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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e na v y 51 not conceptualize and develop its own weapon systems but instead received materials for testing and evaluation from other service facilities, such as the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, or from industrial contractors. This tradition of ordnance proofing and testing can be traced back to 1872, when the Navy established its first proving ground in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1890, the proving ground transferred from Annapolis to Indian Head, Maryland, located next to the Naval Powder Factory on the shores of the Potomac River about twenty miles south of Washington, D.C. 46 All types of naval guns, bombs, gunpowder, projectiles, armor, fuzes, and cartridge cases were tested at Indian Head until the end of World War I, when space limitations prompted the Bureau of Ordnance to search for a larger location. The testing requirements for newer long-range guns and the continuous expansion of the powder factory made such a move especially urgent. Construction of facilities at Dahlgren began in the spring of 1918, and, by 1923, the new proving ground was in full operation. Shortly after Dahlgren opened, management established an experimental department, headed by a civilian Ph.D. physicist, to conduct routine testing of ordnance materials. 47 Tight budgets during the interwar period precluded a major expansion of the department, but diversification of the testing program continued, albeit slowly. In 1936, the experimental department became the experimental laboratory, and its major functions focused on bomb calibration, exterior ballistics, velocity measurements, and armament tests. Four years later, Dahlgren set up a separate armor and projectile laboratory to support additional testing functions and also to conduct metallurgical research. Technical investigations expanded at both laboratories during World War II along two separate but related lines: (1) routine acceptance testing of materials and development of new testing and evaluation procedures, and (2) prosecution of R&D to improve the performance of weapons and armor. 48 After World War II, Dahlgren’s traditional testing and proofing activities continued, often expanding during major conflicts, such as the Korean and Vietnam wars, and then contracting in peacetime. Although this cyclical behavior often caused anxiety among administrators, who feared that closure of the installation was imminent, a crucial reprieve came in the 1950s in the form of a major expansion into electronics and high-speed computing to support the Navy’s new fleet ballistic missile program. The aggressive move into electronic computing was by no means arbitrary. Rather, it complemented Dahlgren’s longstanding expertise in ballistics testing and evaluation, and it also tracked the larger postwar transformation of naval weapons technology from conventional ordnance to missiles and rockets, jet aircraft, and nuclear weapons. The transition from proofing to R&D manifested itself in the establishment of new programs to explore the latest developments in fire control, electronics, optics, ballistics, and 46 On the Naval Powder Factory, see Rodney P. Carlisle, Powder and Propellants: Energetic Materials at Indian Head, Maryland, 1890–2001, 2d ed. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2002). 47 The first director of the experimental department was Louis Thompson, a ballistics expert who had received his Ph.D. in physics from Clark University in 1917. 48 D. I. Hedrick, “Research and Experimental Activities of the U.S. Naval Proving Ground,” Journal of Applied Physics 15 (March 1944): 262; Christman, Sailors, Scientists, and Rockets, 4–5, 55, 63–64.
52 so u R c e s o f we a p o n sy s T e m s In n o v a T Io n In T h e depaR TmenT o f defense guidance. In 1967, for example, researchers at Dahlgren began experimenting with guided projectiles fired from naval guns. This work continued into the 1970s, when the first laser-guided projectiles were introduced into the fleet. Until the mid-1950s, Dahlgren’s computing capabilities relied on the punched-card machines that the staff had installed during World War II to produce bombing, rocket, and projectile tables. In 1955, Dahlgren acquired the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORAC). Designed and built under contract by the International Business Machines Corporation, NORAC was more than one hundred times faster than the computing equipment already in operation at the proving ground. In addition to carrying out routine ballistics calculations, NORAC was also used for war gaming exercises, and, in 1959, it was put to work computing trajectories and other operational parameters for the Navy’s new fleet ballistic missile program. Three years later, a $2 million computation facility was added to supplement NORAC’s work on missile and space systems. This expansion in computational analysis and the continued diversification of Dahlgren’s mission prompted the Navy leadership to rename the proving ground the Naval Weapons Laboratory in 1959. In 1974, Dahlgren merged with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak to form the Naval Surface Weapons Center. 49 Dahlgren’s diversification beyond proofing and evaluation of ordnance into electronics and computers matched a similar institutional transformation within the ammunition manufacturing plants owned and operated by the Bureau of Ordnance. Like Dahlgren and the bureau’s other large corporate laboratories, the engineering support functions attached to the Navy’s ordnance factories tackled and solved major technical problems in electronics, optics, and missile guidance and fire control. One important source of this effort outside the perimeter of the Navy’s laboratory establishment was the Crane Naval Weapons Support Center, located in south central Indiana. 50 Founded as a weapons depot in 1940 to help meet the Navy’s rapidly growing wartime material needs, Crane stored smokeless powder and poison gas, loaded gun projectiles and ammunition cartridges for small arms, and manufactured all sizes of shells, bombs, depth charges, and other ordnance materials. After 1945, Crane continued to function as a storage and production facility, but it also moved into technical fields beyond those directly relevant to its wartime mission. During the war, Crane engineers tested and evaluated the ordnance materials produced by the depot’s own manufacturing divisions and industrial contractors. In 1947, this testing function was centralized in a new department called the Quality Evaluation Laboratory. The laboratory also set standards for munitions safety and quality control. Within a decade, however, the laboratory’s technical capabilities had expanded to provide evaluation protocols for the new electronics technologies that were rapidly replacing mechanical assemblies in firing mechanisms, guidance controls, fuzes, and other critical ordnance components. 49 McCollum, Dahlgren, 13–17, 123, 128–29; Coletta, United States Navy and Marine Corps Bases, 164. 50 The depot was named after Commodore William Montgomery Crane, the first chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography (renamed the Bureau of Ordnance in 1862).
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