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construction work in those areas. So that's the only area where we were really 

 short. That's why we had to have 100,000 square feet of relocatables, which is a 

 poor investment, in order to have working space. You know those darn trailers 

 down there. They were a joke, but we had to have them. That was the only way 

 we could get any work space for the expansion. Otherwise, we really didn't have 

 any money problems. 



What was the military-civilian relation at Dahlgren during the 1960's? Are there any 

 base commanders that come to mind that particularly affected this relation! 



Well, commanders of bases are people, and just like people, there are good 

 ones and bad ones. I learned a long time ago that the relationship of the 

 Technical Director and the Commanding Officer of a laboratory is something 

 that should be kept between those two men, and if they have any differences, 

 they should not be settled by either one of them trying to get edicts from higher 

 authority to settle the problem he has with the other fellow. In fact, I never let 

 the issue of who the hell is the boss around here come up with any of the 

 commanders I worked with. Now some of them felt that they carried all the 

 responsibility and I was just another employee to them, and there was no use 

 arguing that point as long as they let me do my work. There were some that 

 recognized that it was a partnership and that really the technical work belonged 

 to the Technical Director. Some of them frankly faced that. They said, "That's 

 the way it should be; you are in charge of all the technical work, and you carry 

 the responsibility." That's the way Washington recognized it, by the way. But 

 some of them [base commanders] lived in dream worlds. The reason they were 

 appointed to the position [they felt] was that they were either scientists or 

 familiar with the R&D system or the Navy Procurement System, and everybody 

 else at the Station was an underling. Well, you can't redo history, but Dahlgren 

 would have been even further ahead if about half those commanders were 

 replaced with the other half. About half of them really didn't do anything. An 

 outstanding one was Admiral Chase.* He came here as a Captain, and he saw 

 immediately what I was trying to tell him — that we have to go in a certain 

 direction which requires plowing a lot of young professionals into the system 

 at a very high rate. We were going to need them and a different class of officers 

 coming on board, not those who were taking their last tour before retirement or 

 mustangs who never really were professionals, but career officers who still had 

 a career to make, even after they left Dahlgren, and whose careers could be 

 enhanced by the right duties at Dahlgren. He [Admiral Chase] always took me 

 with him when we went to the recruiting officer so we could explain what we 

 had to have in the way of officers. Even though he wasn't here a full term, the 



*AdmiraI John Dawson Chase was Commanding Officer at Dahlgren from July 1968 until July 

 1969. 



