The tests began an hour after sunset and lasted until an hour before sunrise. Then Sea Shadow was docked inside the barge and tugged back to Long Beach. But the long, strenuous months of testing confirmed most of our original stealth predictions. One of the biggest problems we had to overcome was our own extreme invisibility! The ocean waves showed up on radar like a string of tracer bullets. And if the ship was totally invisible, it looked like a blank spot—like a hole in the doughnut—that was a dead giveaway. In the stealth business, you tried like the devil not to be quieter than the
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