Q ..
There wasn't much work going on in Civil Works in the Corps at that time, but
there were flood problems.
A ..
Yes, I was trying to think what, I don't really remember what I spent most of my
time on in the beginning because there weren't too many reservoirs to operate either.
So it must have been just the routine review of hydraulic features of the reports that
the field submitted. A lot of work was done on the manual for design of airfields.
Of course, we, our branch, Hathaway's branch, was the liaison with the Weather
Bureau on this rain gauge and Hydro-meteorological Section and probable maximum
precipitation. We had to report, you know, make the reports to Congress for the
funding for those programs. Ralph Wilson in our office handled the details on these
programs.
Q ..
About that whole idea of doing the probable maximum flood and all of that kind of
thing, that was relatively new for the Corps in its planning process, Civil Works
process?
A ..
It was new to the whole world, and the who 1 e world has copied it.
Q ..
Hathaway is the one that came up with that?
A ..
Hathaway was the father of that business, right. There was just no competition.
Quite often when somebody develops something? somebody else claims to do it at
the same time, but Hathaway was way out ahead of everybody on those things.
Q ..
He didn't seem to have any problem getting the structural people to go along with
that then, or did he have problems?
A
No, I don't think so. Not that I know of. He had the backing of the head office.
It wasn't an instantaneous thing, but the change in procedures was adopted when we
started working on a number of new projects. There'd probably been a lot of
projects approved, but the details had never been developed. There was a grand
program approved on the Mississippi Basin study years before, but they weren't
building them until this period of time. Our branch sent out the instructions and the
requirements for what had to be done in the design of the spillways to take care of
the large floods. Certainly, there must have been some people that thought it was
crazy, but there was never any official problem with getting it accepted. It had to
be accepted and the credit goes to Hathaway for all of that.
Previous Page
