Mortimer then asked for a summary of the case for the proposed changes. Brown, at the request of Admiral Fraley, explained the salient points of the communication problem. When he came to the question of the needed apparatus, he referred Mortimer to Elkins, who in turn referred him to Evans. In a few words Evans stated the advantages of the apparatus.
“What about the expense and difficulty of having it installed?” said Mortimer. “This seems to have been a seriously deterring consideration.”
Evans answered with figures and estimates which decisively disposed of this difficulty, leaving the case so clear for the proposed changes that Admiral Bishop could not do otherwise than authorize them.
Soon after this incident, late one afternoon when the day’s work in the Bureau of Engineering was done, and almost every one had gone home, Evans lingered, as he often did, over a knotty engineering problem. As he was leaving to go, he saw in the corridor a man with a sallow face going into Commander Rich’s room. He knew Commander Rich often stayed in his room long after the others had gone, and many people had business with him; so there was nothing remarkable about this. But to-night the sight of this man gave him a vague, uncomfortable feeling, scarcely more than subconscious, that he had seen him somewhere before. Also in a seemingly haphazard way the thought and feeling of England stirred in his subconscious mind. But the guileless physicist was so absorbed in his engineering problem that these matters never quite reached the arena of his conscious thoughts. He had so much to think about that he had neither time nor inclination to heed such capricious freaks of the subconscious, and the impressions soon passed into the storehouse of forgotten experience.
During the winter months following the return of the commission to Washington, the navy was preparing in a hundred different ways for the task which lay before it. The draft law having been passed, large numbers of recruits, the pick of the draft, were assembled at training stations and rapidly absorbed into the fleet and the various naval bases on shore. Fortunate they were that the organization into which they were thus merged was led by such a body of men as the officers of the United States Navy. Through the long years of indifference on the part of the majority of their countrymen, these faithful guardians of the Nation’s frontier, trained at the Naval Academy to a high degree of professional skill, without which the complex organization of the fighting ships cannot function, had served with zeal, and against great odds had kept the fleet ready—kept the colossal machine intact, so that the hordes of untrained men could be assimilated with the least possible loss of time and effort.
Ship and aircraft construction were accelerated by all known means, and the work of designing and experimenting in every department went on with ever-increasing efficiency and concentration. In gunnery no department was neglected; on ships and in training stations drills with loading machine and dotter were carried on with zeal, and everywhere the officers saw to it that the high standard of efficiency in this field was maintained.
The convoy system had been adopted with the declaration of war, and, with the aid of light cruisers and destroyers, great quantities of essential supplies were being poured into Northern Europe, enabling the Allies to keep up the fight, but by no means to break the deadlock. Nor were the convoys always able to pass unscathed through the submarine-infested seas; the toll of ships and cargoes proved a serious drain on the Allied strength.
During these months, Evans, dressed in civilian clothes, dined with Mortimer at his house almost weekly, and after dinner they would sit alone together in Mortimer’s study, discussing the great problem of the war, often late into the night. Mortimer would tell of the deliberations and decisions of the General Staff. Evans would listen attentively and question him on significant points whose importance Mortimer himself had sometimes missed.
Plans for combating the submarine menace were now developing apace. In spite of the convoy system, serious losses of tonnage kept occurring, and methods of searching systematically for the undersea pirates were eagerly sought. The Bureau of Engineering was devoting intensive effort to testing, perfecting, and installing in new vessels the best available hydrophones (underwater listening gear) and radio compasses (direction-finders), the latter both for finding the enemy by his wireless signals and for making contact with friendly craft when desired, as well as for purposes of navigation in thick weather. Evans devoted most of his time to these tasks, taking a hand in the work of improving methods, and exercising general supervision over the installation, testing, and calibration of all this sort of gear. As in 1918, a special two weeks’ course was started for instructing radio operators in the use of the radio compass, a course given in a laboratory by young radio experts. The operators, as fast as they finished this course, were sent aboard destroyers and other ships where the apparatus was installed, with the understanding that they were fully trained in the use of it. Evans endeavored to enlist the help of these operators in the work of testing and calibrating the apparatus; but he found that more than half of them, although supposedly radio-compass specialists, were utterly useless for the task. Their teachers, being inexperienced in the psychology of the student, had failed to impart the essentials, except to those of more than average intelligence; and, what made matters worse, the laboratory instruction had not approximated the actual conditions aboard ship. Even if the principles had been grasped, the operator found them difficult to apply under conditions so remotely resembling those of the laboratory. Evidently, to send these men out in charge of the radio compass aboard ship would mean the failure of the apparatus in about fifty per cent of the cases in which its use would be required.
It was clear that the course should not only be improved, but should be supplemented by practical instruction aboard ship. Evans conferred with Lieutenant-Commander Elkins, and suggested to him that a motor-boat be equipped with a radio compass and that the operators be taken out on her and given practice in reporting the bearing of a transmitting station as the motor-boat steered an irregular, zigzag course. Aside from the advantage of instruction and practice under actual working conditions, the fitness of a man for radio-compass duty could thus be readily determined. At first they should practice on a transmitting station sending signals continuously, and thus facilitating the readings by giving them plenty of time for their observations; next, they should assay the more difficult task of taking bearings when the transmitting station sent only brief messages. Naval experts have pointed out that the enemy, knowing that his signals will probably be used to locate him by means of the radio compass, will make his messages as brief as possible, in order to render difficult the work of direction-finding; hence the importance of training the operators by calling on them to take bearings with messages of ever-increasing brevity.