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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e na v y 43
electron tubes, semiconductor materials, and missile guidance systems. This
postwar expansion into high-technology R&D at Crane matched similar
lines of work at White Oak, Dahlgren, and China Lake.
The origins of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory can be traced back to World
War I, when the Navy’s shipyards and other shore facilities experienced rapid
expansion to meet urgent military requirements. Founded in 1800 as a major
shipbuilding facility for the Continental Navy, the Navy Yard in Washington,
D.C., gradually converted to gun production, and, in 1886, the Navy officially
classified it as the primary manufacturer of heavy guns for the fleet. 15 This shift
from ship to ordnance production expanded during World War I, and, late in
1917, the Navy erected a separate laboratory—called the Mine Building—at
the yard and staffed it with a small group of engineers to develop mines for the
North Atlantic sea blockade. Work on fuses was initiated at the Mine Building
two years later, when a research group investigating new detonation methods
moved to Washington from the nearby Naval Powder Factory at Indian Head,
Maryland. The mine and fuse groups merged in 1929, and the new organization
was formally designated the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Ten years later, the
laboratory was organizationally separated from the Navy Yard and reconstituted
as an independent research and development facility within the Bureau of
Ordnance. Although its primary wartime mission was to develop degaussing
methods for ships to counter the recently introduced German magnetic mine,
the laboratory also accumulated a diversified knowledge base in the scientific
fields—terrestrial magnetism, underwater acoustics, and oceanography—
associated with ongoing work on depth charges, torpedoes, projectiles, fuses,
and bombs. 16
In 1944, the bureau leadership began preparing plans to move the Naval
Ordnance Laboratory to a new location outside Washington. The old facilities
at the Navy Yard were no longer sufficient to house the laboratory’s expanding
technical programs. 17 The Navy broke ground for a new $40 million research
campus in White Oak, Maryland, two years later, and it was completed and
fully operational in 1950. 18 In addition to continuing work on bombs, torpedoes,
15 In 1945, the Navy Yard was officially renamed the Naval Gun Factory. Paolo E. Coletta, ed., United
States Navy and Marine Corps Bases, Domestic (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 183–87.
16 R. D. Bennett, “Wartime History of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory,” Review of Scientific Instruments
17 (August 1946): 293–95; Albert B. Christman, Sailors, Scientists and Rockets: Origins of the Navy Rocket
Program and of the Naval Ordnance Test Station, Inyokern, vol. 1 of History of the Naval Weapons Center,
China Lake, California (Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, 1971), 4, 59–60; Joseph P. Smaldone,
History of the White Oak Laboratory, 1945–1975 (White Oak, Md.: Naval Surface Weapons Center, 1977),
167–69. Also on the wartime work of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, especially the development of mines
and countermeasures, see W. G. Schindler, “Research Activities of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory,” Journal
of Applied Physics 15 (March 1944): 255–61; and “NOL—Where the Arctic and Equator Meet,” All Hands,
no. 437 ( July 1953): 12–13.
17 Between January 1941 and July 1942, the size of the laboratory staff had increased more than
tenfold, from sixty to eight hundred. By the end of the war, it had more than doubled again to nearly two
thousand employees. The workforce continued to expand during the Cold War. Total employment reached
three thousand by 1970. Schindler, “Research Activities of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory,” 261; Bennett,
“Wartime History of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory,” 295–96; G. K. Hartmann, “Naval Ordnance
Laboratory: From Concept to Hardware,” Defense Industry Bulletin 6 (December 1970): 9.
18 When completed, the White Oak campus comprised a total of sixty-nine laboratories, testing ranges,