David Boslaugh
The AN/SPS-48 Radar and Weapons Direction System Mark 11
Of the nine guided missile frigates of the DLG-26 Class, four of Biddle’s sister ships, Belknap (DLG-26), Josephus Daniels (DLG-27), Wainwright (DLG-28), and William H. Standley (DLG-32) would also be built at Bath Iron Works. It was always a wonder how the tiny, postage stamp sized shipyard could turn out so many fighting ships so fast. The DLG-26 Class was not the first class of guided missile frigate. Before Belknap had come ten of the Coontz (DLG-9) Class, nine of the Leahy (DLG-16) Class, and the nuclear powered guided missile frigate Bainbridge (DLGN-25). Each succeeding class was heavier than the last and looked less and less like a big destroyer and more like a cruiser.
The DLG-26 Class was to be the first group of new-construction ships to have production NTDS equipment installed during construction. Before the NTDS installation in Belknap, six other ships had received the new digital command and control system: the three service test ships: Oriskany, King, and Mahan, the nuclear powered carrier Enterprise, the nuclear powered cruiser Long Beach (both of which had received installations of service test equipment by direct order of Admiral Arleigh Burke), and the heavy guided missile cruiser Chicago, which received the first suite of production equipment.
In those ships having missile systems, NTDS was connected to the weapon systems by way of a refrigerator sized electronic box called an Interconnecting Digital to Analog Converter, or IDAC for short. IDAC fed coordinates of selected high-threat air targets from NTDS to the missile system’s analog weapons direction systems (WDS), which could usually hold eight tracks, maximum, in their analog tracking channels. The weapons control officer could opt to use the targets from NTDS or he could have his own WDS operators feed targets to the tracking channels from their own search radar consoles. This was an arrangement that was not to last very long.
Crossing the Boundary Line – Origin of Weapons Direction System Mark 11
In the eyes of assistant NTDS project officer Lieutenant Commander Joseph Stoutenburgh, having two sets of search radar tracking consoles on the missile ships was a wasteful redundancy. He questioned why the Naval Tactical Data System could not take on the weapons direction task, and possibly eliminate the need for a significant amount of equipment, as well as a few operators who seemed to be doing about the same job in two different systems. One immediate argument against such an arrangement came from old hands in the Bureau of Naval Weapons who pointed out that NTDS was still a radical, unproved system and they would be putting all their eggs in one fragile basket. Furthermore, they pointed out there were functions in the WDS, such as many firing safety checks and complex missile system engagement logic that NTDS didn’t do. They also knew that NTDS computer memory in the missile ships was already loaded to the maximum with almost no reserve to take on any new functions. They were pretty sure they had put this wild idea to bed.
Stoutenburgh persisted. In early 1960 he asked Lieutenant Joseph L. Randolph, newly assigned to the project office, to spend a few months working out the details. Randolph visited numerous missile system support activities and contractors, digested mountains of missile system manuals, studied, and calculated. He concluded that it could be done, that the missile system functions could be worked into the NTDS computer programs, and there could be considerable savings in equipment and operator positions in the combat information centers and weapon control spaces. He showed that he could eliminate six large WDS equipment cabinets, five WDS operator consoles, and the IDAC; in return for three more NTDS consoles a Weapons Control Panel, from which the missile system would be controlled, and a new Fire Control Data Converter that would pass target coordinates and signals in both directions between the weapons and NTDS. It is said that when one old timer in the Bureau of Ordnance learned that the Bureau of Ships had crossed so far over the boundary line of BUORD territory that the missile firing key was going to be on a piece of BUSHIPS’ equipment, the Weapons Control Panel, he submitted his retirement papers.
In the new concept, NTDS would automatically analyze each new hostile and unidentified target with its threat evaluation and weapons assignment logic and identify the most threatening targets which should be passed directly via the Fire Control Data Converter to the missile or gun fire control computers. There was also the promise that target processing time from detection of a hostile target by search radar to assignment to a missile or gun system could be reduced by many critical seconds because of the steps eliminated (Bureau of Ships point paper 1967).
In May 1960 the OPNAV Ship’s Characteristic Board approved the Bureau of Ship’s proposal on the basis that it eliminated two general quarters personnel, and 7,000 pounds of equipment occupying 300 cubic feet of space. OPNAV designated the new arrangement Weapons Direction System Mark 11 and directed that it would be first installed in the last six ships of the Belknap Class, beginning with DLG-29. The decision paper also emphatically stated that it was understood that the new WDS computer programs would be incorporated into existing memory of the two NTDS computers slated for the guided missile frigates, and under no circumstances would more computers be added to the systems. Skeptical and resentful BUWEPS officers still did not think the feat could be pulled off and they demanded that Randolph put in official correspondence that he would accomplish the job or resign his commission. He signed the joint letter to the Chiefs of BUSHIPS and BUWEPS, and many years later retired from the Navy as full Captain with no resignation ever necessary (Mahinske Letter 19 July 1944). It would be a tough and stimulating challenge however.
A moderate sized color photograph displayed on the screen of a personal computer of today requires about 14 million binary bits of information. We think nothing of storing dozens of such photos in our computer’s memory, and it puts no strain whatsoever on our computer. It was not always so.
In 1962 when this writer was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Technical Representative office, the successor to the Naval Computing Machine Laboratory at the St. Paul Univac plant, we had an accident one day. A box of ferrite memory cores intended for one of our new NTDS computers had been shipped to us, and we had left the paper bag holding the box sitting on a desk when we went to lunch. When we came back, the bag was gone, and we assumed a Univac engineer had come by for it, but next day when comparing notes we found he did not have the memory cores. Some detective work revealed that the bag had been accidentally knocked into a wastebasket and by then had gone through the plant’s incinerator. The ashes were immediately raked out of the incinerator and spread out on a concrete floor. One NTDS computer had 32,768 thirty-bit ‘words’ in its memory, and sure enough the ashes were full of roughly one million tiny ferrite ‘donuts’ about one sixteenth of an inch in diameter. Each core made up one memory ‘bit.’
Fortunately, ferrite memory cores are the product of a firing process and thus their trip through the incinerator could not have hurt them. We conjectured maybe it even made them better. Each core was worth about ten cents, meaning that about $100,000 worth of cores were there mixed up in the ashes. We and a number of Univac volunteers spent a mirth-filled day picking cores from the ashes with long needles, and it was well worth the effort. Today the 983,040 bits of memory we rescued from the ashes would probably be barely adequate for a child’s toy or a wrist watch, but at that time that amount of memory represented a large scale mainframe computer.
Memory was thus precious in more ways than one. To get the extra WDS Mk 11 weapons direction functions into a program that could be contained in the two NTDS computers in a guided missile frigate required Lieutenant Randolph and his contractor engineers to write the needed program additions in the most efficient memory using fashion possible. For example, whenever there was a function that involved calculations, they programmed the solution both in the form of a mathematical algorithm and as a table look-up scheme to find which took less memory. The least memory approach always won out. Even the earliest NTDS computers always seemed to have adequate processing speed reserves, primarily thanks to Seymour Cray’s fantastic design capability, and many times Randolph found ways to trade off processing speed in favor of less memory consumption. He quantified a moderately small amount of memory needed to accommodate the WDS Mk 11 functions, and the Fleet Computer Programming Center, Pacific, made a commitment to make exactly that amount of memory, and no more, available in the DLG-29 computer program. In the end Randolph pulled the project off, and his only regret was that he had not placed a large wager with the skeptical BUWEPS officers.
The AN/SPS-48 Radar
The reader will recall that just before Commander Irvin McNally left the Bureau of Ships in 1956 he wrote a specification for a new three dimensional air search radar to work in particular with the Naval Tactical Data System. The document did not tell how to build the radar, it was rather a performance ‘spec’ for a three dimensional radar like none that had ever existed before, and it was a tough requirement. Three dimensional radars had always been a problem because they had to fill roughly a hemisphere of the sky overhead full of closely spaced radar beams as the radar rotated in order to measure not only range and bearing of a target but also elevation angle. In comparison, a two-dimensional radar had only to transmit only one beam, narrow in azimuth and shaped like a broad fan in elevation, at a given bearing angle.
A two-dimensional radar could thus easily scan at a rate of one revolution every four or eight seconds while sending out beams and receiving target echoes at maximum ranges out to more than 250 miles. Existing three-dimensional air search radars, on the other hand had to either rotate much slower in order to generate the needed number of beams to get accurate elevation measurements, or they had to have their range severely restricted in order to generate all the needed beams at higher scan rates. McNally, however, called for the new radar to simultaneously have a 230 mile range coverage, and the same rotation rates as contemporary 2-D air search radars!
The seemingly impossible challenge was handed to a young civilian engineer, Donald C. Bailey, in the Bureau of Ships small 3-D Radar Development group in early 1960. By May, Bailey had converted the specification into a detailed request for proposals and issued it to the radar industry. Of the twelve companies responding, one, Gilfillan Corporation, a small Los Angeles based company that specialized in ground-controlled approach radars for airports, had a most ingenious solution. They had found a new very high powered radar transmitting tube that had the capability to rapidly change its transmitting frequency.
It was possible, using antenna design techniques that had already been perfected, to cause a radar beam to leave a flat antenna at different elevation angles by changing the transmitting frequency. Gilfillan’s ingenuity lay in their idea to ‘chirp’ the transmitting frequency in many small frequency steps as a beam was being pulsed out from the antenna. The result was a transmitted beam that covered a number of degrees of elevation in one outgoing pulse, and from which the elevation of a target echo could be accurately measured. This ‘stacked beam’ feature would allow the radar to get the needed elevation coverage with a reasonably small number of pulses, and would, in theory, enable the required range coverage at eight-second antenna rotation scans.
Gilfillan Corp. won the contract for the new AN/SPS-48 3-D air search radar in June 1960. OPNAV directed that the new radar, after it was developed, tested, and qualified, would be first installed in the last six guided missile frigates of the DLG-26 class, beginning with DLG-29, in company with the Naval Tactical Data System and Weapons Direction System Mark 11 (Bailey Interview 22 Oct 1994).
Trouble in the Missile Systems
Each shipboard installation of the Terrier, Tartar, and Talos missile systems was built of tens of thousands of electromechanical components and was incredibly complex. With so many moving mechanical parts, reliability problems were rampant and small reliability or accuracy problems in one component seemed to have a way of being magnified in the complex interactions of the system environment. When the systems worked they very effectively brought down air targets, but they were difficult to maintain, tune, align, and keep in operation.
To make matters worse, the various major components of the systems, such as the missiles, launchers, magazines, fire control computers, weapons direction systems, and fire control radars were the development responsibility of different managers in the Bureau of Naval Weapons. Each manager then supplied his product to a shipbuilder who had the responsibility of installing and integrating the components aboard a ship. Too many things fell through the cracks, and there seemed to be no one authority in the bureau, other than the BUWEPS Chief himself, to set things right.
In 1962 the Secretary of the Navy directed that an overall systems approach, under the direction of a single flag-level project manager, had to be set up to manage the three missile systems. The Director of the Surface Missile Systems Project Office would have a captain level project manager in charge of each system, and they would have technical direction, funding control, and management authority over all of the sub projects that contributed components to the missile systems. Rear Admiral Eli T. Reich was assigned as project director, and Captain Robert P. (Zeke) Foreman became head of the Terrier System Project Office, the office with which the NTDS and SPS-48 radar project managers would interface in building the DLG-26 Class guided missile frigates (Foreman Interview 8 Sept. 1994).
In the fall of 1962 Don Bailey, manager of the SPS-48 radar project, got a call from his boss. Bailey was to go over to Rear Admiral Eli Reich’s office and review with the admiral the many problems he had run into with the at-sea evaluations of the SPS-48 radar. Bailey proceeded warily, prepared to do battle with yet another ‘6,000 pound gorilla’ who was out to kill Baileys project so he could get the SPS-48 project money reprogrammed into some other project. It was a way of life with Bailey. He spent as much time defending his project against predatory money reprogrammers as he did in useful management activity.
The admiral grilled Bailey in detail on each of the reported operational evaluation deficiencies. But then, to Bailey’s surprise, Reich asked how much money and how much time did Bailey need to fix each of the problems? He asked what other help Bailey needed to get the SPS-48 ready for deployment. Then the 64 dollar question. Was it in any way possible to take eleven month’s off the project schedule so that the SPS-48 could be first installed in the DLG-28 instead of waiting for the DLG-29? Reich wanted desperately to get the new search radar into his missile ships as soon as possible. The two hammered out a new schedule, and the help Bailey would need from the Surface Missile Systems Project to accomplish the accelerated schedule. Bailey left the meeting pleasantly surprised.
Next, Rear Admiral Reich asked the Chief of the Bureau of Ships to Send Lieutenant Commander Joe Randolph over to his office. He emphasized that he did not want any other people there cluttering up their conversation. He wanted to talk only to Randolph. The result was another new schedule, this time to get Weapons Direction System Mark 11 installed first in DLG-28 instead of waiting for DLG-29. He also needed to know exactly what support Randolph needed to do that. Armed with this information, Reich convinced the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations to move first installation of both AN/SPS-48 radar and WDS Mk 11 to USS Wainwright (DLG-28).
Commander Wayne Meyer and His Amazing Fire Control Radars
A New SORT of Tests
Upon being assigned to the NTDS project in 1962 after graduating from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, I sat down with Commander Joe Stoutenburgh, who had replaced Captain Svendsen to discuss my future assignments in the project office. He outlined the history whereby the NTDS computer itself had been used as a test instrument to verify the operability of other equipment at the NTDS test site at the Navy Electronics Lab at San Diego. He said he wanted to explore the possibility of using the computers aboard ship with special testing programs to perform equipment maintenance testing and then system level tests such as radar calibration and alignment, and even overall system operability and readiness tests. I readily agreed to the job, and we established that the assignment would make up about a quarter of my work.
Another quarter of my time was to be spent helping Lieutenant Commander Joe Randolph on Weapons Direction System Mark 11, a quarter on general office activities such as establishing a planned maintenance system and a ship’s installation configuration management system for NTDS, and a quarter on setting up a more formalized and detailed program evaluation and review system, known then as Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), for the NTDS project. Stoutenburgh emphasized that none of us in the small project office could afford to get involved in great detail in any aspect of our assignments. Instead we were supposed to get our work done through other engineers and offices in the Bureau, through contractors, and Navy engineering activities. We were supposed to get ideas and task other organizations to carry them out and institutionalize them. We were supposed to identify problems, get them solved and keep the project moving. He emphasized that, as a lieutenant, I would be doing work far above my pay grade, but “Don’t let it bother you.” I found that the NTDS project would be a most exciting and stimulating place to work.
When the engineers and technicians assembled the prototype NTDS engineering test system at the Navy Electronics Laboratory they progressively tested each newly added piece of equipment as it was connected to the NTDS computers. For this testing they loaded the computers with special testing programs that were sort of nonsense routines. The programs did not make the equipment perform in an operational manner but rather repeatedly sequenced each piece of equipment through every possible operational feature, condition, and state to verify that the device was performing according to specification. The specialized programs were called programmed operational functional appraisals, or POFAs for short. The POFAs either printed out a report indicating the equipment was functioning OK, or they listed equipment discrepancies found by the program. It did not take too much stretch of the imagination to realize that these programs could be further improved and formalized as maintenance testing aids for delivery to fleet ships as part of the NTDS package.
My first technical task in the project office was to start formalizing the POFAs into complete documented maintenance testing packages for the NTDS installations on each ship class. Then we planned to extend the same concepts as far out from NTDS into the other ship systems as we could push them. The job was to include developing and managing the installation of the required physical changes in the ships’ systems to accommodate such system level testing. We would have to make changes to ships cabling, wiring and switchboards in order to send out testing signals from the NTDS computer and receive back test responses, measurements and reference signals. We also realized we would have to develop new analog/digital conversion devices to allow the NTDS computer to talk more fluently with other non-NTDS shipboard systems.
William C. ‘Billy’ O’Sullivan, the NTDS ship installation engineer, was assigned as project partner in developing the testing package because he would have to be involved in bringing about the required ship system changes. We set up a contract with Univac to work out engineering details, develop the necessary computer programs, verify the computer programs and provide technical support to ship’s companies and the activities who would do ship’s system acceptance testing.
We laid out a sequential approach to building the test package. First, a method of quickly measuring and correcting radar alignment errors was urgently needed to help eliminate the endemic problem of generating multiple NTDS tracks on a single target, and to ensure quickest possible fire control radar lock-on when a track was passed from NTDS to the missile or gun systems. Therefore after the POFAs would come a series of automated tests to measure alignment errors among shipboard search radars, fire control radars and other sensor systems. These we named System Calibration and Alignment Tests, or SCATs. Following that would be a package of tests to measure and assess the man/machine performance of a number of NTDS functions such as surface navigation, surface and air tracking, weapons direction operations, and air intercept control. This series was named ship systems operational readiness tests (SSORT). The entire package of all the various test types also had to have a name. It became ship’s operational readiness tests, or SORT.
One Pass Around Mare Island is All You Get
Belknap (DLG-26), the first new construction ship to receive NTDS, was the first target of the SORT package. Belknap was on the building ways at Bath Iron Works, and the builder was scheduled to start NTDS installation in late 1963. This gave us about sixteen months to have the first part of the package ready. Our goal was to complete the entire package including the SSORT tests for the DLG-26.
The mechanically pointed, pencil beam, AN/SPG-55B fire control radar directors of the Terrier missile system were incredibly accurate. In our concept they were to be the primary instrumentation radars for the ship system test packages. Search radar inputs to the automated radar alignment tests were to be entered into the NTDS computer in the normal manner as manually tracked air targets, but there was a problem getting the fire control radar pointing angles and range fed into the NTDS computer. What we needed for our alignment tests were the same very accurate signals that the missile system radar directors sent to the analog fire control computers, but we needed them routed to the NTDS keyset central’s analog-to-digital converters.
The missile fire control radars would also be the key reference instruments for the SSORT tests that measured the combined performance of the ship’s system and the ship’s operators. In the air and surface tracking tests, the fire control radars would be locked onto the same targets that were being manually tracked at NTDS consoles to get a good measure of NTDS tracking accuracy. In the air intercept control tests, we would lock one fire control radar onto the intended air target and one onto the interceptor. The resultant fire control radar measurements, when fed back to the NTDS computer, allowed accurate automated reconstruction of the intercept and assessment of the probability of a kill.
The weapons direction function tests would exercise one missile system in a normal missile shoot while the test conductors locked the other missile fire control radar onto the fired missile soon after launch so that the testing program could record the missile’s track and plot how close it came to the target. These radar measurements, in company with recording all operator actions and system events, allowed accurate reconstruction of the engagement sequence, the target and missile tracks, and assessment of probability of missile kill.
O’Sullivan and I visited Commander Wayne Meyer, the Terrier fire control systems manager in the Surface Missile Systems Project Office to get his help in bringing the fire control radar signals back to NTDS. Commander Meyer really did not need an engineering duty lieutenant and a young civilian engineer from BUSHIPS trying to make changes in his fire control systems. His plate of work was already overflowing and, furthermore, Lieutenant Commander Joe Randolph’s Weapons Direction System Mark 11 project had already raised the discomfort level in BUWEPS enough.
Meyer listened impatiently and gruffly asked pointed technical questions, but after some discussion, he seemed to sense that, if it worked, perhaps the digital system testing capability could be of some use to Terrier system operability testing. He was a strong advocate of daily system operability testing. Radar alignment in particular was a time consuming evolution requiring test ranges or portable radar targets, hours to conduct and many technical man hours of data reduction, analysis, and plotting.
Meyer agreed to help us run signal cables from the Terrier and Tartar fire control radar directors down the hill to the WDS Mk 11 test site at the Mare Island Naval Schools Command at Vallejo, CA. If we showed that the NTDS computer could calculate the statistics on alignment errors among the test site fire control and search radars while tracking a single aircraft in one pass around the site, he would support making the requisite changes in the DLG-26 Class ships.
In a couple of weeks the cabling had been connected between the systems and we went out to the test site to watch the Univac engineers try out their new radar alignment test programs with live air targets. They worked!, and we brought the test print outs back to Commander Meyer who kept his end of the bargain and endorsed our efforts to get the ship’s cabling and switchboard changes in the DLG-26 Class ship’s plans. The shipbuilding specifications for the nine ships of the class were already written and embodied in shipbuilding contracts and naval shipyard shipbuilding orders. Billy O’Sullivan and I were thus scheduled to appear before the BUSHIPS Change Review Board (CRB) to try to convince them that we should be allowed to make the system changes.
The CRB was a body of highly critical senior naval officers and civil servants who had to be convinced of the value of each proposed change, that it was feasible, that it could be done without disrupting shipbuilding schedules, and that there was a source of funding for the change. I had hardly opened my mouth at the start of our hearing when the admiral in charge of the board asked, “What in hell is a digital computer?” Fortunately there was a blackboard in the room and I drew and explained a block diagram of a rudimentary digital computer, and it seemed that the board members were staying with it. Next, however, when I stated that sailors would load a special computer program into the computer to run the alignment tests, it seemed to blow their minds. The next question was, “Now what in the hell is a computer program?”
The board members, like most of the rest of humanity in the early 1960s, were accustomed to devices and equipment that did only one thing, and trying to guide them through the concept of a device that could be made to do just about any function that involved handling information by virtue of loading a different program in it was beginning to stretch their credibility. O’Sullivan and I were beginning to despair of getting our system change orders approved when the admiral abruptly brought the meeting to a halt by saying, “I think you can see that we don’t know what the hell you two guys are talking about. But, you seem to know what you are doing, and you seem to be honest and sincere. Also, we note that the Terrier project office is supporting your wild ideas.” They approved the changes with the strong injunction that if our project ever even showed a hint of shipbuilding schedule delay or disruption claims, it would be immediately terminated. We agreed that was a fair trade and quickly retreated from the hearing room while we were still ahead. O’Sullivan and I would be back before the board many more times as the project progressed.
Development and test of the DLG-26 Class SORT package progressed well, and the computer programs and system changes were verified at the Mare Island test site. The final testing stages at Mare Island provided some exciting times as we graduated from using passing airliners as test targets of opportunity, and arrangement were made for Navy F-4H Phantom fighters and professional air intercept controllers to wring out the tests in a live air environment. The next step was final verification of the computer programs, their documentation, and the ship system changes aboard Belknap, which by the fall of 1963 was floating alongside a construction pier at Bath Iron Works. The Sedgewick Hotel at Bath, Maine, would become my home-away-from-home for many months.
You’re Doing Research and Development on My Ship!
The Navy Supervisor of Shipbuilding and the management at Bath Iron Works (BIW) had warily agreed to give our Univac engineers evening and weekend use of Belknap’s NTDS installation – in return for the unproved promise that the automated tests would shorten system checkout time not only in Belknap, but also in the four following ships of the class that BIW was building. The individual NTDS equipment test programs, the POFAs, were already in daily use and working well. The next stage, however, the automated system calibration and alignment tests using the missile fire control radars was totally new, and a certain amount of shipbuilder apprehension was building up. The apprehension was somewhat relieved when we first tried the SCATs while the ship was lying dockside with the fire control and search radars tracking a passing airliner. Things went quietly until one of the BUWEPS contractor engineers looked at an NTDS console and realized that the NTDS computer was writing the running averages of the radar alignment errors on the radar scope as the airplane passed by the ship. “I’ll be damned!”, he excitedly exclaimed, “It’s reducing the data right now! Dammit, will you look at this!” Digital technology gained a few converts that day.
The next phase, in the fall of 1964, was testing the test programs while the ship was underway on builder’s trials. This brought live roll, pitch and heading inputs from the ship’s gyrocompass into the system. The Terrier Project Office also took advantage of the ship’s motion inputs to perform further verification testing of the newly installed Mk 76 Terrier missile fire control systems, and a number of BUWEPS contractor technical representatives were riding Belknap for this purpose.
Although I had become good friends with the contractor engineers, and they had given us considerable technical support in verifying the workings of the NTDS-to-weapon system interfaces, they were still skeptical of the new digital technology. They, in company with many other weapons engineers, could not grasp how digital computers that executed only one instruction at a time could possibly keep up with the continuum of parallel multiple happenings in an analog world. They also had grave reservations about the reliability of the NTDS computers. They did not see how they could possibly run for more than a couple of hours, at most, before component failures shut them down.
Belknap’s data system technicians loaded and ran the ship’s NTDS operational computer program, and ship’s company operators tracked air targets of opportunity as the ship steamed down the Kennebec River toward Casco Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. Once in Casco Bay the ship was to rendezvous with a Navy airplane, which would be our test target for the day. As the ship entered the bay, our target aircraft called in, and the chief petty officer at the system monitoring panel called over to me, “I’ll stop the op program and load your SCAT program now.” I nodded OK, and the Chief began typing the commands to stop the computers and load the SCAT program from the magnetic tape unit.
The space layout in Belknap had the NTDS computers and peripheral equipment located in a small compartment, called the unattended equipment area, immediately below the combat information center. We did not realize it at the time but, one deck below us, one of the BUWEPS contractor engineers had been occupying himself watching the blinking lights on the computer maintenance panels. Suddenly we heard rapid footsteps coming up the ladder from the unattended equipment area, and the engineer burst into the CIC. “I knew they couldn’t last!,” he shouted. Like a halfback spiking the ball after an 80 yard touchdown run, he exulted, “NTDS is down! The computers just stopped!” Without even looking up, the Chief murmured, “Go look again.” By the time the engineer got back down to the computers, the magnetic tape reels were spinning and the lights on the computer maintenance panels were blinking again. This time he emerged very slowly at the top of the ladder with a most puzzled and downcast expression. He retired to a dark corner of the CIC to think over what he had just seen.
As Belknap’s construction and testing proceeded toward commissioning as a U.S. Navy ship, a new factor entered our equation, Captain John T. Law. Captain Law, first Commanding Officer of Belknap, had just come from a tour in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Unfortunately for us, as one of his last acts in OPNAV, he had written the new OPNAV instruction on the formal procedure required when arranging to get ships and aircraft services to support research and development projects. Captain Law took a great interest in NTDS and he made it a point to attend many of our working meetings with the shipbuilder and members of his crew who were participating in systems checkout. He also visited the NTDS Project Office from time-to-time, and we filled him in on our planned activities.
After every meeting Captain Law would usually exclaim, “It sure looks like you’re doing research and development on my ship.” Whereupon he would hand me a copy of the OPNAV instruction on use of fleet assets for research and development support. I would protest that the test proofing was just part of the normal shipbuilding process for the first ship in a new class, and I would remind him of all the extra training and project office assistance his crew was getting by participating in the tests.
In truth, we were learning that the first ship of a class with a new NTDS system did need time reservations during shipbuilding and sea trials to check out the automated test package computer programs as well as the new NTDS operational computer programs. To alleviate the problem in the future, we worked the required time reservations, funding and support requirements into the general BUSHIPS shipbuilding specifications for future first ships of a class, but that didn’t help us much in dealing with Captain Law on Belknap.
USS Belknap became a commissioned U.S. Navy ship on 7 November 1964, and after two months of fitting out at Boston Naval Shipyard, the ship left for her assigned home port at Mayport, Florida. The next phase in the ship’s life was to be two and a half months of Ship’s Qualification Trials where the ship’s company would be coached by a Ship Qualification Assist Team (SQAT) in shaking down and learning the operation of the new weapon systems. The bulk of the SQAT team was made up of BUWEPS field activity and contractor missile system specialists, and we arranged to add a handful of our own contractor and Navy technical specialists to the team They were to teach ship’s company how to run the programs and interpret the test results; and, on Belknap, to verify that the SSORT computer programs worked properly in live air intercept and missile firing operations. The qualification trials still had an undeniable flavor of research and development.
I rode the ship with the team during the first week of trials, and compared notes with Captain Law at week’s end. His summary was, “Boslaugh, you’re still doing research and development on my ship, and I’m thinking of kicking your team off.” After some negotiation he agreed that the team could continue for another week, after which he would call me in Washington to discuss the fate of the testing program for the following week. For the next two months, except for every third week when I rode the ship, Captain Law called me at the NTDS Project Office every Friday night. He would fill me in on test and training progress, exclaim that I was still running an R&D project on his ship, and formally evict my team from the ship. We would then negotiate the conditions for continued test conduct, and by Monday morning the team would somehow be back aboard Belknap.
Toward the end of Belknap’s Ships Qualification Trials during a visit to the Terrier System Project Office I described the travails of SSORT testing on Belknap. Wayne Meyer, now a captain, grinned and said that he would be the last person to rejoice in someone else’s misfortune, but that he was usually engaged in the same sort of informal shipboard research and development and received the same kind of feedback from some skippers. He noted that his team had tested a number of new Terrier system features aboard Belknap during the qualification trials and had drawn an unusually small amount of flack. He laughed and said, “Now I know who was drawing the fire.”
The SPS-48 Radar and WDS Mk 11 Go to Sea
Wainwright (DLG-28) was laid down on the Bath Iron Works building ways on 2 July 1962 and launched on 25 April 1964. It was to be the first ship to receive the combination of the new AN/SPS-48 radar and Weapons Direction System Mark 11 incorporated into the Naval Tactical Data System. By September 1964 all combat system equipment was installed and ready for checkout with computer programs. The moment of truth had arrived for Lieutenant Commander Joe Randolph’s Weapons Direction System Mk 11 equipment and new computer program.
We were overjoyed when we learned that Captain ‘Zeke’ Foreman, head of the Terrier missile system project had been assigned as prospective commanding officer of Wainwright. He had lived and breathed the Terrier system and WDS Mk 11 for the past few years, and we knew that he had but one goal – to make the new system work. The Bureau of Naval Personnel had also done something else uncommonly intelligent. The Bureau had also assigned two of Wainwright’s future key personnel, prospective CIC Officer Lieutenant Clifford L. Laning and Chief Data Systems Technician Michael Snodgrass, to the Weapons Direction System Mark 11 test site at Mare Island during the preceding year. There they had participated extensively in evaluating the SPS-48 radar, WDS Mk 11, and the Fleet Computer Programming Center’s new NTDS operational program for DLG-28 and the rest of her class.
Laning and Snodgrass had not only done testing at Mare Island, they had made suggestions for system improvement, many of which were now embodied in the new equipment and computer programs. They were part of the crime. They went so far as to set up and give classes on the new system not only to their own ship’s company but to Bath Iron Works engineers and technicians, and following ship’s companies. They were now the experts and they sparked the team that tested and verified the new combat system installation. When the time came for personnel from the Fleet Computer Programming Center, Pacific, in San Diego to install and test the new NTDS operational computer program containing the WDS Mk 11 functionality aboard Wainwright, the team of ship’s company, BIW, and Programming Center personnel had the program debugged and up and running in the incredibly short time of three days of round the clock work (Laning Letter 21 Jan. 1995). It could have taken weeks. The new combat system was ready to go to sea.
Thus it would come to pass that when USS Biddle (DLG-34) became a commissioned ship of the line on 21 January 1967 she would be one of seven new ships having the tightest integration of sensors, men, and weapons as well as the shortest reaction time from detection of a hostile target to taking that target under fire of any ship in the U.S. Navy
Department Organization Aboard a Guided Missile Cruiser
Tom Marfiak
The steam powered cruisers of the Cold War shared many of the cultural characteristics of their predecessors, the big eight inch gun cruisers, with only a third of the crew. Their commanders, senior captains of significant professional attainment, mirrored that heritage. They were characters in their own right. Some were colorful, while others took refuge in the aerie of command. In any event, it was a special privilege to serve under their leadership, to learn lessons of seamanship and command under their aegis. The organization that extended beneath them involved four principal departments—Weapons, Operations, Engineering and Supply, with Navigation serving under the Captain and Executive Officer to assure the safety of the ship in all circumstances. Department heads were Lieutenant Commanders, while the Executive Officer, a full Commander, would serve the senior Navy Captain in command. How were they organized? What responsibilities did they perform? The following paragraphs will attempt to give you, the reader, some idea of how they came together to create the true essence of the ship, its combat effectiveness.
The Role of the Commanding Officer
During this period, Commanding Officers came in many different forms. Some had been schooled in the Navy of the great gun cruisers, and tended to continue that tradition. Others understood the new systems much better, and worked to gain the most from them. All were adept at making their ships highly capable units of the fleet. Working through the Executive Officer and department heads, they imprinted their standards on the crew and on the operations of the ship itself. Even today, years later, their names are part of our memory. Some of them, Commanding Officers of USS Biddle, have spoken here. Their recollections could be mirrored by those of other captains during the same period, or those of captains of our AEGIS cruisers today. The tasks are the same, and the environment, intolerant of neglect or inaction, is unchanged. Standing on the bridge or in the midst of CIC, the chatter of the watch ongoing, the Commanding Officer represented the ship and all who sailed in her. His alone was the responsibility, according to Navy regulations, for her safety and operational effectiveness. The actions of the department heads, or the keenness of the Executive Officer, could assist him, but they could not take his place, or be an adequate excuse for inadequate performance. He alone had to integrate all aspects of the command, consider the timing of each operation, and plan each operation in his head, balancing intelligence and real time knowledge.
The Role of the Executive Officer
“XO,” is a cherished position within the Navy. Second in command, next to the Commanding Officer, confidant, war fighter, organizational wizard, he is adept at thinking on his feet, adapting to every circumstance, no matter how fast events might move, to keep the ship at peak efficiency. He is the arbiter for the majority of issues between the departments, and the chief planner for the evolutions that each ship must accomplish on a daily basis. His department, the Yeomen of the ship’s office, is responsible for the all-important Plan of the Day governing the activities of all departments. In port, his duties include the handling of all correspondence, the preparation of all disciplinary matters and the interaction between embarked staff and the ship’s company. At sea, he is everywhere. There is no better school for command than Executive Officer of a cruiser.
Navigation Department
The Navigator reported to the Commanding Officer, but in the matter of course worked most closely with the Executive Officer. Generally a senior Lieutenant, the Navigator was an experienced lad of upward pretensions. His department was composed of Quartermasters, an enlisted rating with particular responsibility for charts and navigation techniques. It was their job to keep the ship going in the right direction, on the premise that “A collision at sea can ruin your whole day.” In the days before electronic navigation, they maintained the paper charts, plotted the courses, kept the logs and timekeeping pieces, and generally managed the entire bridge. Since celestial navigation was still practiced, they were instrumental in keeping the sextants ready, training the junior officers in that fine art and plotting the results of the sights taken. When entering a foreign port, particularly one not often visited, they were key and essential, researching the available resources, laying down the courses to be followed and competently plotting the approach. It is important to note that this navigation expertise was not unique to the Navigation Department. The Operation Department also kept a close track on the ship’s navigation and the teamwork between the two departments kept the ship in safe water at all times. Many groundings might have been avoided had that teamwork not broken down, or had the commander not neglected to heed the warnings of one source or the other.
Weapons Department
The Terrier Missile system, the nuclear weapons and the guns and torpedoes of the ships armament all came under the management of the Weapons Department. Gunners Mates administered to the readiness of the five inch mount and the three inch gun mounts (to be replaced by Harpoon launchers in later iterations). Missile Gunners Mates cared for the magazines and launchers. Fire Control Technicians watched over the fire control directors vital to the effective operation of the missile firing system. Together, they formed the heart of the Weapons Department. The Weapons Department also included the deck division, headed by the First Lieutenant. He had a very difficult job – leading the First Division, generally composed of the least talented and educated on board, to assure the smartness of the ship’s outward appearance, including the boats and boat handling, and multiple ship’s evolutions, such as refueling at sea, where technical knowledge and deck seamanship both came into play. It was the mark of a smart ship that such evolutions, no matter how complex, could be carried off with smoothness and precision. Since these ships also carried nuclear weapons, there was an entire level of security and administration that was added to the standard tasks. Administration and security were carried to extraordinarily high levels. Periodic examinations, conducted by gimlet-eyed inspectors from the shore establishment, were designed to insure that no comma was neglected. All of it added to the aura of a cruiser sailor – high professionalism, higher standards, no errors permitted. Below the water was an entirely different story. Equipped with a large hull-mounted sonar, an ASROC missile capability and torpedo tubes, the cold war cruiser could be a formidable anti-submarine warfare opponent. Sonar Technicians, schooled in the vagaries of underwater acoustics, watched over the sonar and ASW-related weapons systems. In concerted ASW operations, they manned consoles in CIC to talk with airborne sensors, both helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft, to prosecute Soviet submarines in proximity to the battle group. Needless to say, the care and preening of their systems occupied a majority of their time.
Operations Department
The Operations Department would be superseded in later cruisers by the Combat Systems Department, a combination of the Weapons and Operations Departments of these days. However, in the sixties and seventies, the Operations Department was the natural development of the weapons/operations synthesis that had begun during World War II. Arleigh Burke would have loved to have this capability. The Operations Officer and his department manned CIC, the nerve center of the ship. The Operations Specialists inhabited CIC, manning the radars and plotting stations as well as the communications and providing the backbone of the combat organization. They were augmented by the communications gang, the Radiomen who handled Radio Central and the Signalmen who handled all the visual communications, including flashing light and flag hoists. Seventy years after Jutland, we were still reliant on visual means for close-in maneuvering. In addition, the Electronics Technicians and Radarmen were responsible for the care and feeding of the sensor systems, the surface and air search radars, perpetually turning above the masts, to provide input to the crew in CIC and to alert the weapons operators when the missile systems were called on. Once underway, whether for three weeks or six months, they went on the watch twenty four hours a day, as did the rest of the crew. One did not have to ask who was on watch, or wonder who would answer the net. Unless there had been a dire event, the same voice would answer, the same steady professional would be there. Nelson’s lines of frigates off the coast of France must have had the same steadiness on watch.
Engineering Department
These cruisers were built about an engineering plant that filled fully half the hull and extended into every nook and cranny. The centerpiece of the array was a steam plant with twelve hundred pounds per square inch of pressure. World War II destroyers operated a steam plant with six hundred pounds per square inch of pressure. With the added displacement of the modern cruiser, only the massively increased energy of the 1200 psi system could provide the propulsive energy to move the ship in excess of thirty knots. But, as anyone will tell you who served aboard these ships, it came at quite a cost. First, mistakes could be fatal; a steam leak could cut off an arm. A fire could gut an engineering space. Standards had to be very high. Second, before the days of strict examinations, qualifications varied widely. No matter how smart a ship looked from the outside, danger always lurked within. The best cruisers operated seamlessly, making the difficult look easy. The master of this domain was the Engineering Officer, alias “CHENG.” To be called by that name was not a term of Chinese endearment, but a note of respect, for the Engineer and his department provided the energy that was the life of the ship. All the services, from production of water and light to propulsion and operation of boats, that made her live and made possible every other task on board, was the responsibility of the Engineering Department. Assisted by several junior officers, the Engineering Officer administered to an empire that included all the propulsion systems, the boilers, steam turbines, and electrical generation plant, the evaporators that supplied the purest water for the boilers and crew and the myriad of auxiliaries that provided the special power needed by the combat systems, the boats and davits, the gun systems and sonars and radars, the galleys and laundries and the damage control preparations that would determine the ship’s survivability in the event of damage or attack. Propulsion systems were the domain of the Boiler Technicians, the Machinist Mates and the Electricians Mates. Each was a very different group. The BT’s were rough and ready, tattooed and hardworking, surrounded by their boilers, fuel rigs and pumps. If you had their allegiance, there wasn’t much you couldn’t do. The MM’s ran the plant, with its gleaming deck plates, boards full of gauges and engine rooms crammed full of machinery, including the all-important evaporators that produced the water upon which the life of the ship depended. The EM’s ran the electrical plant, and with their brethren, the Interior Communications Technicians, provided the types of electricity, from 60 cycles to 400 cycles, that drove the vast array of systems on board. There were, of course, union differences, but woe betide the unfortunate member of the Weapons or Operations departments who might cast an unfortunate remark in their direction. On shore and at sea, they were one team, one fight. Beyond the propulsion spaces, the Auxiliary Officer held sway. His division had responsibility for all the systems that supported the ship outside the propulsion box. Ice cube maker not working? Air conditioning awry? No problem – a call to Damage Control Central would soon result in a capable response. The Damage Control Assistant, another key adjunct to the CHENG, had responsibility for working with all the departments to assure the proper status of every door, hatch or closure within the ship, as well as all the emergency pumps and damage control lockers throughout the ship. Memories of the Okinawa campaigns were still strong within the Navy then. From shoring to fire fighting apparatus, readiness of each component of the DCA’s empire was expected at any moment. As the events of the USS Belknap collision emphasized, the moment might come when the ship’s survival depended on them. They cared for the boats, the gig, the whaleboat and utility boat (a large personnel carrier). They took care of the helicopter refueling and lighting and the extensive water wash down system, designed to cleanse the ship of nuclear fallout, in the event of such an engagement. They handled everything from the ice cream machine to the movie projectors. One key component of the Engineering Department was the Machinery Repair Shop. They could fix or repair just about anything on board. With their lathes and welding equipment, they could make parts for washing machines or gun systems, boat steering systems or valve stems. Some of them were unconventional human beings, with earrings and tattoos, but they were wizards on their task, and kept us going notwithstanding the circumstances.
Supply Department
The Supply Officer and the Supply Department provided all those things that make life livable, from pay to clean laundry, from repair parts to paying foreign vendors for fresh vegetables. Their labors were unceasing. The galley worked around the clock to prepare top quality meals. Many a mid watch was made more enjoyable by a shipment of fresh rolls from the early baking cycle. The Pay Clerks and Supply Clerks kept the records up to date and, no matter how intense the operations, ensured that pay records were kept accurately and questions answered with dispatch. No task was too small or too unimportant. Foremost among those tasks was the need to feed the crew. The gleaming kettles in the galley were never empty for long. The ovens turned forth a constant stream of meals, from pizza to roast beef. In the wardroom and the chief’s mess, special meals might be concocted, served on Navy china and accompanied by such things as spices and A-1 sauce not available in the general mess. The wardroom, in the finest Navy tradition, dined on starched white tablecloths, with china and sterling silver cutlery. The Executive Officer, as president of the mess, presided. The Steward’s Mates presided over all with pride and efficiency. The Supply Department ran it all. Far below the main decks, the laundry provided clean clothes, starched khaki uniforms and carefully packaged underwear on a regular basis. There were certainly irregularities, as when one’s favorite shirt returned reduced to one third of its original size, but they were few and far between, and contributed immensely to the merriment of wardroom conversation when they did happen. The true measure of the Supply Officer would come into play when there was a major casualty to a key system, or when a call on a foreign port required the utmost in collaboration with foreign vendors. The best supply officers excelled on those occasions, conjuring up parts from nowhere, and making deals for foodstuffs and tours for sailors that kept up morale.
Department Coordination
Obviously, the work of all the departments had to be coordinated closely to ensure the proper working of the ship. Every morning the XO would call his leaders together for Officers’ Call. Notes would be exchanged and the day’s activities reviewed. One had the chance to observe the relative health and energy levels of one’s peers. Then, throughout the day, cooperation between and amongst those key department leaders would resolve one problem after another, just as it does today. Again, in the evening, Eight O’clock Reports, generally conducted at 1930, before the evening watch or movie call (depending on one’s circumstances), would provide yet another opportunity to assess the readiness of the command to conduct the next series of operations. Each meeting might be followed by a series of communications to key department command centers. The Engineering Officer, for example, would provide his “Night Orders” to the department, detailing tasks to be performed overnight, information on what to prepare for the next day, and the alignment of the plant during the next several hours. Similar orders would be prepared for the other departments. The Captain’s “Night Orders” would give overall direction to the bridge and watch teams. It was always understood that he could be called in an instant if circumstances so indicated. It would be the brave watch officer, in CIC or on the bridge, who did so. In any event, it was seldom required – if operations were intense, the Captain would already be on the bridge or in CIC. One did not have to ask.
Hard Charger! 