors are beginning to receive as much recognition as medical doctors in the University’s world-renowned hospital.
It was two such laboratory doctors, working with improvised equipment, who recorded the heartbeats of Sputnik I the night it was born. They conceived the idea that analysis of the doppler shift of the Sputnik’s signal as it passed overhead would yield the precise orbit of the satellite. Three months later, by a tour de force of mathematical analysis, the scientists determined Sputnik’s orbit with a precision equal to that obtained through many observations using conventional radar and optical methods.
It remained for Dr. F. T. McClure, Chairman of the laboratory’s Research Center, to turn the scientific achievement into one of practical significance for the Navy. He reasoned that if an observer at a known position on earth could determine a satellite’s orbit with measurements made from a single doppler pass, then the reverse must also be true. An observer at an unknown position on earth could determine his precise location from doppler measurements made on signals transmitted from a satellite whose orbit was already known.
For his reasoning, Dr. McClure won the first NASA Invention Award. What he had invented was a satellite navigation system.
The Navy instantly recognized the significance of the system, and the laboratory plunged into its first space program. Dr. R. B. Kershner was made head of the laboratory’s Space Development Division. A satellite was successfully launched in April 1960 and promptly confirmed what was promised on paper. Four more experimental navigation satellites, the latest launched in November 1961, have proved the navigation system not only in satellite instrumentation, but also in the ground equipment and computing routines that make navigation-by-satellite possible.
The system, which works night or day in any kind of weather, anywhere in the world, has been shown in actual shipboard tests to have an accuracy of better than one-quarter of a mile.
Briefly, the system works like this. Four satellites, spaced 45 degrees of longitude apart in polar orbits, continuously transmit signals on two ultrastable frequencies. A message containing the satellite’s orbit data and a precise timing signal is carried on both frequencies.
Satellite signals are monitored by four tracking stations and by a time-recovery station located in the U. S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D. C. The tracking stations record the doppler shift of the two frequencies as the satellite passes over head. The Naval Observatory recovers the timing signal contained in the satellite message and compares it with universal standard time to derive a time-correction value. Doppler data and the time-correction value are sent via an Operations Control Center to a Computing Center.
The Computing Center determines orbital parameters, or numbers that define the exact shape and orientation of the satellite’s orbit. Orbital parameters plus the time-correction value are sent to an Injection Station, from which they are injected by high-power radio into a memory device in the satellite. This “message” erases and updates previously stored data. Messages are subsequently updated every 12 hours by a new injection.
The satellite transmits its message, which changes slightly every two minutes as the satellite moves through its orbit, simultaneously on two frequencies. Use of two frequencies permits a correction to be made for the effects of ionospheric refraction, or the bending of radio waves as they pass through the earth’s atmosphere.
Aboard ship, the navigator turns on special receiving-computing equipment that transforms signals into a position fix in terms of latitude, longitude, and time of fix. The fix is obtained before the satellite completes its 15-minute pass.
The experimental phase is nearing a close. Administrative control of the satellite navigation system has been assigned to the Navy Astronautics Group. The Applied Physics Laboratory serves as technical director for the program.
Tracking stations have been established at Hawaii; Point Mugu, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Winter Harbor, Maine. The Operations Control Center and Computing Center are in operation, and the Injection Station is under construction at Point Mugu. Receiving and computing equipment is now being installed in U. S. Navy vessels. The final installation, putting four operational satellites in space, is scheduled for this year.
The Applied Physics Laboratory stepped up its space effort a year ago when it was made prime contractor for the ANNA satellite program. ANNA stands for Army, Navy, NASA) and Air Force, and it is the first satellite specifically tailored to make geodetic studies. Originally sponsored by the Department of Defense and now managed by NASA, the ANNA program is designed to meet the longstanding and now urgent need for precise geodetic information.
ANNA data are used to relate the major World data, determine the exact location of isolated islands and points of scientific interest, and to map the earth’s gravity profile With an accuracy not previously obtainable.
The ANNA IA satellite, launched in May 1962, failed to achieve orbit, but its successor, ANNA IB was launched in October and now orbits the earth. Data obtained thus far with the satellite is excellent.
The satellite carries three geodetic measurement systems: the Army’s SECOR transponder system, the Navy’s doppler method, and the hashing-light system of the Air Force. Each system provides a means for locating the satellite in orbit and, when this is established, the Position of an observer on ground.
Two or three of the systems can be operated simultaneously. This redundancy permits a cross-check to be made on the accuracy of each system and greatly improves the tracking data upon which the value of derived geodetic information depends.
The Applied Physics Laboratory, which has facilities for building complete satellite payloads, is currently engaged in a variety of Projects in space. The laboratory is prime contractor for an ionospheric-research satellite to be launched by NASA early this year.
Rut the Laboratory’s primary responsibility lies with the Navy, as it has for the past two decades.
The Laboratory is vigorously pursuing a .et Weapons System Program that includes direct technical assistance to individual ships, planning and conduct of ship system evaluations, and direction of equipment contractors in developing system improvements. Under the SDAP, or System Development Analysis Program, the laboratory is responsible for collecting data on each Polaris submarine sub-system and then analyzing the sub-system data to determine the readiness of the submarine for tactical patrol.
In the battle simulation facility, the research center, and the new propulsion research laboratory, APL scientists are searching for basic knowledge that perhaps in a year or ten years will serve the needs of the Navy. The work that translated a doppler tracking method into a satellite navigation system provides us with a dramatic example of the laboratory’s mission successfully accomplished.
The role of the Applied Physics Laboratory and its relationship to the Navy has been most clearly expressed by its Director, Dr. Ralph E. Gibson. He likens the development of a new Navy system to the building of a house. Three parties are involved: the owner, the architect, and the contractor, which may be seen as the Navy, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and the industrial complex of the nation. He views the laboratory as a “systems architect” and cites the achievements of the proximity fuze project and the Manhattan Project as examples of what can be accomplished with a central laboratory acting in the role of a systems architect.
Testifying on systems development and management before the House Committee on Government Operations last August, Dr. Gibson said, “This is an age of expanding technology and emergent political aspirations on a worldwide scale. We face a two-pronged problem. We must preserve the freedom of our democratic way of life. At the same time we must keep our leading position in the face of ruthless and regimented competition. I am convinced that an answer to this problem is to be found in co-operative partnerships or working associations where each member can exercise his special talents in freedom under the discipline of a common objective. The concept of the systems architect in developments of national scope is one example of such a partnership.”
For two decades, the Applied Physics Laboratory of The Johns Hopkins University has enjoyed such a partnership with the Navy and a large family of associated universities and industrial concerns.
Mr. Walker attended Auburn University under the NROTC program and was graduated in 1951. He served on board the USS John R. Craig (DD-885) from 1951 until 1953 and, until his release to inactive duty in 1954, he was District Officer for Reserve Naval Security Groups, 4th Naval District, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is employed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University as a motion picture writer.