Early Work in Aviation 43 



Did your air group at Dahlgren have the responsibility for testing various aircraft? 



Yes, every airplane that had a machine gun or bomb rack was sent down here, 

 and we had to put it through tests. With all planes, we had to see that the angle 

 of fire for the guns was such that you wouldn't shoot up the wings and see if they 

 could actually handle the gun in the air. For fixed guns in fighters, we had to fire 

 them and test them. Any plane that was used for dive-bombing tactics had the 

 "grasshopper legs" on it which kept the bomb from being thrown into the 

 propeller. The bomb was right in this little part of the fuselage when you 

 released it; and if you were at too steep an angle the bomb would hit the 

 propeller. In order to prevent that, these "grasshopper legs" would come down 

 and keep the bomb out far enough so it would clear the propeller. We had to 

 test each of the planes for dive bombing. We had to go up to 15,000 feet to get 

 into the no-lift terminal velocity dive. We would have to do every kind of 

 maneuver we could do when we released the bomb to see if we could hit the 

 propeller. Nothing ever happened. 



You never had any accidents'? 



Never had one hit the propeller. 



That seems like a good way to terminate your career rather quickly. 



It would. If it took your propeller off, you would lose your power and lose 

 control. They never had any trouble that I heard of. 



At that time, was there ever any talk among the Navy professionals of possible trouble with 

 Japan? 



Well, before I came here, we knew back in 1932 that it was almost certain. 

 Once when we started off on a cruise, a few of us were taken up to the Admiral's 

 office. He said he wanted us to take every item an armored plane was supposed 

 to have. He said, "You don't know when you're coming back here, and you've 

 got to have your stuff ready in case we got into a war in a hurry." We knew that 

 was coming. There was no question about it. 



In addition to the bombs and the machine guns, we also had to test the float 

 lights which we could throw out of the plane. We had parachute flares, and we 

 had to take those up and drop them to see how long they would burn. They had 

 to burn a certain length of time or the whole lot was rejected. 



That would seem to present something of a hazard to localfishermen. Did you ever have a 

 flare or bomb drop too near a fisherman? 



No. They were always very anxious if we dropped something because of the 

 nice silk parachutes. They wanted to get that silk. We had one case of fire where 



