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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e na v y 61
rather than product lines: chemistry, mechanical engineering, applied physics,
and metallurgy. By the 1970s, for example, the station (renamed the Marine
Engineering Laboratory in 1963) had introduced, in collaboration with
commercial engine manufacturers, a new generation of nickel- and cobalt-based
superalloys for use in the blade assemblies of marine gas turbines operating in
corrosive saltwater environments, and it had also compiled an impressive record
of achievement in the fields of machinery silencing and vibration dampening.
In the atomic power field, station engineers had made significant contributions
to the improvement of shaft bearings, auxiliary diesel engines, reactor piping,
and fire-resistant hydraulic fluids used in the propulsion systems of nuclear
submarines. 76
The Engineering Experiment Station cultivated a broad and diversified
knowledge base in ship propulsion technology that supported rather than fulfilled
the Navy’s ambitions for shipboard atomic power. The David Taylor Model Basin,
by contrast, played a larger and more direct role in the development of America’s
Cold War nuclear submarine fleet, albeit on a smaller scale than the participating
industrial firms contracted by the Bureau of Ships. The private sector completed
the bulk of the R&D and production for the nuclear navy. 77 Nevertheless,
submarine development at the model basin proceeded along several different but
related lines. The basin’s long-standing expertise in hydrodynamics and related
scientific disciplines and expanding computational capability after World War
II enabled researchers to develop revolutionary submarine hull designs that
significantly improved speed and maneuverability and reduced underwater noise
effects. The same technical resources were tapped to improve the nuclear reactor
technologies originally conceptualized, developed, and manufactured by private
firms.
Named after its first director, the David Taylor Model Basin was set up
by the Bureau of Construction and Repair at the Washington Navy Yard in
1898. After decades of steady growth that matched the Navy’s rapid expansion,
the Navy built a larger and more modern model basin in nearby Carderock,
Maryland. Construction of the towing tanks, test and evaluation laboratories,
and other support facilities began in 1937, and the site became fully operational
in 1940. 78 Throughout this period, engineers and scientists at the basin applied
76 Ibid., 217–19, 222, 256–57, 492. The development of auxiliary components for submarine drive
assemblies was all that remained of what had been an extensive propulsion program that began at the
station in 1946. That year, engineers began working on a closed-cycle submarine power plant fueled by
hydrogen peroxide. For nearly a decade, development of improved versions of the “Walters” engine (named
for its German inventor) moved forward, but, advanced as this technology was, it could not compete with
nuclear power. In 1954, just before the first nuclear-powered submarine, the Nautilus, began sea trials, the
bureau permanently shut down Engineering Experiment Station’s engine development program. Ibid., 241,
250–54.
77 Although they played a steadily diminishing role in new ship construction after World War II, the
Navy’s shipyards actively participated in the shift from conventional to nuclear propulsion. The Electric
Boat Division of the General Dynamics Corporation manufactured most of the Navy’s nuclear submarines,
but the Navy built ten, beginning with the Swordfish in 1957, were built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard
in New Hampshire. By the early 1960s, Portsmouth had become a fully integrated nuclear submarine
shipyard, capable of performing construction, overhauls, and repairs. Shiman, Forging the Sword, 62.
78 Howard, “The David Taylor Model Basin,” 227.