Dahlgren's First Leading Scientist 25 



most importaiit things that was dealt with in the early days and probably still is. 

 Anything that can be done to give younger people and others a better oppor- 

 tunity to understand how progress is made in the direction of new systems is 

 extremely important. A lot of people used to think, and I suppose some still do, 

 that you just decide you are going to develop something and the rest of it takes 

 care of itself. You must, however, have built into the development the machin- 

 ery for acquainting people with the kind of research that is necessary on the 

 foundations of these new concepts. In those days, this was an overriding 

 problem. 



From Dahlgren, you went to the Carl L. Norden Company and then eventually became 

 Technical Director of the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, California. In 

 retrospect, had your expectations at Dahlgren been fulfilled? 



Yes. I think, as far as my expectations were concerned, I knew it was a high 

 uphill road because the support that was necessary for that kind of work had to 

 be based on a very close understanding of the connection between the scientific 

 program and the regular proof and test work that the Navy had to have from 

 Dahlgren. So as time went on, the realization grew that we had to have the 

 technical work and that it was being done better. In the early days, we used to be 

 pretty discouraged because we thought that we weren't going to get support for 

 the things that we thought were necessary, but that feeling gradually went 

 away. We had lots of good support, as well as some that wasn't so good. 



The fact that some scientific work was possible in the naval establisnment lea 

 to improved work in the field. There were quite a number of naval officers at 

 Dahlgren at the time who believed in what we were doing and did what they 

 could to get a scientific program in perspective with the planning for the 

 Proving Ground. 



Again, had my expectations at Dahlgren been fulfilled? I would say, "Yes." I 

 definitely would. I have no basis for an independent opinion on how much of 

 this kind of work was necessary in the earlv stages in order to create a successful 

 framework for developing a center kind of work, but I can say that what has 

 come out of that is, I think, a very substantial confirmation that the Station was 

 working in the right direction and made a contribution. This is a credit to the 

 Station. I'm not saying this to set up a foundation for a feeling on my part or 

 anybody else's part that the specific things we produced turned out to be 

 extraordinarily good weapons systems, etc. That isn't the point. The point is 

 that the merit of doing this kind of work was confirmed to a considerable extent 

 by the results that came from Dahlgren early. Of course the work was continued 

 at various other places, and finally the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China 

 Lake was set up. That whole center was set up to do scientific work. The work at 

 Dahlgren consututed the substantial foundations for the realization that a 

 center like China Lake was necessary. 



