64 Dahlgren 



close the road for up to an hour at a time, if necessary, because of fragment 

 hazards from Dahlgren tests. The State agreed to that. That was part of the 

 agreement in giving them the right of way. 



What do you consider to be the primary problems in maintaining a range such as 

 Dahlgren's? 



I think the primary problem is maintaining the authority to operate a range. 

 It becomes more and more difficult to have a place where you can conduct the 

 kinds of tests that Dahlgren conducts on the river. In other words, there's the 

 problem with the commercial aircraft overhead, the airspace. At the time I was 

 there, we had to coordinate very closely with the Civil Aeronautics people. At 

 times, with certain tests, we had to inform them well ahead and have them put 

 out notices and route the airplanes around Dahlgren. Then you've got the 

 people building more and more up and down the banks of the river. The 

 people over at Cobb Island, Maryland, were complaining about our tests even 

 when I was there. They said, "There shouldn't be this kind of stuff done in a 

 place like this. You ought to take this someplace else." You know, it's like, 

 "Where do you put up a nuclear power plant?" Obviously, someplace else, and 

 it's the "someplace else" business that in the long run could be your major 

 problem. Dahlgren is excellent as a test facility in that it is so near the R&D 

 activities that can use it. 



Is there a real need to maintain a range over water? 



I can see that in certain electronic ordance work the range over water 

 may be the only range that will permit you to know definitely whether or not the 

 equipment is going to work at sea because the kind of reflection you get from 

 water is likely to be remarkably different from the kind of reflection you get 

 from land. I do think there is a very distinct advantage in having a range over 

 water for types of electronic ordnance or if you're testing ordnance that 

 discriminates between water and a target automatically. When you test over 

 water, you're testing over the element which you would be using in operations 

 against surface ships. 



Can you remember any serious accidents that occurred on the range during your career? 



About the most serious accident I remember was during air tests we were 

 running during World War II. We had a practice bomb being dropped from an 

 airplane at a high altitude strike an airplane at a lower altitude. The airplane 

 was disabled. The pilot got out, but the copilot didn't. There was also a case of 

 some oystermen working out in front of what we call the machine gun range. 

 The two men out there longing up oysters in front of the range brought up a 

 40mm mortar shell that exploded on the boat and tore them up pretty bad. 



