LAMPLIGHT DECLASSIFIED: The Naval Career of Captain Gould Hunter

This is the biography of a naval officer whose entire career, spanning two decades, was directed at countering the great threat of the mid-twentieth a Soviet bomber attack against North America coming across the North Pole. Captain Gould Hunter led a classified study group at the Office of Naval Research to find the technologies, equipment, and strategies to best meet that challenge. That study was code-named Project Lamplight.Captain Hunter’s naval odyssey began with his graduation in 1936 from the United States Naval Academy and progressed through the pre-World War II years serving aboard the Navy’s heavy ships. He repeatedly requested to go to the Navy’s post-graduate school to study radio engineering, but that goal was not realized until 1942. Upon completion of that course in 1944, he was sent to the Pacific, where he served as Chief of Staff to an admiral during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October of that year. Still with the goal of developing naval electronic devices after the war, he went to the Office of Naval Research in Washington, DC, developing anti-radiation devices for electronic equipment. Based on his known expertise in radars, he was appointed Project Manager for Project Lamplight in 1954.His story spans the twenty years from 1936 to his retirement in 1956. In between, he had many challenges and many successes. He was known for his kindness, his sense of humor, and his professional competence, as well as the respect given him by juniors and seniors alike. His is a story not to be missed.