James Fitzgerald; Pioneered Military’s Use of Dolphins
Washington Post
James Fitzgerald, 88, an engineer and physicist whose work in sound propagation led to early Navy and Central Intelligence Agency experiments with dolphins, died of cancer Jan. 16 at Camelot nursing center in New London, Conn.
A former resident of Shady Side, Bethesda and Annapolis, he had lived in New London since 1982.
At a cocktail party in Annapolis in 1964, Mr. Fitzgerald casually mentioned to a Navy admiral that dolphins, mammals that rely on natural sonar for hearing and navigation, might prove useful in warfare. The admiral introduced him to a CIA acquaintance who was a specialist in underwater combat.
As Mr. Fitzgerald’s wife recalled, the CIA sent him to Key West, Fla., where he set up a small classified laboratory. His assignment was to study whether dolphin hydrodynamics could be applied to the design of submarines, torpedoes and missiles and whether the animals could be trained to perform missions.
Working with a half-dozen dolphins, he and his associates learned rather quickly that the sleek, intelligent animals could indeed be used to seek out underwater mines, attach explosives and eavesdropping devices on enemy ships and help divers recover lost weapons from the ocean floor.
Mr. Fitzgerald, who gave his dolphins names and often swam with them, communicated with the animals through Morse code-like signals. He discovered that the older dolphins were somehow able to transmit their training to younger ones.
The Navy put dolphins to work. In 1965, a bottlenose dolphin named Tuffy became the Navy’s first sea mammal to complete an open-ocean military exercise, delivering tools and mail to aquanauts 200 feet below the surface of the Sealab II project off the coast of La Jolla, Calif.
Navy Dolphins (Animals With Jobs)
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