72 Dahlgren 



maybe 70 officers. There were also a lot of girls, maybe a dozen or so high 

 school graduates from the county. 



Did you receive your projects from the Bureau of Ordnance or did you go your own way? 



We took a look at the potential that we saw in the A&P Lab and pretty much 

 wrote the primary mission ourselves. Actually, I saw very little of the Inspector 

 of Ordnance or the Ordnance Officer. I'll tell you how little I saw of them. One 

 of them — they changed every 2 or 3 years — called me in for some reason, and 

 he said, "Commander, I want to tell you about precedence in the Navy." He 

 said, "Sometime I might be away and you'll be in charge or we might eventually 

 get down to where an Ensign is in charge. He might get an idea in his head and 

 order an air conditioner for his office." He said, "I want to tell you. Command- 

 er, if anybody has an air conditioner here, it'll be first the Inspector and 

 second myself." I said, "Yes, sir," and came back to my office, which had been 

 air-conditioned for 2 years. It had to be because we had a big metallurgical 

 laboratory, and you have to have air conditioning to do metallurgy. 



Did he ever find out that you had air conditioning? 



No. I didn't tell him, and he'd never been in the place. That's how much they 

 bothered me down there. 



Captain Hedrick was in charge then. Why do you think he left you alone? Did he respect 

 your position or did he have a lack of interest? 



I think he had a good opinion of me, but he felt that Dahlgren was a proof 

 and test facility and that they were there to test ammunition, projectiles, and 

 armor — not to do research work. He felt that the steel companies should do the 

 research work. 



While you were at Dahlgren did you get the feeling in your work in the Ai3'P Lab that this 

 type of research was going to grow and become more of a factor at Dahlgren and in the 



Navy? 



One thing I can tell you right off. We developed the process of case- 

 hardening STS armor — that's special-treatment steel used in thin sheets for 

 splinter shields on 5-inch guns and for airplane protection. 



What do you consider to be the mast significant achievements of the A^P Lab under your 

 supervision? 



Of course there was the STS armor which was the homogeneous light armor. 

 Optimum ballistic properties were obtained in homogeneous light armor by 



