30 Dahlgren 



working on an inertia catapult for catapulting planes off carriers, and they also 

 had a radio-controlled airplane here.* 



/ think a lot of that work was carried on down here. 



Yes.quiteabit of it was. Lieutenant Ballentine** was the Officer in Charge of 

 the Air Detail at that time. 



Later to be Admiral Ballentine'? 

 Yes, that's right. 



You mentioned being in fire control and gunnery after graduation. How didyou get your 

 wings? It seems that fire control and gunnery would almost be a career in itself. 



When I was in fire control aboard the battleships, it looked to me as though 

 the future was going to be in aircraft with their bombs. We had reached more or 

 less the limit of long-range guns. 



That was a rather heretical view for a Navy man, wasn't it— in light of Billy Mitchell'^ and 

 his Army bornbing? 



Aerial bombing had its prospects, especially dive bombing, in the early days 

 when they had nothing but the carrier LANGLEY.J He [Mitchell] came 

 around with his airplanes in operations there with the battleships off the 

 Virginia Capes with poor results. Airplanes came out and made a mock dive- 

 bombing attack on the ships. The LANGLEY never saw them, never heard 



*The first successful testing of a radio-controlled airplane took place at Dahlgren on September 

 15, 1924, under the leadership of Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor of the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory, 

 assisted by Mr. C. B. Mirick, a capable radio engineer, who was assigned by the Head of the 

 Radio Division, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. An N-9 aircraft was used forthe testing and was 

 fitted with the Norden automatic control system and a radio-controlled system designed by Mr. 

 Mirick. 

 ^*Admiral John J. Ballentine reported to the Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, in June 

 1922, where he served as Officer in Charge, Naval Air Detail, until February 1926. In 1923, the 

 then Lieutenant Ballentine conducted the original tests of the first bombsight designed by Carl 

 Norden, a Navy consultant. While on duty at Dahlgren, Admiral Ballentine controlled, from the 

 ground, the first airplane operated by radio control. Following various assignments with the 

 Asiatic Fleet, he returned to the United States in August 1927 for another tour of duty at Dahl- 

 gren as Officer in Charge, Naval Air Detail, until June 1931. He retired from the Navy on May 1, 

 1954. 



tMajor General William [Billy] Mitchell, a famous aviator for the Army from 1914 to 1926, 

 directed massive aerial bombing attacks against the Germans during World War L In 1919, he 

 came home from Germany as the United States' only flying general. 



JLANGLEY was the United States' first aircraft carrier. It was commissioned in 1922 as a carrier 

 and converted and later reclassified as a seaplane tender in 1937. It was sunk by Japanese air- 

 craft south of Tjilatjap off the south-central coast of Java on February 27, 1942. 



