sion. Nor could we solve them by intuition, or from the seat of our pants, if you want 

 to put it that way. We had to find some better way of getting answers. 



These problems faced us very critically during the past war. Perhaps because 

 of this situation a great many of us realized that we had to start thinking about the 

 problems; we had to apply the analytic approach. And that is what we are doing now, 

 thanks to the efforts of a great many people and to conferences of this kind. 



What Mr. Niedermair said about rough-water performance is true, namely that 

 minor changes in the form of a ship do not appreciably affect its behavior in a seaway. 

 Nevertheless, we have in this country, in the last few years, produced a ship, a big ship, 

 which has phenomenally good rough-water performance, particularly in regard to main- 

 taining speed in heavy weather. This ship not only can go faster than any other large 

 ship in smooth water, but she can pretty much match that performance in anything 

 that the North Atlantic has so far been able to put in front of her. 



Not many of you remember or realize that over forty years ago we did the same 

 thing with a pair of little ships called the Great Northern and Northern Pacific. They 

 were built before the first World War. These ships were not large ships; they did not 

 have the length that was mentioned here yesterday. Their water line length was only 

 of the order of 520 feet. Nevertheless, these ships in two wars, on the West Coast and 

 the East Coast, in some of the worst weather in the world, were able to maintain 

 schdule in good weather and bad. As a matter of fact, they were able to do almost as 

 well as the Leviathan in the first World War, our yardstick in those days. There was 

 definitely something about these little ships that made them good. 



One might say that in maintaining speed, dryness, and so on we have sur- 

 mounted this hydrodynamic barrier. But we haven't, because we don't know what it is 

 that makes these few ships so good. We can't put our finger on it. We have ideas, but 

 not very many of us agree on anyone idea. And we won't produce the better ships until 

 we know why the ships already built were so good. 



The Albacore was mentioned here yesterday. She is a remarkable pure sub- 

 marine, no question about it. But the problem of designing that ship for low resistance 

 was not particularly acute, because we had a great deal of previous experimentation, 

 previous knowledge back of us in the way of work on airships, in the earlier years of 

 this century. We knew more or less what an optimum pure submarine would look like. 

 The Albacore, incidentally, isn't too different in shape from the submarines that were 

 built over 50 years ago by J. P. Holland. 



Now the thing we don't know, and the thing we must know, or must find out, 

 is what does the optimum wavegoing ship look like? Suppose we had no considerations 

 of cost, no considerations of displacement, no considerations of this, that, and the other 

 thing, what is the optimum form of ship for traveling in waves? That we do not know, 

 and that we must know some time or other. 



There has been a lot of talk about electronic computers, but don't let us forget 

 that, in general, in order to work an electronic computer we have to have some mathe- 

 matical formulas. In order to derive the mathematical formulas we must know the 

 psysical processes. In many cases I am afraid that we have not known the physical 

 processes too well before we ventured out on very thin ice with the mathematics. So 

 we had to go back and try over again. 



One last item has to do with this matter of hydrodynamic barriers on the new 

 type of submarines. I am talking about the ones that are not atomic-powered, but 

 atomic-fueled only. Propulsion of these vessels is still hydrodynamic. 



Perhaps I can best explain what hydrodynamic barriers we are up against by 

 pointing out to you that we work in a very limited depth of water with any of these 

 submarines. 



Consider that you are a pilot of a big new fighter plane in the next national 

 emergency. This plane is as large as an existing transport plane. You and your crew 

 are supposed to carry out some attacks, in the course of which you have to dodge shell 

 fire, and to dodge all sorts of missiles down close to the earth. All this time you have 



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