This year marks the 18th anniversary of a U. S. Navy simulator called the “1-BZ2 Maneuvering Tactics Trainer.” Known as “BZ,” the device, unlike ships or hurricanes, has never been dignified with a name or glamorized with a sex. Yet “It” owns distinction, having trained over 500,000 naval officers and men in shiphandling, equal in time to one ship and crew steaming continuously for 114 years. A one-of-a-kind trainer (located in Newport, Rhode Island) that has trained a half million Navy men deserves mention in naval annals. But other considerations demand a written history.
These considerations include savings in afloat training time, conserving fuel oil, and preventing collisions. Of further significance, postwar simulation techniques originated with this machine. Most importantly, unlike so many automated gadgets in today’s world which make decisions, this one forces man to make the decisions—not by rote, but by exercise of judgment and forehandedness.
Before BZ, junior conning officers almost always followed the sage advice of their seniors: “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”
The typical raw ensign in the pre-World War II era ran in a circle for the voice tube, screamed for the captain, and shouted for the navigator. Sadly, there were occasions when even these brisk measures did not suffice. Then came that rending noise as a pinnacle of rock sawed through the ship’s belly. Or the promotion-shattering dispatch was relayed from a war-game umpire: “You’re sunk.”
Thus, much of the Navy’s prewar training consisted of all sorts of trials and not much margin for errors. Why did the Navy do it this way? Because it made sense. In the Thirties and before, officers in the Fleet practiced under the gimlet eyes of seasoned skippers who seldom let things get out of hand - out of their own hands, that is. Most mistakes were caught and rectified almost before they were made. The survivors of this sweat-and saltwater-drenched apprenticeship became the old seadogs, wise in the ways of their profession. World War II scuttled, perhaps forever, the Navy’s master/apprentice concept. There were neither the teachers nor the time, to shape the “90-day-wonder” into any kind of certain-safe skipper. He was given a lick, a promise, lots of good wishes, and command or conn of a naval vessel headed into action.
Navy men recognized the faults of this seat-of-the-pants system and took steps during World War II to prepare officers for operations and combat. For instance, antisubmarine training devices appeared as crude apparatuses wherein a conning officer—comfortably and safely ashore—practiced attacking mock submarines. Or he learned gunnery with a primitive spotting board that enabled him to recognize ships, gauge target angles and correct fall of shot. And there was always the time-tested maneuvering board—a graphic plotting sheet—for solving the riddles of relative motion.
These methods were admirable but each lacked the quality of realism. Inevitably, there existed the element of substitution or “let’s pretend” which made the training problem poor preparation for the real thing. So the Navy made-do until after V-J Day.
The Navy paused to reflect in 1945. Career officers asked themselves and each other how they might have conducted the war more efficiently in terms of men and resources. Most of the answers divulged deficiences in training for multiple ship operation. Steaming in storm or calm, day or night, ships operated as teams—more than teams in fact, rather as living entities controlled by a single mind— that of the over-all commander whether he wore five stars or two bars. On occasion somebody would “bust” in these maneuvers and, when this occurred, such errors were traced to lack of training.
Yet, how could there have been adequate training? Unified operations at high speed with darkened ships in the frenzy of combat were difficult to simulate outside of the action theater whether ashore or afloat. Peacetime would make such simulation even more difficult. Certainly, the U. S. Navy could order a squadron of destroyers to sea for a week and let them practice war against one another. But fuel shortage, wear-and-tear, collision hazard,—not to mention economy-minded Congressmen—all militated against this brand of war game. Further, ship skippers, with their careers showing, were reluctant to turn command over to subordinates for training. Navy tacticians agreed that some other way must be found to create realism.
The opportunity to inject such realism occurred at the U. S. Navy’s General Line School in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1946. This school, hastily staffed, was established for the purpose of converting World War II Reserve officers, by and large specialists—e.g., aviators, navigators, communicators, engineers,—into well-rounded career line officers.
The task of organizing and commanding the school fell to Captain Frederick Moosbrugger, a veteran destroyer man. Moosbrugger’s Executive Officer was Captain Wade McClusky, an aviator. Tactical instructors boasted combat experience in cruisers, carriers, battleships, destroyers or submarines.
These officers, aware that actual sea exercises were impractical, early discussed simulation. The Naval War College war game board would not serve. It was not automated (but, of course, what was in 1946?). As such, it was little more than a sort of Brobdingnagian chess board for top commanders. There was, however, in Atlantic City an antisubmarine training contraption made of surplus gears, obsolete optics and leftover wires which might be adapted to practicing simple ship tactics and navigation. The School, lacking anything better, installed this device—1BZ1—in a wartime temporary building.
Here is how the contraption worked: eight booths, barely large enough for three men, contained mock-up ship’s bridges with helms and engine-order telegraphs. The wheels and the telegraphs transmitted motion electronically and mechanically to eight projectors which threw tiny ship-shaped beams of light on a vaulted screen.
Moving hesitantly and jerking whimsically, the resulting ship’s images could be steered around the screen which represented the ocean. Observing the images as if from a helicopter, the students directed their “commands” across the screen in various formations and into simulated battles. Contributing some realism—but not much—were signal flags, telephones between ships and a means of measuring range and bearing with a wand of light. The chief petty officer in charge swore that the machine would drive him straight into a padded cell. He and everyone else at the school referred to the machine as “the Trainer” when they weren’t calling it the “Bastard.”
Even so it was a success. And for a reason not clearly foreseen. Haphazard, crude and unrealistic as it was, something came out of drills held on this primitive trainer. That something was sweat on the brow of any officer given command of a ship or group of ships on the screen. The machine forced the officer to make command decisions under stress.
“Which way do I turn? How fast? When? How do I arrange my formation? What is the best method of attack? What signals to use?” All questions demanded answers right now since the tiny images, just as with real ships, would not wait. Further, the officer’s mistakes—whether collision, confusion or defeat -—stood glaring and naked on the giant screen for both the staff and one’s classmates to see.
So, cussed and cranky as it was, the gadget had merit. A staff article written about the device for the Bureau of Personnel Training Bulletin attracted much comment, particularly about extending the use into more advanced tactics. At Newport, discussions about improvements were frequent.
Everyone agreed that the machine had reached the limit of its mechanical, electrical, and simulating capabilities and a new one, specifically designed for the purpose, should be requested.
The school fought for approval of its request in Washington where postwar money was scarce indeed. The Navy’s Special Devices Center, creator of the Link Trainer, joining as an ally, helped win the fund argument and agreed to undertake the design.
The Center, later dubbed the Training Devices Center, deserves explanation. Like its parent organization, the Office of Research and Inventions, it evolved during World War II. Prior to that time, navies— armies, too, for that matter—may have had training devices, but they were all of the local do-it-yourself variety. When Davy Crockett set a whiskey flask on a stump for target practice, the bottle became a crude training device. When he strung the bottle on a buckskin thong trolley so that it would move across his line of sight like a galloping black bear, he thereby created a training device that was roughly similar to some World War II machine gun trainers.
Similar improvisation existed at sea. In the War of 1812, Captain Sir Philip Vere Broke of HMS Shannon trained his gunners with a pendulum device which told them at what point in a frigate’s roll to shoot the canon. Admiral William S. Sims, U. S. Navy, of World War I fame was also a great one for training devices and saw to it that big-gun aiming could be practiced and checked by a gadget called a “dotter.” Outside the field of gunnery, there were other home-made trainers—to assist navigation, flag-hoist or radio communications, engineering and damage control. But all stemmed from existing shipboard need. Nowhere was anyone attempting to save time, expense, and lives in training all the Navy in all departments.
Actually, it was Adolph Hitler’s General Staff which inaugurated the first service-wide training device system. Because the terms of the Versailles Treaty allowed them no weapons, the Germans constructed wooden mock- ups on bicycle wheels to resemble tanks and gliders as make-believe bombers. Great Britain, short on aircraft, followed suit in inventing methods of schooling flight crews before they ever took to the air.
Then, in 1941, the U. S. Navy established a synthetic device training division whose meager $50,000 budget guaranteed that any devices produced would be synthetic indeed. This organization expanded with the war effort and nearly three million training devices were delivered to all of the armed services before V-J Day.
At war’s end, the center retained men of talent. One such was project engineer Kurt O. Stabenau, a civilian who worked in the Navigation and Seamanship Branch. Another was Alphonse A. Chester, civilian head of the branch. Both of these men wanted to tackle BZ’s design and their advocacy helped win approval of the project.
After approval came a round of conferences at the Line School to determine the military requirements of the machine—i.e., what it was supposed to do. These were followed by more conferences between training officers and civilian training specialists in the Bureau of Naval Personnel and extensive studies by electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, “human engineers,” and educators at the Special Devices Center.
During these conferences there was not much time for abstract meditation since the machine was to be installed and churning in something over a year.
The next phase—and it was presumed to be an easy one—was the actual manufacture. Scores of factories had produced wartime special devices and were old hands at the game. But, most of these manufacturers, with the war two years bygone, had converted to peacetime production of flatirons, furniture, and fancies to satisfy a consumer demand. Moreover, all were aware that the government was now on an economy kick and the lush profits of the war years were out. Others shied away from taking a chance on a one- and-no-more contract. As a consequence, when the invitation was offered to bid, interested contractors were few.
However, a young manufacturer-inventor named Luther Simjian, decided to bid. Simjian, who had earned considerable notice in the Thirties as the inventor of the photo-reflex camera, owned a company which he named Reflectone because of his dual interest in reflectivity of mirrors and the tonal quality of photographs.
Reflectone, located in Stamford, Connecticut, was a war baby which had moved ahead rapidly in the field of military training devices. Starting with an aerial machinegun trainer for the Navy, the firm had produced mock-up machine guns, disappearing targets to educate combat troops, a moving-jeep target fired at by real bullets, and aircraft weight and balance devices to instruct air crews in safe loading. The company was the first to discover the use of graphite nylon as a wearing surface between aluminum parts.
All of these accomplishments illustrated Reflectone’s versatility when manufacturing training devices in quantities which assured profits. The new BZ would differ in that only one would be made and that one, as a simulator, would be vastly complicated.
For instance, the Navy maintained that the ultimate requirements must be flexible to match the capabilities of design, manufacture and changing naval tactics. This meant constant experiment within the one-year time limit. A single miscalculation by the manufacturer and the whole undertaking would result in unacceptable financial loss.
Simjian, nonetheless, dared to bid and won a fixed-price contract for something less than half a million dollars. His Reflectone plant with a bare 30 employees in a factory half the size of a modern food market faced the challenge of a “BZ or Bust” situation.
Now, Project Engineer Stabenau scooted over from Long Island with plans in hand, ideas in mind, to confer with Simjian and Company. “And Company” at this time happily included some topflight engineers (the BZ project was always lucky in regard to quality men). Key man of the group was Maurice D. (Doc) Bennett, in charge of planning and design. Doc concealed both drive and intelligence behind a mild manner. Working at his side was A1 Coster, Production and Design Engineer, a can-do type who would build and scrap four prototype BZ computers in quest of perfection. A third engineer, Dick May, brought a brilliant mathematical mind to the project.
Racing against time, held down by a budget ceiling, and not certain what changes the Navy would decree, it was a case of press-on- regardless and hold your breath at the end.
Basically, very basically, the 1BZ2 would resemble the prototype 1BZ1. There would be a series of imitation ship bridges whose ship controls would manipulate a series of projectors each casting a ship image on a screen. From that point on, however, the new device would be no more similar to its predecessor than a Thunderbird is to a Model T.
The brains would lie in the computers— the component devices receiving commands from the ship bridges and then translating these into directions to be followed by the projectors. Simple enough until one considers the ancillary requirements. The ship images must behave like real ships on the screen. This would mean injecting ship’s characteristics into the motion—advance and transfer, for instance. So, although the projector beams could have been made to spin on a dime, their movements must perforce be controlled so as to give exact simulation of real ships—and different ships at that—carriers, cruisers, destroyers, almost the entire gamut.
Other factors complicated the computer problem. As an example, the torpedoes required separate computing mechanisms and projectors. Yet, these torpedoes had to ride piggyback on the deck image of the mother ship, so to speak, until they were launched, at which time they became moving light images on their own. The four 400-knot airplanes provided to the system demanded additional calculations for wind, speed and air temperature. Also needed was a master control capable of figuratively towing any ship image back to station instantaneously if it became lost in the maneuvering scuffle.
Tolerance of error provoked a headache of migraine proportions. Computers in the 1940s were electro-mechanical devices with heavy emphasis (60 per cent) on the mechanical. They were a natural evolution from the old prewar days when the Navy obtained gunfire data with a computer operated on a spring- wound clockwork principle—including the old-fashioned winding key. But the Navy had by this time advanced the machines to where they could transmit orders by means of a master synchro-servo driving slave units. Yet many functions of computation remained a conglomeration of gears, worms, shafts, cams, and drive wheels. These were all subject to wear, and wear meant lost motion, and lost motion meant error—practically an unknown term in today’s solid-state 100 per cent electronic digital computers.
Simjian, Bennett, and their fellow engineers solved all of the above problems and many others so thoroughly that the completed machine was installed and ready to go by August 1948—13 months to design, build, and install.
The machine was tailored to fit in the same old temporary building as the 1BZ1. From opening day in 1948 when the first class of officers marched in to take the 1BZ2 on its maiden cruise until the present, there has been little significant change. Upon entering the building, the impression is that of a theater interior—a large screen 16X16 feet at one end. At the other, tiers of booths rise three floors to face the screen, each booth about the size of a cramped opera box. Down front in the “orchestra” resides a huge control console. Far up amongst the opera boxes a battery of projectors aim somewhat menacingly at the screen. A clock on the bulkhead and signal-flag display boards complete the picture.
Each ship booth—there are 16 of them— contains the essential control items found on a modern warship bridge: wheel, engine order telegraph, annunciator, gyro-compass repeater, pit log indicator, rudder angle indicator, sound-powered telephones, voice radio and radar position plotting indicator. Students assigned may include a conning officer, helmsman, communications officer and radar plotting officer. These titles vary according to kind of student and type of problem.
Four booths contain “airplane control panels” which “fly” a quartet of airplane images. Then there are four torpedo images each directed by a booth “torpedo control panel.” Single ships may also be projected as clusters of small craft to resemble amphibious forces. Two special tactical commander booths exist to give students a taste of multi-ship command.
The Master Control Panel located in the console performs all sorts of gee-whizzery which no skipper has ever done or ever will— instantaneously stopping the whole fleet for instance, or repositioning it, measuring range and bearing on the screen with projected bands of fight, changing colors of the ship images, and hauling individual ships back into position. Reflectone takes pride in the fact that this is the first console system ever used in a training device.
Each ship, plane, or torpedo owns its own projector consisting of a lens, a reticle through which the light pattern of a ship is shaped and a lamp. The lamp housing executes a kind of follow-the-leader routine, trailing its own lens so that the light always shines squarely into that lens and therefore does not diminish the image when at the edge of the screen. Each ship projector also contains a rangemeasuring line which appears on the screen. Filters enable ship images to show in a choice of six colors for identification.
So much for description. Since the best way to learn is to do, scant time is spent in discussing the innards of BZ with students. Instead, the instructors head out to sea almost literally. By means of a special projector, a chart image of a selected harbor, Newport, for instance, is superimposed on the screen outlining land, water, and shoals. Next, individual ship images are placed, each in its own anchorage. When the students arrive, a sortie plan is passed out to all ship skippers and the OTC
If fog comes (and BZ can make this kind of weather by requiring radar navigation only) the skipper must maneuver by the radar picture only. A variation to the sortie exercise is the harbor-entrance exercise.
Senior officers from the Fleet like to see their ships’ companies play another game with BZ’s help. Ingredients are two or more ships in extremis. The console operator sets up the images so that collision appears inevitable. Students then take emergency avoiding action. Anything can happen including the collision when two images merge, but the only hurt is to pride.
Assuming the ships have navigated the shoal waters of the sortie drill and prevented the collisions of in extremis condition, the BZ can now turn to maneuvers on the high seas. Formations may be simple or compound.
The BZ instructor commences with the simple formation requiring the student OTC to lead his flock through its paces—columns, lines, echelons, change of course, distance, speed, and interchange of ships. Bearings and distances are taken by means of the radar indicator on each bridge or by means of the graduated wand of light which can be thrown on the screen like a giant yardstick to measure distance and bearing.
A vital bit to be learned from formation maneuvering on the BZ is the “feel” of relative movement, the sixth sense which must be trained into every landsman taking to the sea.
In addition to navigation, emergency shiphandling and formation tactics, the BZ simulates sea battles. Here, an operation order prepared by the BZ staff introduces a situation with selected opposing forces. The Op Order may delineate submarines against surface craft, destroyers against destroyers, planes against ships, opposed amphibious landings— the possibilities are many. Further, by employing colored ship images in conjunction with similarly colored eyeglasses on the students, any enemy force may be rendered invisible as it would be in night or fog. Skippers then form and fight by radar. In these sea struggles the composite professional skills of all hands are essential to victory— shiphandling, navigation, tactics, communications, and combat savvy. Essential because the BZ will not lift a single gear to make a decision. It only does what it is told.
So with a real ship—she only does what she is told. With respect to a combatant vessel, BZ’s theme song could well be “Anything you can do, I can do better.” In truth, the elements are all there; start, stop, steer, take ranges, indicate bearings, talk between ships, and the ability to get the seafarer in trouble.
This last, getting the seafarer in trouble, brings the discussion full circle to an earlier declaration of what BZ is all about, namely decision-making under stress. Herein the BZ confirms the aphorism that warfare is both science and art. To take the conn on a BZ bridge one must know what the books say and what the ships can do. A student who does not know book facts and ship figures will certainly founder. But one also needs a sense of creativity which when applied to the situation will further the objective almost by instinct. A knowledgeable student who displays a “Nelson Touch” will almost surely win.
Down through the years nobody has kept score of BZ mock battles which are as much tests as they are drills. But when it comes to numbers, these BZ screen scraps beat even the TV Westerns. Day in and day out with a record of 100 per cent availability BZ continues to grind away. This non-stop performance has piled up that massive roster of alumni. Among them have been U. S. naval and Merchant Marine officers, officer candidates, enlisted men, ships’ officers, task group commanders, War College students, Boards of Investigation re-enacting collisions, and yes, even Waves studying Fleet communications. From nations bordering the Seven Seas students have come wearing uniforms of Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, and Thailand, to mention a few. No Russians though—too bad, too, since the BZ can’t be fooled; if your naval skills are flawed, BZ will detect them quickly.
Comments of those who have been shipmates with BZ reflect its popularity. Vice Admiral Frederick Moosbrugger summed up top command sentiment saying, “To accomplish what the BZ does would take practically the whole Atlantic Ocean and there would be collisions.”
And a Reserve officer candidate capsulized the students’ views, “BZ is not EZ.”
Aside from its training value, a noteworthy feature of the BZ has been its reliability down through the years. Whirring, grinding, clanking, it has continued to serve faithfully for a full generation of Navy men.
Obviously BZ has earned its keep in the U. S. Navy, but more than that, as a first-of-a- kind, it is the forerunner of an entire family of modern-age machinery based on the philosophy of simulation—making people make decisions.
Spearheading these advances in simulator creation has been the Navy’s Training Device Center. Luther Simjian’s Reflectone Company also has kept pace, and a tangible product is the Polaris submarine training system which schools underwater sailors in missile countdown and firing. This sophisticated trainer offers everything but the missile itself; an inertial navigation system (SINS), navigational data computer (NAVDAC), star tracking periscope, loran equipment, even the ocean currents which might affect the aim. A far cry from the old BZ? But is it really? Ship’s speed and ship’s course are still there. And remember the BZ carrying those piggy-back torpedoes which after calculations by the firing ship are launched at the foe? BZ or NAVDAC, the idea is still the same.
Since BZ, however, neither the Training Device Center nor Reflectone have been alone in producing simulators on an assembly line basis. The Army, the Air Force, and many defense-industry manufacturers have joined the formation. Today, devices simulate bombers, space cabins, “real” enemy soldiers, war wounds, search planes, attack submarines and others.
As so often happens with service developments, BZ and its military use descendants have acquired civilian cousins as well. There are truck-driving simulators and passenger- car-driver simulators. Commercial jet pilots sweat out simulated emergencies in detail- for-detail cockpits. Even businessmen with their save-brain computers are coming around to the conception that a computer can ask questions as well as answer them and thus train executives to make decisions. In elementary and secondary schools, certain teaching machines move more to this same BZ theory of “make ’em think.”
Recently a magazine article expressed concern that computers might be “running wild,” in effect, furnishing bad dope to humans. Perhaps. But if the trend toward simulation continues, computers will surprise the American public just as they surprised the Navy back in the days of the old “Bastard” BZ1. They will be making people make decisions. They will eliminate as well as simulate —discarding the inefficient method or individual. Further, they will guide a return to that rugged individualism so useful to our forefathers. For after all, what is rugged individualism but the right, the willingness and the capability of making decisions under stress? The aircraft bombardier alone in his simulated bomber cannot yell for Mom, blame it on Kilroy, exaggerate the record, or otherwise dodge the decision.
Return now to the BZ. How much longer can “It” hold out? A few Navy men think any day “It” will go the way of the Deacon’s One Hoss Shay and collapse in a heap. Others, including maintenance men, aver “It” may last for another generation. Realistic engineers calculate that another five years will see the end.
“The trouble is,” they state, “the poor old critter just can’t keep up with modern fleet problems, supersonic flying machines, satellites, and warships that go lickety-split. Furthermore, the BZ is an outclassed classic. The art of simulation has advanced so far that today we can, to mention a few possibilities, simulate ship’s rolling, noise of gunfire, enemy-inflicted machinery casualties, and three-dimensional effects. Smell, sound, sight, feel or taste anything that happens in battle short of killing can be simulated. A new maneuvering tactics trainer might not have the BZ personality but it would be as much of an improvement over the old BZ as a World War II machine gun trainer was over Davy Crockett’s whiskey bottle on a string.”
Whatever the future, the thousands of Navymen who learned their operational conning and shiphandling in the BZ will affirm, warmly, that the 1BZ2 has earned the right to a commission pennant and a name. Why not a good old American Indian-sounding moniker like the USS Wunbeezietwo, thus changing the neuter “It” to the feminine “her.” She might then really go on forever.