Engineer Memoirs
never really got that third productive year--or seldom got that third productive year
when I wasn't fighting to get things organized.
Q:
But there at NCD you had it.
A:
But there in NCD I did.
Q:
And you didn't have it the next place, either. I can tell that, because that's even less
than two years. But before we go to that, is there something else I ought to ask you
about NCD?
A:
I think we have covered it pretty well. That was probably one of the best assignments
I ever had in terms of being on my own to do what I could.
Q:
And having enough time to do it?
A:
And having enough time to do it. A felicitous assignment in every way.
The Atomic Energy Commission, 19731975
Q:
I'm in sort of trouble with your next assignment, as Director of Military Application at
the AEC, or I guess it was Energy Research and Development Administration?
A:
It changed during the time I was there. Let me tell you a little about that assignment,
so you can understand what was involved.
When the decision was made to devolve the nuclear program away from the
Department of Defense into a civilian agency, there was a negotiation among all the
parties--the President and Congress and so forth--as to what the form of this would
be. One of the conditions that was requested--perhaps demanded--by the military was
that there be a military man in charge of the weapons program. That happened. The first
man was an officer named [Major General James] McCormack [Jr.], who had been in
the Army Air Corps, and was in the Air Force. Ken Fields succeeded him. Dodd
Starbird succeeded him. [Lieutenant General Austin Wortham] Cy Betts, and so forth.
My immediate predecessor was General Frank Camm, West Point out of the class of
January 1943.
Most of these people had been engineers. There had been two from the Air Force, but
the rest had been engineers, because it was a job that involved a lot of technical matters.
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