Carderock Celebrates 100 Years of the Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station at Philadelphia
By Rodney P. Carlisle and Dr. E. Michael Golda
Cmdr. James J. Hyland (seen here as a Captain) served as the first Commanding Officer of the Fuel Oil Test Plant. Archive photo restored by Gary Garvin.
This year the Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station (NAVSSES) at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia marks 100 years of making numerous contributions to the fleet's warfighting capabilities.
Opened in November 1910, this crucial facility had its beginnings when the U.S. Navy converted from coal to oil in order to fire its steam-powered ships. The original facility, named the Fuel Oil Testing Plant (FOTP) was part of an initiative to establish scientific methods and organized laboratories to solve the various engineering problems confronting Navy ships. By its nature, the Navy had always been dependent on technology not only to deliver ordnance to an enemy, but for the very survival of its personnel.
In the early 19th century, the Navy organized its shore establishment into various specialized Bureaus. Naval Machinery was under the purview of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. Rear Adm. George W. Melville, who had studied steam engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before joining the Navy, was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering in 1887. He also served as the Engineer in Chief of the Navy.
Melville advocated the establishment of laboratories operated by the Navy. He believed that only by conducting its own testing and evaluation could the Navy obtain the best technical products from private industry. Melville is credited with the establishment of two facilities. The first was the Engineering Experiment Station (EES), later known as the Marine Engineering Laboratory authorized by Congress in 1903 at Annapolis, Md. The second was the Fuel Oil Testing Plant (FOTP) headquartered in a small brick building (Bldg. 47) at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. FOTP was authorized by the Secretary of the Navy in 1910.
FOTP was not simply a chemical laboratory for testing the qualities of fuel oils. It also housed a fully-functioning steam plant constructed to test and improve the performance of steam boilers fired by fuel oil. The Boiler Division occupied some 40,000 square feet, including fuel oil and distilled water storage tanks, approximately 300,000 gallons each. A water piping system connected the facilities with water piping and pumps bringing in water from the Delaware River. The full-scale testing capabilities of the FOTP enabled the Navy to address all of the technology areas required for improving the Navy's boilers. This included the oil supply, water supply, instrumentation systems, and combustion systems, as well as evaluating the performance of different types of fuel oil.
During its first decade, 1911 - 1919, testing and research work at the FOTP focused on solving technical issues associated with the plans to convert the Navy's steam propulsion plants from coal-fired boilers to oil-fired boilers. Although the same kinds of reciprocating piston steam propulsion and auxiliary machinery would be used, the boilers would be fired by oil, automatically pumped to the burners, rather than by coal that had to be hand-shoveled into the firebox by stokers.
The number and subjects of experiments and reports from the FOTP were impressive. A detailed listing of some of those reports helps give insight into the emerging specializations at the facility and into the work of the small team of individuals there. Three naval officers and two civilians together were responsible for almost all of the research findings from the FOTP from 1911-1919. The first commanding officer, Cmdr. J.J. Hyland, and his successors, Lt. Cmdrs. A.M. Penn and W.R. Purnell, and two civilians E.E. Hobbs and R.C. Brierly, together produced a total of more than 40 reports during the facility's first decade of operation.
The origins of many specializations at Naval Ships Systems Engineering Station can be traced back to the early history of the lab. In the 1920s, the small laboratory at the Philadelphia Navy Yard was known as the Fuel Oil Testing Plant (FOTP).
FOTP continued crucial work in naval engineering through the isolationist years of the 1920s, and its emerging agenda shaped future work there. Although the Washington Naval Conference limited capital ship building, the United States Navy could and did focus on improving aircraft carriers and submarines, which would both play vital roles in World War II.
Looking backward at the World War I experience, the Battle of Jutland had taught many lessons. Of particular importance at FOTP was the fact that the German Navy had demonstrated the use of artificial fog from oil-generated smoke. Research in this area began in the 1920s and continued for two decades.
The agenda at FOTP staked out expertise in several areas related to the push to develop large oil-burning engines for carriers and other ships: instrumentation, fuel-oil flow issues, and burner and boiler issues. In the pre-digital age, analog instrumentation to show temperature, oil supply, oil flow, water supply, steam pressure, all underwent incremental improvement and the plant made studies of manufacturers´ innovations in all these areas.
The emerging specializations at FOTP showed personnel taking full advantage of the heavy equipment to simulate ship-board conditions. They quickly branched into work on a wide variety of related topics concerned with the adaptation of the fleet from coal to oil fuel. Hundreds of devices had to be developed and tested to make the transition, and FOTP made dozens of what they called "painstaking endeavors" toward the goal of oil-powered, lightweight ship propulsion plants.
The Refractory Division, established in 1914 was concerned with tests, investigations and improvements of furnace linings and improvement of specifications for the materials. The division had a relatively small section of 5,000 square feet equipped with 11 furnaces for conducting simulated service tests of firebrick, plastic firebrick, insulating brick, refractory mortars, and castable refractories.
In 1928-29, the plant began to install a major improvement, allowing the condensation of steam and its re-use as feedwater. This major remodeling allowed the steam boilers to have a supply of pure water. Cdr. J.J. Broshek published an extensive paper in which he pointed out that aboard ship, almost all ship engines used water recycled from evaporators as feedwater, and that in order to simulate ship-board conditions, the new arrangement would be a vast improvement over simply discharging steam to the atmosphere after running it through the test engines. Furthermore, he pointed out, the FOTP had been handicapped from its beginning by using raw river water, leading to scale build-up in boilers, burned-out boiler tubes, and foaming during operation.
Two of the naval officers stationed at FOTP in the 1920s went on later to very significant commands. Cdr. Broshek was Officer in Charge 1928-30, and held the rank of vice admiral in the Bureau of Ships by 1944-45. Lcdr. W.R. Purnell, Officer in Charge at FOTP 1918-22, reached rear admiral rank and in World War II served on the Military Policy Committee of the Manhattan Engineer District, which made crucial recommendations regarding the use of the atomic weapon. Purnell would work closely with Gen. Leslie Groves in evaluating technical facilities for the atomic weapon program.
In the 1920s, the programs and the personnel at FOTP left their mark on naval engineering and on the ships and operation of the Navy itself over the next decades. The work had planted the seeds of future growth of the laboratory.
Joseph J. Broshek (right) served as OIC from 1928-30, and held the rank of Vice Admiral by 1944-45. In this 1942 photo, Broshek is seen the touring salvage operation of the Lafayette (formerly the French ocean liner Normandie) in New York City as a Rear Admiral. Photo from the Archives.
The period from Nov. 1918 through Nov. 1941, was a period of isolationism and U.S. neutrality. Even so, the United States began quietly to rearm under the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Under the New Deal economic recovery programs, funds were channeled to new ship construction as early as 1935.
With New Deal funding, employment picked up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and at other navy yards and private shipbuilding firms around the nation. With every new class of ships added to the fleet came a host of new issues, generating dozens of studies of fuel and steam engine performance. The new, oil powered naval fleet of the late 1930s would not have been possible without the years of behind-the-scenes work at the Navy´s shore establishment of labs and testing stations. The ships built in the Thirties would be crucial in World War II.
The name "Fuel Oil Testing Plant" was officially changed in 1931 to the Naval Boiler Laboratory (NBL). By the 1930s, the range of tests went far beyond those pertaining just to fuel oil, and now included air supply, studies of boiler systems, water supply and water treatment, heat content, oil handling, atomizing of oil, as well as studies different kinds of oil. The new name reflected the expanded range of work.
Much of the NBL work focused on improved instrumentation: temperature gauges and boiler water gauges, "Viscometers" and other instruments for measuring oil viscosity, glass for gauges, water level indicators, and manometers. Fuel oil meters on specific ships were tested – for example, the oil meter from the battleship New Mexico. The lab tested analog feedback systems, such as steam-temperature automatic controls.
NBL staff worked on studies of air regulators, soot blowers, furnace floor construction, feed water regulators, draft losses through armor grating, and sprayer plate allowances. The lab produced studies of new industry-designed boilers and evaluated oil atomizers. With the growing realization that each fuel oil product from each producing field, even from each refinery, presented unique problems, increasingly, the laboratory focused on characterizing different oils and identifying their combustion properties, viscosity, and the carbon residue or soot left by each.
While most such tasks went un-heralded because of their very incremental nature, a few accomplishments stood out and drew wider attention throughout the Navy and the field of marine engineering more widely. In the early 1930s, Thorvald (T.A.) Solberg worked with chemist A. Robert Adams at EES to revise the specification for boiler water compound. The result was the 1933, new "Standard Navy Boiler Specification." Gaining recognition from that project, Solberg became Officer in Charge at the Navy Boiler Lab (1933-1935).
Solberg went on to become the best-known and most accomplished of the naval engineers who passed through NBL in the 1930s. He headed the Navy´s role at Operation Crossroads (the post-war Bikini atomic test program), and then, in 1946, as admiral, he served as the first chief of the new Office of Naval Research.
Boiler lab work included studies of steam baffles and other engine components on North Carolina (BB55) and Washington (BB56). Washington was built at Philadelphia naval shipyard, laid down in 1938 and launched in 1940. These ships each had eight boilers and four turbines, reflecting the hundreds of incremental improvements in engine and equipment design generated by NBL.
In the second Battle of Guadalcanal (Nov. 12-14, 1942), Washington engaged the Japanese battleship Kirishima, sinking her. This engagement ranked as the first and only time in history that a U.S. battleship engaged and sank an enemy battleship singlehandedly. Washington sank more enemy tonnage during World War II than any other U.S. warship.
Capt. E. Kranzfelder served as commander of NBTL from 1946-1950. At Pearl Harbor, in Dec. 1941, he led salvage work on the USS Oklahoma. He personally supervised the rescue of men trapped in the engine room. Photo from the Archives.
The crucial nature of the Naval Boiler Lab´s (NBL) work was demonstrated by the events of World War II. Boilers developed during the 1920s and 1930s were entering the fleet, generating 500 percent more energy-per-pound of boiler weight while using about 40 percent less fuel.
The boilers were key to fuel efficient and reliable engineering plants that could run longer at full power. Development and testing continued throughout the war for the South Dakota and Iowa-Classes of battleships, Atlanta-Class-cruisers, and the Benson and Gleaves-Classes of destroyers.
Component developments continued, including superheater protection devices, thermal alarms, improved atomizers, and safety valves. The lab tested and developed boiler compounds, rust preventive compounds, cleaning chemicals, fuel-oil additives, and acid inhibitors. Boiler water samples and fireside slag were analyzed, and caloric value and explosivity of fuel oils were determined.
In 1941, the Bureau of Ships expanded NBL´s mission to include main propulsion machinery, including turbines and gears, and the organization became Naval Boiler and Turbine Laboratory (NBTL). Reduction-gear systems were under tremendous stress with ships operating at full power. Preventing gear failure was crucial. New facilities allowed the NBTL to verify adequacy of design and fabrication, predict full-scale performance, and establish criteria for additional development.
A major project at NBTL directly supported development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, the Navy was the only government agency working on atomic power. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) developed a very efficient liquid thermal diffusion process to separate U235 isotopes from U238 for use in reactors, even before the famous Manhattan Project.
NRL scientists, lead by Dr. Ross Gunn, visited NBTL in 1943 to investigate installing a full-scale production facility. NBTL was selected because it could supply large quantities of high-pressure, high-temperature steam. By 1944, NBTL was, in effect, the pilot plant for the Manhattan Engineering District. Its estimated 5,000 pounds of partially-enriched uranium was later sent to Oak Ridge, Tenn., for further refinement, and probably contributed to the weapon dropped on Hiroshima.
NBTL also continued the tradition of engineering schoolhouse. The Oil Burning School, (established in 1942) trained Sailors to operate and maintain high-pressure, high-temperature boilers. Seven NBTL firerooms often operated 24/7. Much of the course was spent in hands-on operation, with classroom training in feed water, fuel oil, and refractories 16 hours a day, six days a week. By the end of World War II, more than 25,000 officers and enlisted personnel had completed training at NBTL.
While the civilian and military personnel associated with the NBL all made contributions during World War II, three commanding officers had unique experiences.
Capt. C.S. Gillette (Commanding Officer 1936-1939) was at Pearl Harbor Navy Yard on Dec. 7, 1941. After the attack, he organized highly successful salvage operations and repair work that returned the majority of damaged ships to active combat roles.
Commander E. Kranzfelder (CO 1946-1950) also at Pearl Harbor that day, lead rescue efforts of the capsized USS Oklahoma. He also coordinated salvage equipment delivery to other damaged battleships.
Capt. W.R. Purnell (CO 1919-1921) was Chief of Staff and Aide to Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet when the war began. Purnell helped direct a bitter naval withdrawal through the Pacific and established the naval defense of Western Australia.
Returning to the U.S., Purnell was promoted to Admiral and was assigned Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Material) where he helped create policies for the development and use of the atomic bomb. Present in the Marianas as part of his duties with the committee, Purnell was Navy spokesman at the press conference on Guam after the Hiroshima bombing.
Douglas AD-5W aircraft fly over the USS Forrestal in the Mediterranean Sea, April 25, 1960. In a sort of "full-circle journey" the ex-Forrestal is now moored at the Inactive Fleet Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia. Photo Courtesy Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the tensions between the Communist eastern bloc and the U.S.-led group of western democracies erupted into a shooting war, lasting until a truce was signed in 1953. The Cold War had begun in earnest and would last for 40 years. For the Navy, nuclear propulsion and new weapons systems were developed, new classes of surface combatants designed, and aircraft carriers became larger to accommodate both jet-powered fighters and fighter-bombers. Ship Systems Engineering Station´s predecessor, Naval Boiler and Turbine Laboratory (NBTL), remained an active participant in the evolution of the Navy´s machinery capability.
The Heat Power Division tested new boilers for USS Forrestal (CVA-59) and USS Saratoga (CVA-60). Forrestal´s boiler was the largest single-furnace boiler ever tested at the NBTL up to that time and the first major-combatant boiler with completely automatic combustion controls. NBTL studied the interaction between charging the steam-powered catapult accumulators and the propulsion steam system, recommending modifications to the boiler steam drums and changes to water stabilization and control relays.
The Turbine Division tested turbines from USS Saratoga and USS Forrest Sherman (DD 931), lead ship of a new class of destroyers. In the mid-1950s, the Division began work on combined steam and gaspowered (COSAG) turbines for destroyer propulsion.
By the mid-1950s, the Instrumentation Division had been renamed the Applied Physics Division. Studies focused on design criteria for water piping, techniques for installing strain gages in gear tooth fillets for measurement of stresses, improvements of C02 indicators for shipboard use, design of special instrumentation for USS Nautilus, and special instrumentation for determining turbine temperatures.
The Refractory Division tested mineral-metal compounds, or "cermets," now common, but just introduced in the 1950s. These new materials involved combinations of oxides, carbides, nitrides, silicides, and borides with various metals. The new substances sometimes had higher-than-metal melting points, and better hardness, inertness, and erosion-corrosion resistances.
NBTL support of the Navy´s new nuclear submarine force included an evaluation of the effects of steam dumping on the main condenser of the George Washington-Class of ballistic missile submarines. NBTL designed and built a large-scale test facility to determine the performance of various moisture separator designs. High capacity, highly efficient moisture separators were necessary with the use of saturated steam in Navy nuclear power plants. Other efforts included investigations of a flask explosion on the prototype of the USS Triton at West Milton, New York, and of problems with the USS Nautilus main reduction gear.
Through the 1950s, NBTL continued to build new facilities and add additional equipment and test capabilities. The three-story, 40,000 square foot office/engineering extension, was built to house engineers´ working areas, shop space, and administrative offices. By the mid-1950s, the estimated value of all of the equipment, facilities, and buildings of NBTL was $10 million (1955$), a value today of more than $80,000,000.
The staff of NBTL continued their active role in the professional engineering community with the publication of papers in the journals of ASNE and ASME, and membership on ASME and ASTM committees. In 1954, NBTL published "Instrument Standards," which incorporated 15 years of the lab´s development and practical experience in accurate measurement of temperature, pressure, flow, stress, and strain.
The expansion of the Navy during the Cold War, the demand for further increases in the performance of naval machinery, and the introduction of nuclear power created new challenges for NBTL. NBTL met all these challenges and maintained its place on the cutting edge of naval technology.
Capt David B McGuigan was appointed as Officer in Charge at the division in 1978, and immediately began work on a mission review. From 1979-1983, under McGuigan's leadership, NAVSSES managers prepared a "book" entitled Strategy for a Growing Organization, setting forth a detailed strategy for NAVSSES.
The decade of the 1970s was a tumultuous one for the American people, government, and military, and the effects of those broader developments were felt at the lab in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Richard Nixon, elected President in 1968 and re-elected in 1972, vowed to extract the United States from the Vietnam War, by providing training and aid to the South Vietnamese, and by an extensive bombing campaign (some of it flown from Navy carriers) over North Vietnam to get the communist government there to agree to a cease fire.
Through the early 1970s, the war in Vietnam wound down. After intensive bombing campaigns, the North Vietnamese agreed to a cease fire that went into effect on Jan. 28, 1973. With U.S. forces mostly out of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese army simply invaded South Vietnam, with the fall of Saigon accomplished on April 30, 1975. Americans watched in amazement as refugees and American staffers fled the capital by helicopter to U.S. carriers offshore, where the emptied helicopters were pushed off the deck to make room for more refugees.
On Nov. 4, 1979, during a revolution in Iran that ousted the Shah and replaced his pro-American regime with a fundamentalist theocracy, the staff of the American embassy in Tehran was taken hostage. The consequent "Iranian Hostage Crisis," had several long-term effects. The failed "Operation Eagle Claw" of April 1980, intended to rescue the hostages, demonstrated to the armed services that their failure to coordinate planning and the differences in their equipment and procedures meant joint operations were extremely difficult to manage. The lessons learned were reflected in the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which required a greater degree of defense unification and cooperation.
Defense expenditures fell from over $400 billion in 1970 to less than $284 billion by 1976, and then increased gradually over the next few years, partly in response to the situation in Iran, and in response to other international developments during the Jimmy Carter administration.
Through the national turmoil of the decade, station projects continued to reflect a growing set of skills and capabilities. Engineers tested steam purity on the LKA-113 main boilers at extreme conditions. A pilot high pressure drainage system demonstrated aboard USS Saratoga (CVA-60) tested the feasibility of replacing steam traps with constant flow drain orifices.
Station personnel assisted the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard with work on overhauls, including overhaul of USS Farragut (DLG-6). Other tasks were similarly diverse, including work on the motor generators on the USS John F. Kennedy, cleaning large electrical equipment aboard ships, solving problems with submarine steering, diesel engines, fuel pumps and a wide variety of other pieces of equipment. The USS Independence (CVA-62) suffered failures to 10 of the 24 forced draft blowers. After station personnel identified many independent causes for vibration in the blowers, the systems were repaired under supervision. Through the early 1970s, dozens of such mechanical problems from the fleet were routed to Philadelphia for investigation, analysis, and correction.
The mission was well-established, but it was diverse and responsive to crises and issues as they arose. Captain David B. McGuigan was appointed as Officer in Charge at the division in 1978, and he immediately began work on a mission review. Over the period 1979-1983, under McGuigan’s leadership, NAVSSES managers prepared a "book," setting forth a detailed strategy for NAVSSES. Entitled Strategy for a Growing Organization, the book set out a clearer mission, with an emphasis on in-service engineering and test and evaluation. The strategy represented a turning point in the broader history of the facility and set the stage for survival and adaptation to change, despite the BRACs of later decades.
1910-1931 Fuel Oil Testing Plant |
1931-1941 Naval Boiler Laboratory |
1941-1961 Naval Boiler and Turbine Laboratory |
1961-1966 Naval Ship Engineering Center |
1966-1978 Naval Ship Engineering Center – Philadelphia Division |
1978-1992 Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station |
1992-1995 Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division – Detachment Philadelphia |
1995-Present Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division – Ship Systems Engineering Station |
