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Un IV. ER SIT y· 0 F N 0 RT H TEXAS

OR AL H I S T O R Y C O L L E C T I 0 N NUMBER

1 1 6 6

I n t e r v i e w w i t h R A L P H o. ROBINSON

J a n u a r y 1 7, l 9 9 7

Tierra Li nda, Texas Place of Interview:

William J . Alexander Interviewer:

Open Terms of Use: Approved: ~fnife)~ January 17, 1997 Date: COPYRIGHT @) 1997 THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS IN THE CITY OF DENTON All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Director of the oral History Program or the University Archivist, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203. oral History Collection Ralph Robinson

Interviewer: William J. Alexander January 17, 1997 Place of Interview: Tierra Linda Ranch (near Kerrville] Texas

Mr. Alexander: This is Bill Alexander interviewing Mr. Ralph Robinson for the University of North Texas Oral History Program. The interview is taking place on January 1 7, 1997, on Tierra Linda Ranch, in Gillespie County, Texas. I am interviewing Mr. Robinson in order to obtain his experiences as one of the developers the highly lethal, highly secret proximity that was used throughout the

European and Pacific Theaters of World War II. I am also obtaining his recollections of the use of the fuze during World War II in the Pacific

Theater. I'm going to start out, Ralph, and ask you

where you were born. Mr. Robinson: I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September

1, 19].9.

Mr. Alexander: Were your parents native-born Americans?

Mr. Robinson: Oh, yes. My father was b9rn in Ohio, and my mother was born in Arkansas. Alexander: Where did you go to school? Grade school? High school? Robinson: Well, after I got to Houston [Texas), where I started in the third grade, I went to elementary school in Houston at Taylor, Jeff Davis, and Eugene Field [Schools], then Hogg Junior High School, Sidney Lanier Junior High School. I went to John H. Reagan High School, and then Sam Houston High School. I graduated from Sam Houston High School in 1937. Alexander: After graduation, did you go on to college? Robinson: Yes, I went to the University of Houston evening sessions, starting in the fall of 1937. I attended there in 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941. At that time I dropped out of school to go fight the war. For several years I attended USDA, the graduate school of the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington [D.C.J in agriculture. Alexander: What was your major? Robinson: Well, I started out in engineering with a physics major. That's really what I started out in more than anything else. My working specialty was in electronics and radio frequencies. Alexander: In 1940 did you join the service? Robinson: No, I was in the military for two-and-a-half enlistments in the Texas National Guard. I once

2 .. aspired to go to [the United States Military Academy at] West Point [New York] one time, but all of those appointments were dried up. They were not available. I considered going to West Point Preparatory School. I was prepared to do that as one of the choice appointees of the 133rd Field of which I was a member. People there were ready and willing to endorse me for that job--for the prep school. That was supposed to be a completely competitive opportunity to get into West Point, but politics being what they were, they had already decided who was going to be selected. Alexander: Before you got there. Robinson: Before I even started. They said, "Ralph, you're wasting your time!" Then I applied for a commission in the Navy Reserve in 1940. I aspired to become an ensign CVS (communication volunteer specialist], which is working with . I was non-degreed at that point, which was the objection they had, although I was technically qualified. They kept "bouncing" [rejecting) it back, and the interviewer kept saying, "Yes, but he's qualified." Alexander: He just doesn't have the paper [degree] in his hand. Robinson: I didn't have the degree. So, Bert Moritz, the man who had hired me initially at the laboratory in Houston, came through recruiting _laboratory personnel

3 and asked me if I would put in an application with the

Carnegie Institution of Washington [D.C.J, Department

of Terrestrial Magnetism.

Alexander: That's a "jaw-breaker. 11 I want to be sure our

transcriber gets it.

Robinson: All right.

Alexander: Now let me ask you this. You went to this guy who

recruited you, all of a sudden ...

Robinson: No, he came to Houston, Texas, and got in touch with

me.

Alexander: He was coming through town getting bright, young

engineering-type people.

Robinson: [He was recruiting) PhDs and everybody else. He

selected me.

Alexander: He knew you from your college background and so forth.

Robinson: Bert Moritz had hired me as a laboratory technician

several years earlier. I was his last official act

before he left the General Geophysical Company, and he

hired me to go work in their laboratory.

Alexander: Oh, he was with the General Geophysical Company, which

is an oil well development-type or prospecting-type

company.

Robinson: The General Geophysical Company was headed up by a man

named Earl Winston Johnston. He was one of the

original pioneers in reflection seismography. We were

doing all the reflection seismography work for

4 Standard (Oil of] Ohio. They were not a "fly-by- night" (second-rate] place. Alexander: Oh, no, no. Standard oil of Ohio was a very biq company. If you're in the oilfield, you know very much that they were very big and a very important company. He recruited you for the Carnegie position.

Robinson: Yes. Alexander: To do what? Robinson: Well, to do what I had been doing. I was a project engineer designing specialized radios for the Geophysical Company, and that had worked out quite well. It was a pioneering-type of radio development that operated at 35-megacycles, which in those days was hiqh frequency--very high frequency. The set that I designed was a transceiver which was used to transmit the firing pulses, signifying the explosion the dynamite, as well as the seismograph signals. No other company was yet doing that. But we "scooped" [did it before] everybody on that. so, this was quite a technical breakthrough. Alexander: So, it was down in the "hole" [where the charge was placed]. Robinson: Yes. Well, not quite down in, but near the hole. Alexander: Let's go the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Robinson: Okay. Well, the laboratory was at 5241 Broad Branch Road Northwest in Washington, o.c.

5 Alexander: Date? Robinson: It was May s, 1942. Alexander: And this gentleman in Houston didn't have anything

with you going to Carnegie, though, did he or not?

Robinson: Yes, he did. Alexander: He came through and got you to leave Houston and go to Washington, o.c. Now I've got it straight. Robinson: What had happened in the chronology of the development

of the proximity fuze was that they had just completed some successful tests. They had, with a small group of basically hand-made , achieved a level of

operability of 52 percent. That was the benchmark

that had been set by the Navy Bureau of Ordnance at

which we would go into production on those hand-made­

type units. Alexander: But they were proximity-type.

Robinson: They were proximity fuzes. Then they were going to

have to expand the program significantly beyond the

geographical space at available at the Carnegie

Institution Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, and

they were going to get many thousands of square feet, plus they were going to have to increase the number of

personnel involved. I was a part of that--the initial

part--of that enlargement. I was the twenty-seventh

person hired once they had decided to expand their

personnel.

6 Alexander: Okay. When that happened, how long had the proximity

fuze design been in the "cooker" (planning stages]? Robinson: About a year. About a year or more.

Alexander: So, probably from back in 1941 or early 1942.

Robinson: One of the initial concepts for the proximity fuze

came from the Briti sh . From the very beginning, they

wer e full-time partners in the development of the

proximity fuze. The initial phase of the program used proximity devices. We were toying with devices on l i nes attached to a irplanes, pulling them through by airplanes. We thought perhaps we could have a flying

that would be proximity-sensitive. We had other

approaches, like, auto-gyros (helicopter-type

airc raft] that would take off and fly straight up and have a proximity d evice. The reason for all these

different approaches was that we weren't sure that we

could, in fact, build this radar-like device into a that would withstand the tremendous impact of

firing and of spin. Keep in mind that a shell

experiences (the force of] about 20, 000 Gs, that is,

the [ amount of] G-forces acting upon it in being fired.

Alexander: As it spins. That's what causes the Gs . Robinson: We ll, it spins at s omething less than a quarter-of-a­

million revolution s per minute. When it's

acce lerated--fired--that's a longitudinal force. The

7 other is a spin force. Alexander: Yes, I've got you. Robinson: So, these both are very, very significant mechanical stresses that were placed on the electronics. rn those days, of course, we had to use vacuum tubes, so we had to have vacuum tubes that could withstand these tremendous forces. Alexander: Well, the vacuum tubes that I can remember would have been so big that you would probably have had the biggest sh el ls ever made. Obviously, you had miniature vacuum tubes. Robinson: Yes, yes, because the fuze itself was the size of one good-sized vacuum tube, and yet there were four or five tubes in that. Alexander: Okay. Now tell me how those tubes ... did you all invent tubes? This group? Robinson: We had people who were specialists in that type of design. Or. [Merle A.] Tuve, our director, Dick Roberts--the whole crew--were working on a cyclotron which had an enormous vacuum. These people ••• Tuve, especially before he became involved with the proximity program, was making some very high-voltage tubes--up to a million volts. All these people were quite experienced in vacuum techniques. We had other people that we brought in, who were mechanical experts. Or. Raymond o. Mindlin, .who studied with Dr.

8 Timoshenko at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts) ••• Alexander: While we're on that, could I interrupt for just a moment because I'd like to find out who basically ••• you were the twenty-seventh to be hired on. Robinson: In the expansion. Alexander: In the expansion. But in the initial part of this whole program getting started, who were the primary people who were involved there? Robinson: The scientific mobilization began in the early 1940s. There were groups of scientists who became quite concerned about the developments in Europe in which Nazism ... people laughed at it in the beginning, but it turns out that they had to take them more and more seriously because [Nazi German Chancellor, Adolph] Hitler's army began to ••• his goals were both political and military. Alexander: They were expansionistic. Robinson: He was beginning to repress the Jewish folks and other minorities--homosexuals, Jews, anybody they didn't like (laughter). Alexander: Any of us who lived through that period know how we were moving toward a war. Robinson: So, people were getting to be concerned about him. They would talk about how this "paper-hanger"

9 [reference to one of Hitler's vocations while a young man in Vienna, Austria] was coming into such tremendous power. They were distrustful of his motives, and they were also aware that we were woefully unprepared in a technical sense--the American military was kind of unprepared--and they set about to mobilize the scientific capability initially through the academic organizations, the universities. But the effort grew to include engineering resources as well. Alexander: Sure, it did. Robinson: A leader at that time was a man by the name of , who was both the president of •.. well, he had been, I guess, the head of MIT, and then he became the president of the Carnegie Institution of which the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism was one of their facilities. There was also a geophysical facility and some others. There was a man by the name of (James) Conant, and there was about a half-dozen more of these people. At that time Franklin Roosevelt, of course, was our president. They knew Harry Hopkins, who had the ear of President Roosevelt. Alexander: Oh, yes.

Robinson: Hopkins had turned to a man by the name of cox. They wanted to get something on paper that gave some official standing to this scientific effort that they wanted to organize . Cox dug up an organization that

10 had existed during World War I, and which still existed on paper, called the National Defense

Council. I believe that was the name of it. It was on the books, but just not ••• Alexander: Active. Robinson: ••• active. So, he wrote a memo that Roosevelt initialed and okayed, and that got the ball rolling. When it was formalized, it became the NDRC--National Defense Research Council--which was really without funds. It was a way of getting different universities and scientists to work together, and they sort of divvied up the various areas of technology that needed to be updated. See, the Army as still playing with Springfield [Model 1903] rifles and things like that. We had practically no tanks or things like that. Alexander: Oh, yes.

Robinson: So, they had a section for armor; they had one for ; they had one for these proximity devices.

From the very beginning, Vannevar Bush wanted Dr. Tuve to undertake the chairmanship of that division, which became known as "Section T"--for Tuve. Its principal goal was to provide protection to the fleet from the aircraft. At that time, the [German] Junkers-87, known as the "Stuka" [dive-] was simply running pell-mell over Europe, bombing refugees and so forth,

and to a large extent without opposition. Of course,

11 the Junkers-ea was a twin-engine fighter--long-range fighter. We had no adequate defense against those aircraft.

so, when they first started out, we were sharing our ideas with the British. They knew about a way of capitalizing on the variation in [signal] radiation resistance on an antenna as reflecting items near it. This phenomenon was known to radio technicians. I can show you books on that which date from well before the war that show the variation in radiation resistance as a function of distance from the ground. I (chuckle) am sorry to say that I actually saw it working and

explained it to somebody as I was providing communication from the opposing team's bench at Rice Institute up to the pressbox. I had designed the equipment and built it, and me and my partner got to go to all the Rice Institute football games played in Houston. Alexander: (Chuckle)

Robinson: Whenever people would walk there near my transmitter's

antenna on the opposition team bench, and a 150 megacycle radio signal would go SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH! as they would pass through each half-wave distance from my transmitter's antenna. Alexander: Half-wave?

Robinson: But in terms of putting that phenomenon together with

12 an artillery shell, that was the farthest thing from my mind at that time. I was more concerned with •.• Alexander: Girls (chuckle). Robinson: •. • the football game--was Rice going to beat the (Texas A & M College) "Aggies" (chuckle). Alexander: Right (chuckle). Robinson: But, anyway, the phenomenon itself was not new. The British thought using that phenomena in terms of military applications. And we did, in fact, build some bomb-like devices that we would tow near aircraft, that would respond to signals from the ground. The reason for doing that was that you didn't have to withstand all these terrific forces of the acceleration and the spin of firing it out of a gun.

Alexander: Firing it out of a gun. Robinson: So, you could make a bomb easier than you could· do that. Well, the men at Carnegie began to put some numbers together about measuring what the deceleration was when a radio tube was dropped onto a steel plate--a drop of two or three stories. Add the numbers. Alexander: Is it acceleration or deceleration? Robinson: Deceleration. Alexander: It's slowing down as it goes down? Robinson: If they're going to drop something, then [Robinson makes smacking sound with palm striking table.] that's

13 deceleration. If you shoot it, that is acceleration (chuckle). Alexander: Acceleration, oh, okay. You know, I'm a high school dropout (chuckle). Robinson: You know, we made some what we called "Mindlin gauges." They had a little steel ball to see what sort of an indentation they make in a piece of lead. Alexander: Yes. Robinson: They'd make some calculations, and this gives you a measure of how quickly something comes to rest after it's been dropped. The quicker it comes to rest, the higher the deceleration. Well, they found that some of these tubes didn't always break. We got to thinking that if you support them properly, maybe they won't break.

Alexander: When you say that, is that supporting them by design or by something physical? Robinson: Both. Alexander: Both, okay.

Robinson: When you start getting specific, then you've got to

say, "Well, these things are made out of glass, but glass is quite strong in compression [strength], but

very weak in tensile [strength]. 0 If you look at a glass pane, say, and a BB hits a window, there will be a little cone back there [gesture]. The places that it actually fractures are those places the glass was

14 in tension. It almost never fails when it's in compression. So, if you are able to support the elements of the tube adequately, if you can keep the

glass always being stressed in compression, it's quite strong. If you support the whole ••• what you want to

avoid is adding any point of concentration of stress

because surely that will be the point where it will

fail. So, if you support it uniformly, like, in a rubber sock or by wax or anything like that ••• Alexander: Oh, I see.

Robinson: There were some tubes being made ... Raytheon had some that were supported by four

pillars. They were supported like that [gesture).

So, anyway, they began then to experiment with tubes,

and they made their first --smooth-bore. They

put some tubes in it, and, surprisingly, they didn't

all break to pieces.

Alexander: What did they do? Build a shell or just a put ••• ?

Robinson: They made a projectile, and they put the tubes in it,

and they fired it into a sand bank or something.

Alexander: And they held pretty well.

Robinson: (Chuckle) There were things that we did ... ! hope we're

out of the statute of limitations, because we were

firing guns within the city limits of Washington,

D. C •••

Alexander: Inside the city limits (chuckle) . .

15 Robinson: •.• into a sand bank, you know, on the Potomac River on somebody's farm. Some of the first money we spent on that program was to buy some black powder from a guy named Linden A. Schenck. He was a dynamite supplier who sold to nursery-types to blast stumps. Alexander: A nurseryman. Robinson: Yes, that's where we got our first black powder.

Henry H. Porter, who was sort of a "dollar-a-year"

[paid a minimal amount or was unpaid by the

government] man, who was quite wealthy, out of Chicago [Illinois], he was good on reloading guns and so forth. Well, it wasn't very long until we got rid of that foolishness, and we got some real guns. We

finally got a 57-millimeter gun from World War I, which had been used to put on commercial tankers and like that. This was a gun that you would aim at

torpedoes in the water. I don't think it would ever

hit a , but it was a good gun. It was about, oh, eight or ten feet long and 57-millimeters in bore diameter. It shot a projectile that was about, oh, eight or ten inches long. We found that we could put the items to be tested in this projectile and shoot

them absolutely vertical. When the projectile reached the zeni th--sti 11 spinning--they would fall base first ... Alexander: Fall straight back.

16 Robinson: ... right into the ground. Now it was a little "touchy" [risky) until you knew where the shells were coming. Alexander: (Laughter) I would say so. I'd like to be in a bunker. Robinson: You know what they did for psychological reasons? They gave them a board to put over their heads. Alexander: Oh, geez (laughter)! Just in case! Robinson: Yes. I'm afraid we got off the subject. Alexander: That's okay. What we're then doing at this point is really just trying to see if, number one, you have a vehicle and have a component, which is that tube, and

number two, to see if the two can become compatible and do something together to do the rest of this. Robinson: We 11 , let' s talk about what they did together. The proximity device was later known as the "reaction oscillator." This was a circuit that was designed to

be responsive to the load on its antenna. A reflecting material might be dipole or a metallic sheet or an airplane or whatever. Each time the separation between them goes through a half-wave distance--that's the half-wave to whatever point of radiation wave-length you're talking about--there' 11 be one complete cycle of change of resistance from low to high, and that would be reflected into the reaction oscillator's plate and causes a change in its current,

17 where the two cross. That changing signal then could be amplified through a couple of high-gain pentode amplifiers. Then there would be an electronic switch which could be set so that when the positive excursions exceeded a certain point. That electronic

switch, a tube called a "," would "fire" [ionize gas and pass a large current). The circuit

was designed so that it would in turn discharge a .9 mfd which would "ignite" the "squib," which was an electric heat-sensitive device that sets off-­ like a dynamite cap--a small explosion, which, in turn, would have the shock characteristic to detonate

the high-explosive that the shell was loaded with. All of these things happened--once the thyratron got sufficient positive voltage on its grid--in less than a millisecond. Alexander: Okay. What I'd like to see, if I can back off on that

a little bit, as the projectile is going toward its target ... let's say, it's an aircraft or something. It is sending out this (radio] signal ...

Robinson: Continuously, yes. Alexander: ... all the time. Then, as soon as it strikes .•• is that what you're saying? As the signal strikes, I

mean? Robinson: No. The level of radiation resistance of the dipole's antenna--half-wave dipole antenna--is about seventy-

18 two ohms or seventy-three ohms. That's at its mid­ point radiation resistance. That is the normal load that the antenna would show. Then, as soon as it approaches something that is reflecting [the radio signal back], some of that energy will come back and will be either in phase or out of phase with the signal that is being transmitted and the radiation resistance of the fuzes antenna will vary accordingly. Alexander: With what's going out, I see. Robinson: So, the returning reflective signal would either be destructive or constructive. Alexander: But they're not going to be the same wave. Robinson: Everytime the radio signal goes through a half-wave, it will go through one full cycle of constructive/destructive; constructive/destructive. As it gets closer and closer to that target, the amplitude or the swings will get greater and greater. Alexander: Higher and lower. Robinson: The reaction oscillator tube would draw more or less current, which would be reflected as a voltage drop across the plate load resistor, and that would serve as the input to the amplifier, which is what amplifies that variation. Alexander: Okay. Robinson: And this happens then ... you take the velocity of the projectile, and for every wave-length it goes through,

19 there will be two cycles of this, plus or minus. You get one cycle per wave-length. Alexander: That's right. You had said that. Robinson: If we assume that we have a one-meter wave-length--300 megacycle RF frequency--that means that when the fuze travels one meter, there would be two cycles that come

out of that. Alexander: You mean, when that signal travels one meter. Robinson: When the shell travels one meter ... Alexander: Oh, when the shell travels one meter.

Robinson: ... it will generate two cycles. Then if you could quickly convert that over to the velocity of the

shell . .• it might be 2,700 feet per second. But just

for round numbers, let's say 100 meters per second.

In (terms of feet per second), that would be almost

100 yards. Oh, let's make it J,ooo feet per second, so in one second, if we use 3, ooo, you'd get two cycles every wave length of one meter or a 2,000 CPS doppler return signal.

Alexander: In that 1,000 yards. Is there a relevance between ••. ? Robinson: Your numbers aren't quite exactly right there (laughter) . Alexander: No, I know that. I realize that. I'm not familiar with the metric system, but I didn't know that. Is there a relevance between that and cycling going

on ... let me back off so I can understand it better.

20 Is this device now in the shell, and then the radio

device--because that's what it is--is sending out

signals? Robinson: A continuous signal.

Alexander: Yes. That signal, then, is it relevant to, say, a radar-type of phenomenon? In other words, this little

ol' fellow is flying out here in dead space, but

there's nothing around. It's kind of like he's

searching for it. Then, all of a sudden, my plane comes in front of it, and it says, noh, there it is,

and I'm going to find him." I would say, as a layman,

it's [the signal] bouncing back to it. He recognized

it.

Robinson: It is bouncing back to it.

Alexander: So, is that kind of a relevant idea of radar.

Robinson: It is a radar. That's exactly it. It is a

continuous-wave radar.

Alexander: Oh, great, okay, okay. What little bit I know about

all of this sort of stuff, that does mean something to

me. I understand that.

Robinson: Of course, somebody--a purist--might say, "Well, radar

measures the distance [this, that, and the other).

We're talking about a physical phenomenon.

Alexander: You bet! In this particular case, it doesn't have a

little ol' antenna out there with this scanning back

and forth looking for that plane, .either.

21 ) Robinson: No, the antenna is part of the shell. The shell itself is the antenna. Alexander: Let me ask you about that antenna. Was it laid just horizontally in there? Robinson: No, the proximity fuze, of the type we're talking about, excites the entire projectile as its antenna. Alexander: Oh. Robinson: Classically, people think of a dipole antenna as •••

Alexander: Sure.

Robinson: ••• as being right in the middle and having ~wo sides. Alexander: I was just doing that. Robinson: It doesn't have to be in the exact center. It can be off to one end. If it is, it will have changes in impedance; it'll be reactive as well as resistive. It will not be purely seventy-two ohms of resistance. It will be in the thousands of ohms, perhaps. Alexander: Lots of resistance.

Robinson: And it will be probably capacitive. Alexander: Yes, okay. so, actually, the projectile itself is

its own antenna.

Robinson: It is its own antenna. That's why we had to have different frequencies for different-sized projectiles. Alexander: Okay, because of the frequencies, yes. Robinson: The frequencies used for fuzes for smaller shells are much higher than for larger shells proportional to their electrical lengths.

22 Alexander: And this is all something ••. you had how many ••• I don't know ••• let me see what I'm trying to say. How many

and what kind of did these proximity fuzes

finally find themselves incorporated into? Robinson: We didn't call them missiles in those days.

Alexander: I know. Robinson: Missiles hadn't been invented yet.

Alexander: I understand.

Robinson: We had them in size all the way ••• the smallest one

that I designed was a for was the airborne 75-

millimeter ...

Alexander: Cannon.

Robinson: ..• which was mounted in a B-25. We actually didn't put a fuze in that one, but I designed one for that. I was looking at a book today. I designed one to go

in a 6-inch/.47.

Alexander: A 6-inch/.47.

Robinson: It was bigger than that. We did one for the 240-

millimeter, which is about ten-inches. Alexander: Oh, yes.

Robinson: Oh, yes. So, the numbers [in terms of the size of the projectiles that we equipped with proximity fuzes] are

75-millimeter, 105-millimeter, 155-millimeter, a-inch,

240-millimeter--for the American military. The 90-

millimeter antiaircraft was for the Army. The British

[were equipped with proximity fu.zes for their] 3. 5-

23 inch, the 4.7-inch, the 120-millimeter, which we also made for our own services--a whole slew of them. Alexander: Yes.

Robinson: Now early in the game, it was decided that we were going to put fuzes in rockets. At that time, the rockets that were being flown were fin-stabilized, so we needed a space that we could transfer that part of the program over to the Bureau of Standards. so, all of the and fin-stabilized devices the Bureau of Standards did. The rockets that were actually used were designed at the laboratory, but they were

spinning. Rod Morison gets the credit for that, and I worked for him. In fact, in the recent "Deadly Fuze" video, they show the rockets being fired--about ninety-six of them in five seconds. That was a 5-inch

to be used for shore bombardment by the Navy.

Alexander: Shore bombardment from ships.

Robinson: That thing you saw was the LSMR, the Landing

Missile Rocket. Alexander: Yes. But was that in the later part of World War II? Robinson: Yes. Alexander: Can I go back to the time when it became operational? Robinson: Yes. The test gun firing proximity fuzes with which we reached the threshold of 52 percent--over 50

percent--was being fired at Dahlgren, Virginia, down on the Potomac River at the Navy's proving ground

24 there. They were then ready to try these proximity fuzes against aircraft. That was done aboard the cruiser Cleveland in the Chesapeake Bay. We got four airplanes, of which one crashed immediately, so we got to shoot down three. Alexander: Were those drones? Robinson: Those were radio-controlled, full-sized aircraft. Alexander: Oh, they were. Robinson: That meant we were ready for use in the Pacific. (William S.) noeak" Parsons--Commander Parsons, later captain and later admiral ••• the [research] people were

allowed to leave the ship, but ~ of the sailors could thereafter leave the ship. They took the Cleveland then to the Pacific, and they immediately prepared to issue proximity fuzes to the fleet. Commander Parsons was going to lead the introduction (of the fuze into the fleet), and we made three of our

people available--Dr. Jim Van Allen, Dr. R. P. Peterson, and Neil Dilley. In a matter of two days,

they were commissioned as lieutenant j .g. 's [junior

grade] , and they were given their travel orders and

were enroute to the Pacific. Alexander: I'm going to interrupt this just for a minute because

I think one thing that we've kind of left out of here is •.. what essentially is a proximity fuze? We don't have to go back to do this. But it just occurred to

25 me that that is something we haven't really explained. The word "proximity" obviously means that you're in close before contact with the target. Robinson: Yes. Alexander: Which means that it exploded before it reached the target, which, if we've read anything of our history, we realize how many times shells were exploded above the troops and so forth back in the civil War and that sort of thing to amass a larger area. With that proximity-fuzed shell exploding in front of a Japanese Zero, for example, obviously it had more killing

impact, I would assume, than if was shot just straight into it, if you could have hit it. Is that part of it? Robinson: Well, what you say is true, but the significant point isn't that. Alexander: I didn't think so. Robinson: The significant point is that if you have a fuse that works from the projectile contacting the aircraft, it

has only a certain area for it to hit--a given area. If you have one that would go off in the proximity of the target, its effective area for detonation might be

100 or perhaps 1, 000 times greater, so if you could then time it so that the explosion goes off at the

proper distance before it (the projectile) reaches it [the target], then you will have maximum lethality,

26 and the effectiveness of the weapon will be increased by tenfold, perhaps. Alexander: All right now. We getting into something I'd like us to have in here. What did you and your group or some other group figure out as the optimum distance from a target, whether it be a tank or an airplane or •.• who came up with those kind of •.. how did those figures come about? Through testing or what? Robinson: Well, first of all, if we're going to be talking about land applications against entrenched personnel, that's one answer. That's one different height. For that case, there is an optimum height as a function of incoming angle for each caliber gun being used against troops on the ground. That came out later in the war, and that was used in the artillery projectiles when used against personnel. Again, that was a later development in 1943-1944. In the initial days, our principal charge [assignment] was to defend naval ships against hostile aircraft. The original work done was to measure lethality against [test] aircraft suspended in the air and having them go off ... see, the fragments emanating from the projectiles have a trajectory that's forward, and it has a velocity that they have a very poor form factor [they tend to disperse and lose their lethality pattern), so that they lose velocity very quickly-.-but their velocity

27 was very high up close. so, there is a distance there beyond which the fragments--being ragged, jagged pieces of metal--won't go nearly as far as the

bullets. Alexander: No, because of the .•• Robinson: Because of their poor ballistic shape. Alexander: Sure. Robinson: They become spent. So, there is a distance parameter there, and within this fragmentation cone there is an optimum distance before the projectile becomes parallel to the target that you want it to go off. So, if you make a very simplistic assumption, you'd say, "Well, it is a cone, and if you take into account the velocity of the fragments, the distance would be

twenty feet forward. u For a miss, it would be fifty feet--something like that. All right, given that type

of calculation, then you could start to try to confirm this by taking photographs of bursts actually taken against torpedo- suspended in the air and looking at the damage that they'd inflict. Then you could draw an optimum location for the burst to occur. Alexander: It must be quite a camera that will pick off a torpedo-bomber that's under attack. Robinson: Now you've brought in another element. Everything I've said up to now is for an airplane in free space. If you have a torpedo-bomber coming in low over water,

28 say, 100 or 200 feet, the proximity fuze is going to be seeing the water as it flies over it and as it approaches it, and it will be getting this sinusoidal

signal, which I referred to earlier, going through each half amp wave, plus it will be picking up the noise from the waves. Well, they were only sinusoidal to the first approximation. Then it had superimposed irregularities. Anyway, in that sort of an environment, it has to pick up the Doppler return signal from the aircraft, and, again, it has to decide where--relative to the aircraft--does it go off [detonate].

Alexander: That's a different problem than aircraft going over land or going at higher altitude. Robinson: High altitude didn't see the return. Alexander: No, that's right, but it does see--at a low altitude--

a bomber coming in at 100 feet. Robinson: Well, that guy's flying pretty low for a bomber. Alexander: Well, yes.

Robinson: It's bad enough to fly 100 feet over water.

Alexander: That's what I'm talking about--over water. Well, I

mean, you know ...

Robinson: They frequently flew at 300 or 400 feet. Alexander: Torpedo-bombers?

Robinson: All this business about being at twenty feet is not very accurate.

29 Alexander: Well, I know that. Robinson: When you start trying to do some testing at twenty feet, they'd look at you sort of strange-like, because all you've got to do is make just a little bit of "hiccup" (slight variance in altitude], and you've

just "bought the farm" [crashed]. Alexander: Oh, yes, I know, especially at those speeds. Of course, there had to be a tremendous killing factor, then, prior to the fuze. Robinson: Yes, the disappointing number one encounters ... when you start to see what is the effectiveness of the old time fuses, when you realize that it takes hundreds or perhaps a thousand rounds to bring down one airplane ... it's almost impossible to calculate in advance where the aircraft is going to be twenty or

thirty seconds later, but with the proximity fuze no range calculation is necessary. All you have to do is

get range and azimuth. Alexander: Range and azimuth? Robinson: Elevation and azimuth.

Alexander: Elevation and azimuth. All right now, historically speaking, the proximity fuze for the Navy came

into ... well, was it operational in 1943? Robinson: It was operationa 1 in 19 4 3 , yes. It was operationa 1 although not yet distributed until the advent of the Cleveland test. But immediately, when they sent this

30 crew of William s. Parsons, James A. Van Allen, Dr. R. P. Peterson, and Neil Dilley, each went to a ship with a quantity of 500 fuzes. The shells were already aboard. We simply unscrewed their conventional time fuzes and replaced them with our proximity-type fuzes. the field Let me tell you a little story about that. Each

of these men, then, of course, talked with the respective captain and the gunnery officer about these

new devices they were bringing out . I know this from first-hand experience because I talked with the gunnery officer of the cruiser Helena. Commander

Parsons--later Captain Parsons--said he'd want the ships to use at least 50 percent of their antiaircraft projectiles with the new-type fuzes. Before they actually had an opportunity to test them out shooting at Jap aircraft, the ships shot at some rocks off one of the islands, and they "broke" [detonated) with such consistency and deadliness that Ira D. Sykes, then the gunnery officer of the Helena, said, "Hell, I'll use

100 percent of them!" So, the only reason he shot any of the older time fuses was just to periodically check his ship's gun battery alignment. Alexander: Okay.

Robinson: And that was lucky because they had shelled at a place called Munda and were retiring from that action, and

31 they were attacked by some Japanese dive-bombers. These dive-bombers attacked an adjoining ship and were pulling out of that and were flying toward the Helena. It turns out that the planes were flying like they were torpedo-bombers, but their recognition silhouette was that of dive-bombers. At first, there was a little bit of confusion because of visual target recognition at that point, but they were coming toward them. They looked like dive-bombers, but the were flying like they were torpedo-bombers. They obviously were hostile. Alexander: Yes, they were just coming after them.

Robinson: So, they took them under fire. Now I want to make it clear that "coming toward them" doesn't mean that they [the Americans] necessarily fired as they [the Japanese aircraft] were closing. They had to hold fire because of some ships in the line of fire, but

when they did take them under fire, they knocked them down. Our own aircraft cover--fighters--also shot down a couple of them, but one of them [the shooting

down of a Japanese aircraft) was definitely (attributed to] the the proximity fuze. Alexander: There was something I read in the material that indicated that one of the Japanese bombers--and this was on that attack--had dropped his bombs ... Robinson: It did.

32 Alexander: ... and had gone over the flight deck of the Helena, and the Helena followed it (tracked it] over and shot it down on the other side--the backside of it.

Robinson: I ... Alexander: You have a question about that.

Robinson: That may be a true account, for all I know, but I'm

telling you what the gunnery officer told me; and I am not going to say what the relative position was. But

there was confusion because they were coming toward

them.

Alexander: The only other thing I could say is that the Japanese pilot, who was flying that airplane, must have been

darned surprised. Robinson: And quite dead.

Alexander: Oh, yes (chuckle) . Now that was in January or

February, was it? It was early in 1942.

Robinson: In 1943.

Alexander: So, now you've got the Navy in the Pacific pretty well being .. .

Robinson: Well, we were supplying them as fast as we could build them. Alexander: All right, let's talk about that, because, you know, in munitions factories, as we used to think them or

saw them in the movies or the Movietone News or

something, there were hundreds or thousands of people

putting together . By . now, your secret is

33 getting spread around to an awful lot of people. Or is it? Robinson: Well, many of the people who were making them didn't even know what they were making. The "need to know" was a rule that we followed, and they also simply did not talk about the type of work they were doing. There were many components in the fuze that would be unrecognizable as such until it was fully assembled. Now, what you see in the Movietone News is row upon .row of shells, which could have any type of fuse screwed into them. I do not want to leave the impression that all of those projectiles you saw being manufactured on the Movietone News were going to be fitted with proximity fuzes because there was still a rightful place for contact fuses and for some timed fuses as well as proximity fuzes. But they were used in many applications exclusively. For example, those that were being used against the ..• Alexander: . Robinson: Well, no. I was thinking about the V-1 rockets. Alexander: Oh, yes, in England.

Robinson: That was 11 hush-hush" [classified top secret]. Alexander: We need to talk about that. Robinson: I can recall getting the orders for designing this particular fuze of a certain sensitivity. It was not

nearly as high as I could make it, but that's what

34 they wanted because this was a relatively small aircraft that they were shooting at. That was done just literally weeks--certainly not many months-­ before it began. Alexander: Before they began the ••• Robinson: Before shooting the V-ls.

Alexander: •.. the V-ls Robinson: See, we knew in advance. Our intelligence had indicated what the dimensions were going to be, because the Germans were making launching ramps in France. Alexander: Yes, on the coast. Robinson: Yes. They first had them portable, but we knocked them out real easy. Then they made these relatively long ramps in France, which were aimed toward London. You see, the Germans had something that nobody else in the world had. They had a nearby, widely-dispersed,

important, military target--London. Alexander: Yes, yes. Robinson: Just miles of city, miles of people, within the known

range from ... Alexander: Their territory. Robinson: ... their territory on the coast of Normandy. In fact, what the ramps were finally evolved to was literally like an embankment for a bridge.

Alexander: Oh.

35 Robinson: I mean, they were just •••

Alexander: Huge. Robinson: ••• very difficult to destroy even though you knew

where they were.

Alexander: Yes, but you couldn't get to them. Robinson: Oh, no, you could get to them. But it was like

bombing a pile of dirt--just put it back (chuckle). Alexander: Oh, I see. I wasn't following that. Well, when you

designed the fuze for that, what kind of a shell was

it put into? Robinson: The 90-millimeter for our guns and for the British

3.7-inch. Alexander: And they became very effective, did they not? Do you

recall?

Robinson: The last day it was 100 percent. Alexander: Was it really? You mean the last day of the war?

Robinson: The last day they used them. We kept increasing the

numbers [the percentage of success], too, like, 70 to

80 to 90, 95, 97 percent. The gunnery officer said

that they ordered a "cease-fire" before the first

round went off [detonated in the air]. Thirty-two

rounds went off [were fired from the ground], and that

day they got 100 percent of all those targets engaged.

The history books that are written today give a

lot more credit to the RAF [Royal Air Force] planes

knocking these things down and ."tipping" them (off

36 course] and things of that sort. And I don't want to

take anything away the RAF heroes, but the secrecy aspect of the fuze really prohibited telling the public what was happening. But the Germans knew what was happening. They were getting all their V-ls shot down. Alexander: Yes. Robinson: Now one other thing, I think, is sort of romantic about that is that the development of the fuze, especially for the V-1, came just a very short time before the Germans began to actually use them. There was only a limited number of fuzes. The fuzes simply d i d not sit around in the "pipeline" [distribution system] very long, and when they were nearly exhausted, those that were on hand ... they actually sent some bombers to land at the airport in Cincinnati [Ohio], where they were making them, and they took them right off the production line and flew them back. Within that week, they were fired. Alexander: Okay. Robinson: That's how close to ...

Alexander: That's incredible when you think about it. They went from being freshly done, and then it's over there being used and shooting something down. Robinson: We were building them as fast as we could, and then that happened. They were likely to have had all blue

37 camouflage paint or whatever it is that the bombers had in those days. Alexander: Let me ask you something. You've mentioned this, but we haven't touched on this. We were going to. The proximity fuze was one of the best-kept secrets of the war. Most all of us are aware of it, especially if we were around at the time. We are well aware of the

fact that the atomic bomb was a total secret at all times. Obviously, this fuze had to fit right in there somewhere, did it not?

Robinson: Yes. In general I've heard people refer to the three best-kept secrets of World War II as the atomic bomb, the D-Day date [reference to the Normandy invasion,

June 6, 1944], and the proximity fuze. Those were the three best-kept secrets. Alexander: Best-kept secrets.

Robinson: And the way that we maintained the secrecy on the proximity fuze was that the "need to know" was restricted to those that really "needed to know."

There were about 1, 000, 000 people involved in this project. In all, there were eighty-seven plants all over the country making parts of it. The laboratory itself was never greater than about 8 oo people, counting secretaries, drivers, guards, everybody. Alexander: Telephone operators.

Robinson: That was everybody--total personnel

38 Alexander: How many? Robinson: Eight hundred--600 to 800. Alexander: You mentioned something about the high level of contact with President Roosevelt that this project continued to carry. I guess that would have been throughout the rest of his presidency. Robinson: Oh, yes.

Alexander: So, you were never very far from being able to get a direct confirmation for something that you needed desperately or badly. Robinson: No. As a matter of fact, that wasn't the problem. We were given the total responsibility for the program. We felt that our responsibility went to the end user, and that's why commissioned people right out of the

ranks of our scientists and put them in the military to introduce them to the device. The head of our organization--for nsection T, n we're talking about-­ was Tuve, who, of course, was intimately familiar with all the details. The OSRD, the Office of Scientific

Research and Development was headed by Vannevar Bush, and he had these various divisions that reported to him--not many, a half-dozen or so--and he reported directly to Franklin Roosevelt. Alexander: Vannevar Bush.

Robinson: Vannevar Bush did. There was a small group, and I've

looked for the date--it was during the war--but Dr.

39 Tuve, Vannevar Bush, and others went down to call on the president after the thing was going because he [President Roosevelt] had okayed it. It was quite a gamble. You've got to realize that, just like the Manhattan Project [reference to the project that developed the atomic bomb], if it had failed, he would have been blasted for the waste of money. Alexander: Yes. Robinson: And we're talking millions of dollars, but still it was a pittance compared to the effect on the enemy. The cost of the fuzes dropped from, I think, several hundred dollars or something like at the beginning of

the program to, like, $28 or some ridiculous fiqure like that. When you consider the effectiveness in terms of the damage it does to the enemy, that was one

of the best investments we ever made. Alexander: Oh, absolutely. I'm going to pause here for just a second. This will conclude this side of this tape.

[Tape 1, Side 2] Alexander: Continuing the interview now with Mr. Robinson. We've

talked now about the fuze and its use mostly in the

Pacific aboard naval ships. But I think it might be of real interest, too, to look at how the fuze was

used in land combat--anti-tank or anti-personnel, this

type of thing--because the fuze, I think, was meant

for that as well.

40 Robinson: Yes, it was. A thought just occurred to me. You mentioned the Pacific. You know, the fuze was also used for the first time in the Atlantic [European Theater] for the invasion of Sicily. The advantages that we got in the Pacific was mainly an increase from about a three- or six-to-one advantage over conventional qunf ire. But we had a different problem in Sicily, and that was that we were going to be much closer to scientists--German and Italian scientists-­ who we felt might be more likely to figure out what we were doing; and if they once figured it out, then, of course, they could invalidate what we were doing. so, we applied some very special ground rules to the use of the fuze for that invasion. [British Prime Minister, sir Winston) Churchill referred to the "soft underbelly" {referring to Sicily, Italy, and the Balkans] of Europe, but Admiral ... I believe it was

Admiral [Ernest J. , chief of Naval operations) King who said, "Well, it's not going to be very soft." He talked about it being shielded by the (German Air Force] and the armor of [German Field Marshal Albrecht] Kesselring and the mountains. We were close to where there was a lot of smart people, but we decided to use the fuze. We didn't want to give up the advantage it might give us, so we applied some special rules. One of them was that no

41 Navy ship could fire at an aircraft where the round might fall on the land and be picked up and the Germans figure out what was being used. That was one aspect. Another was that we'd send along little decoy transmitters, which were frequency-operated off the fuze, and they put out all sorts of deceptive signals­ -crackling and popping and sqeaking and chirping (noises) --which would be easier for the Italian or German scientific listening posts to pick up, but be confused by. So, everytime that the fuze were being used against aircraft, we had these decoy transmitters camouflaging the air waves. Alexander: Oh, okay. Robinson: So, they were used against the enemy in Europe with a similar effectiveness as in the war in the Pacific, and we maintained the secrecy by the using the ground rules I just mentioned--mainly, nothing was to be fired at anything where the "duds" [undetonated shells] could fall onto shore. We did not allow any of the antiaircraft guns to be used on the shore, even though we suffered by not having them. Alexander: By not having them, sure. Robinson: But we'd also maintained the secrecy of them. Now, if you're asking me about the other use of it, it was decided that ..• or two people, Dr. Baldwin and an officer in the military, simultaneously, about the

42 same time, on a trip talked about another use. One said, "Well, I've been thinking about the same thing. Could it be used against personnel?" The answer is "yes," quite obviously. Now the ••• when I was in the artillery,

we would get an air burst by firing several rounds to where the time fuse was just going off right above the ground, and then we'd raise the elevation a little bit so you'd get an air burst. That meant that you had to

have fired several rounds to find out where you were hitting and then make some adjustments, and then you'd make your air burst. You had the lethality, but you lost the surprise. What we eventually did was to design a fuze which would go off at the right height on the very first round. And for every size projectile, there is an

optimum height, depending on the incoming angle. When it's coming at a very steep angle, it makes your burst quite low; if it's coming in on a very flat trajectory, it should be high. The numbers are, say, for a 155-millimeter howitzer projectile--a gun projectile--if it's coming in a very high angle, it

might "break" (detonate] as low as •.. [Tape paused briefly) Robinson: All right, now the data that generated these curves originated at Fort Bragg, North Garolina, on the so-

43 called "effect field" in which planks that were, oh, I guess, one foot wide and four feet long, somethinq like that, and one inch thick, were buried in little holes or trenches, and they were down six inches from

the surface of the earth. They had paper down

underneath these planks. A fragment that penetrated

one inch of plank and left its mark on the paper then represented wound-inflicting fragments, and they were

counted. By a horrendous number of rounds and a lot of careful analysis, they were able to generate the effectiveness of the round as a function of angle and

thus provide the curves they used.

Well, I followed both religiously. There was

quite a bit of scatter in the data. I treated them as solid data and designed them (the fuzes] accordingly, and the effect was felt at the because ...

Alexander: We 11, we' re not there yet . I wanted to ask you something. What was the time frame for getting these fuzes now over to Europe? You know, we'd talked about the Navy, but now this is going to go back to that.

Robinson: I think that I did not tell you what a "TOT" was yet .

But the answer was, they were produced in quantity and were in position in Europe and were intended to be

introduced in late fall of 1944. The supreme Command, SHAFE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe) or

44 whatever they called themselves, withheld approval for use on the land until they were really ready and the military situation was stable enough to where these things could be used without fear of capture. But the advent of the Battle of the Bulge ••• the date was, I think, mid-December, 1944. Alexander: December 18, I think. That's close enough. Robinson: That's close enough to the middle (laughter). And they were used with deadly effectiveness. Now I mentioned a "TOT" [Time on Target). A

"TOT 11 is a situation where they have, by intelligence, by observation, or by some other means, determined that there's a concentration of enemy which would be a worthwhile target someplace back of their lines (to

their rear]. When they call for a "TOT," the ••• I'll pick a hypothetical time of, say, 1400 [hours]. It

could be raining, foggy, dark, or whatever, but for our purpose it doesn't matter. The large-caliber guns, located far behind the [friendly) lines, would fire so that their first runs would burst at 1400, and then they would fire as rapidly as they could thereafter. Those at the intermediate range--the 155- millimeter "Long Toms" or the 155-millimeter howitzers--would judge their starting time accordingly and would start firing so that their first round burst

at 1400. The lOSs [105-millimete~ guns) and 7Ss [75-

45 millimeter guns), which were much closer, would start later, but they would start at a time when their first round would burst at 1400. At 1400, then, rounds from all of the available artillery that was directed at that "TOTH would arrive on target with frightful results, as far as the [enemy] people who were at that

location were concerned. I think that I've remarked that "I hoped that they had lived a good life, because they were probably going to meet their Maker at that point." There were some instances--and I've talked to people who have witnessed it--in the Black Forest [Germany], where they'd pull ttTOTs" on concentrations of German troops. Alexander: And at the Bulge, right? Robinson: And at the Bulge, right. What they found was that the

tree limbs had been mangled and had fallen to the ground. It was like an enormous brush pile for miles, and tanks, trucks, nothing could move through. They

were just buried under debris from these artillery

projectiles. Now the "cute" thing about the proximity fuze is

that they've got the reflection from the earth and

"break" at the most lethal height--don't worry about whether it was a tree or whatever. It just simply picks up the reflection and goes off without any pre­ adjustment.

46 Remember, I talked . about when I was in the artillery, we had to fire several rounds and get the "sighter." Now, when the visibility conditions were poor, you couldn't do that. Now, with the proximity fuze, that first round is automatically "breakinget at the most lethal height, and every one that follows it does the same. So, the figure of merit of the success can be judged on how the prisoners-of-war and the survivors [recalled it]. They said, "That's the most vicious artillery barrage I've ever seen." They thought perhaps we had a new explosive or something of that sort. They had never experienced anything quite like that. So, it was satisfying in that, when you're in a war, you' re doing the best you can to destroy your enemy, and that was quite effective in doing that. Alexander: That's exactly what has to be done. Robinson: Yes. Alexander: Then I would assume that would be probably, in your mind, an extremely satisfying thing. Not necessarily to kill people, but the fact that that's what war's all about. Robinson: That's what we were there for. That's what we were trying to do, and we achieved our objective, yes. Alexander: So, as one individual, for the sake of having put together the mathematics and .the proper firing

47 distances and so for th, you played a very, very important role in World War II. Robinson: I was the right man at the the right place at the right time. Alexander: Yes, yes, I'm sure that's true. Robinson: And all this was done in complete secrecy. Alexander: That, again, is so remarkable.

Robinson: I ' 11 te 11 you, there was an instance where I was in

contact with people that I really wanted very much to

tell what I was doing ... ! wasn't in uniform. I was serving my country silently. Alexander: That was not simple in those days because there was always that question of: "Why aren't you in uniform? You look like you're ready to fight a war. What are you doing here?" Robinson: Well, they knew that I had applied for a commission, but I wore civilian clothes (laughter). Alexander: I still think about the people, though, that you see on the street, you know, with all of the soldiers who are around. I lived in Denver (Colorado], for example, and that was all a big military town, and that would be something that you'd think about.

Robinson: At every opportunity ... my wife and I finally got married. I guess that right before we got married. She lived near Walter Reed [United States Army

Hospital, Washington, D.C), and ~hat was where they

48 did a lot of amputations. I had been in the 3 6th Division, and when I'd see this distinctive blue

arrowhead with a "T11 (Robinson is describing the insignia patch worn on the uniform of members of the 36th Division.] in it (the hospital], I'd always stop and talk to the guy to find out how our outfit was doing. They'd kind of look at me strange, like, "Why are you wearing civilian clothing?" They thought

maybe I was "4-F11 [reference to a draft board classification that denoted an individual as being unfit for military service] or something (chuckle). Alexander: Well, if you were around Washington during those days, nobody knew what you were doing, I'm sure.

Robinson: And I didn't look like it (chuckle). Alexander: Well, thank you very much. This is an excellent interview. We'll close it down with that. Robinson: Okay, sir.

49