FOREWORD 



There has been Intense interest in the exact mechanisms by which 

 wind energy is converted to wave energy since Sverdrup and Munk origi- 

 nally postulated their wave prediction theory in 1943o Nevertheless, there 

 has been a dearth of carefully collected data on the actual growth of wind 

 waves. The initial attempt to observe this wave growth from the air was 

 made in 1946 by the United Kingdom's Admiralty Research Laboratory using 

 a downward looking radio altimeter flying over the Irish SeOo Subsequent 

 attempts in both the United Kingdom and the United States to duplicate this 

 original experiment were without success until 1964, when the Naval 

 Oceanographic Office, using the specially equipped oceanographlc air- 

 craft of the Navy's Oceanographic Air Survey Unit based at Patuxent 

 Naval Air Station, Maryland, began to obtain excellent wave profiles. 



Working with the officers and men of the Oceanographic Air Survey 

 Unit, Dr. T. Po Bamett and Mr. J. C. Wilkerson of the Naval Oceanographic 

 Office planned and implemented special wave-spectra measuring flights start- 

 ing in 1965 to take advantage of this long-needed capability to profile the 

 sea surface from the air. The resolution of the continuous vertical profile 

 is of the order of one foot in the vertical and 100 feet in the horizontal. 

 Once these truly unique field data were at hand, the authors were able to 

 analyze in depth the validity of various theories now existent regarding wave 

 generation and dissipation. The authors' efforts have been most successful in 

 this regard, and their study can be considered one of the outstanding contri- 

 butions during this decade in this still growing field of airborne oceanography. 



Lo E. DECAMP 



Captain, U<, S„ Navy 



Commander 



Uo So Naval Oceanographic Office 



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