The Invisible Characters: Ross Gunn

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Jan Lundquist
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The Invisible Characters: Ross Gunn

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Ross Gunn, Townsend's senior by eight years, and supervisor of the NRL Heat and Light division, told young Brown his research wasn't "worth the paper it was written on." (Source: Linda Brown) Understandable perhaps, because Ph.D. Gunn was well-versed in the research methods of which Brown, a college drop out, had little knowledge. I suspect, however, that he found the young sailor to be a fast learner, as the NRL would try their damnedest to keep him when his enlistment period was up.

Gunn's and Townsend's lives seemed to have crossed again, in 1939. Gunn's interest in developing new power sources for submarines,had been further inflamed by Fermi's 1939 lecture, attended by top Washington scientists. Within days Gunn would request and receive funding to begin atomic research.

It was understood that in order to produce useful results, a much higher power source than was commonly available would be required. The plant that was likely to fit the bill was located at PNY. In short order, Townsend, now regular Navy, (according to military records in Linda Brown's possession) was assigned to the hydraulic and turbine division of the PNY and Phil Abelson, physicist from the Carnegie Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism[, in Washington DC, was solicited to developed the concentric tube design the Navy would use for thermal diffusion of plutonium isotopes.

The Navy's program was up and running months before the Manhattan Engineering Project, but Vannevar Bush, head of the office of Scientific Research and Development, was mightily peeved at Admiral Bowen, and froze the Navy out of that project. As Gunn would say later, the NRL "had the hose turned on them."

This kerfluffle occurred in the June-Sept. 1942 timeframe, right before Townsend resigned "for the good of the Navy and to avoid court-martial."

Records show that in June, Brown was ordered to transfer "his equipment," whatever that may have been, from Philadelphia to the Navy, but there are no records of this being done. It is possible that Brown choose to resign. rather than obey that directive or disobey it and risk court-martial

(of course, it is also possible that he would have known that construction of the Wonderland facility was underway, and therefore expected to be swept away by the "deeper draft vessel", but that is a subject for another post and another day.)

Sources:
Wikipedia
Ross Gunn (May 12, 1897 – October 15, 1966) was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. The New York Times described him as "one of the true fathers of the nuclear submarine program".

From 1927 to 1947, Gunn worked at the Naval Research Laboratory. He was the author of over 28 papers, and received 45 patents. He designed radio devices for controlling aircraft, which were used in the development of the first drones. He was one of the first to appreciate the possibility of using nuclear power for submarine propulsion. During World War II he was involved in the development of thermal diffusion technology for isotope separation.

After the war Gunn became director of the Weather Bureau's Physical Research Division, where he carried out a series of studies into atmospheric phenomena.
International Journal of Naval History Volume 2 Number 1 April 2003.“We had the hose turned on us!”Ross Gunn and The Naval Research Laboratory’s Early Research into Nuclear Propulsion, 1939 – 1946. Joseph – James Ahern
https://www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/u ... _apr03.pdf
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Jan Lundquist
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Re: Meet the Young Gunn

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Does this photo remind you of someone else?
young Ross Gunn.png
Ross with his homemade wireless in 1911, at the age of 14.

What a contrast with full studio set up that 19 year old Townsend had at his fingertips.

Sure, technology advances, but...

https://www.ttbrown.com/thomas-townsend ... ho-was-he/

Ross was born into to a-respected family of some influence in Oberlin, OH, and most unusually for the time, Ross's mom Lora Conner Gunn had attended two years of college before marriage. But I suppose a small town doctor like Gunn, Sr, with six children to raise, cannot compete with a wealthy industrialist indulging his only son.


The Monthly Weather Review December 1967 F.ROSS GUNN-THE SCIENTIST AND THE INDIVIDUAL F. W. Reichelderfer 81 5
Washington, D.C.
[url]file:///Users/Admin/Downloads/mwre-1520-0493_1967_095_0815_rgtsat_2_3_co_2-1.pdf[/url]
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