1931. It had full control until 1939, in spite of the 

 1932 recommendations of the Navy's General 

 Board, which were, in part: 

 (a) Naval research, of which the Naval Re- 

 search Laboratory is an essential agent, is a 

 necessary Naval activity and should be contin- 

 ued, (b) The activities of the Laboratory should 

 be confined to research and primary or labora- 

 tory experimentation. Subsequent full scale 

 experimentation, service test, and production 

 should devolve upon the material bureaus, (c) 

 The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations is 

 best fitted to administer the Naval Research 

 Laboratory . . . .^'^ 



In 1925 NRL collaborated with the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington in the first measurement 

 of the height and layer structure of the iono- 

 sphere. This was done by measuring the time inter- 

 val between transmission of a radio pulse and its 

 reception after being reflected by the iono- 

 sphere.**'^ This basic research coupled with aircraft 

 reflection observations made in 1930 led to the 

 development of continuous wave (CW) aircraft 

 detection equipment. Continuation of this work 

 led to effective radar, which was first installed on 

 shipboard in 1938, and to many later radar 

 developments.**'' Most of the Navy's advanced 

 communication equipment of this period was 

 developed at NRL; this work arose from and cap- 

 italized on basic research done by the various re- 

 search groups within NRL. 



In underwater acoustics the practitioners of ac- 

 tive sonar found frequently baffling phenomena 

 which required greatly improved knowledge of the 

 ocean as a sound path. E. B. Stevenson made 

 improved measurements of the velocity of sound 

 in the ocean. S7 In 1937 NRL collaborated with 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in 

 a series of measurements made with the help of 

 the USS Semmes. a destroyer specially outfitted 

 as a research ship, and WHOI's Atlantis. The 

 Semmes measured acoustic transmission and the 

 Atlantis measured water temperature. Together, 

 the measurements explained the mysterious "af- 

 ternoon effect" as a bending downward of the 

 acoustic beam by surface water which had been 

 warmed during the day. Because this discovery 

 was classified immediately, and remained classi- 

 fied until long after many others also had learned 

 of it, R. L. Steinberger of NRL and Columbus 

 Iselin of WHOI never received due credit.**** 



In addition to research on underwater acoustics 

 and radioelectronics, NRL did basic research in 

 physical metallurgy, radiography, atmospheric 

 electricity, crystallography, and physical optics. **** 



Navy— World War II 



The BuOrd official World War II history des- 

 cribes a situation that prevailed through the 1930's: 

 [The Bureau] ... in early 1941 included 17 

 independent sections with only a nominal divi- 

 sion organization. (Communication between sec- 

 tions was minimal.) ... In practice, the chief 

 problem proved to be that while research could 

 be coordinated without special difficulties, it 

 almost inevitably tended to be subordinated to 

 other functions. Congress was not generous 

 with appropriations during the peace 

 years ... but ... the problem was less that 

 money was not granted than that it was not re- 

 quested or was diverted to other purposes. 90 



The destruction of the U.S. ships in the attack 

 on Pearl Harbor was a catastrophic demonstration 

 of the vulnerability of ships to aircraft attack. An 

 overall assessment of the Navy's condition at the 

 time is revealing. Antiaircraft armament was 

 woefully inadequate. The little .50-caliber ma- 

 chine gun as well as the unreliable 1.1-inch and 

 the antiquated 3-inch antiaircraft guns had to be 

 replaced by 20mm Swiss Oerlikons and 40mm 

 Swedish Bofors. The country's best antiaircraft 

 gun was the 5' 738, which was a deterrent but 

 didn't become fully effective until its shells were fit- 

 ted with proximity fuses. (The fuse was developed 

 by OSRD with Navy funds, using laboratory facili- 

 ties at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and 

 later at Johns Hopkins University."^') On December 

 7, 1941, the Navy had 20 CXAM radars, most of 

 them already installed on ships. '*- It had tested land- 

 ing craft and had recognized the superiority of the 

 unconventional Higgins design, but didn't have land- 

 ing ships. Torpedoes did not run at specified depth 

 and their exploders frequently failed to fire. The 

 main battery guns on destroyers and battleships 

 were excellent. The carrier-based aircraft with 

 which the United States entered the war, especially 

 our torpedo planes and our fighter aircraft, were dis- 

 tinctly inferior to those of the Japanese in terms of 

 both aircraft performance and the weapons they car- 

 ried. 



''^Gebhard. pp. .^4-35. 

 85|bid., pp. 171-172. 

 S'-Ibid., p. 80. 



''■'Communication from Dr. B. Hurdle. NRL, to NSB staff. 

 June 1977. 



**Hersey.op. til., pp. 13-14. 



''Baylor, pp. 2.'i-26. 



^iRowland, LCDR and Lt. W. B. Boyd, The U.S. Navy Bu- 

 reau of Ordnance in World War II (GPO: Washington, D.C., 

 1954). pp. 8. 18-26. 



•'iSlewart.pp. 123-124. 



«Gebhard, p. 183; Taylor, p. 47. 



COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 333 



