Pool, Carl (Roger Bilstein's summary)

Pool, Carl (Roger Bilstein's summary)

Roger Bilstein discusses his interview with Carl Pool and the barges that carried various stages of Saturn.

University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama

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Bilstein, Roger E.

Pool, Carl (Roger Bilstein's summary)

[00:00:00] Roger Bilstein: Part of the larger story of the logistics problem involved the use of barges not only on the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, but also through the Gulf of Mexico, Panama Canal, and up on the Pacific side of California. And to get that story, Carl DeNeen suggested that we talk to the head of the NASA fleet, as he called it, a man named Carl Pool.

[00:00:37] And Mr. Pool turned out to be an intriguing character. DeNeen described him as an old Navy boatswain, and Mr. Pool certainly had the look of an old Navy hand. He had a gorgeous tattoo, a very large tattoo on his forearm. He had also an appropriate [bay window?]. Not to denigrate him in any way, but just a very interesting character, [cut a?] very interesting figure.

[00:01:08] So we picked up Pool at the headquarters area, and John Beltz was along. We drove his car down to the docks on the Tennessee River, where the three barges then in port were tied up. Pool was going to use the government car. Although his own car was out there, he wanted to use the government car. He was having trouble getting a hold of the keys, so John volunteered to take his own car, use his own gas. Mr. Pool obligingly agreed.

[00:01:41] On the way down to the docks, Pool made some comments about the barges used in the Saturn program. They were the YFNB class, developed during the Second World War as floating supply repair maintenance areas or bases in forward areas in the Pacific. They were self-contained. They were not self-propelled, but they were self-contained. They had their own power supply, complete galley, very large work areas, and storage areas, keeping supplies, making these repairs to keep the fleet going in support of the military effort in World War II.

[00:02:31] The three barges are tied up at the end of a very large, broad highway that runs all the way through the Marshall Space Flight Center complex, through some of the Army test areas, down to the dock side. The road was built especially to carry the various Saturn stages, the test assembly areas when they were manufactured at Marshall, down to the docks were loading aboard the barges, where they were carried either to Cape Kennedy or, in some instances, to the Mississippi Test Facility for further testing. The three barges in port at the time, as we faced them, on our left was the Palaemon, and the center was the Orion—the largest of the three barges—and on the right—as we looked at them—was the barge Promise.

[00:03:26] These barges—as I understood it, as Carl Pool, talked to us—each carried, normally, about a twelve-man contingent. There was a five-man marine crew to see about the handling and running of the barge itself. There was a six-man stage crew who were aboard to make sure that the stages arrived and were cared for properly en route to their destination. There was one government observer. As I understood it, the government observer was there as the final arbiter to make decisions when decisions were necessary, perhaps if the marine group disagreed with the stage crew and also just as an observer.

[00:04:12] For loading the barges, there were two different methods. For the Palaemon and the Promise, the procedure was to ballast the barge so that it sank down the water to a point where its edge was about eight inches above the lip or the edge of the dock. Then a sort of plank or platform was installed from the dock to the edge of the barge, and as the stage was rolled on, the weight of the stage itself would help bring the barge down to the level of the dock for easy loading. This was done with the Palaemon and the Promise, which carried the first S-Is and the first S-IB stages. The Orion was constructed especially to carry the S-IC stages, and in the case of the Orion, the edge of the barge was kind of stepped. It butted right into the edge of the dock, and there rested very firmly on a little ledge that was stepped into the dock, using approximately 500 tons of balance to snug the barge in.

[00:05:36] We first went aboard the Promise, and one of the things that struck me immediately, and which Pool pointed out to us, were the reinforcement strips or aprons that ran up the length of the deck, one on each side. These were to take the weight of the tires of the transporter, as the whole thing with the loaded stage was rolled aboard. It was interesting to see then that this was a necessary step to take to beef up the basic structure of the barge.

[00:06:06] There were a series of tie downs at each wheel, what he called an eight point tie down system. By each wheel were two points, and then the thing was secured at the top and down on the other side at two other points. So by each wheel there were two tie down points making a total of eight in all.

00:06:30] The barge was equipped with dehumidifiers—two on the port side, two on the starboard. There was considerable room beneath the deck in the original ship for storage. The original YFNB was about twenty-four feet in depth, two separate decks then, twelve feet each. To carry the stages they used the lower deck, there were still twelve feet below the lower deck, twelve feet then to the gunnels. But then of course a huge over structure had been prepared to take the stages of the rolled board.

[00:07:17] The NASA organization kept the barges as completely self-sufficient transportation vehicles. Each barge had a power plant to run its air conditioning, provide power for light, provide power for the water system, plumbing system, machine shop, kitchen, general electronic gear needed to keep the barge in running order.

[00:07:47] The Promise in particular was a floating repair ship for the Navy after World War II, based in Florida. It came into the NASA fleet as a result of the collapse of a lock in a dam in the Tennessee River. One of the stages was on its way down at the time, and the lock had collapsed stranding the barge and its cargo upstream. So another barge was brought up to meet it, known as the Compromise. The stage was unloaded, the special road had to be built around the damaged lock, it was reloaded aboard the Compromise, and the voyage continued. Later on, it was found that the Compromise was not really an appropriate name for NASA and so the C-O-M was dropped and the Compromise simply became the barge Promise.

[00:08:46] The various YFNB barges acquired by NASA were largely in the Navy's “Mothball” fleet. The Promise in particular was a good example of its emergency requisition. There was very much a look of the carpenter about it, much rougher in feeling. Going aboard a barge or a seagoing vessel, one would expect to see more metal bulkheads, metal equipment, welding, things of this type, riveting. But the Promise definitely had a kind of almost a shack-like atmosphere about it. It was obvious that people who had inverted its various areas into bunk areas, crew areas had simply gone in and put up plywood partitions in the easiest manner, easiest load possible. It was livable, there wasn't anything particularly wrong with it. It just had this definitely rougher look about it.

[00:09:49] One of the structures in one of the large work areas that we saw had been originally used as a radio repair shack, kind of inside the barge. The exterior of this room appeared to be just regular housing siding, the kind of thing you'd find on a normal ordinary home. The effect I must say was rather incongruous. The air conditioning unit was just hung from the ceiling at that time, it was leaking very badly, and there was a jerry-rigged catch on the runoff. It just had a very rough, different, compromised look about it.

[00:10:34] In the early days of the barge operations, according to Pool, a lot of top management kind of liked the idea of riding along. It was sort of novel, especially the voyage down the California coast to Panama Canal and the Gulf. Karl Heimberg, he said, was the one who made the trip a couple of times. Vandersee was another. There were slightly larger bunk areas then for the VIPs from NASA who might have wanted to make a barge trip.

[00:11:05] We passed into the galley area, which was a very interesting thing. Again, it had a kind of rough look about it, a compromised look. Confirming my stereotypes about Navy galleys, there were a couple of very luscious, girly calendars hanging on the walls. The galley was fairly well equipped with large stoves, fairly large refrigerators, and of course, the usual complement, table chairs, things of this type.

[00:11:41] The power for the Promise was a Caterpillar diesel engine, AC, 60 kilowatts. Nearby was a repair room, a lathe, welding equipment, drill press, what appeared to be at one time a rather complete tool area, again fulfilling this self-standing, self-contained philosophy. There was enough tools and machinery on board ships to make emergency repairs, keep underway, do whatever was necessary.

[00:12:20] We left the Promise and then went aboard the Orion. The difference really was quite obvious. On the Promise, the outside where the huge bulbous over structure had been added. On the outside of the vessel it was necessary to add metal V-shaped supports and metal supports on the sides. The bulbous structure overhung the original gunnels by about maybe three or four feet. There were metal supports then that went down to other parts of the original structure. It had the look of an American gunboat, the kind that you used to see on the Yangtze back in the 20s and 30s, kind of like a large canopy, canvas canopy aboard the thing.

[00:13:11] The Orion was very much different, it was much slicker. As Poole pointed out to us, it had been taken into a Navy yard and constructed and engineered from the very beginning as a barge to carry a large S-IC stage. In getting the S-IC aboard the Orion, the crew made use of turnbuckles to sort of winch the thing in. Then it was secured, and there were guidelines painted on the deck of the barge. It had to be aligned rather exactly, because once it was aboard it was snugged up to an A-frame, very large, which it would have to be to accommodate the S-IC. The A-frame point, of course, was the center of the stage, and used not only to take the S-IC, but the S-II stage. There was a handling ring built into the S-II and S-IC stages attached to the A-frame. The A-frame took the entire weight, so that literally if the ship moved side to side, the stage would stay in one point. The barge literally moved around the stationary stage as it was affixed to the A-frame.

[00:14:37] The equipment on the Orion included not only the dehumidifying equipment, but nitrogen port and starboard to keep pressure on the interior tanks of the S-IC and S-II stages to keep them from collapsing. When the Orion was built, the Coast Guard was on the spot in the shipyard. Although one got the impression from Pool that the barges were not entirely up to, say, Coast Guard or maritime regulations. They were enough to do the job, but maybe they weren't quite as up to snuff as they might have been.

[00:15:19] We went up into the pilot house of the Orion, and Pool emphasized, as did Carl DeNeen, the role of the Mechling Barge Lines, Incorporated. M-E-C-H-L-I-N-G. Mechling Barge Lines, Incorporated based in Juliet, Illinois. As we understood it, the Mechling Barge Lines were unique in the fact that they had seaway rights to go from one river into the next, into the Gulf of Mexico, into the Pacific Ocean, into the various inland channels. Apparently other barge lines don't have the right to go into all these things. The cargo has to be transferred or even offloaded from one barge line to the next. The Mechling Line's seaway rights from port to port made it an extremely valuable asset to NASA and accounts for a large amount of business that the Mechling Barge Lines got. They made considerable use of the tugboat Carl Fuqua, F-U-Q-U-A. Fuqua is what it's sometimes called. The Fuqua was remotely equipped. In ordinary operation, the barge pushed, excuse me, the tug pushed the barge from behind. In the case of the Promise and the Palaemon, control took place then from the pilot house to the tug. But in the case of the Orion, control took place from the pilot house of the barge itself.

[00:17:05] Some of the barge captains had to relearn the different kind of control that they experienced in this kind of thing. The power was supplied by the tug in the rear. Control took place forward. In case something did happen, there was an automatic remote control that switched back to the tug's pilot house so that it could be done from either place. When the captain and the barge and tug were underway, the crew or captain, whoever was doing the piloting, would do a six hour stint and six hours off, the tug captain and the pilot then alternating. The pilot house of the Orion, of course, included a full array of various electronic communications here since it was in all respects the command post whenever the barge and tug was underway. It was a loaded cargo.

[00:18:020] A few random bits of information. When the locks collapsed with the dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority had the responsibility to build the roads around the locks. It was done fairly rapidly because the NASA program, or the Saturn program at this time, had a national priority rating because the roads got built fairly fast. It not only served NASA, however, it also served the Atomic Energy Commission, which also used the Tennessee River with large and sometimes bulky and highly valuable cargoes.

[00:18:40] Typically, the tug boats would push barges and cargoes in river areas and at sea they would be towed. But in much of the seaborne operations of NASA, the ship used was the Point Barrel. The Point Barrel was an AKD, a Navy designation ship. It was originally used in the Navy as a dry dock ship. The aft part of the ship then was a rather hollow thing designed to be used as a dry dock in forward areas. The Point Barrel actually served five years in Arctic duty. It could stay frozen in the ice for long periods of time. It's a cargo area, if you want to call it that, it provided easy access, and it was fairly uncluttered for the stowage of materials and supplies for the Arctic party. The Point Barrel is now in Brooklyn in the Navy's reserve fleet, and although the Navy is responsible for its maintenance, the bill for it is still paid by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

[00:19:57] Whenever NASA got ready for a mission using the barges and tugs, they acquired their crews from the Mechling Company. As I recall there was an annual contract signed with the Mechling Company for the first time for it to supply the required crew whatever NASA demanded it. Usually NASA had to give about a two weeks notice to get a crew from Illinois down, get them aboard the barge, get the thing ship shape, and have also then signed a tug, and a crew for the tug to handle the necessary work.

[00:20:44] And this is the conclusion of the tape concerning the logistics interview with Carl Pool.

0:20:45