Discussion of "A History of Some Foundations of Modern Radio-Electronics Technology" Page 1260

afford to neglect an opportunity of this kind.” The leisurely debate appears in the thirty-three pages of the Congressional Record in which the matter is covered, over the period June 13 to June 30, 1916. Members of Congress were quite unanimously willing to make the initial appropriation of $30,000 by which a Board of six Army and Navy officers was expected to find whether the guided missile principles developed by Hammond would be of benefit to the country. The debate in the Senate was mainly whether the Board should be required to report back to a later session of Congress, or should immediately be provided with conditional funds so that it would be able to proceed without delay if it considered the inventions worth adopting into service.

One of those who may have looked beyond the immediate horizon was Senator Stone of Missouri, who spoke⁸ as follows:

“What is claimed for it? What will it do? In a word, this is what it is claimed it will do, namely, that through the operation of electrical energies controlled by the devices of this invention, an explosive body may be directed in its course until it comes in contact with a given body, stationary or movable, against which it is directed.”

Are we not now, forty-two years later, seeking a device to do just that, with the body against which it may be directed not a battleship twenty-five miles offshore, but a ballistic missile from across the entire ocean?

The lack of real concern for the war raging in Europe, even as late as ten months before our entry into it, is shown by the discussion⁹ as to where a plane was to be had so that the Board could make the guidance tests of the Hammond torpedo:

Senator Brandegee: “Mr. President, I was going to ask the Senator this question: Inasmuch as the House provision provides for a Board of Army and Navy experts to make whatever tests they think ought to be made, and to report upon this purchase—and the machine cannot be bought unless they should report favorably—and inasmuch as the Government owns an aeroplane for its Army, officers and aviators can operate and make the test without any expense at all, without purchasing an airship, why does not that fulfill the conditions?”

Senator Lane: “I do not think this Government owns an aeroplane which will travel through the air with any safety to the navigator: in fact, most of them have come to earth and caused a loss of life of the helmsman. I think we are practically out of aeroplanes: at least, I am so informed, although we have spent millions of dollars in building them. We ought, however, to build another type, and we should do so promptly.”

Senator Brandegee: “I will say to the Senator from Oregon that I saw a very good-looking aeroplane the other day over at the Senate Office Building—it was a Curtiss machine, I believe, or a Wright machine—which the Government, I suppose, can purchase, if it so desires, for a very moderate sum. Aeroplanes, as I am advised, cost from about $7500 to $100,000, according to size and depending on the kind desired.”

Senator Lane: “I also saw the aeroplane to which the Senator from Connecticut refers. It was in a good, safe position; it was near the ground, and I climbed aboard of it.”

Congress was not too concerned about the war raging in Europe, even as late as the summer of 1916. It was not until after the election of November, 1916, that the country realized that such slogans as “We are too proud to fight” and “He kept us out of war,” had contributed to bringing about the worries of Congress in the summer of 1917.

Actually, in the summer of 1915, while waiting for another session of Congress, Hammond was busy¹⁰ with other activities relating to the firing of standard naval torpedoes. In a letter of August 23, 1915, Captain W. S. Sims, Commander, Destroyer Squadron, Atlantic Fleet, advised the Secretary of the Navy: “Mr. John Hays Hammond, Jr., is the inventor of an appliance to facilitate the fire control of torpedoes. He has explained the principle of the device before the Destroyer Squadron Commander and the Squadron Torpedo Officer, Lieutenant Commander J. V. Babcock, and in our opinion the device merits the Department’s serious consideration. . . . It is therefore strongly recommended that Mr. Hammond be given every opportunity and facility to prosecute his experiments.” Naval Ordnance then financed the work, equipment was built by the Cummings Machine Works in Boston under the supervision of A. D. Trenor of the Hammond group, and the system is a fundamental method of torpedo firing.

5) Critique. “Two World Wars have now occurred with no military use of the radio-controlled torpedo; it is just as well except for the futile expenditure of technical effort and public money.”

Rebuttal. The first part of this statement is in error, since the meaning of “torpedo” given in the opening sentences of the section is sanctioned by Congressional and military usage. Most certainly, the inventions acquired by the Government cover applications to both water-surface torpedoes and aerial torpedoes, as well as to the underwater torpedo by which the principles of missile guidance were required to be demonstrated. The “Azon” bombs of World War II¹¹ and the “Glider” bombs¹² used by the U. S. Air Force in wrecking the railroad yards of Cologne are examples of “aerial torpedoes” operating by the Hammond method. The “Stingray” boats used against the Japanese and the drone-boats used against the Germans¹³ are examples of radio-controlled water-surface torpedoes. The Hammond work with underwater torpedoes terminated successfully in 1931, and any failure to use them in World War II is not chargeable to Hammond. When the U. S. Congress failed to consider the 1915 recommendations of Secretary of War Garrison, Hammond was released by General Weaver from any moral obligation to deal further with the U. S. Government, and there were offers from abroad to take over the inventions and devices of the Hammond Laboratory. If Hammond had not elected to continue with the Congress in 1916, it is quite likely that water-surface torpedoes would have been used in Europe during World War I. As it was, the Germans actually did sink a British warship by a surface torpedo under wire control from a shore station.¹⁴

As to the latter part of the quoted sentence, we assume that what our critic meant was that the technical effort and the public money spent were futile. This is also in error. The same principles of guidance that were developed for underwater torpedoes were also applicable to the control of target ships and airborne target drones. This Hammond contribution alone has been considered by experts¹⁵ to have justified the full cost of the Hammond effort to the Government.

6) Critique. “Among the principles claimed to have been developed in the 1910–1914 period is that of the automatic stabilization of the course of a torpedo by means of a gyro.”

Rebuttal. No such claim was ever made. We stated as background of the modern principles of missile guidance: “In the absence of a control signal, the torpedo should be stabilized as to course by mechanisms within itself.” For the purpose of disclaiming automatic stabilization of the course of a torpedo per se, and also of disclaiming any part of the development of the motor-driven gyro, we specifically stated: “Course stabilization had been practiced in naval torpedoes by a gyroscope energized only at the start of a run. But in 1912, . . . .” The “had been,” therefore, very clearly refers to a time prior to 1912, which by our footnote 7 was the date of the initial Hammond concept of the use of a gyro in surface boat control work. Our critic may be sure that if gyro stabilization of the course of a torpedo by itself had been a Hammond invention, we would have used the simple past tense was instead of the pluperfect “had been”; furthermore, we would have given a patent number as a footnote. Our critic chooses to read by Hammond into the text after the word “practiced,” where no such insertion was intended or justifiable.

7) Critique. “This development is understood to have been undertaken by Sperry alone, the Navy adopting the system upon its appearance in 1911.”

Rebuttal. Gyro-compass equipment was installed upon the Utah, the Wyoming and the North Dakota in the latter half of 1912. On the basis of Navy reports up to March 31, 1913, we considered the work done by the Navy, especially by Chief Electrician England of the Utah and Ensign H. R. Saunders of the Wyoming, of sufficient importance to compel mention of the Navy as a party to even the technical development of the gyro-compass prior to its adaptation by Hammond for radio-control and other work in the winter of 1913–1914. If we had failed to mention the Navy, we would

⁸ Ibid., p. 11795, col. 2; June 30, 1916.
⁹ Ibid., p. 11789, col. 1; June 30, 1916.
¹⁰ U. S. Patents 1,388,640; 1,431,140; 1,431,141; 1,431,142; and 1,431,143 to J. H. Hammond, Jr.
¹¹ J. C. Boyce, “New Weapons for Air Warfare,” Little, Brown and Co., Boston, Mass., pp. 225–235; 1947.
¹² U. S. Patent 1,818,708 to J. H. Hammond, Jr.
¹³ Authors’ previous paper, p. 1192.
¹⁴ Letter of Admiral W. S. Sims to Hammond, November 3, 1917.
¹⁵ Letter of Admiral W. V. Pratt, CNO to JAG, January 24, 1931.