CHAPTER IV 



Range Operations 



Donald W. Stoner 



Mr. Donald W. Stoner, a native of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, received a BS in 

 electrical engineering from Gettysburg College in 1931 and an MS in physics 

 from the University of Michigan in 1934. From 1931 until 1935, he was an 

 instructor of physics and electrical engineering at Washington and Lee Univer- 

 sity. Mr. Stoner came to Dahlgren as a junior physicist in 1935 and was Head of 

 the Engineering and Evaluation Department prior to his retirement in 1968. 



The following interview was conducted by Cynthia Rouse in Mr. Stoner's 

 home in Lottsburg, Virginia, on September 14, 1976. 



Can you give us a general background on why you came to Dahlgren in 1935? With your 

 excellent educational background, there certainly must have been other opportunities for 

 you. 



I had about 4 years of experience teaching physics and electrical engineering 

 at a college, and I was interested in getting into something nearer to industrial 

 research. Also, at that time which was still during the years just following the 

 Great Depression, the colleges were not paying very much, and I could actually 

 earn more money working for the government. Then, too, I liked the idea of 

 working in the ordnance area. 



Could you relate some of the early work you did on bombsights and fuzes from 1935 to 

 1941? 



During that period, Dahlgren was running all sorts of tests incident to the 

 development and refinement of the MARK 15 Horizontal Bombsight which 

 was known as the Norden Bombsight and was developed by the Norden 

 Company. Also, Norden was working on a bombsight that was for a diving 

 airplane, and there were various tests to be conducted on that. Most of these 

 tests involved theodolite stations that would track the airplane during the 

 approach just before release, observe the time of flight of the bomb, and 



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