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Full Description
When Computers Went to Sea explores the history of the United States Navy's secret development of code-breaking computers and their adaptation to solve a critical fleet radar data handling problem in the Navy's first seaborne digital computer system - that went to sea in 1962. This is the only book written on the United States Navy's initial application of shipboard digital computers to naval warfare.
Considered one of the most successful projects ever undertaken by the US Navy, the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was the subject of numerous studies attempting to pinpoint the reason for the systems inordinate success in the face of seemingly impossible technical challenges and stiff resistance from some in the military. The system's success precipitated a digital revolution in naval warfare systems.
Dave Boslaugh details the innovations developed by the NTDS project managers including: project management techniques, modular digital hardware for ship systems, top-down modular computer programming techniques, innovative computer program documentation, and other novel real-time computer system concepts.
Automated military systems users and developers, real-time process control systems designers, automated system project managers, and digital technology history students will find this account of a United States military organization's initial foray into computerization interesting and thought provoking.
Contents
Preface xxiii
Introduction 1
1 Radar—New Eyes for the Fleet 5
Beginnings of Radar 5
May Day—24 October 1944 5
Creation of Radar in the U.S. Navy 11
Start of the Naval Research Laboratory Radio Location P r o j e c t . . . 11
Tracking Projectiles in Flight—The Battleship New York Tests . . . 13
The Plan Position Indicator 14
The Baby Gets a Name 15
Mass Production 16
London—An Easy Target 16
Chain Home 16
Learning to Use Radar at Sea 19
The Most Valuable Cargo 21
Radar at War in the Pacific 26
McNally's Day of Infamy 26
Aboard Lexington 32
Aboard the Flying Boats 33
The Fighter Director Officers 34
CXAM in Action 37
Rest in Peace CXAM 39
The CXAM Lives On 41
Turning Point for McNally 42
Evolution of the Combat Information Center 44
The Kamikazes 49
Divine Wind 49
Floating Chrysanthemum 51
2 A Lingering Problem 53
Legacy of the Kamikazes 53
Legacy of Radar . 54
Problems 55
Quest for Solutions 57
TheThreeTs 57
The Guided Missile Frigates 60
Too Much Data and Not Enough Information 61
Three Digital Attempts 62
The Canadian Navy's Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving System 62
Early Digital Experiments at the Navy Electronics Laboratory 62
The Semi-Automatic Air Intercept Control System 65
Trouble with Analogs 66
The Royal Navy Comprehensive Display System 66
NRL's Electronic Data System 67
The Intercept Tracking and Control Console 68
Project COSMOS 68
Project CORNFIELD 69
3 The Codebreaking Computers—A Digital Solution 71
The Navy Codebreakers 71
A Place Named Seesaw 71
From Steam to Electrons 73
A Machine Named Ice Cream 73
The Naval Computing Machine Laboratory 76
A Computer Named von Neumann 77
ENIAC 77
EDVAC 79
The Navy Computers 81
From Gliders to Codebreaking Machines 81
The Moore School Lectures 90
WHIRLWIND 92
Atlas is Built 92
A Hint of Scandal 98
UNIVAC Persists 99
WHIRLWIND and SAGE 100
WHIRLWIND Saved by the Soviets 100
Chain Home a Thousand Times Over 102
Magnetic Donuts for WHIRLWIND 103
SAGE Goes into Production 105
SAGE in Operation 106
From Tubes to Transistors 107
Magnetic Donuts for Atlas II 107
The Undercapitalization Syndrome at ERA 108
We Can Do it With Transistors 109
BOGART 109
Enter the Transistor 110
SOLO, The All-Transistorized Computer 112
MAGSTEC and TRANSTEC 113
ATHENA 113
4 Conception of a New System 117
Project Lamplight—Conception of a New System 117
Continental Air Defense Coordination? 117
McNally's Mission 118
One of Us is Wrong, Mac 118
A Good Man to Have on Your Side 121
From Concept to Technology—The NTDS Technical and Operational Requirements
Document 121
I Have Just the Man You Need 121
Building Blocks for Growth 123
A Digital Frankenstein Monster? 124
General-Purpose or Special-Purpose Computers? 124
Built to Go in Harm's Way 125
Marrying the Digital to the Analog 126
Drums or Magnetic Cores? 127
Automatic Communications 128
OPNAVBuysIt 128
5 Building a New System 131
Who Should Build the System? 131
Project Organization 134
The NTDS Project Office 134
Support from the BUSHIPS Technical Organization 136
The Special Applications Branch 137
The Radar Branch 139
Staffing the Project Office 140
An Evolving Modus Operandi 146
The Chief of Naval Operations Project Office 148
Navy Electronics Laboratory Role 155
A Computer With a Dipstick 156
Selection of Univac 156
Conception of the Unit Computer 159
The AN/USQ-17 Prototype Computer 161
Turmoil in a Young Industry 164
Building the Unit Computers 165
Fuzzy Scopes and Elliptical Circles 168
Selection of Hughes Aircraft 168
Like No Cathode Ray Tubes Ever Seen Before 170
More Than Just Displays 171
Building Blocks 173
Trials and Tribulations of Transistors 173
Computers on the Airwaves 177
A Link—The Primary Long Range Tactical Data Link 177
Selection of Collins Radio 177
From Digits to Music 178
B Link—For Those Without 181
The Interceptor Control Link . 181
C Link—The UHF Short Range Tactical Data Link 182
Digits in an Analog World 182
Developing the Operational Computer Program 183
A New Thing Under the Sun 183
Who Should Build the Seagoing Operational Computer Programs? 184
Real-Programmers Write in Machine Language 185
Real-Programmers Do Not Need to Document Their Programs 187
Building the Prototype Computer Program 188
Programming a Real-Time Computer 188
First Steps 189
Force Tracking and Data Linking 190
TEWA 193
Interceptor Control 195
The Stores 197
A System that Never Sailed 197
The Fleet Comes In 207
6 No Damned Computer Is Going To Tell Me What To Do 211
Getting the Ships 211
The Guided Missile Frigates 211
Not on Our Ship!—How Oriskany Was Won 212
Ready or Not, I Want it on the Nuclear-Powered Ships 213
The Billboard Radars 213
Long Beach and Enterprise 215
Building for Service Test 216
The Q-17 Does Not Make It 216
The Purple Plague 221
The NTDS Interface Specification 228
Good Bye to the Cigarette Lighter 229
Service Test Communications Subsystems 232
Service Test Computer Programs 234
New Faces in the Project Office 234
Service Test Installation 238
No Damned Computer 241
Service Test 245
Getting Ready for Service Test 245
The Navy Meets the Software Monster 249
Where Did All Those Tracks Come From? 250
If You Don't Have a Sense of Humor, Don't Use Computers 252
Hell, It Don't Hardly Ever Fail Sir! 253
Saved by Equipment Reliability 255
Service Approval 258
So What Did They Get for the Money? 259
Money Spent 260
What Was the End Product? 263
7 In the Air, on Land, and Sea 267
On the Land as on the Sea—The Marine Tactical Data System 267
The Amphibious Force Flagships 272
Hawkeye and the Airborne Tactical Data System 274
Advent of USN Airborne Early Warning Radar 274
Hawkeye 276
The E-2A 'Hawkeye' Airborne Early Warning Aircraft 276
TheE-2B Hawkeye 281
TheE-2C Hawkeye 282
Digitizing the Antisubmarine Airplanes 283
Other Navies and NTDS 284
The Royal Navy and ADA 284
New Names for NTDS 291
8 New Horizons for Tactical Computers 297
First Production 297
First-Production Ships 297
First-Production NTDS Equipment 298
The Watch Changes 302
Maybe these Digital Computers are Good for Something After All 305
No Kid Named Joe Randolph 315
Troubles with the Three Ts 315
Seconds are Precious—Weapons Direction System Mark 11 and the AN/SPS-48 Radar 317
The Birth of Weapons Direction System Mark 11 317
Genesis of the AN/SPS-48 Radar 319
No Kid Named Joe Randolph is Going to Tell Me How to Run my Business 322
Mare Island, the Testing Ground 324
Shoehorning a New System into Wainwright 325
Life in Main Navy 327
The Anti-Submarine Warfare Ship Command and Control System 330
The Requirement 330
A Concept for Automating Anti-Submarine Warfare 333
New Link 11 Equipment 334
A New Display Subsystem 335
Analog Leaves Center Stage 337
ASWSC&CS Aftermath 338
Time to Go Competitive? 339
The System Evolves 340
Automatic Detection and Tracking 340
A Large Screen Display? 342
9 Twilight of the Analogs 347
In Combat 347
Early NTDS and ATDS Deployment in Vietnam 347
OnPIRAZ 349
The Beacon Video Processor 350
The Marine Tactical Data System in Vietnam 352
Interceptor Control and Missile Operations 354
NTDS Vietnam Summary 355
Give Us More Memory! 356
The Fleet Goes Digital 357
The First Wave 357
The Second Wave 358
New Computers for New Purposes 358
Finally, 32 Bits—The AN/UYK-7 Computer 360
Moving on to Digital Weapons Control 361
Working Out the Fundamentals 361
Digital Talos 362
Digital Tartar 364
Digital Terrier 365
Closing the Loop 365
The Guns Go Digital 366
A Line of Standards 367
Last Decade of the Analogs 367
Too Many Computers! 368
A Standard Minicomputer 370
The Navy Embedded Computer Program 372
The Politics of Computers 377
Shield of the Fleet 378
The Advanced Surface Missile System 378
From ASMS to Aegis 384
More Boundary Line Adjustments 386
Problems of Success 388
A New Name 389
Do Old Computers Ever Die? 393
Summary 394
Legacy of NTDS 394
Recognition 395
How Could They Possibly Have Succeeded? 397
A Joint Electronics Equipment Designation System 401
B Table of Acronyms and Abbreviations 405
C Univac NTDS Organization, December 1,1959 415
Bibliography 421
Index 441
