Engineer Memoirs
There are various ways to do that. One is to wrap the barrel of the gun with a cable. If
you take the steel and forge it and then you put a case on it so that the interior of the
tube is under compression, when the projectile is fired, the first part of the stress is
taken up bringing it to a neutral point. Then the second part is putting it under tension.
So you get a much stronger gun. All modern artillery are made this way, all big guns,
all those 16-inch guns on the battleship.
My grandfather graduated from West Point in 1872. From about that time to 1900,
modern artillery was developed in Europe and the United States. He was very much
involved in this.
When he came to retire from the Army about the time of World War I, one of the gun
manufacturers offered him the presidency of the firm. My grandfather said that it just
wouldn't be appropriate for him to assume the job of president of this firm, given the
fact that he had been, in fact, the acting Chief of Ordnance of the United States during
the early part of the war.
Basically, he didn't want to lend his name to this. There was no law against this, but he
didn't feel it was ethical. He said he'd be very glad, if they had any design work that
they wanted him to do. And they said, "Oh, no. We've got plenty of designers. We
wanted you to head the company."
That's another example of the way they viewed things in those days. We definitely have
a different view today. That's the first general point.
The second point is that, in the area of foreign sales, so far at least, there is a different
ethic from the ethic that applies to domestic procurement. Let me see if I can explain
the difference, as I see it.
In the case of domestic procurement, we have all kinds of limitations on somebody who
has been working for the Department of Defense going out and joining industry to turn
around and sell back to the Department of Defense. There are laws against it and there
are ethical principles and so forth.
We have a different attitude if those same people join industry for the purpose of selling
to a foreign government because we don't view it as inappropriate, or at least many
don't. After all, this officer never worked for the foreign government. His position as
the official of a company selling overseas is very different from his position as
somebody who was in authority inside the Department of Defense. He's not trying to
sell back to the outfit he worked for.
So you don't find all the ethical strictures there, or the legal strictures.
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