166 Dahlgren 



Were there any proposed mergers with other installations'? 



Panama City was supposed to be part of the merger with NOL and what used 

 to be called USNAVUSL* up in New London and NUWRES** in Newport, 

 but we at Dahlgren never made any proposals at any time to absorb any other 

 activities. As a matter of fact, it was Admiral Mark Woods, t he's on the Advisory 

 Board now, who proposed one time we take over Indian Head. I felt that would 

 be getting too deeply into industrial tendencies for which Indian Head was 

 really created, and it would be diluting our effort to get into that. The merger 

 the second time around made more sense, more a merger of equals, but there's 

 nothing really to be gained out of it. There are more people required — 

 coordinators. I'm not saying they're useless, but you've got a Technical Director 

 and a naval officer now in addition to what was existing before consolidation. I 

 would not have done it that way. I would have taken an evolutionary approach 

 of maybe 4 years, on that order, of people exchanged between them. They're 

 doing some of it now, but I'd have taken a much longer time and then call on the 

 people who have been rotated to prescribe a reorganization. Then it's their 

 organization, but now they don't have anything to do with reorganizing. 

 They're not responsible for reorganizing. Well, I've written articles and 

 preached on this a long time ago that unless the people who are being reor- 

 ganized have a good part in the reorganization, nobody needs to be surprised if 

 reorganization fails. Most of them do because they're masterminded from the 

 top by those who don't understand the process. You can't reorganize into 

 competency or efficiency or even into honesty. You've got to work on the 

 problems of "feeblery," incompetence, and so forth. You've got to identify the 

 individuals and really get them straightened out or fire them. That's unpleas- 

 ant, but it's better than to reorganize them. 



In retrospect, xrould you do anything differently as Technical Director"? 



I'd have been a litde kinder to certain people who were really caught in traps, 

 and I'd have been a little tougher on some of the others who were schemers and 

 contrivers. Those are the things I would have done differently, but you really 

 don't know about a person until after some history has transpired. I don't claim 

 to be somebody who can interview a guy for a half hour, size him up, and tell 

 you what he's going to do. Even after the year's probationary period, it's hard to 

 tell what a man is going to do. You need at least that, but for some of the men, I 

 needed something longer than that. They're pretty clever in being sea lawyers 

 and knowing all the rules and regulations and how to avoid them and give the 



*U. S. Naval Underwater Systems Laboratory. 

 **Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station. 

 tAdmiral Mark Woods was Commander of the Naval Ordnance Systems Command (now Naval 

 Sea Systems Command) from 1969 until 1972. 



