Times of Crisis 87 



the war. We had fuzes that just did not work. So everybody was conscious of 

 that, and nobody wanted to see it happen again. 



Do you have anything else you would like to say about how the technicalfocus evolved after 

 the war'? 



Yes, I did carry that part down to about the Korean War and the aftermath 

 thereof. After the Korean War, we had another decline in personnel because 

 we had taken on a lot of blue-collar help to do the proof and test, and this dried 

 up again as it does after every war. We were losing people, and money was 

 getting quite scarce because the R&D projects that we had been supporting 

 ourselves on before the Korean War were drying up. Our budget went down, 

 and our employment went down year by year. Finally, it got to the point where 

 we had to do something. 



We had at that time three sources of strength. The first, most obvious and 

 most indispensable, was the Computation Laboratory, which now, owing large- 

 ly to Dr. Bramble's efforts, was about the finest computation center in the coun- 

 try and was recognized as a resource — not as much as one would like because 

 the resource really consisted not just of a big machine but also of a staff that 

 knew how to get something out of the big machine. This was the message we 

 had to carry around. In those days, people were altogether too inclined to think 

 that a computer was a black box that you carry into the laboratory and it had a 

 button on it you pushed and it answered vour questions. I can't tell you how 

 many times I pointed out to various Admirals that what we had was a facility 

 not only of machinery but also of people. This was an operating entity which 

 could produce valuable answers and needed to be supported in order to do so. 



The second item was the A&P Laboratory, which was a very well-equipped 

 metallurgical and ordnance laboratory capable of doing it all. It was originally 

 set up to do research on armor and armor-piercing projectiles. The concept 

 dated back to about 1936 and its construction to about 1941. There it was, and 

 the same techniques, the same expertise that you apply to design a better 

 armor-piercing projectile can also be used to design better warheads. We 

 chalked ourselves up with confidence in the warhead area. After all, if the Navy 

 was going along the route of guided missiles, why couldn't we do the warhead 

 work? 



It was quite clear that what we needed was to get a greater, broader responsi- 

 bility from the Bureau of Ordnance. The first prerequisite for that would be to 

 get the recognidon from the Bureau that we could play a role in the increasing 

 technological arena of weapons development. 



The various Navy laboratories were actually, of course, rivals so we didn't get 

 any help at all from them, and we had to fight our own battles for our share of 

 the sponsors' resources. The principal sponsor was the Bureau of Ordnance. In 



