Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 264
Final
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 264 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 265
H E R M A N E. S H E E T S
1908 – 2006
Elected in 1967
“For ship and submarine design.”
BY STEVE LEVINSON
SUBMITTED BY THE NAE HOME SECRETARY
H ERMAN ERNST SHEETS, emeritus professor and chairman
of the Department of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode
Island, died April 22, 2006, surrounded by his family at his
home in Groton, Connecticut. He was 97 years old. Sheets had
long, distinguished careers as an inventor, engineer, manager,
university professor, department chair, and consultant to
industry and government.
Born in Dresden, in the Kingdom of Saxony, on December
24, 1908, Sheets (birth name Chitz) was educated in Germany
and Czechoslovakia; he earned his Diplom-Ingenieur in
mechanical engineering from Technical University in Dresden,
highest in his class of 1934. He then graduated in 1936 from
Charles University-Technical University, in Prague, with a
Doctor of Technical Sciences degree in applied mechanics and
the award for excellence. He began his career designing fans,
pumps, and steam turbines for Erste Bruenner Maschinen Fabrik
in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
Although he was baptized a German Lutheran, Sheets’
Jewish descent forced his departure from Czechoslovakia in
1939 just ahead of the German army. He emigrated to the United
States, sponsored by maternal relatives in this country. He then
obtained and sent visas to his parents in 1940, but it was too
late for them to escape. Years later he learned that they had
been deported from Dresden to Riga where they perished.
265
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 265 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 266
266 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Offered a position at MIT, the entrepreneurial Sheets decided
instead to join a small Midwestern engineering firm, Chamberlin
Research Corporation. In 1942, when the company began
manufacturing washing machines for the U.S. Army, Sheets,
by then a U.S. citizen, joined the St. Paul Engineering Company
where he developed hydraulic machinery and valves, including
valves for the Manhattan Project. In 1944, the Manhattan Project
transferred him to the Elliott Company in Jeannette,
Pennsylvania, where he worked on the development of pumps
(for the fluids for which he had designed and built valves at St.
Paul Engineering) and compressors (including the first
supersonic compressor). The Manhattan District Project
awarded him a citation in 1945 for his work on gaseous
diffusion.
Sheets left Elliott in 1946 for Goodyear Aircraft Company,
where he engineered rockets, until Booz-Allen recruited him
for General Dynamics in 1952 as chief scientist-engineer for the
new nuclear submarine program at its subsidiary, Electric Boat
(EB) Company. There he created and led a state-of-the-art
laboratory for which he recruited a staff of scientists and
engineers, including Dr. Yost Van Woerkom, Dr. Lester Chen,
Dr. Bjorn Lund, Allan Anderson, Kurt Lawrence, and Agnes
Summers, the first woman engineer at EB. He continued to tap
the talents and resources of men with whom he had worked at
St. Paul Engineering (Ralph Jones and Evan Johnson), Elliott
(Dr. Andrew Vazsonji and Dr. Judson Swearingen), and James
G. Wenzel, Lockheed Marine Systems Group.
Under Sheets’ direction, EB launched the Nautilus in 1954
and the Sea Wolf in 1955. In 1959, the Nautilus made a historic
undersea voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the North
Pole. In 1960, the Triton circumnavigated the globe submerged
for 84 days. In 1962, EB completed the first Polaris submarine—
the George Washington—with a missile-firing range of 1,200
miles and a capacity of 16 nuclear-tipped missiles. In 1969, EB
launched the Narwhal, a submarine that used a natural
convection reactor, which eliminated noisy pumps and made
it the quietest and stealthiest vessel in the fleet.
Dr. Edward H. Heinemann, an aeronautical engineer and
vice president of engineering at General Dynamics Corporation,
Final
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 266 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 267
267
HERMAN E. SHEETS
a leading influence on Sheets and a prominent supporter,
nominated him to the National Academy of Engineering in
1967.
At Erste Bruenner in Brno, Czechoslovakia, Sheets had
invented and patented the slotted-blade fan, and the Czech
company had generously given Sheets the world rights to the
patent. Because of its quiet operation, the fan (also known as
the vane-axial fan) eventually found its way into U.S. Navy
submarines. Sheets continued to improve upon the original
design at EB and in retirement; he obtained new patents as late
as 1988 and 1991. Probably one of the least known weapons of
the cold war, fans are crucial for air circulation in the confined
space of an underwater craft. The new cylindrical device was
much quieter than the earlier fan, and on U.S. submarines,
where stealth was considered more important than speed or
the ability to dive deep, quietness was next to godliness.
Another variant of Sheets’ invention was a fan that operated
at 24,000 revolutions per minute in the very tight confines of a
jet fighter. However, in actual operation, the fan encountered
some serious problems. First, it generated a lot of noise, although
this was tolerable in a jet fighter. However, it also had a short
operating life, and when it failed, it failed abruptly putting the
aircraft and pilot at extreme risk.
The pilot had to be alerted that the bearings were about to
fail far enough in advance to land the plane safely and have a
new fan installed. Sheets discovered that about two hours before
the bearings failed, an electric current imposed across the
lubricant film underwent a change that could be measured.
Thus, by maintaining an electric current, the pilot had a two-
hour warning that the fan would fail, enough time to reduce
the fan requirements and/or land the plane.
With the specific goal of keeping EB profitable and its
engineers and skilled workers employed and loyal between
submarine contracts, Sheets set to work developing and selling
EB specialties, including vane-axial fans for electronic package
cooling and for use in marine and commercial heating and
ventilating systems and electronic spot-cooling fans; ball valves
and actuators (low- and high-pressure ball valves and a three-
position hydraulic-valve actuator); vibration-measuring
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 267 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 268
268 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
equipment (a vibra-force analyzer, an automatic 1/3-octave
band analyzer, and a dynamic vibration absorber); and
industrial control systems for hot- and cold-strip steel mills.
Also under Sheets’ direction, EB produced systems designed
to control the tilt of radio telescopes and systems to regulate
the air velocity in supersonic wind tunnels, as well as
controllable-pitch propellers for tugs and fishing boats and a
hovercraft. In addition, Sheets came across a patentable welding
process invented by two EB welders; he obtained a patent for
them and arranged for the royalties to be paid to them.
Other notable projects were the all-aluminum Aluminaut,
financed by the Reynolds Company, and a series of small one-
and two-man submersibles for commercial exploration and
research (the Asherah and Star 1,2, and 3), funded by General
Dynamics. The latter led to the Navy-financed NR-1 nuclear-
powered research submarine. Sheets’ lab was directly involved
in two projects, AUTEC (Atlantic undersea test and evaluation
center) and the NR-1. AUTEC was a pair of deep-diving, two-
man, battery-powered submersibles that were larger and more
sophisticated versions of the Star vessels. NR-1 was ostensibly
an oceanographic research vessel, but it could also be used for
other purposes. However, Sheets’ main interests were in
furthering oceanographic research and diversifying EB’s
products and interests.
Immediately after his retirement from EB, Sheets joined the
Board of Technical Audit Associates, founded by Frank Jewett,
Jr., and also began consulting for General Electric Corporation
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Lynn, Massachusetts, on the testing,
development, and installation of gas turbines in ships LM2500,
LM1500 and LM5000. He was also offered full professorships
by MIT, the University of Texas, and the University of Rhode
Island (URI), which was closer to home. He attributed these
offers to his membership in NAE. With three children still in
local schools, Sheets decided to accept the offer from URI. Just
a few months later, in 1970, his wife Norma died. Sheets was
department chairman at URI until his mandatory retirement at
70 in 1979.
Final
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 268 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 269
269
HERMAN E. SHEETS
Sheets’ first major project at URI was the construction of a
building to house the recently created Department of Ocean
Engineering; the building, on the Naragansett Bay Campus,
included a tow tank. He was particularly proud of having
completed the task without asking for money from the
university or the Rhode Island legislature. Years later, under
the leadership of then chairman Dr. Malcolm Spaulding, the
university refurbished the building and named it after Sheets.
Spaulding credits Sheets’ managerial skills for the success of
the country’s first ocean engineering department.
After his second retirement in 1979, Sheets became principal
scientist for Analysis and Technology, Inc., in Stonington,
Connecticut. The next year he met Paulann H. Caplovitz, an
assistant attorney general of New York, who had retained him
as a consultant to evaluate the apparently negligent disabling
of the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant on the Hudson River.
Sheets married her two years later and brought her and her two
young children, Abigail and Gideon, from New York to Groton.
By then, Sheets’ six children were grown, educated, and
launched. Sheets concentrated all his energy and devotion on
work and his family. He confided to his second wife that his
greatest satisfaction was when his children, grandchildren, and
stepchildren returned home for visits.
After leaving Analysis and Technology in 1984, Sheets
worked for a number of specialized marine-related or fan
companies in the area, including Ship Analytics, Sonalysts,
Epoch Engineering, General Systems Solutions, Inc., and EGG-
Rotron Corporation. He retired a third time in 1994 at the age
of 84 to focus on projects that occupied him until shortly before
his death in 2006. These projects included the application of
cold war/space age technologies to commercial products, such
as ultrasonic washers and microwave dryers; an “underwater
(cylindrical) sail” (based on Flettner’s concept) for yachts and
submarines; and residential wind turbines. He read his last
professional paper in 2003 to the Society of Naval Architects
and Marine Engineers, when he also filed his provisional and
last patent application for his underwater sail.
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 269 3/23/10 3:42:36 PM
OCR for page 270
270 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Sheets was a tireless contributor to professional societies—
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American
Association of the Advancement of Science, American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Society of Naval Architects
and Marine Engineers, American Society of Naval Architects
and Marine Engineers, Marine Technology Society, and Pi Tau
Sigma. He also served on committees and boards for the
Department of the Navy, NAVSHIPS Shipbuilding Industry
Advisory Committee, 1963–1968; the Secretary of the Navy’s
Oceanographic Committee, 1968–1977; the NAE Committee on
Ocean Engineering, 1966–1968 and Marine Board 1968–1976;
the National Research Council Maritime Research Board, Ship
Design, Response, and Load Criteria Advisory Group, 1976–
1979; and National Research Council Maritime Transportation
Research Board, Ship Research Committee, 1979–1982; the
Congress of the United States Office of Technology Assessment,
Consultant on Renewable Ocean Energy Sources, 1977–1978
and on Ocean Thermal Energy, 1980; and U.S. Department of
Energy, Ocean Systems Branch, 1979–1982. In addition to his
26 patents, Sheets authored or co-authored 45 professional
papers and seven books.
Sheets combined Old World manners and American
informality in a charming way. A reserved but kind man with
a droll sense of humor, he could be coaxed into telling stories
from his working life that had the shape of little dramas
accented with touches of the ridiculous. He began each day be
reading the comics, especially his favorite, “Snoopy.” Winner
of the all-Saxony decathlon competition in 1929, Sheets remained
physically active all his life; despite two hip replacements, he
swam weekly until a month before he died.
Sheets is survived by his wife, Paulann H. Sheets, Esq., six
children, Lawrence E. Sheets, St. Paul, Minnesota; Michael R.
Sheets, Poughkeepsie, New York; Arne H. Sheets, Novato,
California; Diana E. Sheets, Ph.D., Champaign, Illinois; Elizabeth
J. Sheets, Los Angeles, California; Karn Sheets Ryken,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts; and two stepchildren, Abigail P.
Caplovitz, Esq., Shelter Island, New York; and Gideon P.
Caplovitz, Enfield, New Hampshire; and seven
grandchildren.
Final
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 270 3/23/10 3:42:37 PM
OCR for page 271
Final
Final Tribute Vol 13.indd 271 3/23/10 3:42:37 PM
