Engineer Memoirs
A ..
Yes. If they can hold the structure, they can prevent it.
..
And they should?
A ..
Well, I think we certainly should try. It would be an economic disaster to southern
Louisiana if total diversion ever did occur.
Q ..
Carroll Le
who later became a general officer, was one of your assistants?
A ..
He was there on a special assignment dealing with the measurement of airfield
pavements for trafficability. This was a special program for the Air Force. We sent
teams to all parts of the world where they had air bases, to measure trafficability and
load capacity of airfield pavements.
Q ..
Is that a typical involvement of the Waterways Experiment Station?
A ..
WES had an outstanding soils and pavement laboratory. This was a part of the activities
in support of military construction at the station. The Corps had a separate laboratory
in Cincinnati, Ohio, that was a concrete pavement laboratory. But this was the flexible
pavement, or asphalt pavement, laboratory.
Q ..
How would you comment generally on the civilians whom you had working for you?
A ..
We had an outstanding group of people.
Q ..
Did you sa.y you knew a lot of them beforehand?
A ..
No, not too many of the key people. I knew a few, but not the key people. I think it
was an
group of people, who became world renowned.
Q ..
Do you recall who some of them were?
A ..
Well, yes. The heads of the three major laboratories. Head of hydraulics was [Eugene]
and Fred [Frederick R.] Brown, who is now the WES technical director, was
one of his immediate subordinates. [Joseph B.] Tiffany was the-1 don't remember the
title then used-principal civilian during my tour. Willard J.
would have been
the head of the soils group, and he had several people with him: Bill
I
remember. Herbert Cook was head of the concrete laboratory. Really an outstanding
group of professional engineers. There's no question about it; they were the experts.
Did you later use some of these people when you were in OCE? I mean bring them into
OCE?
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