Space Forum / Space History / July 2005

What did Robert A. Heinlein do with pressure suits in World War II?

With whom did he work at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and what contribution
did the group make to high-altitude suit development?  I can't find a good
on-line source about any such Navy work during the war, and I suspect my
books won't help much.

Heinlein himself said little directly about his war work, and even then was
vague.  Was it classified, or was he merely close-mouthed?  If it was
classified, is it *still* classified?

In his science fiction, and in his nonfiction writing, he often discussed
the problems of engineering a good space suit design, as for example in the
novel *Have Space Suit, Will Travel*.  What was his real-life experience
with these matters?

Bill Patterson, a scholar of Heinlein's work, writes at
<http://members.aol.com/agplusone/robert_a._heinlein_a_biogr.htm>:

"He and Leslyn found a house in Lansdowne, a suburb of Philadelphia, and
Heinlein went to work on what he described as 'the necessary tedium of
aviation engineering.' Although he was trained as a 'mechanical engineer
specializing in linkages,' his slight experience with aircraft on the U.S.S.
Lexington targeted him toward the Navy's aircraft program at a time when
aeronautical engineering was separating off into a specialized discipline.

"Several of his friends have noted that he was so conscientiously
close-mouthed that they never actually knew what kind of projects he was
working on, but his one surviving piece of technical writing from the period
(1944) is a report on developing plastics for aircraft canopies. He later
spoke of helping to develop the high-altitude suit, the progenitor of
today's space suits, using paradigms created by Edmond Hamilton for his
1930's space operas, and engineering details of the suit appear extensively
in Heinlein's post-war fiction. He has also spoken of running a small brain
trust out of his apartment after he and Leslyn moved from Lansdowne to
downtown Philadelphia. As well as engineering, a supervisor at the Lab
noted, he also served as 'a sort of personnel man for the Laboratory.' He
persuaded Scoles to call up Isaac Asimov -- 'practically kidnaped' is the
way he puts it -- who was doing graduate work in biochemistry at Columbia
University. He also functioned as 'a kind of one-man grievance committee.'
Heinlein was particularly adept at defusing conflicts between Naval and
civilian personnel, whose ages, experience level, and Naval rank were not
always well matched or even compatible. He was remembered as a constant
stabilizing influence amid the chaos."

Fellow science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp writes at
<http://www.lspraguedecamp.com/works/work.asp?id=177>:

"After Pearl Harbor, early in 1942, I joined the Navy as a reserve officer.
Bob Heinlein had an Annapolis classmate, Cdr..A.B.Scoles with whom he had
kept up. Scoles had been appointed director of the Materials Laboratory of
the Naval Air Material Center at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Scoles wanted
to lure to his unit a few Science fiction authors with technical
back-grounds, to see what they could do. After I finished my basic training
I joined the lab. Heinlein came to the Yard as a civilian engineer, and
Isaac Asimov came as a chemist. Heinlein was a Regular Navy officer, retired
for medical reasons. It must have irked him to see me, green to Navy ways,
running around with pretty gold stripes on my sleeve. But he was a good
sport about it, and his advice more than once saved me from making a bigger
a.s of myself than I other-wise might have.

"For three and a half years, I navigated a desk and fought the war with a
flashing slide rule. Working in the Cold Room at temperatures even colder
than an Adirondack winter, I wore the kind of high-altitude flying suit that
fore-shadowed today's space suits. I'm sure the war would not have ended a
second sooner or later if Lt. Cdr. de Camp hadn't been there. But, at least,
I went in under my own power (though draft-proof for age and dependents) and
tried to do as I was ordered.

"Heinlein, Asimov, and I were not a committee of mad scientists inventing
secret weapons. We were assigned to different sections, such as running
tests on hydraulic valves for naval aircraft. Being close personal friends,
we got together almost every weekend, when we could spare the rationed
gasoline. As soon as the war ended, Heinlein and I went back to writing,
while Asimov was drafted into the Army and made sharpshooter and corporal by
the end of his service."

Fishing around for information about pressure suits and the U.S. Navy, I see
1930s suits for stratospheric ballooning, and 1950s suits for the Jet Age--
one USN design was adapted into the Project Mercury suit.  But I don't find
much about the war years.

A brief account at <http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/tailor_stars.html>
mentions that Russell Colley, the Goodyear engineer who developed Wiley
Post's suit, also developed Navy suits in the 1940s, and an article at
<http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventions/a/spacesuits.htm> suggests
that he went on to develop the Mercury suit.

Was Colley at Philadelphia during WWII? Did de Camp and Heinlein work with
Colley?

Douglas S. Crompton has a history site for the base at
<http://www.crompton.com/wa3dsp/k3nal/nawcdocs.html>, and according to his
chronology:

"July 14, 1943 --The Secretary issued a General Order forming the Naval Air
Material Center, consisting of the separate commands of the Naval Aircraft
Factory, the Naval Aircraft Modification Unit, the Naval Air Experimental
Station and the Naval Auxiliary Air Station. This action, effective 20 July,
consolidated in distinct activities the production, modification,
experimental, and air station facilities of the former Naval Aircraft
Factory organization.

"November 30, 1943 --A department of Aviation Medicine and Physiological
Research was authorized at the Naval Air Material Center, to study
physiological factors particularly as related to design of high speed and
high altitude aircraft."

Sounds promising.  I can't connect Colley with NAMC, though, nor can I
connect him (or other collaborators) with de Camp and Heinlein.
Can anyone add more?