Naval Ordnance Laboratory

The Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL), now disestablished, formerly located in White Oak, Maryland was the site of considerable work that had practical impact upon world technology. The White Oak site of NOL has now been taken over by Food and Drug Administration.

The NOL is now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division

Ancient History

The U.S. Navy Mine Unit, later the Mine Laboratory at the Washington (D.C.) Navy Yard, was established in 1918, and the first Officer In Charge (OIC) arrived in February 1919, a date that was considered the beginning of the Laboratory. In 1929, the Mine Laboratory was merged with the Experimental Ammunition Station in Indian Head to form the Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

NOL began slowly, and it wasn't until the beginnings of World War II, when Germany's aircraft-laid magnetic mine began to spell big trouble for the Allies. As the importance of NOL's work became apparent, it also became apparent that there wasn't enough space at the Navy Yard to accomodate the necessary research facilities.

White Oak

In 1944, acquisition, planning and construction work began. Someone remarked to a Navy official during early 1945 that it seemed odd to be building the new laboratory at that time; the war would probably be over before the place could be finished. "That laboratory" remarked the Navy man, "is not being built for this war".

The 200 Area

The first technical facilities were in the new magnetic area (the 200 area). This area was was in the middle of the woods, and remained so up until the Lab's demise in 1994. It is believed that the area was selected because it was magnetically neutral - there was less iron in the earth than in other areas to interfere with sensitive magnetic experiments. The buildings were made of wood, with wooden pegs instead of nails. The buildings had unusual names: Bldg 203 was the "Spherical Field Lab", Building 204, the "Long Field Lab".

The 400 Area

The 400 area was home to a number of wind tunnels. At the end of World War II, the G.I.'s found several large wind tunnels in Germany, and the Government thought "These are neat, let's take them home with us". So the wind tunnels were disassembled, and brought back to the United States. One went to a sister Laboratory, the David Taylor Model Basin, in Bethesda, Maryland. David Taylor operated that wind tunnel into the 1990's when a major failure occurred, and the price tag was considered to be exorbitant (not surprising, since it was purchased second-hand, the manuals were in German, and the warranty had run out 50 years ago).

White Oak's "Supersonic Wind Tunnel", the larger of the two former German wind tunnels, was installed in 1947. There were a number of similar facilities, the Mach 10 Wind Tunnel (1950), Mach 12 Wind Tunnel (1951), the Hypersonic Wind Tunnel (1957), and the Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel (1972). Some of these facilities were still operating when NOL was formally dis-established in 1994.

The Beginning of the End

NOL was purposely built in what was then "out in the woods". White Oak was still farmland, and the designers could not have predicted the phenominal growth of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. But the relentless spread of civilization brought homes and townhouses right up to the fence surrounding the Lab. Purchasers of houses next to an "Ordnance Laboratory" expected to hear an occasional "boom", and were occasionally rewarded with one.

It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon, sometime during the 1980's, when one of the explosive bunkers decided to explode with a really spectacular "boom", which quite surprised the local inhabitants. The concrete bunker, surrounded by earth, just disappeared. While the locals got over it, this was not a good portent for the future.

Base Realignment and Closure

The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) report of 1991 reduced the scope of NOL and reduced the staff to 650 persons. BRAC '93 recommended dis-establishment, and the move of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) from leased buildings in Crystal City, Virginia to White Oak.

NOL was partitioned between three existing Navy Labs: NSWC Dahlgren retained the weapons systems research and associated personnel. NSWC Indian Head received the explosives research, and NSWC Carderock received the basic research interests.

Ultimately though, NAVSEA had a choice on where to relocate. Choice (A) was White Oak, which boasted a 9-hole Golf Course, hundreds of acres of woods with its abundant flora and fauna (many friendly deer), and a pleasant suburban location with existing buildings, lots of parking, good roads, shopping and housing. Choice (B) was the Washington Navy Yard, in a decaying part of the city, with no available buildings, no golf course, neither fauna (except perhaps seagulls) nor flora, poor housing, etc. The obvious choice was, of course, Choice (B).

Projects

• The World War II artillery fuze.

• Nitinol, the shape changing nickel-titanium alloy well known to everyone. The NOL at the end of Nitinol refers to Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

• Hypervelocity wind tunnel testing of Space Shuttle models for NASA.

People

People who have worked there include:

• John Bardeen, the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in Physics.
• John Vincent Atanasoff, inventor of the first electronic computer, Chief of the NOL Acoustics Division.
• William E. Caswell, physicist and victim of September 11, 2001.
• Norm Scofield, inventor of the Scofield-Gold neutron unfolding algorithm which is a method of solving a Fredholm integral equation.
• Sigmund J. Jacobs, inventor of theory for the equation of state of detonation products, the Jacobs-Cowperthwaite-Zwisler(JCZ) equation. obituary Wikipedia entry describing some of his work Kamlet-Jacobs-Gleichungen

References

The description of the facilities was gleaned from "On the Surface", Volume 17, Number 10, 30 September 1994, a publication of the Dahlgren Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center. This issue was titled "THE WHITE OAK LABORATORY: A Tribute".