Meanwhile, the Communications Security Section of the Naval Research Laboratory was in need of a purpose in which to direct their efforts now that the war was over. Their wartime experience with missiles, communications, and television were perfect prerequisites to enable them to instrument and launch rockets to explore the upper atmosphere. This would present them with an engineering challenge (to instrument and launch rockets), as well as a scientific opportunity (to explore the upper atmosphere) that could also be adapted to military applications (missiles). The NRL decided to do rocket soundings instead of satellite research because the development required for satellites would be much more costly and time consuming.
In order to put all of these ideas together, an organizational meeting was held at Princeton University on February 27, 1946 for what was to become the V-2 Rocket Research Panel. The original members of the panel were:
E.H. Krause (chairman) Naval Research Laboratory
G.K. Megerian (secretary) General Electric Co.
(GE was a contractor of the Army Ordnance Dept)
W.G. Dow, University of Michigan
M. J. E. Golay, U.S. Army Signal Corps
C.F. Green, General Electric
K.H. Kingdon, General Electric Co.
M.H. Nichols, Princeton University
J.A. VanAllen, Applied
Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University
F. L. Whipple, Harvard University
The panel met monthly. It had no formal
charter and no ãparent organization.ä This allowed it to keep within
its own judgment regarding everything it undertook. The first task
at hand was the allocation of V-2âs to various research groups. The
Naval Research Laboratory provided groups with new nose sections for the
rockets to carry instrumentation, which were originally designed for warheads.
The NRL also furnished telemetering equipment and erected stations at White
Sands for receiving and recording signals and data.
