UNITED STATES ARMr IN WORLD WAR II 

The Technical Services 

THE SIGNAL CORPS: 

THE EMERGENCY 

(To December 194 1) 

by 

Dulany Terrett 

CENTER OF MlUTARY HISTORY 

UNITED STATES ARMY 

WASHINGTON, D.C., / 994 





Foreword

The more mobile an armed force becomes, the more rugged the terrain it

encounters, or the more widely the force is deployed, the greater becomes the

difficulty of securing and maintaining rapid, completely linked communications.

In the U.S. Army the Signal Corps is the agency charged with developing,

procuring, and furnishing signal equipment to overcome the difficulties mentioned above. In an age of swift and startling progress in electronics, this phase

of its mission demands that it keep abreast of scientific advances at home and

abroad and maintain close ties with civilian laboratories and industry in order

to take advantage of their capabilities.

This volume traces the course which the Signal Corps followed between the

first and second world wars, a period of planning and preparation. Others to

follow will recount the testing of the Corps' organization and equipment, and

the results achieved at home and overseas. The author has dealt with the subject on a chronological basis, instead of following the topical treatment used in

other technical service volumes. This broad-front approach has enabled him to

weave into one pattern the many activities in which the Signal Corps was simultaneously engaged. The reader can here follow from birth the history of Army

radar and mobile radio, the first steps taken in the conversion of the civilian

communications industry to war production, the expansion of training facilities,

and the beginnings of the far-flung communications network that eventually

encircled the globe. He will see the uncertainties of planning and the difficulties

of organization incident to rapidly changing conditions, meager appropriations,

and the clash of interest within the military household. These and many other

matters showing human beings and institutions under pressure are replete with

significance to us who must live in a turbulent world where revolution tends to

have the upper hand over evolution.

ORLANDO WARD

Maj. Gen., U.S.A. Chief of Military HistoryWashington, D. C. 30 January 1953

vii
The Author

Dr. Dulany Terrett was born and reared in Montana and at present lives in

Washington, D. C. He holds a Ph.B. in English from the University of Chicago

and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University, where he served on the

faculty from 1936 to 1942.

During World War II he was an Air Corps officer with the Flying Training

Command and the Air Transport Command. In the latter capacity, he wrote

the history of the Air Transport Command in Brazil and Ascension Island.

Upon his discharge in 1946, he became the Signal Corps chief historian,

first in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer and then in the Office of the Chief

of Military History. In 1952 he resigned in order to become a consultant.

viii
Preface

The prefacing of his book long after he has written it does not ordinarily

come a writer's way. If the present volume be a case in point, history is one

form which permits it. At least to the extent that it has happened, history is

unchangeable; and to the extent that it is unchangeable it will stand and wait

for the attention of those who sooner or later come to it, or of those who, like the

present author, return to it after having drawn apart from its details.

This view seems justified in retrospect as well, it appears to me. The history

of the realizations, disappointments, mistakes, and successes of the United

States Army Signal Corps before and during the war which ended in 1945 was

itself undertaken entirely after that period had passed into history, and was

planned and written with an eye to chronological and panoramic structure. It

was in an effort to capture perspective and proportion, those qualities of necessary removal from the subject which every writer closely attached to his subject

will despair of along with me, that I decided to devote the first volume of a

history of the Signal Corps in World War II to a period beginning a number of

years earlier. The massive gift which the Infantry makes to the national interest

is made mostly in the battle itself, wherefore infantry history is combat history

above all else. Technical arms and services like the Signal Corps, which must

enter a war with technical gear ready to go, exert a large share of their productive effort before it begins. For this reason, this volume surveys The Emergency

and the years, half lassitude and half desperation, just before the Emperor

Hirohito's bombers came in over Kahuku Point.

Opening with the panorama of Signal Corps interests and distinguishing

each of the characteristic landmarks of the scene, it develops by moving closer

for repeated and prolonged views at most of these dominant features and by

returning to the whole view often enough to keep it in mind. As the Signal

Corps is an agent of communications, the main theme is the snaillike, lightninglike race toward radar, frequency modulation, and a multitude of electronic

devices. Other parts of the narrative illustrate the lesson of the extravagant and

enervating results of interservice strife. One can draw it primarily from the long

story of unequal rivalry between the Air Corps and the Signal Corps. Yet the

alarums and excursions of this melodrama never drowned out the quieter

actions. Of these, the quietest was the development of radar, second only to

nuclear fission as the greatest scientific advance of the war. The Emergency makes

modest but firm claims for the Signal Corps' part in this development, at the

same time producing evidence against a common notion that radar was the

ix
invention of a single scientist or of a single country; as was true of the atomic

bomb, its origins were so wide as to be nearly universal. Next to radar and possibly of even greater significance to the average man was the emergence of FM,

the frequency modulation system of radio, which all but revolutionized the use

of tanks in the war, not to speak of its record afterward. The advance of crystal

control, along with the ticklish triumph over the presumed insufficiency of the

crystal supply, makes an episode interlinked with the FM story. The influence

of the communications industry in the Signal Corps is an important element,

showing the close relationship between the two in the selection and manufacturing of equipment and in the selection and training of officers and signalmen.

A wider but very much weaker relationship described is that between ourselves

and our allies, especially the British. One of the sections in this field recalls the

mutually fruitful mission of Sir Henry Tizard and other electronic scientists and

physicists to the United States in 1940. Finally, I trust that The Emergency

demonstrates a discrepancy which later years closed: the gap between the

pygmy Army and the jumbo. I hope, in sum, that the Signal Corps history adds

its part to the defining and emphasizing of the two broad characteristics which

have come to be so dominant in modern war that they will increasingly make

up the bulk of military histories: first, the long preparations incident to a war

or to any single day of it; and second, the technological aspect which has so

transformed conflict that either wars or the men who fight them may

consequently disappear.

The writing of this book produced many pleasures, of which the most

frequent and most happily remembered were the acts of interest and assistance

very gratefully acknowledged here. My colleagues in the writing of this series,

all of whom have shared with me the repeated profit of these acts, have for their

own part bulwarked me with them to a point I cannot begin to acknowledge in

full. Suffice it to say that upon Miss Pauline M. Oakes, Mrs. Dixie R. Harris,

and Dr. George Raynor Thompson I urge my devoted thanks for all their intelligent appraisals, unflagging perseverance, and liberal contributions. Miss

Helen Kasenchak's expert typing deserves full recognition, as does the research

and writing, at an earlier stage, of Miss Ruth E. McKee. I should like to thank

individually the hundreds of persons who have found files for me between

Washington and Alaska, smoothed my way to interviews, notified me of opportunities I had overlooked, and in general shown an abundance of cares and

courtesies which one has no right to expect but welcomes. Since I must content

myself with a mass acknowledgment, I want it to be known that in my grateful

mind the mass is made up of individuals. Miss Ruth Stout, Mr. Joseph R.

Friedman, and Mr. Arthur Henne have shepherded the book editorially. May

its appearance in print be at least a token tribute to them.

Washington, D. C. DULANY TERRETT

May 1954
Contents

PART ONE

Before World War II

Chapter Page

I . MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS ............. . 3

The Place of the Signal Corps ................ . 6

T h e Early Signal Corps ................... . 9

The Signal Corps in World War I .............. . 16

I I. THE ARMY IN LIMBO .................. . 2 2

Postwar Curtailment .................... . 2 2

The Continuing Technical Tradition .............. . 26

Defense-Strategy Signaling .................. . 3 5

Administrative Signaling .................. . 4 8

Peacetime Procurement Planning ............... . 5 8

III. THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS .......... . 70

T h e Chief i n Office .................... . 7 0

Pictorial Communication .................. . 7 8

Communications Contradictions ................ . 8 2

Communications Spheres of Interest .............. . 88

IV. THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE ............... . 95

V. EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH ......... . 110

Wire ......................... . 11 0

Radio ......................... . 11 6

Radar ......................... . 12 1

PART TWO

The Limited and Unlimited Emergencies

V I. THE PACE OF EMERGENCY .............. . 13 3

Testing Tactical Communications ............... . 13 6

F M .......................... . 14 1

Moves During th e Winter .................. . 14 7

T he Weight of Field Demands ................ . 152

xi
Chapter Page

VII. THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO ............ . 16 6

Accumulating Production .................. . 16 6

T h e Mirrors o f Defense Effort ................ . 17 4

F M Confirmed ...................... . 17 8

First Answers in Air Radar ................. . 185

T h e Tizard Mission .................... . 19 1

VIII. SELECTIVE SERVICE .................. . 20 3

Signal Strength ...................... . 20 4

Signal Training ..................... . 20 9

IX.. WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES. ........ . 221

T h e Pigeon Service .................... . 22 1

T h e Photographic Service .................. . 22 3

Tactical an d Administrative Service .............. . 23 0

Supply Service ...................... . 24 0

X. WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES ........... . 251

X I. SIGNALING TH E HEMISPHERE ............. . 27 5

To the Northwest and the Northeast .............. . 275

T o th e Southeast ..................... . 28 1

From Ne w Jersey ..................... . 28 6

From the Office of the Chief Signal Officer ........... . 291

T o th e West ....................... . 29 9

APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II ... 307

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ................... . 34 3

LIST O F ABBREVIATIONS ................... . 34 7

INDEX ............................. . 35 5

Charts

1. Radiation Spectrum, World Wa r II ............... . 7

2. Contrast Between Typical Signal Corps Organizations in Wartime and

Peacetime ......................... . 7 2

xii
Illustrations

Page

One Early Means of Signaling ................... . 12

Civil Wa r Signal Tower ...................... . 1 3

T h e Wright Brothers' Airplane ................... . 1 4

Early Experiments With Radio ................... . 1 5

Signal Corps Installations in France in 1918............. . 17

T h e SCR-77 ........................... . 2 9

A Flying Radio Laboratory .................... . 3 1

Experimental Antennas ...................... . 3 2

Early Sound Detection Device ................... . 3 7

The Wa r Department Message Center ................ . 51

Transmitters a t Station WAR ................... . 5 4

ROTC Students ......................... . 7 5

Motion Picture Camera Crew ................... . 8 1

Mobile Pigeon Loft........................ . 8 5

An Aircraft Warning Service Filter Center .............. . 87

A Training Film Field Unit .................... . 102

Laying Field Wire ........................ . 11 2

A Battery-Powered Telephone ................... . 11 3

A Twelve-Drop Switchboard .................... . 11 4

T h e SCR-131 .......................... . 11 8

Radar ............................. . 12 6

T h e SCR-177 .......................... . 14 0

D r. Edwin H. Armstrong ..................... . 14 3

Locator Equipment a t the Louisiana Maneuvers ........... . 153

T h e SCR-195, Walkie-Talkie . ................... . 15 7

Training i n Teletypewriter Maintenance ............... . 21 3

Enlisted Men Learning Open Wire Construction ........... . 216

Enlisted Men Learning Pole Climbing ................ . 217

Pigeon Lofts a t Fort Monmouth .................. . 22 2

Training Film Under Production .................. . 22 6

Portable Radios Developed by the Signal Corps ............ . 232

Camouflaged IF F Equipment ................... . 26 5

Maj. Gen. Joseph O. Mauborgne .................. . 272

Maj. Gen. Dawson Olmstead .................... . 27 3

Remote Receiver Station ..................... . 27 6

T h e Cable Ship Restorer ...................... . 27 8

SCR-271 Radar Station i n Panama ................. . 28 5

All illustrations are from Department of Defense Files.

xiii

PART ONE

BEFORE WORLD WAR II

CHAPTER I

Military Communications

Shortly before World War II was over,

the General Assembly of the United Nations met in an auditorium which provided the delegates with five almost simultaneous versions of an address. With a

selecting device, they might choose the

language they wished to listen to. This

gear was welcomed with a casualness

which only emphasized the distance an

important utilitarian science had come

during the half-dozen years when its advances had been obscured by war. In the

first postwar years, also, cities commenced

to equip their airports with radar systems

which regulated an incoming airplane

from the ground. Telephones began to be

installed in automobiles, and home television sets and frequency-modulated

radios to be promised to the general commercial market of the United States, Great

Britain, and a few of their allies. In many

treason and war-crimes trials of the era,

wire and tape recordings formed an important part of the evidence. International

allotment of radio frequencies meant as

much, in a renewed contest for spheres of

influence, as control of mountain passes

had in earlier history. Telephotography

and a special lens for long-range detail

appeared in the news and picture industries. The coaxial cable, radio relay, page

teletype, facsimile processes, and a hundred other contrivances stood ready to

forward the revival of general communication. Whether these developments

would have occurred sooner or later or

not at all, if there had been no war, is a

point apart from history. They did take

place and, with many others in other

fields, dispassionately demonstrated that

practical advances had been made in response to the destructive demands of

battle.

In the advances of this particular realm,

the realm of mechanical aids to human

communication, the Signal Corps of the

U.S. Army had taken some part; for the

military services were the greatest users of

such devices during that period, and the

Signal Corps was the communications

corps of the Army. If the Army were one

of its own soldiers, the Signal Corps would

be his hand in the act of writing, his

larynx, palate, and tongue in the act of

speaking, the ears hearing, and the surface of the skin registering impressions

from external invisible energy. It would

signal that he was about to communicate,

it would provide the mechanics for him to

do so, and it would enable him to receive

the messages of others. Thus in communications the Signal Corps had a notably

single mission. Yet almost infinite possibility for variety made it also as complex as

the processes of hearing and speaking are.

Moreover, like those processes, it was

vital. To be able to communicate—to

signal—is to be alive.

Applied through a period when earlier

scientific development had seemed to
THE SIGNAL CORPS

make it quaint, the name Signal Corps had

reattained exactness as World War II approached. At one time associated with the

torch and the square flags, a signal had

come to designate a whole scale of ways in

which the electromagnetic spectrum could

give notice that it was carrying a message.

Signals were generated by the human

hand and voice, and by electronic impulses as well. Once as rudimentary as a

shaking of spears in the sunlight, military

signaling now suggested a multitude of devices. Even the basic information which

the savage required—"I am a friend" or

"I am a foe"—could appear in a dozen

forms. Over the wire paths of the telegraph, the cable, and the telephone, over

the wireless ones of radio, signal communication filled the ground, water, and

air. Photographs conveyed messages in a

way everyone was likely to grasp; cryptographic appliances obscured them in the

hope that almost nobody could grasp

them. Radar was opening a new avenue of

communications, the quivering patterns

of the oscilloscope being a form as specialized as wigwag had briefly been.

Message sending, which had altered

scarcely at all between Pheidippides at

Marathon and the Emperor's courier at

Ratisbon, had acquired a myriad of devices between the mid-nineteenth and

mid-twentieth centuries, and war had

altered them in being altered by them.

Most of this change had come about in

less than a hundred years of supplementing communication, a message, with communications, apparatus for carrying a message. It had reached such an extent that

every margin of efficiency had become

a vital prize among armies. Not only did

the message have to be spoken, heard,

written, or read, but also it had to be received without interference from others; it

had to be sent and received over long distances; it had to arrive on time; it had to

be so precisely transmitted that it left no

room for doubt, or so deliberately garbled

and obscured that only those intended to

understand it could do so. Army communications were often less than the

ideal—even the most fabulous aid to

aerial navigation, artillery spotting, tank

command, or long-range detection aroused

the abuse of harried operators from time

to time; but ideally they were supposed to

be swift, rugged, adaptable, simple, and

secure beyond any average standard.

The military means of communication

used in World War II were often not different from the nonmilitary means: a command teletype paralleled a news or stock

exchange ticker; a messenger on a motorcycle was the "hand-carrying" equivalent

of a bicycling Western Union boy. Their

use was distinctive, however, and attained

an importance hard to overstate. Warfare

intensified the use of the office telephone,

the newspaper teletype, radio broadcasting, control towers, railway semaphores,

and the other apparatus of communication in the nonbelligerent pursuits.

Military communications had developed in three main aspects. These were

general sensory signaling, likely to be nonelectrical, electrical signaling over wires,

and electrical signaling without wires.

Although in the growth of modern means

of communication these aspects formed

early, middle, and recent stages, they did

not form a line of succession. Samuel F. B.

Morse's telegraph was already in considerable use when Albert J. Myer introduced systematic wigwag, but flag signaling quickly reached its limits, whereas

Morse's invention started a development

which still had no boundaries a hundred

years later. Rather, the three aspects represented degrees in the extension of signaling techniques. Within the Signal Corps
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 5

of World War II they existed concurrently.

First, there were the primary means of

signaling, which are usually visual: the

torch and flags, as elemental as pillars of

fire by night, cloud by day; the semaphore, which Napoleon developed into a

system of 1,200 stations between Paris and

Moscow; wigwag; the heliograph, mirrors

flashing in the sunlight; Very pistols and

other pyrotechnics; panels (signaling to

airplanes with arrangements of colored

cloth upon the ground); and blinker.

Pigeons were also primary means of signaling, and so were sirens, gongs, and

whistles. As a class, the primary means of

signaling were historically earliest, and, by

contrast with World War II's complicated

reaches of invisible communication, they

seemed primitive; yet they were not outdated. Wigwag could still be useful in the

business of sorting out supplies on a beachhead, and blinker was as much a stand-by

for the Navy as the automatic semaphore

was for rail transportation. The chief difference was a matter not of date but of

limitation. The best means of communication was that which could carry the most

messages fastest with the fewest mistakes.

In this sense, the simple devices for signaling directly to the eye and ear lacked

capacity, speed, and precision.

When the art of communications had

become electrified, it had suddenly advanced in all of these qualities, and the

technical aspects of military communications commanded the field to such an extent that virtually the whole history of

World War II communications is theirs.

The second form of signaling involved

electrical communication over wires:

cable, telegraph, telephone, teletype.

Throughout World War II, this was the

principal form of Signal Corps communications. The third advanced electrical signaling to wireless devices: radio, radiotelegraph, radiotelephone, radioteletype, television, radar; in this field, the most

thorough and significant change became

evident. The accomplishments of radio in

attaining teletypewriter transmission at a

hundred words a minute, in reporting the

weather locally by radiosonde, in radio

control of airways, or in the handietalkie which pleased Winston Churchill

during a visit to Fort Jackson, South

Carolina,1 and with which he pleased the

newsreel audience—all of these were part

of a story of startling change. Television

had not yet come into its own sufficiently

to contend for wide interest. Radar was

the crown of communications efforts during the war. Radar learned to guide an

airplane at a distance, to return it safely

and to land it; radar mapped landfalls or

storms; matching itself to searchlights and

antiaircraft artillery, it gave them unheard-of precision; it twice enabled the

British Isles to ward off a nearly supreme

German aerial assault, once from the

Luftwaffe, once from the V-1; and it

looked toward postwar successes which

were as gentle as leading the blind and as

ungentle as marshaling long-range missiles. GCI, GCA, loran, shoran, racon,

IFF, MEW, ASV, BTO, rawin became the

new black magic.2 Resulting from interservice, international, interacting achievement of many minds fully as much as the

1

 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The

Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1950), p.

386.

2

 GCI ground-controlled interception

GCA ground-controlled approach

loran long-range navigation

shoran short-range navigation

racon radar beacons

IFF identification, friend or foe

MEW microwave early warning equipment

ASV air-to-surface-vessel radar detection

BTO bombing through overcast

rawin radio or radar determination of wind

velocity
6 THE SIGNAL CORPS

atomic bomb,3 in no sense was radar

thought of as U.S. Army equipment

strictly. Nor did it diminish for the Signal

Corps the importance of the routine job of

signal communications which was on

hand at the beginning of the war and still

on hand at the close; but as an instrument

to open the imagination it took first place.

The span from visual signals to radar

was enormous; yet they shared a basic

function: passage of information. In the

course of the Signal Corps' emergence into

the form it possessed in the 1940's, two departures from this essential function made

themselves felt. One of these was pictures—still pictures, training films, combat newsreels—undeniably a form of communication but a form at least once removed from the commonly accepted

meaning of it. The other stood not for

communication, but for countercommunication. It was an interruption, obscuring,

or obstruction of communication. "Chaff,"

"cigar," "carpet," and such devices for

jamming enemy radar; speech scrambling

and other endeavors to hinder interception of telephone conversations; monitoring and interception of both friendly and

enemy radio; and all modes of cryptography came under this classification.

With these two exceptions, however, all

of the devices within the field of responsibility of military signaling, whether they

used simple or complex, natural or artificial means, had the single function of passing information. In executing it, the Signal Corps had become, at one time or

another, either permanently or temporarily, the Army's center of activity for

captive balloons, weather observation,

codes and ciphers, ocean cables, carrier

pigeons, aviation, goniometrics, field telephoning, thermal detection, and many

other efforts. By the time of the laboratory

and field experiments of the 1930's, the

Signal Corps was long established as a

partner in the development of the communications science. Even in the days of

equipping Union armies with telegraph

wagons, military communications had

penetrated, although unknowingly and in

a matter-of-fact way, the splendid scale

which joins sound, light, and energy.

(Chart 1) When electronics emerged

eighty years later at the forefront of this

scientific research, Signal Corps experimentation contributed to the general

advance.

The Place of the Signal Corps

The major mission, however, was pursued not through science but through practical mechanics. For the most part, during World War II, the Signal Corps was

described as one of seven technical services. The adjective was significant, because

several of these services were essentially

applied sciences. Before the war the Signal

Corps had been classified as an arm, but

during the war it was bracketed with the

six other technical services as an agency of

the Services of Supply, or Army Service

Forces.4 As a part of the Army Service

Forces, it thus took its place in one of three

major groupings of resources of men and

matériel, the other two being the Army

Ground Forces and the Army Air Forces.5

3

 The fact of radar's international parentage "will

surprise only those who cling to a Hero Theory of

scientific progress and demand for each discovery a

single putative inventor. . . ." Henry Guerlac, "The

Radio Background of Radar," Journal of the Franklin

Institute, CCL, No. 4 (October, 1950), 285. 4

 WD Cirs 59, 2 Mar 42, and 138, 14 May 46, sub:

WD Reorganization. The Corps of Engineers also occupied a prewar category as an arm. 5

 The Army Ground Forces drew in the Infantry,

Cavalry, Field Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps,

Armored Force, Antiaircraft Command, and Tank

Destroyer Command.
CHART 1—RADIATION SPECTRUM, WORLD WAR II
8 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Army Air, Ground, and Service Forces

were designed to be interdependent;

although administratively the Signal

Corps served as a component of the Army

Service Forces, Signal Corps equipment,

functions, and trained men appeared

throughout the Ground and Air Forces

and in theaters and defense and base commands as well. The same relationships

characterized the other technical services

 6

and the administrative services

 7 which,

with the service commands (erstwhile

corps areas, zone of interior administrative divisions), made up the Army Service

Forces.

The way to see the Signal Corps of

World War II, therefore, is to plot it on a

world-wide chart. Such a chart begins

with the President, the Secretary of War,

and the Chief of Staff, continues with the

General and Special Staffs, with theaters,

task forces, defense and base commands,

and with the Army Ground, Air, and

Service Forces, and subdivides again into

the big ground and air arms and services.

Most of its space must still be devoted to

an extraordinary complexity of army

groups, armies, corps, divisions, regiments,

battalions, companies, and platoons, of air

forces and commands, wings, groups,

squadrons, and flights, of administrative

divisions, branches, sections, subsections,

and units. Within this vast wartime framework, the Signal Corps was to be thought

of chiefly as a technical service, as the

principal communications agency for the

whole organization.

It was to be thought of also as an arm.

Signaling was indisputably operational,

and the signalmen were attendant upon

the air force and the infantry closely

enough to qualify as combat-zone soldiers.

The duality is clearly marked in the common Signal Corps distinction between

tactical networks and administrative networks. Tactically, all forward communication was the province of the using arm: for

example, of the Infantry, the Cavalry, the

Armored Force. The crew of a B-17-E or

-F, during the first year of the war, used

an interphone set, RC-36; a tank or

armored car would employ a frequencymodulated radio, SCR-508: this is the

way in which the using arms required a

fundamental Signal Corps contribution.

Each division had a signal company, each

army corps a signal battalion, and each

field army a signal construction and a signal operations battalion, as well as depot,

repair, radio intelligence, photographic,

headquarters signal service, and other

companies, depending upon the field

army table of organization and the tactical situation which was applicable. In the

Army Air Forces, a similar pattern was

drawn, signal units being assigned at

wing, division, command, and air force

levels.8

The conception of the Signal Corps

function both as arm and as service

changed, however. During the war, all of

the arms and services underwent a meta6

 The Chemical, Engineer, Quartermaster, and

Transportation Corps and the Medical and Ordnance

Departments. For the purposes of this history this is a

standard list, although Department of the Army Circular 64, 10 March 1948, added to it the Finance Department, and although Circular 59, 2 March 1942,

also subordinated to Army Service Forces the supply

and procurement functions of the Coast Artillery

Corps. 7

 The Adjutant General's, Judge Advocate General's, and Provost Marshal General's Departments

and the Offices of the Chiefs of Chaplains, Special

Services, and Finance. 8

 FM 1-45, Army Air Forces Field Manual: Signal

Communication, 4 Dec 42, par 2b. See also the basic

manual on signal communication, FM 24-5, 19 Oct

42, and all of the pertinent manuals in the FM-11, or

Signal Corps, series. Sometimes official usage links the

terms signals and communication, as it does in the titles

to these field manuals; sometimes it separates them, as

in referring to army, corps, and divisional signal officers, but to regimental, and lower, communication

officers.
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 9

morphosis, the Cavalry most of all, the

Signal Corps not least. Quiet and small in

peacetime, characterized by such familiar

objects as the telephone,

 9

 it became a

world-wide, strategic service, wielding

prodigies like radar. Even some time after

the war had begun, the Signal Corps

could still be thought of as an organization which devoted itself primarily to

message-center work and which, in its

tactical duties, rated visual communications high alongside telephone and telegraph.10

 But at the end of the war, the

Signal Corps described its mission as "not

only [the provision of] communication

facilities for the War Department in the

zone of the interior and all overseas theaters, but [also] the design, procurement,

construction, installation and major maintenance for radar, radio, telephone and

telegraph communications for the operations of the U.S. Army throughout the

world."

 11

The Early Signal Corps

Among the technical services, the Signal

Corps was neither the biggest nor the oldest.12

 Its work was concentrated, and its

history covered only eighty years. Historical hindsight, in fact, would suggest that

modern military signaling was a conditioned response to Morse's improvement

in message sending; that in former days

the Army had had no need for a Signal

Corps because quick means of communication were unknown, but that a revolutionary invention had had to be met with

an arm capable of exercising it. Hindsight

falters a little, for under this sort of cause

and effect the Army would have produced

a Transportation Corps soon after Fulton

and certainly after Stephenson. Moreover,

the Signal Corps had its recognizable

beginnings in a region far from the electric

telegraph, along the Rio Grande in Texas,

where Dr. Albert J. Myer, recently commissioned an assistant surgeon and detailed to Fort Duncan, Texas, was carefully

altering a system of hand signals which he

had developed for deaf mutes into a system

of flag signals for use at distances out of

earshot altogether.13 From this start, Myer

was to become the first Chief Signal Officer of the Army. He had realized that the

same sort of alternation and spacing by

which a telegrapher controlled his key

9

 "The principal weapon of the Signal Corps man

is the telephone with its associated material just as the

rifle with its ammunition is the principal weapon of

the infantryman." Memo, Lt Col Alvin C. Voris for

Maj Gen Charles McK. Saltzman, CSigO, 9 Oct 24.

SigC 475.7 Equip. 10

 WD, Introduction to Employment in the War Department—A Reference Manual for Employees, Aug 42, p. 21.

The Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer, 1942,

'listed the following agencies of communication employed in signal systems within Army divisions:

1. Message centers

2. Messenger communication

a. Airplane messenger

b. Motor messenger

c. Motorcycle messenger

d. Mounted (horse) messenger

e. Dismounted messenger (runner)

3. Pigeon communication

4. Radio communication

a. Telegraph

b. Telephone

5. Visual communication

a. Lamps

b. Flags

c. Panels

d. Pyrotechnics

e. Airplanes

6. Sound communication

7. Wire communication

a. Telephone

b. Telegraph

c. Teletypewriter 11

 Info Br OCSigO, The Signal Corps, U.S. Army,

16 Dec 46. SigC Hist Sec File. (See Bibliographical

Note.) Formal statement of Signal Corps functions appears in Army regulations. The versions which were

in force at various stages from the end of World War I

through World War II were: AR 105-5, 14 Jan 22,

15 Dec 26, 15 Mar 33, 10 May 39, and 1 Dec 42; AR

105-15, 12 Nov 21, 1 Aug 25, 17 Apr 40, 1 Aug 42. 12

 The quartermaster, medical, and engineer functions, which were part of the Army during the Revolution, were the oldest, and by most measurements the

largest. The Ordnance Department, which dates from

the War of 1812, remained small but always had large

appropriations. For the sources on the historical origins of the services, as well as those on the beginnings

and development of the Signal Corps, see the Bibliographical Note. 13

 (1) Hq of the Army, New York City, SO's 128

and 129, 4 and 6 Oct 1854. National Archives. (2) Albert J. Myer, A New Sign Language for Deaf Mutes,

Being a Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine,

1851, University of Buffalo.
10 THE SIGNAL CORPS

could be applied to flags or torches for

visual signaling. He patented his system,

got the Army to adopt it, experimented

with it just before the Civil War, and then

in frustration saw it work for the Confederate forces at the First Battle of Bull Run,

while he himself was too late for the battle.

Afterward, it proved itself for the Union

Army at Gettysburg, for the Union Navy

at Mobile Bay, and in a hundred other

engagements. Sometimes the armies put

up chains of elevated platforms in order to

facilitate the flag signaling.14

Myer also was attempting to construct

the new Signal Service upon long-distance,

mechanical signaling as well as upon shortdistance, manual methods; but the regular

telegraph, which ordinarily followed the

tracks of the railroad, was in the hands of

the U.S. Military Telegraph. Ostensibly

military, but actually a private concession,

it controlled the Morse equipment and

the teen-aged boys who were skilled at

using it. Civilian aeronauts organized a

balloon corps for observation and signaling. Myer wanted no part of that, and

ultimately deflated it in 1863 when he

rejected an opportunity to take it over.

Instead, he assembled wagon trains and

equipped them with alphabet dials and

magnetized pointers which, responding to

the electric impulses being transmitted

from another part of the train, indicated a

message letter by letter. Without effectively challenging the civilian telegraph

monopoly, he developed thirty such trains

for the Union troops, each extending the

tactical situation by wire for six or eight

miles. On 3 March 1863 Myer had the

satisfaction of seeing Congress create the

signals arm,15 but his continued attempt to

draw administrative as well as tactical

wire communication into his new organization brought him into conflict with

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, sent

him into eclipse, and helped to allow the

Signal Service to expire unredeemed at

the end of the war. Within a year and a

half, his point of view was sufficiently vindicated to restore the organization, with

himself at its head. From then on, although

with vicissitudes, it survived. In 1875 the

Signal Service was given bureau status in

the War Department, and on 24 February

1880 it became the Signal Corps, with

Myer its general and his Manual of Signals

its guide.16

For a time within its first quarter century, part of the emphasis of its mission

shifted from signaling to meteorology. In

1870 it took on responsibility for scientific

weather observation, especially in the

shipping areas of the Great Lakes and the

Atlantic coast. Until this work was transferred in 1891 to the Weather Bureau of

the Department of Agriculture,17 Signal

Corpsmen pursued meteorology, especially

in two notable expeditions to the north.

Famous at the time, these arctic projects

made magnetic, pendular, and tidal observations and collected weather and natural

14

 At the beginning of the Civil War the Union had

few secrets from the Confederacy. J. E. B. Stuart had

been a signal officer; and Jefferson Davis and John B.

Floyd, both former Secretaries of War, as well as Robert E. Lee, had been acquainted with Myer's work.

Lt. E. P. Alexander, who knew about this method of

signaling because he had been assigned to work on it

with Myer, was present at the First Battle of Bull Run

and warned Beauregard of the approach of McDowell's column. In turn, poetic justice thwarted him

at Gettysburg, when signal flags on Little Round Top

led him to believe it was better defended than it was. 15

 PL 58, Secs 17-20, 37th Cong. The official birth

date of the Signal Corps is 21 June 1860, the date of

Myer's appointment as Army Signal Officer. Comment 3, OCMH to OCSigO, 11 Feb 54, sub: Birthday

of SigC. SigC Hist Sec File 314.7 General 1954. 16

 This work was published in various editions from

the Civil War to the close of the nineteenth century. 17

 Except for gathering marine meteorological data,

which the Hydrographic Office took over in 1904.
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 11

history information at points then the farthest north reached by white men. The

Point Barrow party, led by 1st Lt. P.

Henry Ray, left San Francisco in midsummer, 1881, and came safely back two years

later. The Ellesmere Island party, leaving

from St. John's, Newfoundland, at the

same time, was not seen in the United

States again until 1884, when the six survivors told bitter tales of hardship and

death, including the execution of one man

for rifling food supplies.

The commander of this group, Adolphus

W. Greely, became Chief Signal Officer in

1887 and remained so into the era of radio

and the airplane, twenty years afterward.18

The fame he won as head of this meteorological expedition led to his appointment

as Chief Signal Officer, yet he reflected

almost every interest of the Signal Corps,

and his career spanned the maturity of the

earlier forms of communication and the

origins of the later ones. Before his arctic

assignment, he had been putting in telegraph lines in the territorial west. More

than two thousand miles of such construction took place between 1876 and 1879,

and commercial communications and the

Signal Corps then began the close relation

which continued thereafter. As the railroads consolidated the west and as the

number of Army outposts diminished, private interests took over the telegraph lines.

Outside Washington, D. C., Fort Whipple,

then a Signal Corps post and later named

Fort Myer in honor of the general, had

installed a practice telephone line in

1878.19 Also in that year, the Corps had

begun its first experiments with pigeons.20

The last years of Indian fighting advanced

the heliograph as a means of military signaling. In 1888 the Corps brought out a

new type of heliograph which weighed

only fourteen pounds packed and which

had a range of as much as sixty miles in

clear atmosphere.21

Only visual signaling counted for much

in the field. Telegraph trains, increased in

size to nine wagons, were still rear-echelon

communications, and the telephone gave

no promise of sturdy military usefulness. A

Signal Corps sergeant combined it in a

field kit with a Morse key and battery in

1889, but the device was too expensive to

be practical. Military ballooning came in

again in 1892, and experiments in air-toground telephoning a few years later re18

 For an excellent sketch of Greely's life and works,

see W. Elmer Ekblaw's account in the Dictionary of

American Biography, XXI (Supplement One), 352-55.

After General Myer, who died in 1880, the succession of Chief Signal Officers through World War II

was as follows:

Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen ........ . 1880-1887

Maj. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely. ..... . 1887-1906

Brig. Gen. James Allen ............ . 1906-1913

Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven ....... . 1913-1917

Maj. Gen. George O. Squier ....... . 1917-1923

Maj. Gen. Charles McK. Saltzman.... 1924-1928

Maj. Gen. George S. Gibbs ........ . 1928-1931

Maj. Gen. Irving J. Carr .......... . 1931-1934

Maj. Gen. James B. Allison ........ . 1935-1937

Maj. Gen. Joseph O. Mauborgne. ... . 1937-1941

Maj. Gen. Dawson Olmstead. ....... . 1941-1943

Maj. Gen. Harry C. Ingles.......... . 1943-1947

The list of Chief Signal Officers might also contain

the names of two officers who held the place briefly

during the period when Myer was in disfavor. These

were Lt. Col. William J. L. Nicodemus, who occupied

it from 10 November 1863 to 26 December 1864, and

Col. Benjamin F. Fisher, whose tenure, beginning

with Nicodemus' departure, ended indeterminately

between 28 July 1866, when Myer's administration

retroactively recommenced, and 15 November of the

same year, when Fisher was formally relieved. 19

 1st Lt. George I. Back, "The Telephone; Commercial v. Military History and Development," Signal

Corps Bulletin, No. 42 (March, 1928), p. 10. 20

 Unsuccessfully, because the hawks of the region

preyed upon them. The experiments took place in

Dakota Territory with Col. Nelson A. Miles's 5th Infantry. Capt. Evan D. Cameron, "The Development

and Use of Homing Pigeons for Military Purposes,"

Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 24 (February, 1924), p. 26. 21

 Possibly the greatest range achieved by this device (in 1890) was 125 miles. Historical Sketch of the Signal Corps (1860-1941), Eastern SigC Schools Pamphlet

32 (Ft. Monmouth, N.J., 1942), p. 30.
12 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ONE EARLY MEANS OF SIGNALING employed flags hoisted by balloon.

called the air-to-ground telegraph demonstrations of the Civil War. Most Army

posts had a few telephones, some owned

by the Signal Corps, some rented from the

Bell Company. Even so short a conflict as

the Spanish-American War, however, increased the advance of new sciences. The

Army gave its first contract for a powered

airplane in the year of that war, 1898,

allotting the money to Samuel R Langley.

The laying of submarine cable in the

waters of Cuba and the Philippines extended the scope of signal communications, and in the expansive aftermath of

the war the Signal Corps undertook the

Washington-Alaska Military Cable and

Telegraph System. This became the most

important continuous field operation.22

The knowledge of the north obtained in

the Ray-Greely expeditions, the experience gained in building frontier communications systems, the scientific background derived from meteorological duties,

and the exercise provided in establishing

relatively long lines during the war with

Spain all contributed to the formation of a

chain which employed telegraph, cable,

telephone, and even the newest wonder,

wireless communication.

In 1899 the Signal Corps had radioed

experimentally between Fire Island and

the lightship twelve miles away and a year

later installed two stations for New York

Harbor traffic.23 In 1903 a pair of stations

provided space telegraph—in those days

an excellent description of radio—across

Norton Sound, to and from Nome. By

1908 there were eight stations in Alaska,

six in the United States, five upon Army

transports, three in the Philippines, and

one in Cuba. Their spark-gap sets ranged

in power from 750 watts to 10 kilowatts.

Field tests improving upon Boer War

models meanwhile developed the Army's

first vehicular sets, loaded into wagons or

on pack mules.24 Cumbersome as these

were, they illustrated the fact that the researches of Maxwell and Hertz

 25

 were

giving birth to the era of Marconi and

22

 First Draft, Alaska Communication System History, 1944. SigC Hist Sec File. When the predominant

use of radio made the early title inappropriate, the

Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph

System became the Alaska Communication System. 23

 Capt. Edwin R. Petzing, "Development of Radio

in the United States," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 42

(March, 1928), p. 34. Mention of this work should

not slight Capt. Leonard H. Wildman, who contributed to the installation of wireless at both Long Island

Sound and Norton Sound. 24

 S. I. Neiman, "Vehicular Radio," Signals, I, No.

6 (July-August, 1947), 20-25. 25

 James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), British physicist, and Heinrich R. Hertz (1857-1894), German

physicist. The principles of electromagnetic radiation

which Maxwell forecast in 1866 were confirmed in the

experiments of Hertz in the '90's.
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 13

CIVIL WAR SIGNAL TOWER on

Cobb's Hill, Appomattox, Virginia.

De Forest. Military communication was

assuming its twentieth-century character.

The emergence of a science of electronics was paralleled by the appearance,

after long waiting and frustration, of a

science of heavier-than-air flight. On

1 August 1907 the current Chief Signal

Officer, Brig. Gen. James Allen, established an Aeronautical Division, to "have

charge of all matters pertaining to military

ballooning, air machines, and all kindred

subjects."

 26

 A captain, a corporal, and a

private staffed the division. Specifications

for the Army's first airplane required that

it be able to carry the pilot, a passenger,

and enough fuel for 125 miles, that its

speed average forty miles an hour in a tenmile test, that it stay aloft for an hour, and

that it be capable of being dismounted and

loaded into Army wagons.27 The Wright

brothers produced such a plane in 1908

and tested it successfully (despite the fatal

accident to 1st Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge),

with a series of passengers including Maj.

George O. Squier, later the World War I

Chief Signal Officer.

For a period, there was a possibility

that airplanes and radio, the two inventions which had suddenly opened the element of air as a space for the hitherto

grounded army to move within, would

develop inside the same organization.

Squier, the man who had drawn up the

specifications for the military airplane,

represents the transition which was then

altering the Signal Corps. In 1911 he described experiments covering the use of

wires to guide high-frequency oscillations,28

 a process fundamental to the

multiplex telegraphy and telephony which

made up the largest part of World War II

military communications. Joseph O. Mauborgne, a lieutenant who was to be Chief

Signal Officer twenty years after Squier,

was beginning to achieve recognition as a

contributor both to airborne transmitting,

in 1912 and 1913, at Fort Riley, Kansas,

and to airborne receiving, over Corregidor

in December 1914.29 These demonstrations, however crude, had opened aerial

26

 OCSigO Office Memo 6, 1 Aug 07. AAF 321.91-

A SigC Org. 27

 WDSS, Information and Education Div, "The

Army Air Forces — Organization," Army Talk, No.

159, 25 January 1947. 28

 George O. Squier, "Multiplex Telephony and

Telegraphy by Means of Electric Waves Guided by

Wires," Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical

Engineers, 1911. Originally called wire wireless, wired

wireless, or line radio, the process came to be called

wire radio (possibly the most descriptive term), carrier

frequency, or the carrier-frequency, carrier-current,

or guided-wave method. 29

 (1) The Signal Corps, United States Army: A

Popular History, MS, p. 75; (2) Maj Gen Joseph O.

Mauborgne, My Early Work in Airplane Radio Development. SigC 342 Gen.
14 THE SIGNAL CORPS

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS' AIRPLANE during tests at Fort Myer, Virginia.

communications as a major field of Signal

Corps work. Congress recognized military

aviation by converting a small office division into an Aviation Section of a top

strength of 320.30 The range of air-toground Morse increased to 140 miles, and

Signal Corps pilots experimented with

air-to-air Morse exchange. The most perplexing problem was noise. Airplane design

had substituted tractor for pusher engines,

with the result that all the disturbance lay

directly in front of the pilot. By 1916 the

Aviation Section felt that a different generator and headset had solved the problem; and Michael Pupin and Edwin H.

Armstrong, whom Brig. Gen. George O.

Squier asked to convert the radio signal

into a visual signal which would show up

on the instrument panel, agreed that radio

reception was preferable and possible even

in spite of the roar and static. It is significant that Signal Corps activity of this era,

at a time while it was still attached to a

rudimentary tactical mission, produced

names associated with both of the world

wars, when scientific research tended to

become as important in the mission as

utilitarian skill. An older Signal Corps and

a newer one, soon to be old itself, coexisted.

30

 PL 143, 63d Cong, 18 Jul 14. The testimony of

Signal Corps officers at the preliminary hearings on

this bill a year before had made clear the fact that in

early military aviation the most important function

was reconnaissance and communication, not bombardment. Capt. William Mitchell, 1st Lt. Benjamin

D. Foulois, and 1st Lt. Henry H. Arnold, future Air

Corps generals, agreed with Brig. Gen. George P.

Scriven, the Chief Signal Officer, that the time was

not then ripe for separation from the Signal Corps,

"where all aeronautic work has been done for the last

20 years." Hearings before the Committee on Military

Affairs, HR, 63d Cong, 1st Sess, On HR 5304, 16 May

13, p. 51 and passim.
EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH RADIO included installation of sets in aircraft

(above) and automobiles (below).
16 THE SIGNAL CORPS

The Signal Corps in World War I

The older was dominant. The United

States began and completed its role in the

1917-1918 war without reaching a development in either combat communications

or combat aviation comparable to that of

France or Great Britain. In both fields the

nation's war experience was shorter, its

appropriations smaller, and to a considerable degree its industry slow to start and

its research too late to be felt. The only

battle testing of the Aviation Section had

consisted of mail and reconnaissance

flights during the Punitive Expedition into

Mexico in 1916. None of its fifty-five airplanes carried any kind of weapon; nor

had the experiments with aerial wireless

communication introduced radio into any

cockpit. When, in March 1918, the Signal

Corps was faced for the first time with the

need to install radio apparatus aboard

Spads which the Air Service was flying in

France, the French supplied it, having

supplied the airplanes also.31 American

air-to-ground radiotelephone, shown the

summer before to the Secretary of War,

Newton D. Baker, was not ready.

Correspondingly, in ground signaling,

the old methods had sufficed before the

war for an Army engaged in small-scale

maneuvers or patrolling the borders of

Mexico. Quenched-spark sets carried by

pack or wagon had introduced radio into

both the Punitive Expedition and maneuvers, but, in general, buzzers, messengers,

and visual signaling answered the need for

command communications within infantry

brigades; and although the field artillery

had telephones for fire control, provided

by the Signal Corps since 1905, it also used

flags. Tactically, there was little need for,

or opportunity to employ, electrical communications. Thus, much of the equipment which the Signal Corps brought over

to Europe in 1917 was wholly unsuitable

for the character of warfare then existing.32

In the early stages, the American Expeditionary Forces was obliged to rely solely

upon French telephone and telegraph

facilities; large purchases, as of poles and

crossarms, dry batteries, buzzerphones,

switchboards, and radio and earth telegraphy sets, were necessary before the communications mission for the American

Expeditionary Forces could be fulfilled.

Titles in the procurement list were grouped

into but fourteen categories.33

In France, wire quickly became the

almost exclusive instrument of army communications. It was the best means

whether within the regiment or from the

division back to corps and army headquarters. Heliographs appeared only far

back of the lines, if at all; panels were

reserved to signaling to aircraft; the pigeon

service, attempted at General Pershing's

order, had a limited success, although a

bird named Cher Ami proved to be a help

to the "Lost Battalion." But wire was

paramount; the Meuse-Argonne offensive

used it at the rate of 2,500 miles a week.34

31

 "Report of the Chief Signal Officer," War Department Annual Reports, 1919, p. 1190. Also separately

published, the Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer,

1919, is by far the most comprehensive source of information on the World War I Signal Corps. 32

 (1) Petzing article cited n. 23, p. 36. (2) Col C. F.

Martin, Hist Sec Army War College, Signal Communications in World War I, Aug 42, p. 8. SigC Hist

Sec File. 33

 Telephones, telegraphs, radios, line construction

materials, batteries, wire and cable, field glasses,

chests, kits and tools, mechanical and electrical signals, wire carts, pigeon supplies, meteorological equipment, and watches. James V. Clarke, Contract Adjustment in the Signal Corps, 1 July 1939-15 August

1945, Nov 45, p. 3. SigC Hist Sec File. 34

 By the close of World War I, U.S. production of

field wire had reached 8,000 miles a month. After a

similar time interval in World War II, the production

rate of W-110-B wire was 150,000 miles a month.
SIGNAL CORPS INSTALLATIONS IN FRANCE IN 1918 included a telephone

and telegraph station at Château-Thierry (above) and a goniometric station at Royaumeix (below).
18 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Multiplex printing telegraph equipment

connected Tours, Chaumont, Paris, and

London. Transatlantic cable was called

into use, at reduced rates, for EFM's (expeditionary force messages) from the

troops to their friends and relatives in the

United States.35 Both forward and rear

zones depended upon the telephone network, after construction crews had fanned

it out from Chaumont and Tours.36 This

was an achievement for the period, admirable for trench warfare. In the mobile

situation of World War II it would have

been, first of all, nearly impossible to build

and, second, not relatively worth building.

Although a transatlantic radio station

was built near Bordeaux, the War Department in Washington had no radio contact

with its commanders in the field, and

these commanders had no very dependable wireless systems among themselves.

Radio carried little of the war's communications load. In the first place, the tactical

situation again and again brought the

Western Front into small areas and mired

it there. For another reason, although

nearly 10,000 radio sets, chiefly airborne

radiotelegraph, were produced for the

Signal Corps and Air Service, the conflict

was over too soon for the combat signalman or aviator to use them much. Finally,

radio was too new to have passed the awkward age. Spark-type equipment did have

the advantage of not requiring a skilled

man to tune it or mend it, but was so heavy

it could scarcely be moved, was often unintelligible, and was frequently out of

commission. Tube equipment generally

replaced it. Radio's chief use was for intelligence work. At goniometric stations it

took what were later called "fixes" upon

enemy transmitters and identified their

location by the intersection of the angles.

It intercepted German ground telegraph,

telephone, aircraft, and artillery signals;

and, in a foreshadowing of the succeeding

war's signal intelligence and monitoring

companies, it policed communications on

the Allied side.

The most interesting aspect of Signal

Corps radio in World War I was the consolidation of the hitherto scattered efforts

in scientific research. The Signal Corps

Laboratories had their beginnings in a

World War I radio research division which

functioned in company with the electric

communications industry and with a special wartime Signal Corps laboratory in

Paris. This division worked upon aircraft

radiotelegraph and radiotelephone sets,

aircraft interphone equipment, aircraft

direction-finding systems (given first priority),37

 three types of continuous-wave

radiotelegraph sets, wavemeters, batterycharging radios, four improved TRS.

(earth telegraphy) items, radio operating

and repair trucks, and a radiotelegraph

set for tanks. The prewar invention of

vacuum tubes enabled Signal Corps researchers to try them for electric wave

detection, amplification of radiofrequency

and audiofrequency, continuous wave

transmission, voice modulation, regulation

35

 Col Edgar Russel, CSigO AEF, AEF Memo, 17

Jun 17. SigC 676 Wired Wireless and Tree Tel & Tel. 36

 History of the Signal Corps, American Expeditionary Forces. SigC Hist Sec File.

The Signal Corps wire networks for the American

Expeditionary Forces, including those leased from

France, comprised approximately 50,000 miles of administrative lines and 40,000 of tactical lines. The

exact figures are difficult to determine, because the

standards for calculation vary. (1) "Signal Corps

Work in the A.E.F.," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 1

(April, 1920), p. 14. (2) Maj. Alfred E. Larabee, "The

Signal Corps and Signal Communication," Signal

Corps Bulletin, No. 31 (September, 1925), pp. 33-34.

(3) Lt. Col. Frank H. Fay, "A.E.F. Telephone and

Telegraph System," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 56

(September-October, 1930), pp. 25-27. 37

 History of Camp Alfred Vail, New Jersey, 1918.

SigC Hq Ft. Monmouth File 314.7.
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 19

of current and voltage in generators, and

other special purposes without which the

multiple applications of World War II

radio would never have been possible. But

despite the fact that an American, Lee

De Forest, was the inventor, the United

States was behind in the use of vacuum

tubes. Industrial production of them

started from almost nothing when the

nation went into the war.

For the most part, none of the laboratory

improvements got into production before

the Armistice. Had any been developed

before the war, radio history would have

been made, for the critical inadequacy of

equipment necessitated remarkable advances in the field. For example, a two-way

radio loop set was contrived because the

enemy shot away the antennas of ordinary

radio. The new device laid the receiving

antenna on the ground, and for the transmitting antenna substituted a small loop

connected with the spark gap. This set

had a range of six miles, transmitted on

two wavelengths, and could be transported

in three sections each weighing less than

thirty pounds. Developments in electric

communications of the American Expeditionary Forces were in part the contributions of Edwin H. Armstrong, then a

Signal Corps captain and a noted radio

scientist since 1910. He applied Langmuir's master oscillator-power amplifier

circuit to improve tank communication,

and he invented the amplifier to facilitate

reception of high-frequency signals. The

master oscillator-power amplifier became

basic in radio design, although the war

was over before it could be tried in battle,

and high-frequency amplification made

possible the superheterodyne receiver and

revolutionized wireless communications.38

Signal Corps and Tank Corps men

together devised equipment on the masteroscillator principle which the signalmen

installed after the Armistice to make a

radiotelegraph network connecting the

Paris headquarters with the Army of

Occupation. Of considerable extent and

surely one of the earliest successes of the

sort, the network engaged stations at Antwerp, Spa, Koblenz, Trier, Toul, and

Chaumont at various stages between November 1918 and September 1919. The

control was twenty miles outside Paris, at

a site in the British zone far enough away

to escape the radiodiffusion from the EifFel

Tower spark transmitter. The purpose of

the net was to take the place of the telephone and telegraph lines in case they

were sabotaged; and on one occasion,

when the wire transmission was interrupted for forty-five minutes, it did convey

to Paris an address which President Woodrow Wilson was making in Germany. During the time of its operation, the network

carried thousands of messages, as only wire

networks had done up to that point.39

Historically the most interesting of all

the experiments was an initial attempt at

radar. The only means of being warned of

the approach of an airplane was to catch

sight of it, which was usually too late, or to

hear it, which, even with the aid of sound

38

 Armstrong's contributions to radio science, although generally acknowledged, were persistently

challenged in court, and the decisions often went

against him. "Revolution in Radio," Fortune, XX

(October, 1939), 86 ff. De Forest was the principal

figure to press counterclaims. So far as the superheterodyne discovery is concerned, 1943 adjudication

assigned the credit to Lucien Levy, who like Armstrong was a World War I officer. Henry W. Roberts,

Aviation Radio, introduction by Lee De Forest (New

York: W. Morrow & Company, 1945), p. 90. Nevertheless, and taking account of the fact that the decisions were essentially commercial rather than technical, Armstrong's place in the development of radio

is secure. 39

 Ltr, Edwin H. Armstrong to author, 21 May 52,

with incls. SigC Hist Sec File.
20 THE SIGNAL CORPS

locators, gave advance notice only as fast

as sound travels. During the work which

led to his contribution to the superheterodyne receiving circuit, Armstrong considered the possibility of a receiver sensitive

enough to pick up the electromagnetic disturbances given off by an airplane's ignition system.40

 Another attempt made in

the same period was thermal detection.

This, too, was an effort to intercept the

electromagnetic radiations from an airplane engine, but to measure its heat as it

drew near or receded from range. Thermal detection was a tantalizing field of

research. Even with the later successful

development of pulse detection, scientists,

including those in the Signal Corps Laboratories, never wholly gave it up; but it

seemed always to promise better results

than it produced, and until the outset of

World War II, aural detectors (sound locators), in association with searchlights,

marked American aircraft warning sites.

In order to meet its World War I mission, the Signal Corps had to multiply

itself by thirty-five. At the time of the 1916

National Defense Act, the Corps was

smaller even than when it had taken part

in the Spanish-American War. It comprised 42 officers and 1,212 enlisted men,

scattered over half the world. The Aviation

Section alone had grown as large. At the

declaration of war Signal strength was

only 371 more. Half were in the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph

System, half were organized into a pattern

of field and telegraph companies.41 To supplement them, there were 6,000 licensed

amateur radio operators. More than 4,000

of these responded to a spirited recruiting

campaign which even promised "assignment in a battle plane flying over the front

lines,"

 42

 and, under a World War I precursor of World War II's Affiliated Plan,

thousands of men came in from the

commercial communications companies.

Among the regular Signal Corps troops at

the outset of the war, there had been

organized two telegraph and two field

battalions. The National Guard had ten

field signal battalions, no telegraph companies, but sixteen separate companies—

all together 163 officers, 3,510 enlisted

men. The strength deficiency, then, was in

telegraph units, and it was to make up this

difference that the Signal Corps had persuaded American Telephone and Telegraph, Postal Telegraph, Western Union,

and Western Electric to organize battalions of skilled technicians and to permit

many of their engineers to become Signal

Corps Reserve officers in 1916.43

Training started at Fort Leavenworth,

40

 E. H. Armstrong, "Vagaries and Elusiveness of

Invention," Electrical Engineering, LXII, No. 4 (April,

1943), 149. 41

 The field signal company authorized in 1907

consisted of 4 officers and 100 enlisted men. From

1910, regulations provided for one field signal battalion to each infantry and cavalry division. The field

battalion comprised an outpost, a wire and a radio

company. (Memo, CSigO for CofS [1 Jan 36], sub:

Study of the reorganization of sig coms of div and

higher units. SigC OT 322 Gen.) The telegraph company, unlike a field company, did not serve at the

front; it had been created by War Department General Order 55 in 1913. Two of them made up a battalion from 1916 on. Until just before the United

States entered the war, the signal field and telegraph

battalions existed only on paper. The first reference

to them in the Army List and Directory appeared on 20

December 1916. The issue for that date lists four battalions of each type. 42

 Kenneth B. Warner, "Radio Amateurs in War

and Peace," Signals, I, No. 2 (November-December,

1946), 38. 43

 For narratives of this expedient, see: (1) Ruth F.

Sadler, History of the Signal Corps Affiliated Plan,

Aug 44, pp. 1-14. SigC Hist Sec File. (2) Peter L.

Schauble, The First Battalion, the Story of the 406th Telegraph Battalion, Signal Corps, U.S. Army (Philadelphia,

1921). (3) 313th Field Signal Battalion History (Des

Moines, Iowa, 1939). (4) A. Lincoln Lavine, Circuits

of Victory (New York: Doubleday Page & Company,

1921).
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS 21

Kansas, at Camp Meade, Maryland, most

particularly at Camp Alfred Vail, New

Jersey, and at several other locations;

forty-five universities and colleges organized special courses of instruction in telephone and radio engineering, meteorology,

and photography;44 at Vail a camp of 129

buildings arose equipped with every

known device used in field signal work,

including a divisional wire net with underground stations. In Washington the Office

of the Chief Signal Officer moved from

building to building as it outgrew itself.

Well over 50 percent of the total force of

the Signal Corps went into the American

Expeditionary Forces, there to become

about 4 percent of a much greater total.45

This is not to count the Aviation Section.

In the American Expeditionary Forces at

the time of the Armistice, there were 50

field signal battalions, 28 telegraph battalions, 11 depot battalions, and 19 service

companies: a sum of 1,462 officers and

33,038 enlisted men.

After demobilization had drained off the

wartime strength, after the years intervening between the two world wars had dispelled the full recollection of the earlier, a

residue of accomplishment was still to be

observed. There was, for one thing, a pictorial record of conflict compiled by the

cameras of thirty-eight Signal Corps photographic teams.46

 There had been a practical demonstration of the Affiliated Plan.

At General Pershing's demand for weather

service in France, military meteorology

had come back to the Signal Corps.47

Electronic knowledge had noticeably widened. And the principal Signal Corps post

had come into being in northern New

Jersey, with its character permanently

established. Not until 1925 did it become

a permanent installation and change its

name from Camp Alfred Vail to Fort

Monmouth; but almost from the end of

the war it was the recognized center for

two principal functions, communications

training and communications research; it

was the site of the Signal School and the

Signal Corps Laboratories. With this post,

as possibly nowhere else in its range of

interest, the Signal Corps assumed the

aspect which it held at the outset of the

next war twenty years later.

44

 (1) Memo, CSigO for CofS, cited n. 41. (2) Courtney R. Hall, The Development of the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer, Pt. I: 1917-1943, Sep 44, pp. 17-

18. SigC Hist Sec File. 45

 Exec Order 2862, 20 May 18. 46

 At the end of World War I, the Signal Corps had

become the repository for almost 7,000,000 feet of historical motion picture film and for about 85,000 still

negatives, most of them purchased from outside

sources. This material joined the collection of military

pictures taken since the days of Mathew B. Brady in

the Civil War.

Although the photographic activities of the Signal

Corps began in 1881, the primary photographic duty

was assigned officially in July 1917. Memo, Brig Gen

Joseph E. Kuhn, Chief War College Div WDGS, for

CofS, 17 Jul 17, sub: Photography of military operations. PM-10122-1WCD Record Div National

Archives. Training films came to be a part of this

duty; the Army's first one, Close Order Drill, was

photographed at the Military Academy in 1916. Pictures for surveying and ground photomapping were a

responsibility reserved to the Corps of Engineers.

Memo, CofS for TAG, 19 Jul 17. PM-10122-1WCD

Record Div National Archives. The Air Service, after

its divorce from the Signal Corps on 20 May 1918,

took over aerial photography, along with 2,700 of the

3,000 men engaged in the military pictorial work. M.

E. Boswell, Signal Corps Photography in World War

I, Apr 46. SigC Hist Sec File.

WPD, Hist Br, Catalogue of Official A. E. F. Photographs Taken by the Signal Corps, U.S.A., WD Doc 903

(Washington, 1919), is an excellent guide to the still

pictures of World War I. The motion picture film can

be referred to from a title list in the National Archives. 47

 In 1917. Signal Corps weather stations commenced in the United States itself in 1918, and the

Meteorological Service was formalized in AR 105-

210, 12 November 1921. At its peak, it comprised

thirty-nine stations. AG file 665.6, passim, especially

Memo, OCSigO for WP&T Div, 30 Oct 31.
CHAPTER II

The Army in Limbo

Postwar Curtailment

The sudden evaporation of a large

army, the change from crowded training

camps and busy offices to a backwater

organization, put a drain on military efficiency and sense of identity. In the confidence bursting forth from a victory and

with a natural reluctance to think of wars

in the future tense, the nation was glad to

revert to its normal civilian status and to

put the Army back in perspective. The

Army saw its recent strength vanishing,

and its brief influence wiped away as it

resumed the pleasant life of peacetime

service. The abrupt ebbing, followed by

gradual stagnation and ultimately a recommencing rise, formed the soil of the

next twenty years.

Ten days after the Armistice the remaining allowances for the current fiscal year

were almost erased.1 For industry's sake,

Congress continued most of the 1,244 contracts outstanding; they were fulfilled in

spite of the fact that the war was over, and

Signal Corps war-ordered equipment piled

up in the sudden peace with nobody to

use it. Civilian employees, drafted soldiers,

National Guardsmen, Reservists—all went

out along with most of the money. The

National Defense Act of 1920 provided a

strength of 5,000 men for the Signal Corps.

In 1921 the figure was down to 3,000 and

in 1922 had fallen to 2,184.2 The 51st Signal Battalion, stationed at Camp Vail, was

the only one authorized for the post-World

War I Army. In every way, the dwarfing

of the Military Establishment left little

opportunity for studying and applying the

gigantic lessons of the war. Planning for

mobilization of industry in a future war

began with a marked lack of encouragement.3

 Many laboratory projects came to

a halt. From time to time, enlisted men,

confronting frozen promotion lists and

meager pay, secured their release by paying to the finance officer a sum proportionate to their unexpired term of service.

The Signal Corps continued, proud in its

own household but feeling, with the rest of

the Army, that at the national dinner table

it was sitting below the salt.

Raids and forays from other branches

of the service filled the place of the recent

war. The Field Artillery, the Air Service,

and the Tank Corps asked the Signal

Corps to concur in a change in Army regulations which would let them install,

maintain, and operate their own signal

communications systems. The Adjutant

General's Office endeavored, without success, to take over the War Department

Message Center. The Coast Artillery

Corps expressed a preference for having

the Corps of Engineers install its firecontrol systems. The Air Corps wanted

1

 Memo, SW for Chiefs of Bureaus, 21 Nov 18. 2

 CSigO, Annual Reports, 1920, 1921, 1922. 3

 H. D. Hausmann, Signal Corps Activity in Industrial Mobilization and Procurement Planning, 1920-

1940, Pt. I. SigC Hist Sec File.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 23

photography, military meteorology, and

development, procurement, installation,

and maintenance of air navigation equipment.4

The hardest blow of all came first. In its

capacity as a prominent arm of the Army,

the Signal Corps had controlled combat

communications, except for the Field Artillery, well down to all but the smallest

echelons, or, to put it in another direction,

from the rear all the way to the front.

During the war just past, some signal units

within the infantry brigade had been

made up in part of Infantrymen, in part of

Signal Corpsmen from the outpost companies of the field signal battalions; but

the general fact was that the communications of the great combat organizations

had been in sole charge of the Signal

Corps. The 1920 Army reorganization

carried this responsibility through the divisional level, stopped it there, and from that

point on assigned communications to the

Infantry, Field Artillery, or Cavalry.5 In

effect, given the postwar Army, in which

units greater than a division scarcely existed, the order wiped out most of the

tactical interest of the Signal Corps and

permanently moved its center of gravity

away from classification as an arm and

toward classification as a service.

Every Chief Signal Officer protested,

beginning with Maj. Gen. George O.

Squier, who pointed out the confusion he

felt sure would result if several independent radio or wire systems operated in one

area, and who declared that signal communication "MUST BE one complete and

coordinated system from battalion headquarters of the combat units to the Commander in Chief of the Army."

 6 Col.

George C. Marshall expressed himself in

much the same way, saying that he believed that communication troops should

all be Signal Corps troops. But he had

made it clear that the units should be indivisible parts of the combat organizations

which they served, not, as had often been

the case in the American Expeditionary

Forces, to be broken in upon and deprived

of this man or that by the signal officer of

a higher level. They must "train and serve

habitually with the organization to which

attached."

 7

Nevertheless, and although there were

doubts as to the legality of the shift, the

change took place. It had much to recommend it for other arms and services. In

many ways, it marked the beginning of an

essential Army-wide interest in communications matters.8

 The new arrangement

specified that the commander of each unit

would establish the unit's communications

system, his signal officer being responsible

for its efficiency. For the Infantry and

4

 (1) Memo, CSigO for CofS, 22 Jan 20, sub: Sig

com sv. SigC 676 Gen, 1918-1938. (2) Pauline M.

Oakes, The Army Command and Administrative

Communications System, Pt. I: War Department

Radio Net, 1920-1940, Oct 45, pp. 16-18. SigC Hist

Sec File. (3) Memo, Lt Col Consuelo A. Seoane for

Col Charles McK. Saltzman, 8 Mar 23. SigC 676 Gen

1918-1938. (4) Summary Report on Photographic

Activities of the Signal Corps Since August 4, 1941, in

the Fields of Motion Pictures and Visual Aid, 26 Feb

43, pp. 374-76. SigC APS Div File. (5) Courtney R.

Hall, The Development of the Office of the Chief

Signal Officer, Pt. I: 1917-1943, Sep 44, p. 72. SigC

Hist Sec File. (6) M. P. Claussen, The Development

of Radio and Radar Equipment for Air Operations,

1939-1944, p. 11. Photostat copy in same file. (7) Ltr,

TAG to CSigO, 18 Jul 34, sub: Radio direction compass, and 6th Ind, Chief of AC to TAG, 11 Mar 35.

SigC 413.44 Compasses 1, 1919-1934. 5

 WD GO 9, 18 May 20. 6

 Memo, CSigO for CofS, cited n. 4(1). 7

 Memo, CSigO for CofS [1 Jan 36], sub: Study of

reorgn of sig coms of div and higher units. SigC OT

322 Gen. 8

 (1) Memo, Maj Gen William G. Haan, WPD, for

[TAG?], 4 May 20. SigC 676 Gen, 1918-1938. (2) AR

105-15, 12 Nov 21 and 1 Aug 25. (3) Brig Gen Paul

M. Robinett, Ret., Chief Special Studies Div OCMH,

comment on MS, 25 Oct 51. Copy in OCMH.
24 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Cavalry, it solved the problem of having

signalmen arbitrarily transferred without

reference to the tactical problems of the

commander. Yet other difficulties arose.

Men not trained in communications work

contended that the Signal Corps equipment was too delicate or was improperly

made. Signal platoons and detachments

became indistinct and undependable. The

using arms were authorized to train their

communications men by whatever methods worked best inside the regiment or

battalion or squadron, whereas signal

communication takes place much oftener

between than within units.

Thus an un-co-ordinated pattern of

separate training procedures invited chaos.

Six arms—the Infantry, Cavalry, Field

Artillery, Coast Artillery, Air Corps, and

Signal Corps—began to use diverse methods. "The Signal Corps is making the

utmost endeavor to assist in producing

standard training for all communications

troops of the Army, with a view to doing

its part in making the system workable,"

said Maj. Gen. Charles McK. Saltzman,

Squier's successor, "but it is the duty of

this office to express the view that the

principle is not sound."

 9 In 1923 the Cavalry endorsed a resumption of the old system, and the War College commandant

suggested that for the Infantry the dividing line could be drawn so that brigade

communications returned to the Signal

Corps; but the parceling-out of responsibility continued.10

Periodically, the Chief Signal Officers

denounced it, declaring that it had not

been thought suitable for the last war and

would not remain long in another one.11

The opinion was universal in the Signal

Corps that communications must operate

under single rather than divided control.

The greater their complexity—and means

of communication were becoming more

complex every day—the greater the apparent urgency for having one agency

alone develop the signal plans, produce

the signal equipment, train the signalmen.

Maj. Harry C. Ingles, for instance, said

that the principle applied in the Air Corps,

too. Ingles became a World War II Chief

Signal Officer, and his words therefore

pass into and merge with an official position insisted upon for twenty-five years.

The Signal Corps ought to have the responsibility for communications all the

way to the front in the Infantry and the

Cavalry, he asserted, and ought to have it

all the way for the Air Corps as well. So

far as the Air Corps went, "the original

reason for the present arrangement was

that it was thought [by the General Staff]

that airplanes would be operating from

landing fields and airdromes so far in the

rear that it would not be practicable" to

assign air signal troops anywhere else than

at the rear, where they would presumably

spend their time putting in wire communications for the big headquarters. Air signal

communications, Ingles felt, would certainly entail much more than that, particularly when aviation, having ceased to be

subordinate, was no longer attached to the

ground arms. In his opinion, "This reason

never had very much foundation and now

. . . has even less."

 12

Maj. Jerry V. Matejka, also a Signal

Corps general of World War II, conceded

that a tactical commander must be "solely

responsible" for his own communications

9

 Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 2 Apr 24. SigC 300.3 AR

105-15. 10

 SigC 676 Gen, 1918-1938, passim. 11

 Historical Sketch of the Signal Corps (1860-1941), p.

95.

12

 Notation by Maj Ingles on Ltr, Capt Fred G.

Borden to Ingles, 8 Feb 30. SigC 676 Use of Army

Com Systems 3, 1929.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 25

system and "must have absolute military

control" of all of the men assigned to it,

but contended that there was no reason

why the men must belong to the same arm

as the commander. Matejka repeated the

conviction that standardization of training

was vital, because good communications in

one regiment must be matched by good

communications in another regiment, if

there is to be good communication between the two. This training, he argued, is

a specialized knowledge, and the men who

master it need to know that they will be

rewarded for their skill, not held back because, being signalmen, they do not command troops. He recommended, therefore,

that Signal Corps units should be reestablished in echelons from which they

had disappeared, should be commanded

by Signal Corps officers on the commanders' staffs, should be attached to the tactical organization rather than assigned, and,

the tactical mission being completed,

should once again become part of the

parent Signal Corps units from which they

had been detached.13

Maj. Gen. Joseph O. Mauborgne, likewise, becoming Chief Signal Officer, met

the lingering controversy. It came up in

1937 over the question of who was obligated actually to put a radio into a combat

vehicle. Did responsibility for signal communications extend to installing signal

equipment? The chiefs of the Infantry,

Cavalry, and Field Artillery, as well as

G-1, G-2, G-4, and Mauborgne, held

opinions at variance with each other. The

combat arms wanted to have the Signal

Corps do the installation of every set in

every one of their vehicles. But the lines of

authority had been drawn at a point

which made this impossible, the Chief

Signal Officer objected. His organization,

not being provided with the men or the

funds for going throughout the Military

Establishment in order to install radios,

could only install them at the factory, as

part of an assembly-line process. Assemblyline installation could occur only if the

Infantry, Cavalry, and others synchronized their procurement of vehicles with

the procurement of accessories, yet so far

was this from being the case that appropriations for the radio equipment were not

even sought in the same fiscal year as

appropriations for the vehicles themselves.

The combat arms must be prepared to

train specialists for handling communications. This was the point of major importance. Installing a radio was not difficult;

an untrained infantryman could do it. The

Signal Corps would put the pilot model in,

and would enclose specific instructions

with every set, but the Infantry, Cavalry,

Artillery, and other arms must use their

own men for the responsibilities which

they claimed.14

Every year, meanwhile, put all forms of

signaling several years ahead of the stages

of development reached before the 1920

reorganization. The man who had been

expert in 1918 was ignorant in 1928 unless

he had kept himself informed of the new

devices and methods. Far from being able

to be communications mentor to the whole

Army, the Signal Corps could barely

maintain the pace itself. General Saltzman

took note of a growing demand for apparatus of greater capacity and variety, but

was unable to do much to supply it.15 His

13

 Maj J. V. Matejka, "Signal Communication,"

Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 89 (March-April, 1936),

pp. 20-24. 14

 Memo, Actg ACofS G-3 for CofS, 20 Aug 37,

sub: Revision of AR 105-15—re responsibility for installation of radio equip in vehicles. AG 676 (3-19-37)

(1) Revision of AR 105-15. 15

 Ltr, CSigO to All SigC Officers, 28 Mar 24. SigC

676 Gen, 1918-1938.
26 THE SIGNAL CORPS

organization could afford almost no new

equipment for its operating functions in

Washington, the corps areas, Alaska and

the departments, nor even for its Signal

School at Fort Monmouth, where the demands of the future made it particularly

important.

Recognizing the necessity for modernizing its curriculum, the school tried to

keep its instruction up to date and its enrollment at a high enough level to warrant the instruction. But only a few men

could be allotted to training without

affecting the efficiency of the Corps' daily

responsibility; and there was considerable

dissatisfaction, moreover, with the caliber

of officers, whether from the Signal Corps

or from another branch, who were allotted.16

 Many a field officer was "deplorably ignorant of signal communications."

 17

In a few cases, men who could not be

spared from their duties in order to go to

the school sought further study at local

technical schools and universities; and

partly for their advantage, partly to maintain interest among Reserve and National

Guard officers, the school gave correspondence courses. Even in these, however, students did not always show the reasonable

familiarity with their own component of

the Army which the printed lessons and

monographs took for granted.

Occupied with routine duties, some

Signal Corps officers and men vegetated.

Routine duties, some essential, some unessential, told particularly upon enlisted

men. It became increasingly difficult to

maintain morale; the rate of turnover was

heavy. The Army Pay Act of 1922 had reduced the grades available to radio operators; as a result, a good operator did not

often re-enlist unless he had one of the

higher noncommissioned officer ratings.

From Monmouth, the 51st Signal Battalion was supplying qualified enlisted instructors and qualified enlisted administrative or technical specialists, but against

a steady demand that always exceeded the

supply. Of ninety-four men from the battalion who were going to classes in 1928,

fifty-one were made available for assignment as a pool of trained specialists. So

great was the need for them that the pool

was drained within six months.18 Officers

found themselves faced with the requirement that they develop attainments like

skill in public speaking and an elementary

acquaintance with international affairs,

with business administration, or with languages.19

 In another connection but on the

same theme, Maj. Spencer B. Akin, later

the postwar Chief Signal Officer, suggested that it might be a good thing for a

Signal Corps officer to have at least "a

general idea of the probable effects on his

specialty of the most recently developed

agencies of warfare."

 20

The Continuing Technical Tradition

Taking a much firmer view, from time

to time members of the Corps offered plans

for rebuilding it as a strong technical or16

 (1) Ltr, Maj George L. Van Deusen, Sig School,

to Maj David McL. Crawford, OCSigO, 27 Mar 29;

(2) Ltr, CSigO to Comdt Sig School, 28 Mar 29; (3)

Ltr, CSigO to CO Ft. Monmouth, 24 Jul 29, sub:

Home study courses for officers. SigC 352.11 Gen

Courses of Instruction 1. 17

 Ltr, Maj Ingles, Sig School, to Maj Otis K.

Sadtler, OCSigO, 9 Mar 25. SigC 352.11 Gen 1. 18

 S Sgt Leo W. Bundy, History of Fort Monmouth,

1936, pp. 1-8. SigC Hq Ft. Monmouth 322 51st FM

1928. 19

 AG Ltr, 22 Aug 30, sub: Honor courses in sv

schools. AG 352.01 (8-18-30) Misc (0). 20

 2d Wrapper Ind, [Maj Akin, Asst Comdt] Sig

School Ft. Monmouth to CSigO, 7 Oct 31, on AG

Ltr, AG 352.01 (4-15-31) Misc M, 24 Sep 31. SigC

352.11 Gen 2.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 27

ganization.21 For steadily the technician

claimed a larger part of the soldier. Year

by year, it was becoming more necessary

for even a basic signalman to know Ohm's

law than the manual of arms. In field exercises there was little change; old habits

persisted like campaign hats.22 But many

minds in the Corps were conscious of the

honorable tradition of scientific interest

and contribution which they inherited, as

well as alert to the studies and experiments

of their own day. The laboratories of the

Signal Corps

 23

 were the centers of this

interest. Whatever was amateur became

professional there; what was speculative

took a position well behind practical military uses but was not cast aside altogether.

The growth of the service, such as it was in

the stunted years between wars, occurred

more in the technical than in the tactical

or administrative sides of the Signal Corps.

Research and invention of considerable

variety took place. Master Signal Electrician Samuel O. Hoffman led off with an

experiment in thermal detection. In January 1919, at Langley Field, Virginia, he

endeavored to locate an airplane by intercepting the heat of its engine. He was able

to register on a galvanometer the presence

of a Jenny which was flying at 3,500 feet

just after nightfall in thick, wet weather.

Beyond that, he failed, because unluckily

"the slightest whiff of cloud gave a warm

indication as large as a plane would

give."

 24

 This was an effort in a scarcely

opened field of the communications

spectrum.

In the better-known yet still sufficiently

novel span which ground waves occupy,

General Squier's wired wireless came forward to reach a wider public. Squier had

his invention demonstrated between the

Signal Corps Research Laboratory at the

Bureau of Standards (in Washington) and

Baltimore, again between New York and

Albany on the telephone lines of the New

York Central Railway, and over a Chesapeake Bay cable of the Weather Bureau.25

Among other things, the tests made clear

the feasibility of telephoning from moving

trains. Working from the wired wireless

principle, R. D. Duncan, Jr., who was the

chief engineer of the Signal Corps Research Laboratory, developed an instrument which he named the superphone,

because it promised "absolute secrecy of

communication without any chance of the

conversation being overheard, interrupted

or broken into."

 26

 The promise exceeded

the performance.

Experiments in optical signaling made

use of polarized light. The physicist Robert A. Millikan, later a Nobel prize winner,

had instituted this research when he was a

Signal Corps major in 1917. Dr. Louis

Cohen and Maj. Joseph O. Mauborgne

worked on a new method of eliminating

21

 E. g., Ltr, Sig Supply Officer, Sig Sec N.Y. Gen

Intermediate Depot, to CSigO, 29 May 24, sub: Sig

coms systems, with 2d Ind, CO Camp Alfred Vail, to

CSigO, 16 Jun 24, and 3d Ind, Col Voris to O/C Sig

Sec N.Y. Gen Intermediate Depot, 20 Jun 24. SigC

352.11 Gen 2. 22

 See, for example, the 1933 training film, Signal

Communication Within the Infantry Regiment,

TF-13. 23

 Before their consolidation on 12 August 1929 as

the Signal Corps Laboratories at Fort Monmouth,

these consisted of the Electrical Laboratory and the

Research Laboratory in Washington (the latter at the

Bureau of Standards) and the Radio Laboratory at

Monmouth. In addition, there was the Signal Corps

Aircraft Radio Laboratory at Dayton, Ohio. 24

 S. O. Hoffman, "The Detection of Invisible Objects by Heat Radiation," paper read at ninetyseventh meeting of the American Physical Society,

25-26 April 1919, Physical Review, 2d Ser., XIV (August, 1919), 154. 25

 "Recent Experiments in Wire Radio," Signal

Corps Bulletin, No. 6 (February, 1921), pp. 4-6. 26

 Maj. Gen. George O. Squier, "A New Telephone

Invention, the 'Superphone,' " Signal Corps Bulletin,

No. 12 (January, 1922), p. 1.
28 THE SIGNAL CORPS

static. Capt. Fred P. Andrews developed a

variable condenser for use on the Alaska

cable system. A transmitter-receiver resonance indicator was worked out by 1st Lt.

Wesley T. Guest, although after four years'

negotiation he was unable to patent it for

the government.27 O. E. Marvel, a radio

engineer for the Signal Corps at McCook

Field, Dayton, Ohio, contributed to the

development of a radio-controlled automobile with which the Engineering Division of the Air Service at that field used to

mystify visitors.

The Signal Corps had become responsible for radio research and development

in the broadest sense in February 1919,

the authorization only confirming what

was already the case, because both the

American Expeditionary Forces and the

Air Service had depended upon it for wireless equipment.28

 After the Armistice, the

work which had been carried on in Paris,

Washington, and Little Silver, New Jersey,

shrank and concentrated. Some of it continued at the Bureau of Standards for a

time, along with Navy research. Then it

was moved to Little Silver, ultimately to

be joined by the Signal Corps electrical

and meteorological laboratories in the

area to be known as Fort Monmouth.29

Close confidence surrounded the work, for

radio was a generic term which covered

many technical experiments. To the public, conveniently, it meant little else than

broadcasting—just as aviation was coming

to signify heavier-than-air flight only; and

even to uninitiates within the Signal Corps

itself, the term raised no notion of anything more than a weak competitor to the

standard wire means for communication.

However, to the engineers in the Signal

Corps Laboratories, as to electrical science

and commerce generally, it meant, above

all, wireless communication in the established fields of telephone and telegraph.

Loop radio, having reached postwar

official status as the SCR-77,30 made its

appearance at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where

Mauborgne showed it to the Field Artillery Board. Airborne radio began to

achieve real importance, and a clear distinction grew up between ground and air

equipment. There came to be three kinds

of air radio equipment, depending upon a

primary use for communications, navigation, or meteorology. The Signal Corps

Laboratories established a liaison staff at

McCook Field, in 1922, in order to supervise the testing of air communication and

air navigation sets, but kept meteorological development at Camp Vail. Since the

Meteorological Service, which had been

revived in 1917 and 1918, was for the

Army as a whole, it seemed a good idea to

retain meteorological devices, whether for

air or ground use, at the New Jersey development agency. McCook Field was

incorporated into Wright Field, and

Wright Field became the air matériel center. The liaison group there became the

Signal Corps Aircraft Radio Laboratory;

from 1927 on, it proposed as well as tested

the equipment which the Signal Corps

developed for the Air Corps.

27

 SigC 072. Patents, assembled alphabetically by

name of inventor: Andrews, Guest, et al. 28

 For a few months in 1918 the Air Service had attempted both to install radio sets and to train radio

operators, but, overreaching itself, had conceded the

training to the Signal Corps. Thereafter, the Air Service provided personnel and school facilities for the instruction and airfields and pilots for research experiments and practice trials. WD, Annual Reports, 1919,

Vol. I, Pt. I, pp. 1189-93. 29

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1930, p. 41. 30

 Originally standing for "set, complete, radio,"

the initials SCR came by general consent to mean

"Signal Corps radio" instead. Although to the public,

a radio set was likely to mean only a receiver, to a Signal Corpsman a set included, not only the receiver,

but also the transmitter, antenna, and power supply.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 29

THE SCR-77 in use during ROTC training at Camp Vail, New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Camp Vail became Fort

Monmouth, and the main Laboratories

there had reached the "130" series of

SCR's. These were portable sets which

showed the sharp functional distinction of

their World War II descendants: the

SCR-130,131, and 132 were ground forces

radios (and the 131 continued in use until

1944), whereas the next four in order were

made for the air forces. The SCR-133 was

for pursuit airplanes; observation planes

would employ the 134; night bombers, the

135; and the SCR-136 was a ground-toair set. The view which prevailed then of

the prime function of a military airplane

is indicated by the fact that the SCR-134,

the observation plane set, received the

most attention; comparably, the bombardment airplane's SCR-135 was projected as

"a set whose range when used as a radiotelephone will be from 80 to 100 miles, and

... as an undamped wave radiotelegraph . . . from 200 to 250 miles."

 31

Armstrong's superheterodyne receiver had

vanished into an eddy of patent difficulties

before his postwar successors in the Signal

Corps could smooth out its performance

for military uses. Unable to use the superheterodyne, and rendered dependent by

the Congresses of the 1920's which

awarded all government enterprise to private business, the Signal Corps did what it

could with commercial radios of the day.

These sets cramped the receiving antenna

into a small space in order to achieve a

marketable compactness, but had the advantage of the simple tuned frequency.

31

 "New Airplane Radio Set: Experimental Work

on SCR-135, Airplane Radio Transmitter," Signal

Corps Bulletin, No. 6 (February, 1921), pp. 1-3.
30 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Some of the disputed patents expired in

1931 and, with the commercial companies

engaged in rivalry to bring out new superheterodyne sets, the Signal Corps was able

to ask them to produce one for the Army.

The receiver BC-189, the first superheterodyne receiver standardized for an Army

set, was ready by 1934.32

In navigational radio, the Bureau of

Standards, the Air Service, and the Signal

Corps collaborated on the radio beacon, a

device which the ever-lengthening range

of airplanes was making inevitable. Flight

tests had been made with it at Boiling

Field, Washington, D. C., in 1921. Shortly

afterward, the work was transferred to

Ohio. A variety of other flights tested and

improved it until, in 1927, it guided Air

Corps 1st Lts. Lester J. Maitland and

Albert F. Hegenberger to Hawaii, slightly

in advance of the late-summer "Dole

Derby" over the same route.

In 1935 a noteworthy reorganization

collected all development work in air

communication and air navigation equipment, whether Signal Corps or Air Corps

work, and lodged it in the single agency,

the Aircraft Radio Laboratory of Wright

Field. Progress in new types resulted. The

joint effort produced military versions of

the radio range and the radio compass;

versions of all of the instruments for blind

flying (altimeter, gyrocompass, artificial

horizon, airspeed indicator, bank-andturn indicator, rate-of-climb meter); and

the instrument-landing system which

developed into ground-controlled approach.33

Military airfields throughout the United

States and in the Canal Zone and Hawaiian Islands were gradually equipped with

homing beacons and radio ranges. The

ranges, of a new type advocated by the

Department of Commerce, permitted an

extra channel for radiotelephony. Thus,

the station could broadcast weather information along with the beacon signals (the

"A," the "N," and the steady, on-course

tone). With the speed of flight increasing,

this was a great advantage, because a pilot

could lose his course if he had to switch off

the range signal in order to get the weather.

At that stage of aviation, however, radio

aids to flying had by no means established

themselves. The least progress made at the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory was in the fundamental decision of whether to include

radio equipment in the blueprint design of

aircraft. The ability to fly by instruments

held forth such obvious advantages that it

seems astonishing that radio was not integral to all military aircraft from the moment that it was available. Designers and

aviators alike, nevertheless, were often

reluctant to part with the maneuverability

and speed which the weight and bulk of

the radio sets would cause them to lose.

For some time the airborne equipment

developed at the Aircraft Radio Laboratory was merely accessory. In 1936, however, the Signal Corps announced that

"the Army's 1,150 war planes at last were

equipped fully with radio communication

and the utmost in military navigation devices."

 34

 The communications equipment

thus replaced had been in use since 1922.

Meteorological research, at the Fort

Monmouth laboratories, acknowledged a

debt to Maj. William R. Blair, which was

also acknowledged in the Air Service's

1924 round-the-world flight. Blair, who

had been head of the Meteorological Section in the American Expeditionary Forces

32

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 11 (October 10, 1936), p. 8. (See Bibliographical Note.) 33

 Capt. F. L. Ankenbrandt, "Ceiling Zero—Visibility Zero," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 109 (JulyDecember, 1940), pp. 10-25. 34

 Kansas City Star, February 13, 1936.
A FLYING RADIO LABORATORY
32 THE SIGNAL CORPS

EXPERIMENTAL ANTENNAS installed on an airplane.

and who took a leading part in the work

at Fort Monmouth for many years, joined

scientists of the Bureau of Standards,

especially Harry Diamond, in working out

the principles of an audiomodulated

radiosonde. It was not called the radiosonde then, but the radiometeorograph.

Any weather-station man was practiced in

releasing a small pilot balloon and calculating its rise and drift by following it with

a theodolite until it disappeared from

view. The new meteorograph held out a

promise of being useful at night and on

cloudy days, when the weather man could

not see the balloon, and of providing information regarding temperature, pressure, and humidity as well as wind data

above the clouds. It consisted of an automatic, battery-powered, miniature weather station and transmitter, borne by the

pilot balloon. When the expanding

balloon burst in increasingly thin air, the

instruments would parachute to earth, to

be salvaged, if they could be found, for

another flight; meanwhile, the meteorologist would track the automatic squeaks

of the transmitter with directional receiving antenna on the ground.

In the summer of 1935 the Meteorological Service sent 1st Lt. William H.

Wenstrom and three enlisted men to set

up a temporary weather station at Rapid

City, in the South Dakota Black Hills.

There the Air Corps and the National

Geographic Society undertook a successful balloon ascension into the stratosphere.

Wenstrom and his men gave radiometeorography a series of tests, sending 45-inch

and 12-inch pilot balloons aloft and detecting the signals by means of a super-
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 33

heterodyne receiver. By 1938 the Air

Corps' Patterson Field, Ohio, and Barksdale Field, California, were using the

radiometeorograph, in a form standardized at one and one-half pounds for the

device itself, one-half pound for its parachute, and one pound for the balloon; it

broadcast its signals on a frequency of

179.6 megacycles.35

In addition to all of these tangible evidences of advance, the pages of the Signal

Corps Bulletin reflected the possibilities—

not yet the actualities, but the possibilities—which excited radio scientists and

engineers. William D. Hershberger, associate physicist at the Laboratories, wrote

in the Bulletin of experiments in radio

optics, a term then used to refer to the

area of the spectrum from the P-band to

the K-band where radar afterward materialized; it derived from Hertz's demonstration in 1886 of the optical properties of

radio waves. Capt. John J. Downing published a theory of radio reflection. Paul E.

Watson, for whom the Signal Corps

Eatontown Laboratory was renamed after

his death in the midst of World War II, explained antenna radiation characteristics

and devised a method for computing

ground-wave intensities. Capt. K. M.

Soukaras analyzed the propagation of

radio waves into the ionosphere. In a summary of essential facts known about radio

energy, and emphasizing the debt which

any item of military equipment owes to

the theory that precedes it, Maj. Roger

B. Colton offered rules of thumb for the

Laboratories in their radio equipment

projects:

(1) Frequencies below 100 kc ... re- quire extensive and expensive antenna systems; (2) frequencies between 100 and 1,500

kc are generally useful ... (3) frequencies

between 1,500 and 2,500 kc are especially

good for vehicles, small boats, and airplanes,

and for short and medium distances, but in

airplanes it is generally preferable to use frequencies from 3,000 to 3,500 kc alternatively

with frequencies from 5,000 to 6,000 kc;

... (5) frequencies above 30,000 kc are

very short distance frequencies; (6) frequencies above 300 mc (300,000 kc) behave very

much like light and are as yet hard to produce efficiently.36

Colton, a graduate of Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later became director of the Signal Corps Laboratories during the three years before Pearl

Harbor.

Wire projects gradually assembled

much of the wire equipment that was to

be used in the forthcoming war. There appeared a lightweight field teletype, the

first which the Signal Corps had, an

adaptation of a commercial teleprinter;

another teleprinter, applicable to radio as

well, and produced by George A. Graham,

who was afterward the chief engineer of

the Wire Section at Fort Monmouth;

W-l10 field wire, for which the Laboratories investigated the possibility of replacing tin and rubber with cellophane and

duprene, two Du Pont synthetics; laryngaphones and, later, built-in diaphragms,

35

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with William R. Blair,

SigC Ret., Locust, N.J., 12 Feb 50. (2) Signal Corps

Information Letter, No. 6 July 10, 1935), p. 18, No.

18 (July 1, 1938), p. 16, No. 19 (October 10, 1938),

p. 15. 36

 W. D. Hershberger, "A Survey of Radio Optics,"

No. 79 (July-August, 1934), pp. 15-23; Capt. J. J.

Downing, "Reflection of Radio Waves," No. 99

(January-March, 1938), pp. 27-30; Paul E. Watson,

"Antenna Radiation Characteristics," No. 99 (January-March, 1938), pp. 65-78; Watson, "A Method

of Computing Ground Wave Intensities," No. 103

(January-March, 1939), pp. 48-55; Capt. K. M.

Soukaras, "Radio Wave Propagation and the Ionosphere," No. 106 (October-December, 1939), pp. 27-

32; Maj, Roger G. Colton, "Radio Energy Radiation

and Propagation," No. 86 (September-October,

1935), pp. 18-25. All in Signal Corps Bulletin.
34 THE SIGNAL CORPS

so that gas masks could be used with

standard telephones; the EE-8-T2 telephone; and the sound-powered telephone.

The last, as its name indicates, was an instrument which dispensed with dry batteries and activated its transmitter merely

from the power of the human voice. Dubious about it, the Signal Corps nevertheless bought two sets for testing. These

came from the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and were identical with those the

Navy used on battleships. In addition, the

Signal Corps scrutinized Radio Corporation of America and Control Instrument

Company sets, and signed a 1937 contract

for a dozen of still another model with the

Automatic Electric Company.37 The

sound-powered telephone was never a

favorite in those years, however.

The EE-8 telephone, Type 2, became

the answer to a general need among all

components of the service for a superior

military field instrument, light of weight,

rugged, easily maintained. First standardized in 1932, although not procurable

until 1937, it was one of the items developed well in advance of World War II

which proved themselves in that conflict.

Outdoing the maximum transmission

range of its predecessor, the EE-5, by at

least six miles, it was also lighter in weight

and "talked up much better."

 38

 Other

items of wire communication equipment

which these years brought out included

the telegraph set, TG-5, which won the

approbation of the Field Artillery; reel

units with improved wire-laying and wirerecovering devices; a loading coil for

Coast Artillery and Signal Corps long

field lines which trebled their range; and

W-130 wire, a strand even lighter than the

field wire W-l10. Assault wire, as it was

known, had to be flexible and light of

weight, very easy to handle and carry, because front-line men would use it. If the

outer rubber insulation were applied by

the usual extrusion process in manufacture, the wire would be too thick and stiff.

Drawing it instead through liquid latex

seemed to solve the difficulty.39

Much of the development work took

place without the sympathy of the Army

as a whole, which, encased in a skintight

budget, was likely to declare that no

money should be frittered away on tomorrow-projects when today had to be

taken care of first. The nation at large,

which as an electorate was responsible for

the tight budget, insisted moreover that

the Army use up what it had before ever

asking for more. Admirable as this sort of

thriftiness was in checking wastefulness, it

did not help the services to keep up to

date. Stocks left over from ten years earlier

had to be "consumed" even though from

the engineering point of view they were

obsolete. Often this meant dismantling

models of several types and recombining

them, in order to get something as close as

possible to what the consumer required

without going to any expense except considerable overhead and salaries.

Although in 1927 the Signal Corps

Technical Committee endorsed the development of a monocord switchboard, the

Chief Signal Officer indicated that neither

time nor funds would permit it.40 The

37

 Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of Signal

Corps Research and Development in World War II,

1945-46, Vol. V, Wire Communication, Pt. 4, Proj

562-B. SigC Hist Sec File. 38

 Memos for Record, Maj Louis Cansler, OCSigO,

25 May and 5 Sep 36. SigC C&E Equip Gen. 39

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 18 (July 1,

1938), p. 12. 40

 Capt George I. Back, O/C Wire Equip Projs

SCL, History of Wire Communication Development

Projects and Certain Miscellaneous Development

Projects During the Period 1924 to 1933, 23 Aug 33,

p. 9. SigC Hist Sec File.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 35

engineers proposed an improved telegraph

set in the same year, but could not order

it while numbers of the old sets were on

hand. They abandoned an interesting

project for a mobile meteorological station

for lack of money. There was very little

progress until the 1930's in the redesigning of fire-control systems for coastal guns.

The Office of the Chief Signal Officer had

to cancel an assault-wire project. Poverty

seemed pretty constricting. Yet sometimes

these cancellations came from decisions

which held, not that they cost too much,

but that they had no value. In 1928, for

instance, the Research and Engineering

Division improved a signal lamp, only to

find that although the Coast Artillery did

want it the Infantry did not, and the Field

Artillery was unenthusiastic.41 A more

striking case in point, particularly to those

who struggled a decade later with wet,

rusted, gritty, or fungus-clogged equipment, is the dropping of a project for shelter for communications in the field,

because "no need could be foreseen for

equipment of this character."

 42

Usually, though, the fault was not

shortsightedness but shortness of means.

Considering the whole annual appropriation, research and development got what

looked like a generous share, but it was

not a relatively predictable, day-by-day

activity, and other Signal Corps functions

were.43 The nub of the problem, indeed,

was that research and development demanded heavy outlays if there was to be

any return at all, yet could not be certain

of rewarding every investment.

Defense-Strategy Signaling

The riskiest, the most elusive of all

projects now a successful part of past history were the detection projects. Militarily

they were of unmistakable significance.

They were related to a fundamental rule:

know where your enemy is. To the United

States of the 1920's and 1930's, which

thought solely in terms of defense, detection was associated with the desire for

enough warning; and because the airplane was above all others the weapon

most likely to appear without warning,

detection projects became to an ever

greater extent aircraft warning projects.

Detection also implied the discovery of

targets on land and sea, and the location

of objects or persons that were not targets

as well as of those that were. In later

usages, even, it included finding the fixed

as well as the moving—landfalls and

mountains, along with mobile objects like

approaching bombers, submarines, night

scouting parties, birds, rain clouds, and

V-2 projectiles.

Some methods of locating used one-way

devices; that is to say, they depended

upon picking up radiations from the object being detected. Others were two-way,

sending out radiant energy and measuring it when the target reflected it. Detection research ranged the known spectrum.

It explored visual means, as in bringing

an airplane within the beam of an antiaircraft gun battery's searchlights or comput41

 Capt. Jay D. B. Lattin had noted that the French,

in putting down the rebellion of Abd-el-Krim, had

used visual signals. He thought that the American

Army ought to keep them, too, and develop them

"rather than let [them] become discarded because of

cumbersome apparatus and insufficiently trained personnel." Ltr, Lattin, Office Mil Attache, Paris, to

CSigO, 4 Nov 25. SigC 676 Sig Coms of the French

Army. 42

 Back hist cited n. 40, p. 35. 43

 For example, in one subunit fiscal plan which

estimated $1,950,000 for construction of communication systems, the main activity of the Signal Corps, research was budgeted at $480,000. Memo, Fiscal Div

for Maj Owen S. Albright, 19 Feb 25. SigC OR 381

Mob Plng.
36 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ing the position of a 16-inch railwaymounted gun by measuring its muzzle

flash. It depended upon sound, as in the

aural detectors of the nation's 1939 coastal

defenses. It produced results by heat, or

infrared rays; by ultraviolet rays; by short

radio waves; and, most impressively of all,

by microwaves. Several of these avenues

had opened in World War I. Light was the

principal means of detection then, when

flares and star shells illuminated no man's

land and searchlights attempted to catch

zeppelins in their beams. Radio direction

finding was a valuable adjunct to ground

tactics; and the efforts at detecting airplanes by intercepting the very short

waves given off by the ignition systems or

by locating their infrared radiations had

led to the postwar experiments in thermal

detection of aircraft which Signal Corpsmen engaged in at Langley Field and also

at Columbia University.

Sound-locating equipment, turned to

after the early thermal experiments, absorbed a good deal of both Signal Corps

and Ordnance attention. Scientists understood its physical limitation—the basic

fact that the objects to be detected were

already flying half as fast as sound

travels—but had to bring it into being

anyway, pending something better. In the

equipment which they brought out the

Army got its first practical means of

detecting airplanes at a distance. Just as

searchlights, the first method attempted,

extended the sense of sight, and as pulse

radar is figuratively an extraordinary

heightening of the sense of touch, so the

intermediate method sharpened the hearing. Binaural detectors employed large

horns in order to track an approaching

airplane by the noise of its engines. Originally there were four horns, one pair

funneling sound into the ears of the azimuth operator, the other pair serving the

elevation operator, but the number was

reduced to three in the last models just before radar replaced sound location.44

Binaural equipment controlled 60-inch

searchlights, in an association of extra

sight with extra sound. Aural detection

passed through a series of refinements

which kept it a part of the nation's antiaircraft defenses until after World War II

had begun. Nonetheless, it was doomed

from the outset, because sounds move too

slowly to provide much warning.

Sound ranging in another field led to

experimentation in hydracoustics or marine aural detection. In July 1922 the Signal Corps fell heir to some of the soundranging projects of the Coast Artillery

Corps,45 and in 1930, making the customary arrangement with a using arm, took

over all of the laboratory development of

the equipment while the Coast Artillery

assumed its field testing. Some of the

equipment was for ground sound location,

but the Coast Artillery Corps had particular interest, next to antiaircraft projects, in

detecting water-borne targets. Hydrocoustic ranging, as the words suggest, endeavored to calculate the distance of an

object by hearing it through water.

Scattered attempts had been made to develop it, as an aid to navigation solely, before World War I. The technique was

based upon the fact that surface or underwater craft emit sound waves which delicate underwater microphones can pick up

and transmit to instruments on shore. In

its simplest terms, such an arrangement

44

 Harry M. Davis, History of the Signal Corps Development of U.S. Army Radar Equipment, Pt. I,

1944, Fig. 1. SigC Hist Sec File. 45

 "Engineering and Research" and "Development

Projects of the Signal Corps," Signal Corps Bulletin,

No. 18 (February, 1923), pp. 27-28, and No. 21 (August, 1923), p. 7.
EARLY SOUND DETECTION DEVICE
38 THE SIGNAL CORPS

provided a "seeing ear" by which the observer on land could tell what was going

on underneath the water or on its surface,

in spite of distance or poor visibility. During its years of work in subaqueous sound

ranging, the Signal Corps produced several instruments, and had binaural sets

ready for service test by 1935.

Other forms of detection of ships, challenging the aural methods, claimed attention. One means tried by the French liner

Normandie called for the transmission of

ultrahigh-frequency (15-centimeter) radio

waves in a 45 ° arc in front of the bow.

When the radio waves encountered an

object not more than a dozen miles away,

they were reflected into a sensitive receiver and amplified so as to be made audible

in a telephone receiver. "This was a sort

of ear-radar," and an extraordinary advance.46

 A suggestion closer to Signal

Corps interests, because it came to the

Laboratories from the Hawaiian Department, proposed an adaptation of Millikan's "black light" to alert the coast of

Oahu with a system of ultraviolet beams

impinging upon photoelectric cells. An incoming ship or landing party would herald itself by interrupting the beam. The

Laboratories, however, pointed out the

impracticability of the proposal. Such

rays are tangential to the surface of the

earth; the only way to cover the island approaches would have been with a dense

series of beams, and some of the apparatus

might have had to be placed 250 feet

above the water line.47

Infrared methods, both for airplanes

and for ships, were steadily under trial.

When Major Blair was the officer in

charge of the Research and Engineering

Division of the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer in the late '20's, he expressed his

dissatisfaction with sound locators and

recommended that money be allocated

for both high-frequency radio and heat

detection. He was especially interested in

the former, being one of the few men of

that time who saw possibilities in detection by means of having radio waves

"bouncing back like an echo."

 48

Upon becoming director of the Laboratories in 1930, Blair scheduled a project to

inquire into the potentialities of both. Set

up in February 1931, Project 88 had the

title Position Finding by Means of Light,

but what was in mind was more nearly

Detection by Means of Electromagnetic

Radiation—in that part of the spectrum

which spans both microwaves and infrared rays. Scientists referred to it as the

"radio-optic" field because the radiations

are of such high frequency as to have lineof-sight characteristics. The assignment of

Project 88 to the Sound and Light Section

brought into proximity all of the explorations of means of detection. Blair first put

the emphasis on heat ranging. Year by

year thermal research had reached several

more of its frustrating yet elusively promising climaxes. At the Aberdeen Proving

Ground, in 1926, the Ordnance Department had detected an airplane by reflected

infrared rays and the Naval Research

Laboratory had reported successful experiments. Because Ordnance had just

46

 Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Radar: What Radar Is and

How It Works (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946),

p. 117. For a contemporary description of this equipment, see " 'Feelers' for Ships: New Micro-Wave

Equipment Described," Wireless World, XXXVIII

(June 26, 1936), 623-24. 47

 Ltr, CG Hawaiian Dept to TAG, 30 Mar 34, sub:

Use of ultraviolet-ray projectors, and 2d Wrapper Ind,

Dir SCL to CSigO, 16 May 34. SigC 311.6 Ultraviolet-Ray Projectors—Defense of Oahu. 48

 "I remember those exact words." Statement by

Brig. Gen. Oliver L. Spiller, Coast Artillery Corps, in

an interview with Capt. Harry M. Davis, 28 June

1945, Washington, D. C. SigC A46-160 Data on Blair

Patent Search.
39

withdrawn in favor of the Signal Corps,

infrared work in the new Project 88 was

based upon the Ordnance researches. Signal Corps experience going back to the

1919 tests was added to it in the person of

the section chief, Dr. S. H. Anderson, who

had been present at Langley Field when

Hoffman made them. In 1932 the Laboratories tracked a Navy blimp to 6,300 feet

by the reflected infrared means.49

In 1934 it became apparent that, although the Ordnance-Signal Corps duplication had been resolved, another had

taken its place. The exchange of correspondence over the Hawaiian Department's electric eye suggestion brought to

the attention of the General Staff the fact

that secret thermal research was in progress in two parts of the Army; for the Signal Corps, in pointing out that its infrared

projects were more likely to turn out well

than the ultraviolet method, drew an objection from the Corps of. Engineers.

Charged with the responsibility for developing searchlights, the Engineers had

sponsored research in infrared detection

after a 1933 Air Corps-Antiaircraft exercise at Fort Knox, Kentucky, had shown

how unsatisfactory the accustomed aircraft warning equipment was. Pending a

decision on the question of responsibility,

both combat services kept their thermal

detection projects in force.

Meanwhile, the method inherited from

Ordnance, the reflected (two-way) method, proved disappointing and the Signal

Corps suspended further work on it; the

equipment could not generate enough

heat to be detectable after any moderately

long round trip. The radiated, or oneway, approach was kept open. With a

thermolocator, which they produced for

marine detection only, the Fort Monmouth experimenters more or less successfully tracked a series of ocean liners sailing

past them from New York Harbor: the

Mauretania to a distance of 23,000 yards in

1934, the Normandie to 30,000 in 1935 and,

in the same year, the Aquitania to 18,000

through a fog. They were even able to distinguish the Mauretania's dummy smokestack from her three real ones.50

 Nevertheless, the Laboratories' detection research

was due for a new departure. Radio-wave

work was about to take full precedence

over heat ranging. Thermal detectors

were delivering much better results than

radio, but their limit of efficiency persisted

in arriving too soon.

The services' study of radiolocation had

begun in detail at the Naval Research

Laboratory in 1930. On December 10 of

that year, Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor and his

colleagues there had demonstrated Doppler-method equipment to representatives

of the Signal Corps, the Coast Artillery,

and the Air Corps. The Doppler method

is more commonly referred to as beat detection, in distinction to pulse detection,

the means finally adopted for most of the

wartime radar equipment. The principle

of beat detection is much the same as that

of the superheterodyne receiver, because

it depends upon a difference in frequencies. A transmitter sends out highfrequency waves, the waves strike a moving object, and the contact changes their

frequency. The interruption has slightly

retarded or accelerated them, with the result that they return at a frequency just

different enough so that as they beat

against the new outgoing waves the difference is perceptible. It is a difference of

only a few hundred or a few thousand

cycles, and thus can be heard in a re49

 Davis hist cited n. 44, p. 20. 50

 (1) SCL, Supplementary Prog Rpt, 1935. (2)

Interv with Gen Spiller cited n. 48.
40 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ceiver. It can also be indicated on an

oscillograph, and the speed and direction

of the object which the waves are intercepting can be precisely measured. The

naval laboratory research in the radiointerference method had not reached this

stage; it was in its beginnings. Indeed,

Blair was unenthusiastic about it because

it seemed to offer no precision at all. It

showed generally that there were airplanes in the vicinity, but not where each

one was.51

Here was a case where no one was

wholly wrong or right. In terms of the

interceptor aviation of that day, beat detection promised to permit a squadron to

be warned, get into the air, catch sight

of the enemy, and engage in a dogfight.

From this point of view, both naval aviation and the Army Air Corps would be

interested. But the Signal Corps was developing aircraft warning equipment for

the use of the Coast Artillery primarily,

and, in terms of ground antiaircraft fire,

beat detection sounded unpromising. The

guns would have no exact firing information and the attacking planes would be

past and out of sight before they could get

it. Nevertheless, the Signal Corps Laboratories put William D. Hershberger to

work on radio interference in the Radio

Section.

In 1931 Taylor's tests indicated that the

beat method would require a wide separation of the transmitter from the receiver.

Given a characteristic of that sort, the

equipment would be almost impossible to

install on a ship. The Secretary of the

Navy, forwarding to the Secretary of War

in January 1932 a report on the Naval

Research Laboratory's work, suggested

that the Army might have more use for it.

Actually, the laboratory continued with it,

Taylor, Leo C. Young and Lawrence A.

Hyland taking out a patent on it in 1934.52

Hershberger, whose practice at first was

simply to note an increase in the signal

strength at the receiver when the reflections came back, was assigned to the

Sound and Light Section in 1933. As the

work became a segment of the whole program of radio-optic research, it began to

undergo more hopeful exploration.53 In

1934 a Signal Corps detector of substantially the same type as the Normandie

equipment showed itself capable of following a truck which was being driven on

the parade ground, a boat off Sandy

Hook, and so on. It was made with an

RCA-Victor 9-centimeter magnetron and

used a parabolic reflector. Dr. Irving

Wolffof the RCA laboratories conducted

the tests. This may well have been the first

successful use in the United States of

microwave radar, or of what eventually

became microwave radar.54

A decade later, the fact that the beat

method readily distinguishes moving objects from a stationary background, such

as a mountain, was to cause a revival of

interest in it, just as, for different reasons,

thermal research again became important.

The radio interference equipment used in

1934, however, was not further developed

by the Signal Corps Laboratories at that

time. Its range was limited, and (this was

the key difficulty, not to be solved until

51

 1st Ind, Dir SCL to CSigO, 14 Jan 31, on Ltr,

CSigO to Dir SCL, 8 Jan 31, sub: Aircraft detection

by reflected radio waves. SigC 413.44 Detector against

Aircraft (Heat or Radio) 12-F. 52

 U.S. 1981884, System for Detecting Objects by

Radio, issued 27 Nov 34, filed 13 Jun 33. 53

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Dr. S. H. Anderson, 20

Nov 44. 54

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec, with Col James D.

O'Connell, CO SCEL, 14 Apr 47, Belmar, N.J. (2)

Ltr, Pres SigC Bd to CSigO, 22 Nov 39, sub: Demonstration of SCR-270-T1, Incl 1, draft speech. SigC

CE 334, Case 312, Folder 1.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 41

the fortuitous appearance of the cavity

magnetron) the power of the tubes was

low. Moreover, the Laboratories' acquaintance with the Navy's work only

confirmed the impression that, however

well it might do for that service, the different attributes of coastal defense gunfire

made another approach necessary. Writing in his annual report for the fiscal year

1934, Blair observed that the new attempt

might involve "projecting an interrupted

sequence of trains of oscillations against

the target and attempting to detect the

echoes during the interstices between the

projections."

 55

 This was the principle of

pulse radar.

In making such a suggestion, Signal

Corps science took a notable step. The

suggestion did not immediately alter the

program, for further development and repeated testing continued with the equipment which was already in existence; and

in any case there was the normal lag between a proposal and the time when it

takes effect. Nonetheless, Blair's remark

opened to the Laboratories the possibility

that light location, sound location, heat

location, and radio interference might all

retreat before a new method which projected pulses of electromagnetic energy

into space and noted the exact time, in

millionths of a second, required for them

to bounce back from any obstacle in their

range.

Radar was not yet named. Its development in military, naval, commercial, and

foreign laboratories was then commencing, a world-wide secret of which no one

possessed more than a fraction and which

none shared with another. From place to

place and time to time until publicity and

usage standardized the term, it went by

such designations as the British radiolocation

and RDF (radio direction finding), or was

described as RPF (radio position finding),

microwave, and pulse-and-echo. In preserving

its nature from the public, the Signal

Corps referred to it merely as radio—as

SCR's. U.S. Navy nomenclature resulted

in the word radar: ra for radio, d for detection

or direction finding and r for range.56 But in

1934 that name was not known.

The preliminary hints were.57 As early

as 1900 Nikola Tesla had called attention

to the phenomenon of electromagnetic

wave reflection and had predicted that

"we may determine the relative position

or course of a moving object, such as a

vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the

same, or its speed." In 1904 a German,

Christian Huelsmeyer, took out patents in

both Germany and Great Britain for "a

method of detecting and recording distant

metallic objects (ships, railway trains, etc.)

by means of electromagnetic rays."

Although the patent application showed

a drawing of "a steamship carrying this

equipment, sighting an unidentified vessel

by wireless," Huelsmeyer's idea was totally

neglected for thirty years; then German,

French, British, American, and other

radar began to evolve all at once.58

Marconi had tentatively pointed out the

use of short waves for detection in 1922.

Observing that short waves had been neglected in radio science since its early days

a quarter of a century before, and taking

note of the fact that Hertz had shown that

metals can reflect electric waves, Marconi

55

 Dir SCL, Annual Rpt to CSigO, 1934, Annex. 56

 Ltr, Rear Adm J. A. Furer, Co-ordinate R&D,

Navy Dept, to CSigO, 31 Jan 42, sub: Definition of

radar. SigC SPSTC 5 Misc. 57

 The antecedents and infancy of radar make a

story told in many sources. See the Bibliographical

Note. 58

 (1) Nikola Tesla, "The Problem of Increasing

Human Energy," Century Magazine, LX (June, 1900),

208. (2) L. Brandt, "German Radio-location in Retrospect," Interavia, V (1950), English version, 315.
42 THE SIGNAL CORPS

prophesied a development which would

automatically warn vessels in fog or darkness of the presence and bearing of other

ships.59 Also in 1922, at the Naval Research Laboratory, Taylor and Young had

noticed that a Potomac river boat, passing

between a radio transmitter and a receiver, had reflected the transmitted

waves. The British scientists, E. V. Appleton and M. A. F. Barrett, had obtained

ionospheric reflections in 1924 and 1925.

Dr. Gregory Breit and Dr. Merle A. Tuve

had demonstrated the principle itself during the course of measurements of the

ionosphere taken for the Carnegie Institution in 1925.

But so soon as the startling military

value of radio reflection had become evident, secrecy tightened. When governments realized that it was a national

instrument of the first magnitude in a

world deteriorating into warfare, there

was no longer any possibility of exchanging information on it through the periodicals, offices, and market places of scientific

research. The secret was to be protected at

every point of contact—against possible

enemies, against possible allies, against

commercial enterprises, particularly those

with extranational interests, and even

against other services of the inner defense

force of the nation. Yet despite all efforts

of Germany, Japan, France, Britain, and

the United States to cloak and obscure

from one another the urgent sense which

each one had of being on the verge of a

new weapon which none other possessed,

from country to country radar developed

in many of the same ways, faced many of

the same problems, reached many of the

same compromises.60

In 1934 the Germans had obtained

radio reflections at a distance of 20 meters

from the hull of a decommissioned battleship in Luebeck Bay, then at a distance of

2,000 meters from another target ship at

Schilkee. The Reich Navy permitted these

experiments to fall into some neglect, from

which Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

summarily rescued them for his Luftwaffe,

although in a different form which bypassed microwave work.61

 Starting out

with radio interference in January 1935,

British scientists shifted to the pulse

method in May and by the middle of June

had tracked an airplane to seventeen

miles. Between 1935 and 1939, their CH

stations (that is, the chain of radars at

home) took shape in the high-frequency

area, the wavelength being 11-13 meters.

As the nations lined up for war, Robert

Watson-Watt and his colleagues succeeded in stringing a chain of figuratively

invisible radio-direction-finding towers

along the Channel and North Sea coasts

of Britain. They were not invisible to Germany, but presumably the Reich discounted them. Goering's boast that no

enemy aircraft could ever get through to

Berlin was not so incredibly presumptuous

as it sounded; for at the time he made it

Germany was developing both of the basic

types of radar. When, in 1939, the time

seemed ripe for a war, early warning appa59

 Guglielmo Marconi, "Radio Telegraphy" (address presented June 20, 1922, New York), Proceedings

of the Institute of Radio Engineers, X (1922), 215-38. It

is interesting to see that an abstract made of Marconi's

speech and published at the end of its printed form

missed his point and thus stands as evidence of the

way in which the principle of radar was generally

overlooked, although at hand. 60

 Thus, for example, the Germans attempted to get

sharpness of definition for their Freya by means of a

thermal unit, just as the Americans did with their

SCR-268. A. E. Hoffman-Heyden, "German Radiolocation in Retrospect, (II) The Anti-Aircraft Artillery's Radar Equipment," Interavia, VI (1951), 623. 61

 Curt Bley, Geheimnis Radar: Eine Geschichte der

Wissenschaftlichen Kriegfuehring (Hamburg: Rowahlt,

1949), passim.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 43

ratus, the Freya, scanned the approaches

to German defenses from about a hundred

stations; and the gun layer, the Wuerzburg, was ready to go onto the production

lines. After 1943, Allied aviation over

Germany suffered more from antiaircraft

fire laid by Wuerzburgs than from

anything else.62

In 1937 France's 15-centimeter Normandie "ear-radar" gave way to a beat

system developed by Pierre David, tested

in great secrecy at Metz for military engineers and antiaircraft experts, tried out at

aerial maneuvers near Reims in 1938,

and established at scattered points along

all three coasts by 1939. In Japan the

pioneer University of Osaka professors,

Kinjiro Okabe and Hidetsugu Yagi,

worked from 1936 on, but with Doppler

apparatus, without an oscilloscope (they

used continuous wave) and without the

confidence of either their Army or Navy.

In the United States, where the length of

the coast line made unsuitable any fixed

chain of warning radars such as the British had, and where consequently the effort

was toward mobile defense positions,

secrecy was equally shrouding. It steadily

moved Army and Navy detection research

farther apart. Although there were occasional contacts, neither knew exactly what

the other was doing, and each duplicated

some of the brainwork, the tests, the plans

and mistakes of the other. The Signal

Corps Laboratories were better acquainted

with what was being done at the National

Bureau of Standards and in the commercial laboratories: Bell, General Electric,

Radio Corporation of America, and Westinghouse.

Blair, as director of the Laboratories,

and Colton, heading the Research and

Engineering Division in the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer, had a heavy responsibility to back the right horse. They kept

the one-way thermal detection project

high on the list; and sound detectors,

which were all that the public knew of the

development of aircraft warning instruments, received their due in attention to

improved models. In the microwave subproject, Hershberger's tests went forward

with a succession of tubes then available.

Again and again, their inability to generate a strong signal thwarted progress.

Acknowledging disappointment in the

Signal Corps gear so far, Blair still reiterated his interest in radio-wave detection

in his 1935 report. "With improvements

in the radiated power of [the] transmitter

and sensitivity of the receiver," he noted,

"this method of position finding may well

reach a stage of usefulness."

 63

 Late in the

year, and at the urging of Colton, Hershberger prepared a memorandum which

summarized the advantages of the pulse

method. A visit the next month (January

1936) to the Naval Research Laboratory

for a demonstration of the Taylor-YoungHyland beat equipment confirmed Hershberger in the same objections which he

and Blair had made before: that it provided no discrimination of the target. The

Navy engineers were also, he learned,

working on pulse equipment, with a

10-microsecond signal and with the transmitter and receiver close together.

Although Navy and Army research was

parallel, there was a noteworthy difference. The Navy laboratory was set up as a

research laboratory, specified and supported by Congress in the name of research. It could range farther within the

62

 Radio Research Lab, Harvard University [O. G.

Villard, Jr.?], Flak Radar Countermeasures in the

European Theater of Operations—A Review and

Evaluation of Their Use by the 8th Air Force, Sep 45.

SigC 413.44 RCM Gen 3 ET 2757. 63

 Dir SCL, Suppl Rpt to CSigO, 1935, Proj 88-G.
44 THE SIGNAL CORPS

imaginations of the scientists conducting

it than Signal Corps efforts were allowed

to do. Experimentation at Fort Monmouth

had to be directed toward an immediate

application, toward developing a specific

and practical piece of equipment. For

large research, the continuing policy was

always to turn to commercial concerns

and to get it done by contract. Much of

the early work on Army radar constituted

an exception to this normal procedure.64

During 1936, Lt. Col. Roger B. Colton,

Maj. John H. Gardner, Jr., of Colton's

office, and Lt. Col. Louis B. Bender,

Colton's successor as officer in charge of

the Research and Development Division,

were to visit the principal companies to

see what they had and whether they could

take over the Signal Corps work. The

companies were pessimistic about the possibilities of the work, and the decision was

accordingly to continue it in the Signal

Corps Laboratories.65 This was a forthcoming arrangement, and was concerned

only with getting the work done. First, the

direction it would take had to be decided.

Early 1936 determined this matter.

Just at that time a deterrent befell

thermal research and development which

was not to be overlooked. Both the Signal

Corps and the Corps of Engineers models

of thermal equipment were declared inadequate for detecting aircraft.66

 The

method was acceptable for detecting ships.

The Coast Artillery Corps, which was the

using arm for the thermolocator that the

Signal Corps had developed, wished to be

sure of warning of the approach of vessels

to the nation's harbors and coast defenses,

and for that reason the Signal Corps

equipment and projects remained in force.

But warning of enemy bombardment

planes? That was a different matter. The

Corps of Engineers, withdrawing from

thermal detection, sought to turn to radiowave projects, and the Ordnance Department once again came forward to put in a

claim of its own. In this area, though, the

line of demarcation was sharp. Radio, as

Maj. Gen. James B. Allison, the Chief

Signal Officer just then, reminded everyone, has but a single medium for transmission. "For this reason it is a cardinal principle that every endeavor must be made to

centralize control of radio matters in a

single agency wherever practicable."67

Moreover, Signal Corps radio-wave work

was just about to come into its own. Allison won his point. Not only was his

responsibility for thermal detectors sanctioned, but he was charged with responsibility for radiolocation development as

well.

The victory was clouded, for he was

given no funds, although he asked for less

than a single SCR-268 cost after Pearl

Harbor. Taking up the Colton-Hershberger memorandum which urged the

pulse method, Blair had forwarded it to

Allison's office. In the general field of

radio methods of detection, Blair had

noted the Navy was "far in advance of

. . . any other known agency."

 68

 He

indicated regret that radio-detection work

was only a subproject of thermal-detection

64

 Davis hist cited n. 44, rev. Ch. V, p. 21. 65

 Ltrs, CSigO to TAG, 23 Oct and 6 Nov 36, sub:

Airplane detection devices. SigC 311.6. 66

 Coast Artillery Bd Proceedings, Ft. Monroe, Va.,

Proj 1060, Thermal Direction Locators (Heat Detectors), 17 Mar 36. 67

 14th Ind, CSigO to TAG, 12 Dec 35, on Memo,

Chief of CAC for CSigO, 4 Jun 34, sub: Development

of heat detection device. SigC 311.6 (6-4-34). 68

 Ltr, Dir SCL to CSigO, 12 Feb 36, sub: Radiooptical position finding of aircraft, with Memo, Hershberger for Dir SCL, 27 Jan 36, sub: Detection of aircraft by radio-optical methods. SigC 413.44. The

Navy was working on a set which would give protection for fifteen miles through fog and other disturbances.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 45

work at the Signal Corps Laboratories,

and asked for the money to give it full

standing. Allison accordingly sought the

funds. The Chief of Coast Artillery, vigorously supporting him, held that "the Army

has before it today no more important

development project than that of finding

positive means for the detection of aircraft"; but Army feeling was rather general that whatever funds could be obtained

should be applied to known commitments,

not to uncertainties. The War Department

conceded the importance of the project,

but could only rule that the money "must

be provided by the curtailment [within

the Signal Corps] of other less pressing

developments."

 69

 This meant taking it out

of moneys already allotted to something

else.

The other developments under way at

that time in the Laboratories included

many items which were to become important in the tactical signal communications

of World War II, among them the first

Field Artillery and Infantry walkie-talkies,

the vehicular radio sets SCR-193 and

SCR-245, a shielding system for suppressing radio interference in tanks, the soundpowered telephone, the throat microphone, and improved field phones, field

wire, assault wire, and loading coils.70 The

top priority given to radiolocation would

affect them all, and although the opening

of the new Squier Laboratory building

had improved conditions at Fort Monmouth, there was still only a small staff.

But devoted to their work, as they had

need to be, the Fort Monmouth engineers

had been accomplishing much with little.

On 15 May 1936, with the moneyless permission of the War Department, pulseecho detection became a high-priority job.

Using a design which Hershberger had

entered in his notebook in February, the

Laboratories commenced construction of

the first Signal Corps pulse equipment.

The microwave equipment had not been

able to surmount the difficulty of inadequate strength in the transmitter and receiver, and had been abandoned in favor

of very high frequencies.71 By the end of

June, the engineers had built a "breadboard model" of a portable, 75-watt, pulse

transmitter.72 Colton joined them as executive officer in August, and Capt. Rex

V. D. Corput, Jr., was assigned as officer

in charge of the Radio Section. In Washington the Chief Signal Officer was asking

for a reconsideration of his plea for special

funds. Hershberger left in October and a

few months later joined Dr. Wolff at the

RCA Laboratories in working with 9- and

10-centimeter waves generated by a magnetron and echoing from objects a mile

and a half away. Wolff demonstrated the

equipment in Camden to both Army and

Navy officers.73

The request for outside funds was once

more denied. The work would have to be

supported at the expense of other projects.

Allison took the necessary step and diverted $75,741 of fiscal year 1937 money.74

The sum became available in November.

69

 Ltr, Chief of CAC to ACofS G-4, 24 Sep 36, sub:

Airplane detection device, and 1st Ind, TAG to

CSigO. SigC 413.44. 70

 Davis hist cited n. 44, p. 34. 71

 Roger Colton, "Radar in the United States

Army: History and Early Development at Signal

Corps Laboratories, Fort Monmouth, N.J.," Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, No. 331 (November, 1945), p. 742. 72

 SigC R&D hist cited n. 37, Vol. IV, Pt. 2, Proj

12-6.2, p. 7. 73

 Henry E. Guerlac, Hist Div OSRD, Radar, Sec.

A, Ch. VIII, pp. 31-34 (in consecutively paged copy,

pp. 344-47). Photostat of 1945 MS in SigC Hist Sec

File.

74

 Historical Report of the Signal Corps Engineering

Laboratories, Folder 5, Ch. X, p. 232. SigC Hist Sec

File.
46 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Many more engineers were now occupied

with the task. Whereas it had been fulltime work for one man, it became at least

half-time for more than fifteen. Colonel

Blair moved everything, including the

beat-detection work, into the Radio Section, and Paul Watson, its civilian chief,

became director of the project. The day

for the first test approached rapidly. A

receiver was added, and the transmitter's

frequency changed from 133 megacycles

to 110. On 14 December 1936 the men

loaded the transmitter into one truck, the

receiver into another, and set out for a site

near Princeton, where the traffic to and

from the Newark airport provided many

targets. There they saw the device record

the echoes of the pulses which they were

directing into the flight path. Crude and

experimental as it was, it was radar. The

transmitter and receiver were a mile

apart, and the equipment tracked the airplane for only seven miles, but it was radar

at last.

The Naval Research Laboratory was

now quite reticent, although soon to disclose its experiments to the Bell and RCA

Laboratories. For the past year its confidential progress reports had become secret

and therefore inaccessible. The reason for

such security was of course that the Navy's

pulse experimentation, parallel to the

Army's, but in advance of it and assured

of financial support, had suddenly shown

the dramatic promise which characterized

it wherever scientists were investigating it.

The Naval Research Laboratory had been

able to demonstrate the method to Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn, Commander in

Chief of the U.S. Fleet, that fall. In February, Charles Edison, Assistant Secretary of

the Navy, in company with Admiral William D. Leahy, saw another demonstration. The Signal Corps considered renewed

consultation, but the December tests decided against that step. Through the

following period, nonetheless, naval aviation lent its co-operation, in concert with

that of the GHQ Air Force, to the testing

of the Signal Corps equipment. The two

air services provided blimps and airplanes

to be detected, over and over, while the

Laboratories crews tinkered with it.

Everything came to a head in the following spring. May 1937 is a turning

point in Army technical history. What

later became the SCR-268, first U.S.

Army radar, was shown then to a number

of important persons with such effect that

it became one of the top military secrets of

the nation. It was a short-range radiolocator for controlling searchlights. The immediate purpose in constructing it had been

to locate airplanes at night, in range, elevation, and azimuth (distance, height,

and direction), accurately enough so that

a Coast Artillery battery's searchlight

would instantly pinpoint the plane when

the apparatus turned the light on. Given

this purpose, the Signal Corps apparatus

came into being with a quality which no

other system possessed. It was mobile. By

contrast, the British equipment, meeting a

different function, had taken shape as an

immobile series of high towers.

During their first trials of the device,

the Radio Section men had built two

models, one of 110 megacycles and the

other of 240, the latter in an effort to

reduce the cumbersome amount of antenna that was necessary.75

 These were

very high frequencies, but not, of course,

microwave frequencies. Only when the

more powerful transmitter tubes came

into being would radiolocation become

microwave radar and the marvelous advantage of compactness be achieved. At

75

 Davis hist cited n. 44, p. 48.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 47

these lower frequencies, the equipment

made its test appearance. The 110-megacycle apparatus employed a heat detector,

because the specifications still required it.

The Laboratories men had improved the

thermotheodolite during the year just past

by mounting six thermopiles in a 60-inch

searchlight reflector; so they used it as an

intermediary, to focus and specify for the

searchlight the information which the

radiolocator had picked up. A much more

significant feature was the directional antenna array, which consisted of a number

of rods arranged so that the radio waves

would be canceled in the directions which

were not being searched, strengthened in

those which were. In order to swing and

tilt them in a broad scanning of the sky,

the engineers mounted them on the chassis

of sound locators from which they had

stripped away the listening horns. Sound

detection of aircraft became archaic in the

American Army at that moment.

On 18 and 19 May 1937 General Allison, Maj. Gen. Archibald H. Sunderland,

who was the Chief of Coast Artillery, and

Brig. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, at that time

the Assistant Chief of the Air Corps,

watched the future SCR-268 show what it

could do. A week later the demonstration

was repeated for Secretary of War Harry

A. Woodring, several senators and representatives from the Congressional Committees on Military Affairs, and Maj. Gen.

Oscar Westover, Chief of the Air Corps.

On the first occasion the weather was so

bad that the heat locator was of no value

at all; the radiolocator found the airplane

in four out of seven passes. At the May 26

demonstration the weather was better and

the score was excellent.

Even the most extraordinary technical

advance looks crude from the point of

view of its later stages of improvement,

and the performance of May 1937 at Fort

Monmouth would have been completely

inadequate for the war which was on its

way, but this was four and a half years

ahead of the Pearl Harbor crisis. If luck,

engineering skill, and appropriations held,

the device might be ready by the time the

yet undesignated enemy attacked. At its

debut, its potential importance was plain

to be seen. Secretary Woodring declared

that "all the members of the [inspecting]

party were a unit in praising the remarkably satisfactory result attained."

 76

The Laboratories men themselves were

more critical. They saw that the equipment would have to give a continuous

tracking rather than a point-by-point

report, that it could not be brought to

bear against low-flying airplanes, and—a

nearly insuperable problem—that it could

be jammed. Moreover, this was a Coast

Artillery set, a set designed to point searchlights and then antiaircraft guns at an

approaching airplane; but an enemy

bomber would be only five minutes away

by the time the locator detected it. This

was not enough time to get interceptors up

into the air to meet the hostile craft. What

the Air Corps wanted, and immediately

requested, was a detector with longer

range. The military characteristics formulated for an Air Corps set, upon Signal

Corps recommendation, required it to be

capable of an early warning range of 120

miles.77 In this undertaking was the inception of the SCR-270 and the SCR-271.

One mobile, the other fixed, they were the

early-warning companions to the gunlaying SCR-268. The Army entered the

76

 Ltr, SW to CSigO, 2 Jun 37. SigC 413.44 Detector 12-F, Folder 3. 77

 SigC Technical Committee Case 151, 12 Jul 37.

SigC Hist Sec File.
48 THE SIGNAL CORPS

war with these three radars and continued

them in use throughout the conflict.

Administrative Signaling

The development of radar in the Signal

Corps came about as part of the Signal

Corps' responsibility to tactical communications. The SCR-268 was in the broadest

sense a piece of communications equipment, informing a coastal gun position of

the nearness of an airplane. It was a part

of the tactical signaling which engaged

Signal Corps efforts in all of the arms of

the service—in the Infantry, Cavalry,

Field Artillery, and Air Corps, as well as

in the Coast Artillery for which it had

been devised. Administrative signaling

was quite another thing. The Army as an

army wanted tactical communications

equipment: mobile, individual, secure.

The Army as an agency of government, a

complex apparatus of thousands of persons

many of whom had no tactical duties at

all, wanted administrative communications: fixed, interrelated, continent-spanning, day-in-day-out channels of business.

In peacetime years and, as the global scale

of the oncoming conflict determined, in

war as well, this was the most important

single function of the Corps. It was the one

field of military communications where

the Signal Corps authority was supreme,

both in tradition and prospect.

The Signal Corps itself did not wholly

realize the fact that in a considerable way

it was becoming a communications industry right within the Military Establishment. Elsewhere in the Army, many other

persons had been slow to catch up to the

change which the 1921 reorganization had

overtaken and confirmed. Some held the

view that a peacetime Signal Corps was a

luxury. Had not its wartime mission been

allotted to each of the other arms? And

surely there was "nothing about telegraph,

telephone or radio that requires special

training in time of peace. . . ." 78 Maj.

Gen. Johnson Hagood, whose opinion in

the 1920's this was, acknowledged that in

past performance the Signal Corps had

been "wonderful," but felt that the time

had come to dissolve it. Others, citing the

nonmilitary Washington-Alaska Military

Cable and Telegraph System, agreed that

the function of Army communications was

wholly tactical, and that since that function had been dispersed the Signal Corps

was left with nothing to do. Even in the

War Department, some were unaware of

the Corps' record of practical service. Secretary of War John W. Weeks, for example,

did not know (nor had any particular

reason to know) that his message center

was paralleled by one in the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer in another part of the

Munitions Building; the duplication was

revealed when General Squier sent up for

permission to hire a messenger boy.

 79

Encouraged to do so by Congress and

American business, the Army was in the

habit of thinking of fixed communications

systems as private enterprise. The Army

could rent or lease them in time of war,

but otherwise they belonged outside the

government. In the Civil War, Western

Union had declared this point of view. In

the 1870's and '80's, the wire strung

through hostile Indian country had never

been considered the Signal Corps' merely

because Signal Corpsmen had put it up.

The Washington-Alaska Military Cable

and Telegraph System had monopolized

78

 Maj. Gen. Johnson Hagood, The Services of Supply

(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1927), p. 379. 79

 Ltr, CSigO to SW, 28 Oct 20, and 1st Ind, 1 Nov

20. SigC 311.2 WD Msg Ctr 1, 1920-29.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 49

Alaska communications on terms mutually convenient to the government and to

commercial fishing, lumber, mining, and

shipping interests. To resist a British statesubsidized combine which gave evidence

of controlling long-range communications,

President Wilson had encouraged General

Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph, Western Electric, Westinghouse,

and United Fruit to form the Radio Corporation of America, a private combine.80

All of these instances demonstrated the

established custom. In reducing the Military Establishment and other governmental agencies after World War I, Congress required them to go to private commerce, industry, and banking—the Signal

Corps, for example, being kept dependent

upon the communications industry.

Yet whether in private or public form,

communications services were as necessary

to Army administration as to that of any

civilian department of the government. It

was inevitable that they would be essential

to the daily routine, and a matter for consolidated, specific assignment. The advent

of radio, heralding big, swift communications, and its addition to the cable, telegraph, and telephone already in existence

made technical message sending too complex to assign to any but a technical service. In fact, the first move toward it came

concurrently with the 1921 reorganization

of the Army. In Plan White, one of the

"color" series of war plans, the General

Staff proposed a network of Army radio

stations, operated exclusively by military

men and connecting the staff with all

corps area headquarters except the First,

and with certain key cities. The intention

was to provide the Army with both alternate and auxiliary means of communication in case internal strife or national

disaster broke or interrupted the commercial facilities upon which it depended.81

The War Department Radio Net thus

came into being. A control station in

Washington was designated WVA and

manned by the 17th Service Company.82

The original equipment was a 11⁄2-kilowatt

transmitter mounted on a 11⁄2-ton truck at

the Army War College two miles away;

the station crew operated it by remote

control.83 With the subsequent use of

additional transmitters at the Arlington

naval radio installation, the net expanded

until a five-station linking was carrying

about fifty messages a day. Measured in

terms of original sent traffic, it totaled

3,868,362 words the first fiscal year.84

This was the first element of an Army

radio system which was to grow steadily,

span the world, and comprise both tactical

and administrative networks. The tactical

networks would include the Air Alert Net,

both fixed and mobile, for air defense; the

Coast Artillery, for harbor defense fire

80

 Maj. Gen. George S. Gibbs, "The Influence of

the Control of International Communications on the

Conduct of War," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 55

(July-August 1930), p. 7. This article appeared again

in 1933 (Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 70, January-February, 1933, pp. 2-18) under Maj. Gen. Irving J.

Carr's name.

A detailed story of the beginnings of the Radio

Corporation of America is to be found in Chapters 9-

12 of Gleason L. Archer's History of Radio to 1926 (New

York: The American Historical Company, Inc.,

1938). A second volume Big Business and Radio (New

York: The American Historical Company, Inc.,

1939), brings the account of the radio industry up to

World War II. 81

 Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 12 Mar 21, sub: App. 10

coms War Plans White. AG 381 Misc Div. 82

 Redesignated the 17th Signal Service Company

per War Department General Order 5, 23 March

1925. 83

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Charles Murray, ACS

Div, OCSigO, 7 Sep 45. 84

 Ten years later, in 1933, it was 26,500,058, and

yet another ten years after that, 216,145,629 words,

enough to send the complete text of War and Peace

every day in the year and twice on Sundays.
50 THE SIGNAL CORPS

control; and others as need arose—in maneuvers, for instance. The administrative

would include, first of all, the War Department Radio Net of fixed stations located

in Washington and at the headquarters

of each corps area and department; next,

and in logical extension from this control

net, individual ones for each corps area

and department to connect its headquarters with garrisons and posts in its territory; third, the Army transport net, linking the vessels with each other and with

shore stations; and ultimately, the network of the Army Amateur Radio System.

Thus the military radio system would

become an integral part of the command

communications system, extending from

general headquarters through the chain

of command to the smallest unit in the

field, and an integral part also of the

administrative system. Its name in World

War II, when it reached maturity, fused

these functions, and it became known as

the Army Command and Administrative

Network.

While a radio net was thus being

formed, the War Department's telegraph

business was originating in two places: in

the Office of the Secretary of War and in

that of the Chief Signal Officer. The discovery of this obvious duplication, together with the example of yet another

duplication in the fact that the Navy had

a communications center of its own, led

Secretary Weeks to propose a merger.85

Both General Squier and the Navy demurred, but the Army wire and radio

centers did combine to produce a War

Department Message Center. This was the

second principal step in systematizing

Army administrative communications.

WVA and the two telegraph offices merged

in order to handle all of the military communications traffic—collecting, receiving,

sending, and distributing—in Washington. Whether accomplished by radio,

cable, or telegraph, the traffic came

through the Message Center and was

assigned to the supervision of the Signal

Corps. The War Department Message

Center opened on 1 March 1923. Set up

as a field agency despite the fact that it

was not "in the field" but in the Munitions

Building, it became by tacit working

agreement in the Signal Corps a section of

the Plant and Traffic Division next door.86

A third government message center was

to have been run by the Post Office Department, but the Army and Navy joined

forces to quash it while still not uniting

their own.87 Nevertheless, the War Department Message Center had immediately invited other agencies of the government to use the War Department Radio

Net,88 and commencing with the Veterans

Bureau, the Departments of Justice and

Agriculture, and the Bureau of Internal

Revenue, they did so, to such an extent

that by the end of the 1920's War Department radio was handling dispatches,

which would once have gone by commercial telegraph, for more than fifty agencies

of the government.89

The War Department Message Center

rapidly became the vital organ of the Signal Corps. It represented to Washington

a palpable reason for the Corps' being.

Despite the recurring problem of getting

enough men and equipment, successive

chief signal officers guarded control over

85

 Oakes study cited n. 4(2), p. 9. 86

 Memo, Capt Carter W. Clarke, O/C WD Msg

Ctr, for Exec Officer OCSigO, 29 Sep 38. SigC 320.22

17th Sig Co. 87

 Oakes study cited n. 4(2), pp. 9-10. 88

 Ltr, Actg Chief Coordinator WD to SW, 6 Apr

23. SigC 676.3 Gen 2, 1922-23. 89

 Historical Sketch of the Signal Corps (1860-1941), p.

107
THE WAR DEPARTMENT MESSAGE CENTER. Early radio facilities at the

Munitions Building above, and the Message Center in May 1941 below.
52 THE SIGNAL CORPS

it against any attempt to modify or dilute

it.90 In 1925 General Saltzman lost authority over the 17th Signal Service Company,

but regained it at the end of the year. In

1926 amendments to the National Defense

Act, which had cut the Signal Corps

strength to 2,165, curtailed the hours of

operation at Station WVA. The War Department Radio Net had been slowly

increasing in importance, but now had to

forego any thought of matching the Navy

Department's twenty-four-hour schedule.

The loss of operating hours was regrettable because one reason for establishing

the net had been to give experience to

soldiers who were taking communications

training. To select the appropriate means

for transmitting a message demanded a

thorough knowledge of the channels of

communication available at the Message

Center; a good man had to know what

burden he could put upon any of the several means without congesting them and

the degree of security which each afforded.

Moreover, communications apparatus

changed rapidly.

Medium-frequency, high-power transmitters like the SCR-140 replaced the

original continuous-wave sets and then

gave way to high-frequency, low-power

equipment. The use of these followed a

trend established by amateur operators

and the Navy. The first equipment of the

sort in the War Department Radio Net

consisted of eleven crystal-controlled sets

built in the Signal Corps Laboratories

from Navy specifications and installed in

1926. They were temperamental, and

Capt. Guy Hill was the only man then

stationed in Washington who could master their whims, but they outdated the old

high-power, long-wave transmitters.

By the time when, on 30 November

1928, WVA changed its call letters to the

neatly appropriate WAR, the control station was using transmitters not only at

Arlington but also at Boiling Field, Washington Barracks, and Annapolis. Nine

Coast Guard transmitters—1 kilowatt,

high-frequency—improved the network's

sending, and in the following year the

establishment of 10-kilowatt amplifiers in

San Francisco eliminated the last relay

points between the east and west coasts.

Washington, San Antonio, San Francisco,

Panama, Hawaii, and Manila now all had

10-kilowatt transmitters. WAR was taking

care of one sixth of the Signal Corps' radio

business, and the radio service was becoming the equal of the telegraph. Without

counting the stations of the Alaska system,

there were 154 in the Army system.91

Like anything else, the repeated urge

for modernization in the Message Center

and Radio Net was offset by handicaps.

Everything had to be wrung from meager

appropriations but that was the usual

story. More to the point in the late 1920's

was the fact that the Navy's insistence

limited the Army to an antenna power of

10 kilowatts; and this turned out to be a

disguised blessing.92 Being barred from

greater antenna power, the Signal Corps

turned to greater antenna refinement,

90

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-1, 17 Oct 23, sub:

AR 105-25 SigC tg, cable, and radio msg sv. SigC

311.2 WD Msg Ctr 1. (2) Ltr, Exec Officer OCSigO

to All Corps Area and Dept Sig Officers, 6 Jan 36,

sub: Msg ctr, and Ind, Col Walter E. Prosser, Sig Officer Eighth Corps Area, to Col Dawson Olmstead, 30

Jan 36. SigC WD Msg Ctr 2. 91

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1929. There were 16 in the

War Department net, 46 in the corps area and department individual nets, 28 in the Air Corps net, 21 for

harbor defense, 15 for Army transports and other

Quartermaster vessels, and 28 for mine planters and

other Coast Artillery vessels. 92

 Joint Army-Navy Committee on Army-Navy

Coms, Communication Procedure, Ch. II, 22 Aug 21,

superseded by Ch. VI, Sec. B, 16 Aug 28. SigC 311.23

Joint Bd Serials.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 53

with the result that it succeeded in beaming the signal, for the first time in government radio. Beaming, or directing the signal precisely to the point of reception,

made maximum use of the allowable

power, whereas broadcasting had wasted

it. WVA thus got continuous, high-frequency channels of a range long enough

to reach across the continent and overseas.93

 Other improvements took place.

The first transmitting station to be built

by the Army was set up at Fort Myer and

went on the air on 20 March 1930. After

January 1931 a site at Battery Cove, near

Alexandria, Virginia, became a remote receiving station.94

 Up to that time, noise inside and outside the Munitions Building

had often made radio reception so trying

that message traffic would pile up all

through the day, to be taken care of only

when the relative peace of night had arrived. The Message Center was simultaneously allowed to make itself over. The

Navy communications center had already

done so, and some improved equipment

from Navy yard shops aided the conversion. Wire teletype had begun to come in,

as a matter of universal preference and in

imitation of commercial practice. This

equipment and all of the cable and telegraph facilities were rehabilitated. In

radio the administrative net attained to

twelve high-frequency positions and two

medium-frequency positions which could

all be monitored from a single control

point, and WAR had achieved a twentyfour-hour schedule with other stations in

the net, although not yet with full schedules in the incoming direction.

Special unemployed legislation made it

possible to use fiscal year 1932 funds

before the expiration of the 1931 year in

order to begin replacing some telephone

equipment which was older than World

War I. The legislative gesture was much

too feeble, and the replacements had to be

made over a period of fifteen months and

from place to place throughout the Army

telephone system; yet, complete at something less than would be an impressive

total in World War II, they were welcome

as being one more little toward an ultimate much.95

It was more difficult to keep trained

men in the Message Center, when civilian

communications offered less regimentation and better wages, than in any other

part of the Signal Corps. In 1928-29, for

example, just before the business index

plunged, 40 percent of the operators on

hand at the beginning of the twelvemonth period were lost to the Signal

Corps when it ended, and had been replaced by tyros. One of the more disturbing aspects of such a situation was that

there was no way of meeting emergencies

and an Army which is not equipped with

an infallible manual of witchcraft in order

to meet a situation which nobody expects

is no Army at all.

With a sidelong look at the Navy,

which was walking along the same route,

the Signal Corps moved toward closer

relations with civilian radio hams. The

amateurs were making radio the province

of every enthusiast in the nation. "Their

highest ambition is to reach halfway

93

 1st Lt. Wesley T. Guest, "Rehabilitation of the

Army Radio Net," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 66

(May-June 1932), pp. 32-35. 94

 (1) Memo, Capt Frank E. Stoner for Gen Gibbs,

29 Dec 30; (2) 3d Ind, TAG to CSigO, 26 Jan 31, on

Ltr, OCSigO to TAG through QMG, 8 Jan 31, sub:

Temporary location of remote radio receiving station.

SigC 676.3 Battery Cove 1, 1930-39. 95

 Twenty-two new switchboards (51 positions), 2

automatic systems (2,000 lines), 26 underground conduits, 33 underground cables (buried wire), 13 aerial

cables (wire pole lines), 7 lines for target ranges, 6 for

fire-control positions, and 8 miscellaneous projects.

CSigO, Annual Report, 1932, p. 19.
54 THE SIGNAL CORPS

TRANSMITTERS AT STATION WAR are being inspected by David Sarnoff of RCA

(left) and Capt. Frank E. Stoner.

round the world . . . with a 10-watt set,"

Maj. Gen. George S. Gibbs commented in

an early broadcast, and went on to praise

them for many advances.96 Short of controlling a large organization all under

military regulation, a circumstance the

Signal Corps could not possibly hope for,

a ready-made civilian auxiliary was the

best bulwark possible. With the hams, the

Signal Corps developed the co-operative

program known as the Army Amateur

Radio System.

Springing from the recollection of the

work of civilian radio operators in World

War I, the relationship had begun in 1925

with a visit which Lt. Col. Frank J. Griffin

and Capt. Tom C. Rives had paid to the

headquarters of the American Radio Relay League in Hartford, Connecticut.97

What they discovered had impressed

them and had confirmed Rives's belief

that Signal Corps training should tap this

source. The lack of men for military communications was not to be put down to a

lack of interest in radio, for league membership had increased rapidly. Most of the

members had Department of Commerce

transmitting licenses, and their stations

stood comparison with commercial and

governmental outlets.

96

 Gen Gibbs, address on Station WBZ, Boston, 15

Mar 28. 97

 K. B. Warner, Secy ARRL, Proposed Plan of Cooperation Between the Signal Corps, USA, and the

American Radio Relay League, as Determined at

Conference at Hartford, Conn., 24 Mar 25. SigC

311.23 A/N Radio Procedure 1, 1924-32.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 55

In fact, the radio amateurs were amateurs only in the sense that they worked

for pleasure rather than for pay. They had

long since graduated from Ford spark

coils to tube transmission on continuous

wave, and they spoke casually about making two-way contact across the Atlantic

despite their limited power and against

heavy atmospheric and artificial interference. Their pioneering on the short

waves had opened new channels which

had proved reliable for daytime long-distance use, and they had explored and

utilized the high frequencies which commercial interests had rejected. Accordingly, the Signal Corps began seeking out

small groups in several of the corps areas,

and, with their co-operation, indoctrinating them in military radio procedures and

holding weekly radio drills. The groups

merged, and the Army Amateur Radio

System came into being. At first it was unsuccessful. An unlucky burden of administrative detail fell upon each of the hams

serving as local representatives. Then a

noteworthy job in the 1928 Florida hurricane, when WAR and an amateur at West

Palm Beach had worked together to keep

a circuit open, gave AARS new impetus.

By slanting it away from the Army and

toward the Red Cross, its sponsors were

able to keep it alive. Operating on Monday nights except during the summers,98

and with its control station moved to

Washington, the AARS expanded from

300 to 500 members, then to 1,100 in

1935, to 1,700 in 1939, and ultimately to

2,400, when the Pearl Harbor attack suspended all amateur radio activity in the

United States.

But WAR's connection with the radio

amateurs was only periodic—a matter of

immediate local or remote national emergency. It still did not put men at the operating positions for routine daily and

nightly work. The problem remained.

When war began in September 1939,

there were sixty-three civilians and fortythree enlisted men in the Message Center.

Even this number existed, however, only

because appropriations had touched bottom and had had to go up again. Funds

had been drastically cut five years before,

at the very time when the advent of the

Civilian Conservation Corps and the order

requiring the Air Corps to carry the mail

had crowded the channels with flight messages and triple-C traffic. The Signal

Corps had been obliged to warn other

government agencies that free message

service must come to an end with the fiscal

year 1935.

Because half of the total business came

from outside the War Department and be,-

cause none of the agencies, understandably enough, had provided in their estimates for money to pay for it, the Bureau

of the Budget had had to come forward

with a special temporary allowance.

Thereafter, a rate of nine mills a word

went into effect, and the civilian agencies

took most of their business elsewhere. The

military administrative traffic increased,

however, and the effort to handle it was no

easier than before. Commercial enterprise

went on, also, picking off the men trained

at government expense, and leaving the

Signal Corps to try to perform technical

jobs without the technicians for them.

General Allison protested in 1936:

While the Army has been struggling with

unsatisfactory communications in spite of the

best efforts of zealous and intelligent personnel, the American Telephone and Telegraph,

Western Union, Postal, RCA and Mackay

98

 Radio had not yet reached the stage where it was

dependable. Heavy interference often obscured it and

summers nearly closed it out.
56 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Companies have been earning an interna- tional reputation . . . because . . . men

. . . thoroughly trained for their jobs are

able to secure long life from the expensive

equipment which is required in modern communications. . . . The Army has . . . [an]

organization of part-time signalers. ... It

is extravagant to entrust expensive signal

equipment to men who do not fully under- stand it, and it is idle to expect partially

trained operators to give the rapid service

which is demanded by a modern army."

With the aid of the Civil Service Commission, the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer inaugurated civilian recruiting

measures which improved classifications

and allowed for training on the job. The

effect was almost immediate: men withdrew from the 17th Signal Service Company, became civilians, and continued at

their jobs in the Message Center at better

pay. At the approach of World War II, the

17th had the status, moreover, of a separate company, except that it was under

the Chief Signal Officer for duty assignments.100

 The situation continued to be

tense in all of the other stations of the

Radio Net; in a fifteen-month period in

1937 and 1938, they lost 456 trained

specialists.

Largely as a result of improved equipment, operators who did stay were able to

multiply speed by two, then by three. In

September 1933 the Public Works Administration allocated $176,170 to the War

Department for the Signal Corps to spend

on physical improvements.101 This made it

possible to continue renewing the threadbare telephone and radio systems of posts

and garrisons. The Plant and Traffic Division blocked out the money in twentyfive projects, half of them being for the Air

Corps. "This work is of great benefit to the

Army," one officer stated. "It has enabled

the Signal Corps to place worn-out, obsolete (and in many cases pre-war) telephone systems in first class condition. It

has expanded facilities to the point where

all activities requiring telephone communication can be furnished such service."

 102

PWA expanded rapidly, and within its

first year (fiscal year 1934) had distributed

$343,614,628 to the War Department.103

For seventy-seven projects which were

supported either by direct allotment or by

suballotment from the Quartermaster,

Air, and Engineer Corps, the Signal Corps

employed $1,801,766 of the whole War

Department allocation. Many of the

projects were for fire-control communications in the antiaircraft gun batteries and

harbor defenses of Pearl Harbor and the

Panama Canal. Another grant of $207,-

366, apart from the sums for construction

99

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1936, pp. 19-20. 100

 M. E. Boswell, The 17th Signal Service Company: A Component of the War Department Signal

Center from World War I Through World War II,

Oct 45, p. 26. SigC Hist Sec File. Of the forty men

who made up the company as it generally was in the

late 1930's, one third were assigned to the Photographic Laboratory; the other two thirds served at the

Message Center, at the AARS station and the transmitting station at Fort Myer, and at the remote receiving station at Battery Cove. SigC 320.22 17th Sig Sv

Co, passim.

101

 Ltr, Maj Kenneth P. Lord, Finance Dept, to

CSigO, 16 Oct 33, sub: Apportionment of National

Industrial Recovery funds. SigC 475.7 (PWP) Funds

1, 1933-34. 102

 (1) Schedule of obligations attached to Ltr,

OCSigO to WD Budget Officers, 15 Nov 33, sub:

Preparation of schedules of obligations (Green Sheets)

for funds received from Federal Emergency Admin of

Public Works. SigC 475.7 (PWP) Funds 1, 1933-34.

(2) OCSigO R&W Sheet, Plant and Traffic Div, initialed "RBC" [for Maj Colton], to Exec Officer, 7

May 34. Same file. 103

 This was part of a larger sum of $1,371,388,345

set aside for federal projects, and that sum in turn was

part of a total of $3,300,000,000. Ltr, Harold L. Ickes,

Federal Emergency Administrator of Public Works, to

SW, 16 Jan 34, with OCSigO status rpt, 22 Jan 34.

SigC 475.7 (PWP) Rpts, Jan-Feb '34.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 57

of fixed communications, provided aircraft tactical radio.104

The windfall of Public Works Administration and Works Projects Administration

funds rescued the communications from

falling behind. In the nerve center at

Washington and in the outlying stations,

the effect was gratefully felt. High-speed

equipment appeared in places other than

the original two, Washington and San

Francisco. Although it was still manual

and not automatic, it was an improvement, and Hawaii, San Antonio, Atlanta,

and Chicago profited from it.105 Diamondshaped, or rhombic, directive antennas

arose at the Fort Myer transmitting station and receiving rhombics at Battery

Cove, each an asset by virtue of providing

the most possible with the least amount of

power; gradually the net was enhanced

with others.106 Noise and fault locators

and vacuum tube keyers made a commendable difference. WAR had kept a

channel open for radioteletype, so in 1937

the equipment was installed as a venture

in the Second Corps Area station in New

York. Washington hoped to provide either

leased teleprinter or teletypewriter exchange (TWX) service to other sections of

the country, quite apart from any such

facilities within the regional communications systems. The net began to think also

of adding to its own group of networks

those of the National Guard, the districts

of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and

the police.

Necessity forced more and more expansion upon fixed Army communications

despite the opinion, long held in the Signal Corps itself and enforced in the 10-

kilowatt limitation, that in case of war the

Navy's radio system would become global

whereas the Army's would be confined to

the corps areas and departments. Yet to

meet a world-wide war, the War Department Radio Net and Message Center

were antiquated.107 All equipment, either

Boehme (high-speed) or straight key, was

still operated by hand. Radioteletype had

not yet come into general use, and for

most of the stations was only in prospect.

The system needed emergency power

equipment, independent of the commercial supply, as well as additional channels

similarly independent of leased lines.108

And for all that it was a number of years

since General Gibbs had announced,

"Facsimile transmission has come, television is a demonstrated fact, and highspeed radio transmission and reception we

have in our hands to use whenever the

volume of traffic justifies its installation,"

 109

 his forecast had still not come

wholly true.

In the Signal Corps' unique field agency,

WAMCATS, the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, a

104

 The Air Corps sought radios for each of 24 fighter airplanes, 30 light bombers, and 46 medium and

heavy bombers. The principal requirement was for

the airborne sets SCR-183 and SCR-187 and for the

ground radio SCR-188. Ltr, Brig Gen Oscar Westover, Actg Chief of AC, to TAG, 8 Dec 33, sub: AC

requirements program from Public Works funds. SigC

475.7 (PWP) Supplies. 105

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 2 (July 16,

1934), p. 13. 106

 Ltr, Maj Van Deusen, Exec Officer OCSigO, to

TAG, 22 Mar 34, sub: Installation of antennas at

WAR, and 9th Ind, 4 Jun 34. SigC 676.3 Fort Myer,

1932-39. The National Capital Park and Planning

Commission asked for the Battery Cove site in order to

make a park for Alexandria, but was denied. Ltr,

Harry H. Woodring, Actg SW, to Frederic A. Delano,

Chm National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 25 Jul 36. WDGS G-4 26616-16. 107

 Maj Gen Harry C. Ingles, Speech at Centennial

of American Telegraph Association, 24 May 44. SigC

AC 352.13 Speech Material, 1943-44. 108

 Memo, Capt Clarke, O/C WD Msg Ctr, for

CSigO, 23 Feb 37. SigC 676.3 WAR (WDRS), 1936-

39.

109

 Gibbs (and Carr) article cited n. 80.
58 THE SIGNAL CORPS

similar set of changes took place. Wireless,

first supplementing wire, came actually to

supplant it. A network of cable, telegraph,

and radio at the end of World War I, the

system became one of cable and radio ten

years later (the telegraph being discontinued in 1928) and of radio alone by

1934. In 1930 the cable began to go out of

use, despite the fact that in 1924, at a cost

of $1,500,000, the earlier one had been replaced with a new one. An appropriation

of $200,000 bought radio equipment to

serve in its stead. The Seattle-Ketchikan

portion of the cable was abandoned on 31

December 1931, and the KetchikanSeward portion in 1934.110

 Time thus

wholly transmuted the original system of

the year 1904, a system of 2,100 miles of

cable, 1,500 of land line, and only 100 of

wireless space spanning. By 1936 there

was no longer any way to keep even the

name. It was changed to Alaska Communication System. Veteran employees

went into mock mourning111 for the days

before radio had assumed command, and

WAMCATS fell back into the past to join

the vanished Aviation Section and Myer's

Manual of Signals.

Radiotelephone made a limited Alaskan

debut in 1931, when transmitters were

put in at Marshall and St. Michael, two

outposts of the Norton Sound region

where wireless had been essential from the

beginning of the century. Boehme highspeed automatic equipment appeared

upon the Anchorage-Seattle circuit in

June 1933. Simultaneously, the imponderables of the budget affecting Alaskan communications as everything else, the War

Department ordered thirteen stations

closed; but because they were necessary,

the Signal Corps sold the equipment to

the communities concerned and provided

the operators for it almost as before.112 The

system as a whole had been saved from

sale to private interests only because the

enabling legislation had been tabled.113 In

1936 increasing traffic brought a regrouping of twenty-five stations into six nets, all

stations of a net working on the same frequency and Anchorage serving as the control. After July 1937 radiotelephone facilities had become universal; connected to

the long lines of the American Telephone

and Telegraph Company, they made it

possible to reach any point in the world

from Juneau or Ketchikan.

Peacetime Procurement Planning114

In providing administrative communications the Signal Corps performed a

basic peacetime service. War would raise

tactical communications to the same importance, then redouble the doubling,

110 (l) Historical Sketch of the Signal Corps (1860-

1941), p. 103. (2) Pamphlet, Alaska Communication

System, 1900-1950, p. 26; (3) First Draft, Alaska

Communication System History, p. 130. SigC Hist

Sec File. 111

 Hist cited n. 110(3), p. 99. 112

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1934, p. 6. 113

 (1) Ltr, Patrick). Hurley, SW, to Joseph W.

Byrns, Chm HR Committee on Appropriations, 25

Mar 32. WDGS G-4 29284. (2) CSigO, Annual Report,

1931, p. 1. 114

 In the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II the full-length study of military

procurement, procurement planning, industrial mobilization, manpower uses, logistics, and other aspects

of the whole subject of supply is contained in the following: (1) John D. Millett, The Organisation and Role

of the Army Service Forces (Washington, 1954). (2)

Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global

Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943 (Washington, 1955).

(3) R. Elberton Smith, Army Procurement and Economic Mobilization, and (4) Byron Fairchild and

Jonathan Grossman, Industrial Relations and Labor

Problems. The last two volumes are now in preparation.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 59

again and again, toward infinity. Of this

fact, even in limbo, the Army's communications branch was sure. The War Department Message Center, the War Department Radio Net, the Army Amateur

Radio System, leased wire lines, garrison

and field systems, and the Alaska service,

contained both a continued response to

the calls of peacetime and a rudiment for

a wartime communications system which

would meet a wartime mission. The future

was tacitly imposed on the present. At

times between the two world wars, the day

was sufficient without a tomorrow, especially a threatening one; but awareness of

the next day, the next fiscal year, the next

war never disappeared. No military

agency could afford to forget that however well it had met its charge in the

recent war, however adequately it did its

duty currently, it would fail unless it could

find some way to calculate and be ready

for the future. Although the Army might

recede from the public mind, the public

would nevertheless expect it to be

equipped on demand for an emergency.

The future was peculiarly difficult for

the Signal Corps. In order to accomplish

its mission, the Corps had to be a supply

arm as well as a technical arm, a supply

service as well as a technical service, and

the obligation to be so was to the future

even more than to the present. In being

responsible for every dry battery the Army

needed, precisely as the Quartermaster

Corps was responsible for shoelaces and

the Medical Department for aspirin, the

Signal Corps was its own best customer.115

The demands of the rest of the Army,

however, particularly of that shadowy

Army of the successive Protective Mobilization Plans, had evermore to be taken

into account as the foremost obligation.

Tangible signal material had to be on

hand for the daily demands; imagined

supplies had to be on paper for a distant

exigency. Tangible or imagined, they were

a problem.

The apparatus of the Signal Corps is

technical to the highest degree. This observation was made with great earnestness

in 1919, at a time when radio was just

coming into its own.116 Succeeding years

confirmed the view, with emphasis. Communications instruments are precision instruments, individual, complex, so subject

to constant modification as to be new one

year, out of date the next. They demand

exact engineering, exact manufacture,

exact testing to bring them to the delicate

efficiency expected of them, and exactly

trained men to use them to best advantage. For these reasons, Signal Corps anticipation of its future mission was equivalent

to knowing the futures of the Army, the

electrical industry, and electrical science.

The supply function was thus always

both actual and theoretical, the actual

straitened, the theoretical unbounded.

For supply was as big a word as communication. It could be split three ways, resplit a

dozen. In its broad reaches it touched

budgeting and contracts, raw materials,

allocations, critical items, and priorities,

machine tools, spare parts, patents, industrial mobilization, and manpower. Its

enormous range and detail offered a

career in itself, within the larger career of

the Army. Men like Elder, Hildreth,

Cuny, Bush, and Pigg could be thought of

as career colonels in supply within the

Signal Corps as Olmstead could be con115

 The policy was set in 1920. WD GO 61, 22 Nov

20. Sec. II, and WD Supply Div Memo 1049, 22 Nov

20.

116

 WD, Annual Reports, 1919, Vol. I, Pt. 1, p. 1282.
60 THE SIGNAL CORPS

sidered an administrative careerist or

Milliken a specialist in training.117

At the top level of definition, supply

comprised planning, procurement, and

distribution. Planning was the duty assigned to planning sections both in Washington and the field, procurement was

done (at least after 1925) from the offices

of procurement districts, and distribution

was made from depots and depot sections.

Planning formed the future of supply;

procurement and distribution were ordinarily linked because they represented the

immediate moment.

For many years, equal boxes on the

organization charts of the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer showed "procurement," "storage and issue," and "procurement planning,"

 118

 the first two representing the actual or current work going

on in supply, the third the hoped-for. The

three boxes were not really equal, for the

nebulous long-range work possessed much

more significance than the palpable, dayin-day-out purchase and issue did. Given

the stripped and shivering body military

of those years, what fatness there was, was

all in dreams. Two thirds of the orders

which the Signal Corps placed in 1920

were for less than a hundred dollars, and

one fourth for less than ten. Both procurement and distribution were often merest

routine.119 Corps area signal officers kept

their units provided with what the peacetime budgets and their own initiative made

possible. Signal depots and signal sections

of depots catalogued, repaired, and issued

signal equipment as they were directed to,

and tried to keep life in what was stored.

Stockpiles were so meager that ten years

after the Armistice the largest depot section, New York, held only 4,000 items for

issue and the smallest, New Cumberland,

41.120

Procurement, a function which in

World War II created one billion-dollar

Signal Corps after another, was then work117

 Eugene V. Elder studied at the Army Industrial

College and the Harvard Graduate School of Business

Administration, commanded the Philadelphia Procurement District between 1943 and 1945, and before

and after that assignment spent more than fifteen

years in the supply organization of the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer. From 1929 on, Raymond C. Hildreth's duties were those of a supply officer. They culminated with command, successively, of the Sacramento and Lexington Signal Depots. Clifford D.

Cuny, who was one of the first to take the Harvard

course under the arrangement begun in 1923, was a

Signal Corps supply specialist from the end of World

War I through World War II. George P. Bush made

his career in this field principally for twenty years. His

capacities spanned planning and expediting, storage

and issue. Albert M. Pigg's career lay most consistently of all in supply, from 1 January 1920, with an assignment to the Signal Corps General Supply Depot

in Washington, D. C., to 15 May 1946, when he completed a two-and-one-half year tour at the Holabird

Signal Depot, Baltimore.

For many years before Dawson Olmstead became

Chief Signal Officer, his assignments gave him administrative experience. He was a student at the Command and General Staff College and the Army War

College, officer in charge of the Washington-Alaska

Military Cable and Telegraph System, executive

officer to General Allison and General Mauborgne,

president of the Signal Corps Board, and commandant of the Signal Corps School. Charles M. Milliken

was for two years a student and for five years an instructor at the Command and General Staff College,

for another four years was assistant commandant of

the Signal Corps School, and, after an interval of a

year as chief of the Operations Branch and its successor, the Field Service, in the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer, was for the next six years, as a brigadier general, the officer commanding the Signal Corps training activities at Camp Crowder, Missouri, and Fort

Dix, New Jersey. 118

 E.g., the charts for 30 September 1922, 1 November 1928, 26 December 1929, and 9 November

1939. The box titles varied, but their meaning

remained the same. 119

 Capt. Wilton B. Persons described the peacetime

procurement process in "Signal Corps Supply," a

Signal Corps Bulletin article, May-June, 1933. 120

 Memo, Maj Dawson Olmstead, Chief Supply

Div OCSigO, for CSigO, 8 Jan 29, sub: Outstanding

accomplishments in SigC Supply Sv, 9 Jan 28-9

Jan 29. SigC 400 Gen 5.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 61

ing in terms a thousandth part as large.121

The years between the wars limited distribution to a bedrock meaning, a matter of

bin-stock items and control space, shipping tickets and memorandum receipts.

The handing out of items as they were

asked for, a giant's duty when procurement became gigantic, was correspondingly dwarfed in time of peace.

Planning was a thing the other way

around. The press of war might allow little

time for it, but the stretch of postwar (or

prewar) years offered a long opportunity

to plan to the last crystal. There was no

night-and-day shipping schedule to keep

abreast of; maintenance was free of the

special problems, like protection against

fungus, which war in strange theaters imposed; the signal supply catalogue contained only 2,500 items and seldom needed

to be revised.122 Not only the entire country but overseas stations as well were

served from three procurement districts.

Contracting was minor, and educational

orders, the special contracts devised to

educate manufacturers in the Army's

needs, remained in the cocoon. Allocation,

scheduling, expediting, which were all

vital parts of a wartime supply machine,

in peace had small importance. Supplying the day's needs built up good experience, but anticipating tomorrow's created

knowledge in advance of experience. Planning surveyed a whole region from requirements and standards to estimates of

plant capacity and sources of manpower.

It dealt in major potentials.

Certainly World War I had demonstrated the need for planning in the whole

field of supply, including industrial mobilization, an area which before that time

neither foreign armies nor the U.S. Army

had seriously considered.123 All through

the final offensive of 1918, there had been

dangerous shortages of many kinds; the

munitions program had been inadequate;

confusion had existed among the various

supply agencies at home and abroad; some

factories had fallen behind because of too

many orders, others had not been equal to

the orders they got. A man in the street

might have thought that the Allies had

won because they were so good that the

enemy had to give up, but the persons responsible for supply had breathed a sigh of

relief. The war had ended just soon enough

to forestall a breakdown. If, for instance,

all of the American combat forces had

actually been engaged for a full month

together, the Signal Corps would have

needed 63,000 miles of wire to maintain

their communications. But the best production figure for any month was only

8,000 miles.124

Peacetime procurement planning started

off immediately at the close of World

War I, from a series of conferences with

businessmen in which Brig. Gen. William

Mitchell of the Air Service and Col.

Charles McK. Saltzman, the Assistant

Chief Signal Officer, took part.125 Legislation was the next stage. Saltzman helped

to draft an enabling paragraph which

would oblige the armed services to under121

 The amounts of Signal Corps purchases from

1920 through 1935 remained in sums which fluctuated

between one and two million dollars. E.g., 1926:

$1,031,484; 1930: $2,299,181; 1935: $1,688,633. 122

 James V. Clarke, Contract Adjustment in the

Signal Corps, 1 July 1939-15 August 1945, MS, 1946,

p. 9. SigC Hist Sec File. See also Col H. B. Ferguson,

CE, Lecture G-4 Course 47, Army War College, 26

May 22. Army War College Record Sec. 123

 [Dwight F. Davis] ASW, Mass Procurement,

lecture delivered before the Army War College, 20

Jan 23. SigC Proc Plng Sec File. 124

 1st Lt. Frank W. Bullock, "Wire Industry Vital

to War Planning," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 66

(May-June 1932), p. 6. 125

 Hall hist cited n. 4(5), pp. 88-89.
62 THE SIGNAL CORPS

take procurement planning, Secretary of

War Newton D. Baker endorsed it before

Congressional hearings, and it was made

one of the 1920 amendments to the 1916

National Defense Act. The same legislation authorized an assistant secretary of

war, responsible for all military procurement and for mobilization of industry and

materials.126

Planning, explicitly authorized, was of

course implicit in both of these functions;

but whereas military procurement was

part of the civilian economy, and long

accepted, industrial mobilization was new

and ominous. Wherefore, the two parts of

this assignment diverged. Business, the

accepted guide of government at that

period, put the emphasis upon procurement and bridled at the shackling possibilities of mobilization planning. Whether

in its military or its civilian aspects, mobilization planning called up such possibilities. In spite of the fact that military

planning is planning for some place not

here and at some time not now with men

who are not yet in uniform and with materials which are not yet in production, it

implies present conscription; and conscription is hard to achieve even when the

threat to the national security is at hand,

let alone in the afterglow of a war to end

all future wars. The military phase of procurement planning, reflecting that of

actual procurement, involved estimating

requirements, allocations, contract schedules, and so on; but the larger economic

phases took planning into such fields as

stockpiling strategic and critical materials,

converting plants for wartime manufacture, financing new factories, and awarding contracts according to local supply of

power, to ease of access, to availability of

labor.

The need for superagencies, controlling

the civilian elements of military power,

could be prophesied. Assistant Secretary

of War Dwight F. Davis, for example, was

aware of a necessity for a war industries

board, a price control committee, apparatuses to administer labor, food, fuel,

transportation and communication, a war

finance corporation, and a war trade

board.127 There was no getting away from

these parts of the plan if there was to be a

plan at all. The initial group of fifty officers working in the Assistant Secretary's

office at first devoted their attention to the

military requirements of a procurement

program and let the economic phases go;

but it became apparent that computing

the needs of a military force was not to be

achieved while the equation was filled

with x's. Wide-scale procurement planning

took firm root. The War Council, the

Joint Army and Navy Munitions Board,

and the Army Industrial College became

its agents. Maj. Laurence Watts was the

first Signal Corps officer to be assigned to

the Industrial College for training. Its lecturers during its first years included not

only Watts, 1st Lt. Byron A. Falk, Maj.

Roy H. Coles, Capt. Alfred M. Shearer

and other Signal Corps officers engaged in

the problems of supply mobilization, but

also civilian communications chiefs like

David Sarnoff of Radio Corporation of

America and J. J. Carty of American

Telephone and Telegraph.

Acting under the Assistant Secretary's

office, the lower echelons organized procurement planning programs of their own.

The supply list which the Assistant Secretary assigned to the Chief Signal Officer's

responsibility reiterated signal, meteorological, and photographic items as custom

126

 41 Statute 764, sec 5, 4 Jun 20. 127

 ASW lecture cited n. 123.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 63

already established.128 To plan for their

procurement, the Office of the Chief Signal Officer opened a section headed by

Maj. Francis G. Delano, with Capt.

Edward F. French and Lieutenant Falk as

his assistants.129 For most of the 1920's

there were three officers and two clerks in

the section. In accordance with boundaries

which the Office of the Assistant Secretary

of War had fixed for fourteen industrial

districts, the Signal Corps also established

three procurement districts and assigned

an officer in each of them to carry out procurement planning which was distinct

from that of the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer. The officers were Capts. Ralph R.

Guthrie, Alfred M. Shearer, and George

P. Bush, and they served respectively at

New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

These three sites were chosen because, as

Assistant Secretary Davis explained, "the

Signal Corps districts are necessarily built

up around those existing facilities such as

General Electric Company, the Westinghouse Electric Company and the Western

Electric Company, dealing in electrical

equipment."

In Washington and afield, then, the

Signal Corps undertook the planning of

primary and secondary requirements, the

surveying of industry, and the imaginary

apportioning of war contracts. Furthermore, it sought Reserve officers as procurement experts; this was a part of the

work in which, as elsewhere, the official

policy was to look to industry. The rule of

thumb in Signal Corps planning was to

expect 50 percent of the required manufacture to come from the area of the New

York Procurement District, 40 percent

from Chicago, and 10 from San Francisco.130

 Telephone equipment came principally from the Chicago region, radio

from New York.

All planning led to the secret strategic

plans of the General Staff's War Plans

Division, and was based upon the probable requirements of a mobilized army

and the survey of industrial power. Personnel mobilization plans were to take

care of the former and supply planning

the latter. The War Department Mobilization Plans commenced in 1919; and

1920, 1924, 1928, and 1933 plans followed

before Protective Mobilization Plans took

their place. The supply plans were at first

known by the names of colors—Green

Plan, Tan Plan, and so on—and ultimately

as Industrial Mobilization Plans.

At first, supply planners attempted to

survey industry by means of questionnaires. They were markedly unsuccessful.

They were rebuffed as meddling, presumptuous, or simply "dumb."

 131

 The

Army War College began the use of questionnaires with an endeavor in 1921 to

get replies to what it called an industrial

inventory. When the effort failed, the

General Staff ordered the supply agencies

to gather their own information. Repeating the attempt with its own industrial

mobilization questionnaires, the Signal

Corps had no better luck. U.S. Steel,

Westinghouse, and General Electric were

128

 The Signal Corps' responsibility for radar lay in

an early regulation's specifying "all methods of determining the direction or range of artillery, radio

stations, aircraft, or marine craft." AR 105-5, 14 Jan

22, Duties of the Chief Signal Officer, par. IV b. 129

 Lt Col George P. Bush and Martha E. Manning,

History of Procurement Planning, 1920-1940, MS,

1942, p. 21. SigC Proc Plng Sec File. 130

 The New York District represented the Office

of the Assistant Secretary of War's areas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

6, 7, 10; Chicago, areas 8, 9, 11, 12, 13; and San Francisco, area 14. OCSigO Office Memo 74, 20 Dec 22.

WD Industrial Mob Plan, Dec 23, Annex 5, Chart 2.

In March 1933 the War Department substituted

four procurement zones for its original fourteen. 131

 Capt Albert M. Pigg, Monograph on Reports

of Survey, 1935, p. 3. Proc Plan Sec File, Industrial

Mob Br, P&D Div, OCSigO.
64 THE SIGNAL CORPS

among the large companies to show unwillingness to answer them. The War

Department registered an ineffectual retaliation against brusque treatment by

promising to shut out un-co-operative

businessmen in case of war. This was

comforting, but did not fill the void where

the answers should be. Moreover, there

was dispute over such basic riddles as the

reserve of materials: whether to plan for

the maximum emergency or for whatever

modest contingency Congress was likely

to agree to.132

The procurement problem stemmed

straight from the mobilization problem.

The War Department Mobilization Plan

work, which had commenced in terms of

an Army of six and a half million men

while production was still geared to war

effort,133 had dwindled to a million men

on M Day, a million and a half six months

later. On this basis, the planners working

in the Assistant Secretary's office toward

the 1924 revision of the plan were computing requirements, but could hardly

know the conditions under which they

would be needed. In a dinner address,

General Squier offered lump sums to give

an idea. Each month, it seemed to him,

the Signal Corps would probably need

7,000 radio sets and 12,000 telephones;

19,000 miles of galvanized iron wire and

76,000 miles of insulated wire; 20,000 storage batteries and 200,000 dry batteries.

He even mentioned 60,000 pounds of

pigeon feed.134 So, would the war be short

or long? local or global? soon or never at

all? The Signal Corps' part in planning

had to be related to the answers to these

questions, to the reserve of raw and manufactured materials, to manpower, transportation, and industrial potential. In

order to answer them the planners needed

to get replies to their questionnaires. Industry pointed out that the Army could

not expect answers without knowing what

to ask—and the circle was complete.

Conferences with industry, a second

attempt, were hamstrung by the reluctance of business representatives to speak

frankly in front of their competitors. This

reaction was not surprising. One of the

important tools of supply planning was the

report of survey, and the report of survey was

panoramic enough to daunt a man whose

factory it analyzed.135 Yet until the good

faith and serious purpose of military

planners were accepted by business, there

could be no real information on which to

base a plan. After a period of several years,

the Signal Corps officers on planning duty

built up the confidence of industrialists,

and business representatives did consent

to disclose production rates, plant capacity, and other figures. They stipulated,

however, that they speak in private and to

a Regular Army officer, not to a civilian

who might be hired away by a competitor

132

 Bush and Manning hist cited n. 129, pp. 77-78.

133 \YD Pub Relations Br, Statement by Brig Gen

Harry L. Twaddle Before the Truman Committee,

24 Apr 41. AG 381 (11-29-40) Sec 1. 134

 Maj Gen George O. Squier, Wartime Procurement and Procurement Planning in the Signal Corps,

address at dinner for ASW, N.Y., Feb 23. SigC PP

Basic Plan for Proc. 135

 Reports of survey were supposed to show

"parent or subsidiary firms, executives, ownership,

capitalization, normal products, production machinery, normal suppliers and subcontractors, sources

of supply for raw materials, number of employees,

power and transportation facilities available, a complete listing of the Signal Corps items which, in the

judgment of the Planning Officer, the plant would be

capable of producing, the preferred items for production, that is, the items for which the plant was considered to be best suited to produce economically and

in the quantities needed, and finally, a recommendation by the Planning Officer as to 'allocation' of the

facility." Bush and Manning hist cited n. 129, p. 85.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 65

for the sake of the information he had obtained.136

 Under no circumstance was

industry asked for information without

clear approval from the Office of the

Assistant Secretary.

Consultation with industry was further

hampered by the fact that officers had no

expense account to depend on so that they

could travel to a plant in order to survey

it firsthand. Ordinarily, they prepared reports from the information on file near

them, and the result was sometimes remote from fact. The farther away history

moved from World War I, the less significant was any report based on the industrial potential which had existed at its

close. Most industries had converted their

factories wholly to the uses of peacetime

and could no longer be considered available for war production without extensive

reconversion. As this situation developed,

the factory plan came into being. Wherever

a survey became obsolete, planning officers sought to replace it with a construction plan, for building a new factory, or an

expansion plan, for altering an existing

one. These plans held the kernel for the

arrangements whereby the federal government later subsidized the expansion of

industry during and somewhat before the

1941-1945 war. A factory plan was made

if the industrial capacity for an item was

determined to be less than twice the

amount which the requirements of the

Mobilization Plan made necessary. (In the

Office of the Assistant Secretary of War,

the standard planning policy was that

half of the industrial capacity would be

the maximum allowed to military use, the

other half being reserved to the civilian

economy.) Planners estimated production

in twenty-four-hour units because fulltime operation would be the rule of war,

but computed it at two and one-half

rather than three times the production

figure of a peacetime eight-hour shift because they felt sure that efficiency in the

second and third eight-hour periods of the

twenty-four would not be up to the

standard of the first.

In the preparation of factory plans, the

Signal Corps asked for the industrial surveys which the Bureau of the Census had

compiled with an expertness and detail

that no small service could approach.

Statutory secrecy imposed upon them

made them inaccessible, however, and

the planning sections were accordingly

obliged to cover the same ground for themselves. Moreover, factory plans were of less

use to the Signal Corps than to services

like Ordnance which required special

military manufacture almost totally unrelated to civilian use.

The most valuable device for Signal

Corps planning was the item-procurement

plan. It came up in the same set of circumstances which produced the report of

survey but accomplished a different purpose. It shifted the point of view from plant

to item and from report to plan. The

reports of survey were in no sense plans.

They were supposed to reflect the existing

situation, plant by plant, of the communications industry. The item-procurement

plan (or, simply, procurement plan, as it

came to be called) separated the problem

into the actual materials themselves, by

considering the requirements of the military system singly, whether as raw resources or as manufactured products, and

synthesized future procurement in that

way.

One of the commodity committees of

136

 Pigg monograph cited n. 131, p. 5.
66 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the War Department of which the Signal

Corps held the chairmanship was that for

mica.137 As an insulator—as a component

of radio condensers, as an essential to

commutator segments in motors and generators—mica was vital; and since only a

small proportion of the total amount

mined was useful and since several

branches of the Army counted upon it,

there had to be careful planning for an

adequate supply in case of war.138 It

accordingly received special study. So did

quartz crystals for radio transmission,

crude diamonds for wiredrawing, and

other raw materials.139 For manufactured

items, similar studies had to be made.

Storage batteries, a common enough product, were of continuous importance to the

Signal Corps. A 1926 item-procurement

plan for them began by scrutinizing and

trying to define the strategic mission of

storage batteries, then moved into detail,

first describing the basic lead-sulphuric

acid and nickel-iron-potassium types, next

listing the models which the Signal Corps

would need. Continuing, other sections of

the plan discussed critical components,

critical raw materials, production tools,

labor requirements, and contract policy.

The plan closed with a graph which

charted the manufacture of batteries from

the beginning of the process to the end.140

These plans had limitations. Not only

were lists of critical materials likely to

change abruptly, but new methods of

manufacture or advances in the field of

electricity could fast make them out of

date. For instance, the advent of better

magnetic steel altered the whole area of

procurement of field telephones. An even

more important change occurred when

the use of metal for vacuum tubes made

the shielding process unnecessary. The

rapid obsolescence which was the Jonah

of communications equipment made it

hard to merge the individual item plans

into a comprehensive view.

Military uses often set a standard much

higher than commercial manufacturers

maintained in their product; hence a plan

ordinarily had to be written with custombuilt apparatus in mind. Maj. George P.

Bush and others held that war would

require mass production, even of radio, yet

attempts in that direction were frustrated

by the very attributes which render radio

a valuable and delicate instrument.141

Another barrier to mass production could

arise from the fact that companies would

probably not use interchangeable components to an extent which would make it

possible for several factories to join in

quantity production. The New York Procurement District anticipated difficulty in

subcontracting the manufacture of highfrequency equipment for this reason—that

the prime contractors would use proprietary parts and features.142

Machine tools posed another dilemma.

Should the Signal Corps try to keep up its

supply of them, an effort which would involve almost yearly replacement, or should

an equivalent amount of money and time

be spent on developing better methods

and models, in the hope that there would

137

 The Signal Corps was also represented on the

commodity committees for ferroalloys, nonferrous

metals, optical glass, rubber and rubber goods, steel

and iron, and wire and cable. CSigO, Annual Report,

1930, p. 56. 138

 Capt Alfred M. Shearer, Tentative Plan for the

Production of Mica, 1929. SigC FM-137. 139

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1928, p. 18.

140 "A Typical Signal Corps Plan for the Procurement of Supplies," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 37

(January, 1927), pp. 31-40. 141

 H. D. Hausmann, Procurement Planning and

Industrial Mobilization, 1920-1940, Pt. II, pp. 258ff.

OCSigO Industrial Mob Br File. 142

 Rpt of N. Y. SigC Proc District, 35, 8 Jul 35.

SigC Annual Rpts.
TH

E ARMY IN LIMBO

67

be enough advance warning for the nation

to retool its factories? After World War I,

the Signal Corps took over a large quan-

tity of tools, jigs, and dies which were so

soon outmoded that the second choice was

inescapable; and machine tools had to be

added thereafter to the planned produc-

tion of an item.

In 1929, when the new administration

of Herbert Hoover came into power, a

reorganization in the Office of the Assist-

ant Secretary of War took industrial mo-
68 THE SIGNAL CORPS

culminated in statistics on the weight,

volume, and cost of the tactical signal

equipment a wartime military machine

would use in units from a platoon all the

way up through a field army. This task

completed, planners turned to presenting

the computations in the form of charts, for

the greater convenience of corps area signal officers in their own planning and purchase of equipment. For a period, these

war planning equipment charts unofficially

took the place of tables of basic allowances. They could not serve forever,

though, and in the fall of 1934 Capt.

Albert M. Pigg and his associates—Pigg

by then the Procurement Planning Section's only officer—began to prepare tentative tables of basic allowances upon the

basis of discussion with all arms using signal material. The discussion was careful

enough to result in nearly definitive work,

so that Signal planning reaped two benefits. In the first place, it enjoyed the advantage of up-to-date information until

the official tables of basic allowances appeared; and in the second, when that time

came, most of the Signal Corps' contribution was ready. The old supply plans

named for colors were falling into the discard meanwhile, although unluckily not

until a good deal of time and energy had

gone into attempts to revise them. Further

work on these plans stopped in 1934, and

they were replaced altogether in 1937 by

the first of the Protective Mobilization

Plans.

In anticipation of the new Protective

Mobilization Plan and to try the usefulness of existing plans, Signal Corps supply

agents were everywhere asked how ready

they thought they were. Long lists of questions went out in 1936 to each echelon—

the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, the

New York and Chicago Procurement Districts, the signal sections of the New York,

Chicago, and San Francisco General

Depots, the corps area signal offices, and

the signal sections of corps area supply

points. For Wire W-110, for example, the

questions included these:

Which items procured by other supply

arms and services must be considered in pro- curing Wire W-110?

What will be the procedure, if any, to insure the required flow to manufacturers of

manganese, rubber and tin required for Wire

W-110?

What procedure will be followed in plac- ing contracts for Wire W-110 and ... in

making payments therefor?

Have all the facilities capable of fabricat- ing Wire W-110 or its component processes

been surveyed . . . ?

Have plans been made so that production

can be shifted from one geographical area

within a district to another . . . ? To another

procurement district?

How much wire is the depot planning to

stock in wartime? Where?

Will this wire be stocked as loose coils, on

reels DR-4, on reels DR-5? What proportion?

How will overseas shipments be made?

 148

Procurement planning had gone far in

the years it had been in existence. These

were searching questions, making plain

the extent to which Signal Corps requirements were interbound with those of the

rest of the Military Establishment, American industry, and civilian life. They called

up the whole supply apparatus of the Signal Corps: the depots, the procuring agencies, the overseas suppliers. Planning, indeed, revealed that procurement itself was

half planning. The most difficult thing of

all was to calculate the rate. The last

(1933) War Department Mobilization

Plan did not allow enough time for equipping the troop units which it projected. It

was unrealistic in its apprehension of

148

 Bush and Manning hist cited n. 129, pp. 62-64.
THE ARMY IN LIMBO 69

engineering difficulties, oversanguine in its

estimate of the amount of war production

to be drawn from an industry far removed

from war.

The only certainty about procurement

was that it was a long process—many

thought too wrapped with red tape to be

able to move at all149—and the greatest

contribution which planning could make

would be to hasten it. Almost no one then

realized what later experience eventually

proved—that the time lag from drawing

board to end of production for military

electronics equipment is normally from

four to eight years.150 A schedule for the

SCR-194 showed that four and one-half

years had advanced it only to the edge of

manufacture. Proposed 23 June 1932, the

SCR-194 had traversed various routes of

approval and amendment, service test and

modification, standardization and specification, to final authorization from the

Office of the Assistant Secretary on 18

January 1937.151 Bidding, award of contract, manufacture, inspection, acceptance, delivery, and that ultimate test, the

approval of actual use, were yet to come.

More than for any other reason, the

Protective Mobilization Plan was developed because it promised to speed things

up. The first one was prepared in the

anxiety engendered by the newest Japanese attack upon China, which followed

German and Italian demonstration of

strength in Spain, which followed Italian

force against Ethiopia, which followed

Japan's Manchurian conquest at the outset of the decade. Assuredly, there was no

want of urging for planning. Whether a

new approach would produce good results

remained to be seen. In any case, the

years devoted to predecessor plans were

far from wasted. If the work on the new

basis was as valuable, it would produce

priceless knowledge of methods and techniques, priceless experience in computing

requirements, gauging sources of supply,

revealing possible shortages in materials or

components, and estimating facilities

which would be depended upon for manufacture. The ultimate value of two decades

of procurement planning would lie not in

perfected blueprints, ready instantly to fill

the breach when the emergencies were

proclaimed, but in the men it had trained.

149

 Brig Gen Alfred W. Marriner, USAF Ret.,

ruefully made this point in an interview with the

author, New York, 12 February 1950. 150

 A conservative estimate allowing two to four

years for development, one to two years from development until production begins, and one to two years

for completion of production. MS Comment by Maj

Gen Roger B. Colton, Ret., 14 Sep 53. SigC Hist Sec

File.

151

 Hausmann study cited n. 141, Pt. III, p. 79.
CHAPTER III

The Scope of the Signal Corps

The Chief in Office

For a Chief Signal Officer between wars

to suppose what his Corps might be at full

reach and range took an act of the imagination. From 1924 to 1937 General Saltzman, General Gibbs, General Carr, and

General Allison spanned a period when

neither World War I nor World War II

was close, yet all of them were expected to

know their service not only as it existed

but also as it ought to exist for a major

conflict. The circle of their fiscal yearly

duties was concentric to a larger circle

which they could only guess at. Everything they did might shorten or extend the

radius. Each Chief followed in a kind of

episcopal succession derived from the past

but deferring to the future; each in turn

took his place at the head of an agency

which had antedated him far enough so

that he could not mold its dogma but

which would also postdate him in assigning his acts to the body of permanent

tradition. The primary charge laid upon

each of them was to act in terms of what

might lie ahead, because if war materialized, the nebulous outer limits would

become real.

It is not surprising that the constricted

limits they worked in appeared sometimes

to be the whole reality. The Chief himself

could often give his time in office an importance it did not actually have, to the

extent of his awareness that he had been

set in place to hold the organization

together and to advance it if circumstances

called upon him to do so. Maj. Gen.

George S. Gibbs was of this sort, a man of

capacity whose career matured at a point

when there was least for him to do. Both

the recollection and the prospect of a wartime Signal Corps being uppermost in a

good Chief Signal Officer's administration, the guiding principle was conservation, retention, preservation. Empire

building might well have been easier by

comparison. Maj. Gen. Charles McK.

Saltzman even found himself obliged to

deny the assertion that the Military

Establishment was "standing by in idleness and wastefulness."1

 He met this

threat, and turned to the next, where

"One and Two Per Cent Clubs," economy

devices of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, were demanding that he

pare the skin from a budget which he felt

had already lost its flesh. Both he and his

successor, Gibbs, made the cuts, but they

both put the equivalent amounts back

into their budget requests for the ensuing

years.2 Gibbs also balked at a proposed

sale of the Washington-Alaska Military

Cable and Telegraph System; and he reorganized the whole administrative structure of his command so that he could leave

it, he hoped, well decentralized the better

1

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1926, p. 1. 2

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1926, App., pp. 68-70,

and Annual Report, 1927, App., p. 23.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 71

to resist the onslaught of either Congress

or war.

To take care of the responsibilities

charged to the Chief, his office was usually

arranged in four divisions: Personnel, Research and Development, Supply, and

Special Service, the latter including such

miscellaneous activities as the photographic, pigeon, and meteorological services. Little change in this basic organization took place in the 1920's; the principal

one was that General Saltzman organized

a Training Division apart from Personnel.3

During the fiscal year 1930, however,

something of a real reorganization was

undertaken by General Gibbs. Declaring

in his annual report for that year that he

had wanted to make the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer a genuine "head

office," he explained that he had "centralized supervision and decentralized operation" by closing the Washington, D. C.,

signal depot and moving four laboratories

to Fort Monmouth.4 Current purchasing

had already been shifted to the procurement districts; and Monmouth was well

established as the center for training.

Gibbs's small Washington headquarters of

twenty-one officers and fifty-three civilians stepped out of the general organizational pattern of the 1920's and into one

which lasted a comparable time in the

1930's. It comprised the Personnel, Research and Development, Supply, and

Training Divisions, added Plant and

Traffic, for the administrative communications duty, and made photography and

meteorology into separate divisions by dissolving the old catchall, Special Service.

With these seven divisions the Office of

the Chief Signal Officer continued up to

the end of the decade and the threshold of

the new war. Then, under expansion, the

peacetime pattern served like a basic blueprint. The double scope of the Signal

Corps between wars, the daily challenge

to a Chief Signal Officer of those days to

see his organization as acorn and oak at

the same time, could scarcely have materialized with more force than actually

did develop. A dozen small and quiet field

agencies grew to over four dozen which,

although dependencies, were often as

large as their progenitors of the 1920's and

1930's; and the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer alone reached a size greater than

the Washington and field activities

together had once been. (Chart 2)

The December 1929 reorganization anticipated the larger view by its redesignation of the Training Division as the War

Plans and Training Division. Actually, its

principal work continued to be training.

It was responsible for the program of Signal Corps interrelation with ham radio

enthusiasts.5 It scheduled the special oneyear assignments of officers who studied at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

the Harvard Graduate School of Business

Administration, the Yale Sheffield School

of Electrical Science, at other universities,

in Los Angeles with the moving picture

industry, at the Command and General

Staff School and Army Industrial College,

and with the division itself in the Signal

Intelligence Section—all as part of the

very real trend to specialize the officers of

the Signal Corps. For want of anyone else

to do so, it supervised the instruction of

pigeons as well as of human beings. In the 3

 Courtney R. Hall, The Development of the Office

of the Chief Signal Officer, Pt. I: 1917-43, p. 50. SigC

Hist Sec File. 4

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1930, p. 2, and accompanying orgn chart. 5

 (1) Maj. David M. Crawford, "The Army Amateur Radio System," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 47

(March, 1929), pp. 39-45. (2) AARS Revised Gen

Plan, pars. 2 and 5, and AARS Regulations, Secs. I,

VI, VII, VIII.

72 THE SIGNAL CORPS

School and Literature Section, the division

concerned itself with the revision of past

training doctrine and the formulation of

new doctrine; extension courses were one

of its innovations which the Army generally adopted. There were never as many

as a dozen civilians, including those working at codes and cryptograms, in the War

Plans and Training Division, and the

whole complement of officers was three,

then four, then five, and ultimately seven

by 1937..Maj. David M. Crawford was the

first officer in charge; Maj. Spencer B.

Akin succeeded him in 1932 and Maj.

William S. Rumbough followed Akin in

1935.6

The reorganization plan also moved

fiscal duties up to the Executive Office.

There the Fiscal Section devoted itself

primarily to the budget, a process managed over a range of at least three years.

If, for example, the Research and Development Division and the Laboratories

were readying a program, the preparations were not for the current fiscal year

nor even for the next but for the one after

that. In the last six months of 1934, Major

Blair, Maj. Hugh Mitchell, and others

projected the fiscal year 1937 development

program. By 1 January 1935 they were

ready with two sets of estimates, maximum and minimum figures, which they

had discussed with Maj. Stewart W. Stanley, chief of the Fiscal Section and which,

through him, they were prepared to defend before the G-4 Division of the General Staff. G-4 then reached a compromise

figure which General Carr, the Chief, forwarded to the War Department, his own

officers being obliged to defend it again,

item by item. This stage resulted in another calculation, which went into the

War Department budget and, in August,

was presented before the Bureau of the

Budget. Having been approved there,

with further modifications, it came before

the Appropriations Subcommittee of the

House of Representatives and finally, in

early 1936, to the floor of Congress. Debate in each house and Senate-House

conference preceded its passage and its

signature by the President. Then it became

official and, on 1 July 1936, took effect as

a part of the fiscal year budget for 1937.

As a matter of fact, the Signal Corps'

1937 appropriation marked the end of the

era of impoverishment, for before that fiscal

year ended the total reached $5,587,357.7

A large part of it, however, went toward

the intensive program to put radio in

every military airplane. Only a fifth went

to the communications mission, a seventh

to the pay of civilian employees, and in

every case except the special expenditure

for the Air Corps the Chief Signal Officer

and his staff could use the funds only on a

monthly basis.8 If a telephone construction

project were to cost more than one twelfth

of the total amount appropriated for telephone construction projects, it would have

to wait until enough money for it accrued.

This sort of arrangement set limits to administration which no Chief Signal Officer

of the period could escape. It heightened

the importance of routine, of detail, of

slowness to take action. The Army between

wars was not a big business, but an enterprise conserved for bigness, its agents

trustees for a critical and universal public.

6

 Capt Frederick Reinstein, The Development of

Military Training Branch, OCSigO, 1929-1945, pp.

2-7. SigC Hist Sec File. 7

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1937, p. 7. Part of the new

accretion of funds reflected the appointment, two

years before, of Gen. Malin Craig as Chief of Staff.

General Craig had lent personal support to the increase because he especially valued communications. 8

 Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officers All Corps Areas and

Depts, 2 May 36. SigC 676.1, Jan 25-Dec 39.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 73

All procedure had to be standardized, and

co-ordinated with the standardized procedures of other agencies.

Suppose that the Chief of Cavalry

wanted the Chief Signal Officer to provide him with a radio which troopers

could mount upon guidon staffs.9 He first

offered a tentative description of its military characteristics agreed upon by his

service board. The Signal Corps Technical

Committee reviewed these and passed

them on to G-3 and G-4. The concurrence

of these staff sections permitted the item to

appear in the budget requests for the ensuing fiscal year, to pass through the

channels just described.

With the appropriation in hand, the

Chief Signal Officer assigned the project

to one of the Laboratories or to a commercial organization. Thereupon the developing laboratory started a test model,

sending in monthly reports the while.

With the model in hand, the Signal Corps

and the Cavalry, together with the Infantry or any other component also interested, conducted a service test, the reports

of which, after a month or a year, found

their way back to the laboratory or the

business firm, so that the design might

incorporate all modifications called for.

The project engineers tested the redesigned

model and, if the alterations were satisfactory, the Signal Corps Technical Committee recommended that the guidon radio be

standardized for production. With the

Office of the Assistant Secretary of War

supervising the scheduling, a basis of issue

would be determined from the needs of

the Cavalry and the plans of the General

Staff. The stage of final specifications then

would arrive, although not without thorough discussion, including suggestions

from industry; and at last the Signal

Corps could invite bids, let the contract,

follow the item through its manufacture,

pay for it, and issue or store it according to

the requisitions made.

Next to getting money, the great problem for these Chief Signal Officers was

getting personnel. The effect of horizontal

or across-the-board cuts, as often as not at

a time when the duties were doubled, was

to close out all hope of promotion for years;

as a result, some civilians and many enlisted men whom the government had

spent thousands of dollars to train took the

first opportunity to leave.

In 1927, the 2,165 enlisted men in the

Signal Corps, representing 1.8 percent of

the enlisted strength of the Army, were

distributed not only in the United States

but also in Alaska, the Canal Zone, the

Hawaiian Islands, and the Philippines.

The greatest number, 864, was assigned to

the 11 signal service companies in the

United States and the next largest, 530, to

the remaining tactical organizations within

the continental limits: that is, to the 51st

Signal Battalion, the 1st and 2d Signal

Companies, and the 1st Signal Troop. The

Hawaiian garrison took 320 men, Panama

215, Alaska (for the cable and telegraph

system) 187, and the Philippines 63. Sixty

percent of the assignments were to the Signal Corps' administrative, or at any rate

nontactical, functions.

Ten years later, in 1937, the distribution of enlisted strength was unchanged:

60 percent administrative, by this time

assigned in 14 signal service companies,

and 40 percent tactical, now not only in

the 51st Signal Battalion and the 1st Sig9

 The reality that grew out of this supposition was

the SCR-511, although by the time it emerged for

general use there was no longer any thought of carrying it on horseback. Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of Signal Corps Research and Development in

World War II, 1945-46. Vol. VIII, Pt. 2, Proj 814-B.

SigC Hist Sec File.
74 THE SIGNAL CORPS

nal Troop but also in 6 (rather than 2)

signal companies and the new provisional

Radio Intelligence Company. A 1,200-

man increase which had come about during ten years was confined almost entirely

to the continental assignments, leaving

the garrisoning overseas little altered. For

Hawaii there were 340; for Panama, 250;

for the Alaska Communication System

(and this did include the men stationed at

the Seattle headquarters), 185 where there

had been 187 a decade before, and for the

Philippine Islands, 60.10

Officers were a more stable force. Rank

carried attributes of social acceptance and

authority which made all the difference in

choosing whether or not to stay with a

military career. In the long economic depression this intangible influence melted

before the more telling desire just to hold

a job. Then there were fewer resignations.

A study completed in 1936 advanced the

possibility that the Signal Corps would

have a hard time filling up its officer allotment in the decade from 1939 to 1949.11

What was expected was that many officers

would reach retirement during those years

and that the Signal Corps would be confronted with the fact that the years of

economizing had robbed it of successors

for them. For there were few opportunities for young men to enter the corps of

Regular Army officers during the years

when the World War I officers were still

thoroughly active and filled all the places

allowed except a few at the bottom for

each year's West Point graduates. The

Signal Corps was a popular choice at the

academy, and because of its technical

exactions was likely to secure cadets from

the upper scholastic levels, but it was not

enough that this was the case.

Until the Thomason Act12 was passed

in 1935, no new officers came in except by

transfer from other branches or from the

Military Academy, and even under the

new legislation only one or two men a year

could be beckoned from civilian life. At no

time between the wars did Signal Corps

officer strength reach the authorized 300.13

In July 1937 General Allison was asked to

submit "some feasible plan that would

permit a decrease in the number of Signal

Corps officers on duty in the District of

Columbia without impairing the efficiency

of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer."14

In view of the fact that there were then

only 21 officers on the Washington staff,

and only 265 in the entire Corps, Allison's

opposition to the proposal can be imagined. He had only just got through recommending that his supply of officers be

increased by 54.15

The Regular list always looking too

short to them, the Chief Signal Officers

maintained a commissioned Reserve by

means of Affiliated Plan arrangements

and Reserve Officers' Training Corps

units. For most of this period the roster

totaled between 2,000 and 2,500 names.16

Some training of Reserve officers was

undertaken at Fort Monmouth during the

summer encampments of the Citizens'

Military Training Corps, 412 appearing

for this duty in 1928. Signal Corps ROTC

units were located at the Massachusetts,

Carnegie, and Georgia Institutes of Technology, Cornell University, and the state

10

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1927, App., pp. 19-20, and

Annual Report, 1937, p. 2. 11

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1936, p. 1. 12

 PL 408, 30 Aug 35, 74th Cong. See also WD

Bulletin 9, par. II, 22 Oct 35. 13

 Capt Wilson G. Burden, Mil Pers Br OCSigO,

Signal Corps Strength, Nov 45, p. 8. OCSigO Career

Management File. 14

 Ltr, ASW to CSigO, 8 Jul 37. SigC 322.08 Gen. 15

 Ltr, Gen Allison to CofS, 17 Mar 37, sub: SigC

troops. In same file. 16

 Burden study cited n. 13, p. 10.
ROTC STUDENTS are shown above arriving at the railroad station at Fort Monmouth

and below in a field training class.
76 THE SIGNAL CORPS

universities of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,

Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These were

the principal source of Reserve officers,

producing 156 second lieutenants in a

typical year, 1928.17

By a well-established arrangement a

large share of the officers in the Reserve

came from the communications industry,

especially from the operating rather than

from the manufacturing companies. It was

perfectly natural that a communications

agency should find its officers among communications men. Certainly one would

expect Reserve chaplains to be clergymen,

and in a profaner sphere the Signal Corps

was quite as specialized. In the same way

that the medical departments of the armed

services answered to the American Medical Association, so, although to a less

marked degree, the American Telephone

and Telegraph Company and the Radio

Corporation of America had a prominent

position in the Signal Corps.

Col. Ira D. Hough and Lt. Col. Carroll

O. Bickelhaupt, on temporary active duty

in 1934, prepared a prospectus which recommended that enlisted communications

specialists be recruited in time of war by a

group of Reserve officers "selected from

the personnel of the four large communications companies." The other two were

the Western Union and Postal TelegraphCable corporations; but neither of these

matched the importance of AT&T in wire

or of RCA in radio. Colonel Hough and

Colonel Bickelhaupt proposed that thirtysix of thirty-eight recruiting officers be

Reservists from the telephone and telegraph system, and allowed radio one in

New York and one on the Pacific coast.

Recruiting from the 6,000 or more "so

called independent telephone companies,"

they said, "could and probably would be

handled through the Bell Telephone Companies with which they are connected."

 18

If businessmen thus proposed partial

control of the supply and assignment of

Army personnel, Army men were comparably willing to have it so. Private

industry could place its officials in the

Reserve and the Army could encourage its

Regular officers to be businessmen. A Reservist could be a businessman in olive

drab and a Regular a soldier in a grey

flannel. At about this same time Major

Rumbough, for example, although not a

businessman-officer,19 recommended that

the radio course be divided into three

periods so that student-officers might

spend the middle stage working for RCA

or Mackay, in association with the RCA

or Mackay Reservists.20

Both sides were at pains to make certain

that the public did not become aware of

any agreement between them in the matter of mobilization, but the interrelationship between the Signal Corps and the

giants of the commercial communications

networks was fundamental to any Chief's

administration.21 The Signal Corps Laboratories, as has been pointed out, were in

frequent connection with the Bell Laboratories. Both military and civilian personnel attended schools of the Bell System.22

Manpower and industrial mobilization

planning was necessarily based upon commercial capacities. Military expansion

17

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1928, p. 17. 18

 Col Ira D. Hough and Lt Col Carroll O. Bickelhaupt, Signal Corps Enlisted Communications Specialists Requirements for a Major Emergency, 20 Apr

34. Personal file of Bickelhaupt. 19

 In retirement after World War II, he became

principal of the Falls Church, Virginia, high school. 20

 Ltr, Maj Rumbough to CSigO, 12 Oct 36, sub:

Practical radio course for officers. SigC 352.11

Gen 2. 21

 Ruth Sadler, Mil Pers Br OCSigO, History of

the Signal Corps Affiliated Plan, Aug 44, p. 17. SigC

Hist Sec File. 22

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1928, p. 18.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 77

yielded to commercial priority in setting

up the terms and conditions under which

War Department facilities were provided

with such special services as long lines and

teleprinter networks, the Signal Corps

ordinarily fulfilling that half of its mission

which pertained to domestic communications by leaving them in the hands of the

private companies.23 And commercial

communications men crossed back and

forth into the military preserve, military

men into the commercial—General Gibbs,

for example, having become the executive

head of Postal Telegraph—in a way which

blurred the demarcation line between

them.

To umpire communications after the

model of the Interstate Commerce Commission's authority over transportation

facilities, Congress created the Federal

Communications Commission in 1934.

Hitherto jurisdiction over domestic communications had been shared by the ICC,

the Post Office Department, and the

FCC's predecessor, the Federal Radio

Commission, which dated from 1927, and

to which still another chief signal officer,

General Saltzman, had been appointed.

All forms of domestic communications

now were brought under the supervision

of the new agency. In many aspects of his

work a Chief Signal Officer came into

contact with the FCC, usually at second

hand but nonetheless with registered

effect. The frequencies which he reallocated throughout the using components of

the Army he received from the commission. Equipment developed in the Laboratories conformed to airport control allotments or to standards approved by the

commission. The amateur radio operators

upon whom he depended for an initial

source of skilled manpower were licensed

by the FCC. The Alaska Communication

System made direct recommendations to

the commissions on all applications for

service in the northern territory.24 New

developments like frequency modulation,

so vital to military communications, were

repeatedly examined and arbitrated before

the commission.

As a rule, the Chief Signal Officer acted

or was instructed in such matters through

representation on a variety of boards and

committees designed to deal with them. It

was through the Interdepartment Radio

Advisory Committee that General Allison

participated in the 1937 hearings before

the Federal Communications Commission

which ultimately reserved 43 percent of

the 30-300 megacycle band for government television use.25

 Consultative agencies existed on international, national,

interdepartmental, joint Army-Navy, and

interservice levels as well as within the

Signal Corps command itself, where the

Chief had the Signal Corps Board and the

Signal Corps Technical Committee for

expert counsel. For the Signal Corps Technical Committee, the chairman and vicechairman were the chief and assistant

chief of the Research and Development

Division. In a similar fashion, the commandant and assistant commandant of

the Signal Corps School were the two first

officers on the Signal Corps Board, which

made up its membership with three, four,

or five other Signal Corps officers. The

board had its headquarters at Fort Monmouth and was probably the most important of all the committees and boards at

23

 E.g., 1937, Agreement Between the War Department and the American Telephone and Telegraph

Company. SigC 676.1 WD Agreement. 24

 Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Communications

Commission—Fiscal Year 1939, pp. 3, 6, 68, 81, 83. 25

 A decision which drastically affected the FM development discussed in pages following, especially

Chapter VI.
78 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the disposal of the Chief Signal Officer;

whenever he directed it to do so, it undertook cases which concerned equipment,

method, organization, or any other subject which required its deliberations.

To improve his knowledge of the problems and demands of his fellow services,

General Allison added a Communication

Liaison Division to his office in 1936, a

move prompted by aviation, the new force

in warfare. The principal problem of the

Communication Liaison Division was to

get frequencies for this growing arm of the

service, whether for the GHQ Air Force,

the various wings, or the Aircraft Warning

Service. The Communication Liaison

Division made a fresh start in fields which

were also formed in the Interdepartment

Radio Advisory Committee, the Communication Appliances Committee of the

Army and Navy Munitions Board, the

Joint Army and Navy Board, and the various technical committees of other branches

of the service. On most of the technical

committees—Quartermaster, Engineer,

Medical, Chemical Warfare, Ordnance,

and, most important of all, Air Corps—the

Signal Corps had membership. All were

intended to reconcile the interests of the

various arms which were concerned with

the developing of equipment. At top echelons, the Army and Navy Munitions

Board and the supreme war planning

agency, the Joint Board, called upon the

Chief Signal Officer and his staff and

agencies for both the seeds and the fruits

of his administrative direction.

Outside the Military Establishment the

Chief's connections thinned but nevertheless led to other departments of government, to the Congress, to the scientific,

engineering and industrial worlds, and to

international relations. In the period when

accords on many subjects were growing

out of the Hague Conference and the

League of Nations, the Chief Signal Officers sent one or another member of their

staffs, most frequently Major Crawford, or

went themselves, to meetings in foreign

capitals. From the preliminaries in Washington, in 1920, of the International Conference on Electrical Communications and

from its Provisional Technical Committee

discussions in Paris the next year, there

followed a series of congresses in Rome,

Brussels, The Hague, Copenhagen, Madrid, Lisbon, Bucharest, and other cities.

Inter-American relations produced similar meetings in the capitals of the Western

Hemisphere. To most of these the Signal

Corps sent a delegate.

Pictorial Communication

Thus from the details of their immediate

suite of offices to the world panorama of

communications, General Saltzman, General Gibbs, General Carr, and General

Allison pursued the interests and assignments of their position. Their main business was always communications, the

large segments being research and development, training, planning, supply. The

smaller segments were such interests as

photography, cryptography, meteorology,

pigeons. Any of these was aside line, a fact

which underscores the change in the Signal Corps which World War II was to

produce, for no one of them could have

been called a side line after that war was

over. Pigeons practically disappeared from

military use; meteorology, transmuted into

"sferics," became a major concern of science; and the other two activities were so

raised up to and merged with the main

function that they were no longer adjuncts

to communication but veritable forms of

it. Cryptography looked odd in the prewar
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 79

world but perfectly natural in the general

secrecy of the mid-century, when communication was as often cryptic as clear.

Photography promised to become the

most immediate form of all, short of

speaking to a man face to face. Development of facsimile and television to a point

where transmission of a scene was possible

at the moment of its occurrence might all

but undermine writing, and return the

human race to the use of pictures.

Although facsimile and television were

much farther along than the general public realized, so long as the communications industry held back their development, in effect they had no practical existence for the Signal Corps. Photography

was limited to the indirect forms of communication, and for military purposes

these were associated with minor functions or with major functions in a minor

way. Publicity and record were the minor,

intelligence and training the major. Chief

Signal Officers were curators of a large

collection of still pictures assembled from

photographs made by the Corps of Engineers, the Medical Corps, the Air Corps,

the commercial news services, civilian

government organizations, and the Signal

Corps itself. These interservice pictures

provided detail upon hundreds of items of

equipment, especially for illustrations of

technical manuals, supply catalogues, and

film strips, and stored up a mass of source

material for G-2 analysis.

The Signal Corps' own pictures, the

bulk of the collection,26 had followed the

tradition of Mathew Brady through the

1917-1918 war without loss of artistry or

significance. As time replaced the immediate shock of these photographs with the

poignancy of remoteness, it became evident that they were a national record of

great value. World War I was the first

conflict to be photographed widely with

the motion picture camera as well, and

not only did the results aid combat intelligence and stimulate pictorial instruction

but they also brought cinema audiences

close to the sight of battle for years after

the Armistice. Nevertheless, although the

Signal Corps' files of historical still and

motion pictures had permanence, change

often reduced their importance, especially

for G-2 use. Technical photographs were

outmoded by technical advances. Photographs taken in the name of publicity and

morale were the most ephemeral of all;

when their occasion was past, they became

either waste paper or dead items in the

record file. With the end of World War I and the

return from France, the war-trained

photographers and laboratory technicians

vanished into civilian life, leaving only a

small staff in Washington, a cameraman

or two for each corps area, and a unit on

duty at the Signal Corps School. A mere

remnant retired to Washington Barracks;

and nothing could illustrate the pinch of

postwar retrenchment more than the fact

that the Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory building there, designed for three

stories, leveled off at two in 1919. The new

training program dwindled to a single

course in still photography, which was

periodically crowded from the curriculum.27

 In 1927, reinstating the course after

a lapse, the Signal School made the attempt to teach the elements of both still

and motion picture photography in four

months, but obliged its instructors to

ignore the existence of the new sound

26

 Including the transparencies for color prints,

which Maj. Edgar Russel had made in 1910. 27

 Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 35 (August, 1926),

p. 50.
80 THE SIGNAL CORPS

techniques until the next year, when the

school was able to double the time of

study and add a lecture series in the

theory of sound pictures. Graduates spent

a few more months at the laboratory in

the Army War College and then were assigned to corps areas or departments.

Demands for photographic service

mounted slightly as the facilities for it declined. In 1925 the Signal Corps was

ordered to be the Army's outlet for all pictorial publicity.28

 The Photographic Division of the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer opened an agency in New York

City to deal with the press but was never

in a position to be effective. Requests also

came in for new training films, the distance from World War I having made the

old ones absurd. In 1928 the War Department designated the Signal Corps as the

producer of these films and set forth the

procedures for them but stopped short of

allocating funds.

The motion picture industry's investment in silent pictures had been jeopardized by the sudden appearance of talkies.

Before they converted production to alltalkies, however, the large companies

were dubbing in sound effects and dialogue and issuing the patchworks which

resulted. Taking a leaf out of their book,

Capt. Alonzo P. Fox of the Signal Corps

Photographic Laboratory contrived to

purchase two sound projectors and bring

a few of the old silent films up to date.

Naturally, the result was a makeshift, particularly awkward because the projectors

had to be cranked at a steady rate of

twenty-four frames a second to correspond

with the normal speed of talking, whereas

the projection rate for the silent film was

sixteen frames.

The next step was to make new films,

devised from the outset for sound. In 1929

there was money to hire a commercial

agency. Fox Movietone News owned a

truck that seemed suitable and, as an experiment, was engaged to produce a trial

motion picture of Infantry maneuvers at

Fort Benning, Georgia. The Fox equipment was not so mobile as it had been expected to be, however, and took all shots

and managed all effects from the observation post alone. Inevitably, the maneuvers

maneuvered out of sight and the commercial cameras ground away at scenery. The

Signal Corps cameramen pursued the infantrymen on foot, and later the technicians interwove the successful parts of the

two versions; but temporarily the Photographic Division abandoned the idea of

producing training films by commercial

contract.29

Yet it was obvious that Signal Corps

photography would have to be dependent

upon the film industry. Even if the Laboratory had been able to acquire fine

equipment, there were no photographers

prepared to cope with its complexities,

and the Signal Corps School was incapable of instruction in them. G-3 could

promise no more than one or two hundred

dollars for tuition at any trade school to

which the Signal Corps might send its

officers.30 Subsidization would have to be

sought elsewhere. In the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts

and Sciences the industry had an agency

which could sponsor just such arrangements. The Army had been lending itself

28

 WD GO 26, 30 Dec 25. 29

 Interv with Willard W. Jones, Special Proj Br

E&T Div OCSigO, 2 Mar 48. 30

 Memo, Maj Crawford for Pers Div OCSigO, 15

Jul 30, sub: Photographic courses. SigC 352.11 Photographic Courses.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 81

MOTION PICTURE CAMERA CREW photographs a sequence for a training film at

Fort Benning, Georgia.

to a succession of boy-gets-girl films with a

military setting, and had reason to hope

for reciprocal relations.31 Confronted by

Lt. Col. Walter E. Prosser with a request

to sponsor Signal Corps officers for annual

photographic training in Hollywood, the

Research Council agreed to do so. It paid

for the training from funds contributed by

the Association of Motion Picture Producers of America, and in the fall of 1930

Capt. Frederick W. Hoorn went to the

west coast, the first of seven officers thus

scheduled.32

With its first sound camera, an RCA

product, the Signal Corps, in April 1933,

undertook its first feature-length production in sound. That the film should justify

the $3,300 expense of the new equipment

was important. For this reason, the Pictorial Service decided to capitalize upon the

experience just past, and to photograph

the infantry at Fort Benning again. The

picture became TF-13, Signal Communications Within the Infantry Regiment,

and except for the problem of maintaining uniform density and for a new

difficulty that manifested itself in the

processing (the racks and tanks which had

31

 In D. W. Griffith's America, not of this type but

one of the most ambitious historical films of the

period, Maj. Jonathan M. Wainwright appeared

briefly, many years before taking the central role in

the Corregidor drama. 32

 Summary Report on Photographic Activities of

the Signal Corps Since August 4, 1941, in the Fields of

Motion Pictures and Visual Aid, 26 Feb 43, pp. 374-

76. SigC APS Div File.
82 THE SIGNAL CORPS

served well enough for 16-millimeter film

required that the new 35-millimeter strips

be cut, developed in sections, and spliced),

all went well.33

Subsequently, Maj. Melvin E. Gillette,

returning from the Hollywood course to

resume the directorship of the Photographic Laboratory, was able to get funds

for machines which performed the developing and printing under automatic controls of time and temperature. He also secured a special-effects printer by means of

which the laboratory could produce dissolves, fades, and trick shots.34

Because many of the training films of

these years were taken not in a studio, but

out of doors, control of sound was laboriously learned. "Progress in this activity is

necessarily slow," said a contemporary

statement.35 "The whole field of educational talking films is a new one, with little

material available as a guide in methods

of presentation." The technicians had to

discover how to shut out the whistling of

the wind or the chirping of birds and

where to catch the noise of cannon fire.36

Gradually they became sufficiently familiar with the mechanical processes to spare

more time and thought to the substance

of the narrative.

In response to continuing demand for

training films, the War Department set a

yearly production rate of twenty. Although this number was so modest that it

allowed for barely one to an arm or service, the Signal Corps had not produced so

many in ten years, let alone in one. Rather

than ask the laboratory to take on such a

program of field work, Major Gillette, by

this time the officer in charge of the

Photographic Division, went to Fort Monmouth to organize and head a Training

Film Field Unit, the first of the sort, in

June 1937.37 To discharge a central duty

of photographic communication, he had a

staff of three enlisted men and one

civilian.38

Communications Contradictions

The concealed nature of major areas of

Signal Corps work, notably in research

and development, prevented them from

being fully weighed and estimated, and

rendered the whole scope somewhat indistinct. A diffused impression also arose

from the addition of apparently unrelated

assignments which blurred the outline of

the main mission. There was indeed a lack

of cohesiveness in a mixture which tumbled photographs and pigeons, secret inks

and weather balloons in with communications, and advocates of neat spheres of administration could object that a Chief

Signal Officer's responsibilities were too

diverse. The administrators themselves,

however, found that the most burdensome

anomaly of all still derived from this paradox: that while the past war posed the

problems the next held the answers. The

33

 The cast included 1st Lt. Claude B. Ferenbaugh;

among other assignments, he held that of postwar

commanding general of the Military District of Washington. 34

 Major Hoorn devised an improvement upon

which the Signal Corps sought a patent until intervention by the Eastman Company led to its abandonment. His method endeavored to substitute continuous for intermittent motion of film, as it passed

through the aperture of the projector. If it had been

successful it would have resulted in a much wider

range of images and in great optical accuracy, an advantage of importance to scientific work like that performed in the Signal Corps Laboratories. SigC File

072 [Patents] Hoorn, Maj Frederick W., 29441. 35

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1932, p. 31. 36 At the point of reverberation, not at the muzzle of

the gun, although the finished production would make

the roar simultaneous with the belch of smoke. 37

 Notes. SigC Hist Sec File. 38

 Fort Monmouth: An Outline of the Principal Activities of the Only Signal Corps Post, p. 17. SigC

Hist Sec File.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 83

fact that their fellow chiefs of other arms

and services labored under the same uncertainty made it no easier to solidify.

World War I lived on, World War II was

yet inscrutable.

Thus at the same time that the Signal

Corps was supposed to be modernizing

itself to serve the new mechanized Army,

it was also supposed to maintain an Army

Pigeon Service. To think simultaneously

in terms of vehicular radio and a formula

for mash required more flexibility than

the average administrator was willing to

attempt. Yet both were a part of a Chief

Signal Officer's domain; and who was to

say either that vehicular radio would be

possible or that birds would be outmoded

in the communications of a war to come?

Homing pigeons belonged to an earlier

tradition as much as the Army mule and,

in a small way, were as persistently

laughed at, yet made a very good agent

of communication, as reliable as many

and more discreet than most. The Army

mule was not to be wholly displaced by

mechanization; nor was the pigeon.

The basic contradiction was to be observed in other areas. In radio intelligence, for instance, a table-of-organization unit was at last authorized in 1937,

but was unprovided with modern equipment and therefore limited to much that

was obsolete. Again, although an Aircraft

Warning System represented a firm look

into a risky future, and radar, which

would give it substance, was already at

hand, so long as aircraft warning was conceived in terms of fixed continental positions it was also characterized, so far as

the Signal Corps was concerned, by conventional fixed wire. This persisting paradox deserves closer illustration.

After the Armistice in 1918, 35 of 110

Signal Corps pigeon lofts remained in operation. General Squier authorized the

expenditure of five thousand dollars to replenish and improve the stock, and the

Pigeon Breeding and Training Center at

Fort Monmouth bought, through the

chief of the British pigeon service, 150

pairs of the best European strains and

bred them with 200 good specimens retained from the war. Five thousand dollars was a considerable sum to spend all at

once upon any form of communication,

and if pigeons were to go out of date the

expenditure would be hard to justify. If

they were not to be any more out of date

than the bayonet or the steel helmet, a

communications chief would be rash not

to keep them in force. In any case, pigeon

communication remained a part of the

Signal Corps' charge, and in the next two

decades the quality of the birds improved

steadily. Such money to spend on them,

though, was not available again. The

number of lofts dwindled to sixteen in

1928 and to eight in 1938.39 The entire

Army Pigeon Service consisted of a dozen

enlisted men, who were stationed at Forts

Monmouth, Benning, and Sam Houston,

and in the Canal Zone, Hawaii, and the

Philippines. Fanciers and racing enthusiasts made a very large civilian public, but

for military communication "pigeoneering" lapsed into obscurity. The airplane

as well as the radio made pigeons look illsuited to the era.

When early Kelly Field pilots had

taken them into the cockpit on training

flights from San Antonio to Austin, the

birds could deliver messages calling for relief, the relief could arrive and the air39

 (1) CSigO, Annual Report, 1942, p. 309. (2) Army

Pigeon Sv Agency, The Homing Pigeon, draft of revision of TM 11-410, 1943; (3) SigC Hist Sec, Military

Use of Pigeons Between Wars, p. 19. SigC Hist Sec

File.
84 THE SIGNAL CORPS

planes be repaired and on their way by

the time that word could get through by

telephone or telegraph. In the later years,

when cockpits had closed against the

winds of high speeds, when concrete had

replaced grass airfields and beacons and

directional radio guided a pilot, the

pigeon seemed to have no service to perform for him. Nor for many others.

A dozen years after the war, the pigeons

at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, having rendered their wartime quarters unhabitable,

the building was razed, and in this case

the birds were moved to empty barracks

which were no newer, but were cleaner.

This transfer was an exception. Ordinarily, as the lofts fell into disrepair they were

not replaced, until necessity developed a

mobile loft—a Chevrolet station wagon

somewhat remodeled, screened, and accommodating fifty pigeons in baskets—

which the 11th Signal Company at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, tried out and approved in joint Army-Navy maneuvers in

February 1932.40 At that time the cost to

the Army of a Chevrolet station wagon

was $569.92, and the materials to convert

it at the Signal Section of the New York

General Depot amounted to $130 more.

After several months of planning and

some transferring of funds, the Office of

the Chief cleared the way for the expenditure and procured two more vehicular

lofts, one for Fort Sam and the other for

Quarry Heights in the Canal Zone. With

this development, the Army Pigeon Service reached a peacetime limit. Except for

an unpublicized experiment at Monmouth in breeding birds to fly at night.41

the status of pigeon communication could

not advance much further.

With radio the opposite held true.

Little used in the 1917-18 war, radio

might be the principal means for communication in another. Informed Signal

Corps opinion did not really think so, but

the change of doctrine which brought

about the mobile army created the demand to find out. Certainly communications would have to keep up with the

troops, no matter how or how fast they

moved. The initial test came in Texas, in

the fall of 1937, when the entire Military

Establishment focused its regard upon experimental maneuvers there of the new

infantry division. Called triangular because it assembled a division out of three

regiments, without brigades, rather than

out of four, paired off in brigades, this

organization of a combat division had

been in the mill for many years. General

Pershing had recommended it. The talk

of mobility and the need to streamline the

fighting machine had at last brought it

forward. Staff officers were hoping to reduce to 13,500 a combat organization

which in 1918 had numbered more than

28,000.42 The signal complement would

be halved from 40 to 20 officers and from

1,000 to 500 men. A great challenge

would lie in assembling replacements

months in advance of any emergency call

for them, because the reduction was what

looked then like an absolute minimum.43

With some anxiety, in view of the

importance of the tests, the Signal Corps

began to ready its only full-strength bat40

 (1) Memo, Brig Gen Halstead Dorey, CG 2d Div,

for CG Eighth Corps Area, 17 Nov 31, sub: Proj for

pigeon-loft building, with 1st Ind, Eighth Corps Area

to TAG, 5 Dec 31. SigC 454.8 Pigeon Lofts 1, 1917-

Jul 42. (2) Memo, Capt Evan D. Cameron, 11th Sig

Co Hawaiian Div, for CSigO, 10 Mar 32, sub: Rpt on

Chevrolet mobile pigeon loft of 11th Sig Co. SigC

454.8. 41

 SigC Cir 10-4, Wash., D. C., 1 Sep 36, pp. 1

and 4. 42 Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1937, p. 6. 43

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 16 (January 12, 1938), p. 18.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 85

MOBILE PIGEON LOFT

talion. Typical of the battalion's circumstances was the fact that not a model of

any new radio development, especially in

the short-range, high-frequency, lightweight versions, was available. The best

that could be done was to convert SCR194's into SCR-195's and to assemble

some SCR-209's from components in

stock, a process which yielded seven sets.

In a convoy of fifty-five vehicles, the 51st

Signal Battalion left Fort Monmouth on

21 July 1937, and reached San Antonio on

2 August.44 Maj. Stephen H. Sherrill commanded the 51st, and Maj. Harry E.

Storms, Maj. Garland C. Black, Capt.

Elton F. Hammond, Capt. Gilbert Hayden, and Capt. Robert W. Raynsford were

among other Signal Corps officers on

hand.

The tests were scheduled in three stages.

The first emphasis, through August and

September, fell upon the separate units,

specifically the signal platoons; but most

of the two months passed in close order

drill, parades, inspections, and athletic

contests.45 Training was scarcely more

specific in the second stage, which continued for two weeks and was devoted to

combat teams, the men being urged to

find "points of cooperation" with each

other. Only in the third period, which occupied a month's time, did the new triangular division emerge for trial. Accordingly, the Signal Corps got few answers

44

 A History of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, 19 IT1946, pp. 59-60. SigC Hist Sec File. 45

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 16 (January

12, 1938), p. 19.
86 THE SIGNAL CORPS

to the question of the proportionate

importance of tactical wire and tactical

wireless.

The Texas tests would have been significant, however, if they had done

nothing else than to hint the possibility

that the conduct of communications in

another war might bog down in dormancy

and complaisance. Signal Corps feelings

had been roughened by an Associated

Press statement to the effect that motorization of the Army had made the existing

military communications equipment obsolete.46

 The official release from which

the story had been written had already

stated much the same thing. Many of the

lessons which Signal Corps officers said

they had learned in Texas were so trivial

as hardly to be lessons at all. Some officers

saw nevertheless that wire, the queen of

World War I combat communications,

was going to have to take a consort for

World War IL Both in front-line and in

mobile communications, where wire

would be left behind and where its security systems were slow and cumbrous, there

was a new field for radio. Even beyond

combat communications and into the

need for long-range, secure, and generally

fixed administrative communications,

radio would have a large place. But how

large?

Generally speaking, wire was too well

established for radio to have much opportunity to compete. Ready at hand as a

prime element in the national defense was

the great commercial wire system, longrange, apparently secure, and fixed. The

defense of the United States was the principal mission charged to the Army, on a

directed assumption that the nation

would be defended on its own soil rather

than across oceans and continents. Aerial

assault, for example, would be intercepted

at home, with home-based airplanes,

civilian home guards, troops on home

ground. Accordingly a vast communications system already in existence was an

integral part of defense and basic to the

Signal Corps' calculations. In these estimates, warning against the approach of

an enemy would require no special communications equipment which could not

be improvised or provided locally.47

Plans called for a series of observation

posts and information centers along the

national frontiers. Each frontier had been

marked off into sectors, and each of these

was to have its own Aircraft Warning

Service. A sector AWS, in turn, was divided into zones containing an information center and ten or twenty observation

posts. Except that the alarm would be

broadcast over commercial radio, the

commercial wire system would serve as

the whole communications net, with regular telephone service to and from the observation posts and with leased telephone

and teletypewriter circuits, including teletypewriter exchange service, everywhere

else.48 The networks of the state police,

the Forestry Service, and the Coast

Guard, as well as facilities of railroads, oil

companies, and public utilities might be

auxiliary; for the most part, however, the

American Telephone and Telegraph

Company would provide communications

for the entire national system.

The earliest organized Aircraft Warning Service exercises occurred under these

proposals at Muroc Lake, California.

46

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 15 (October

7, 1937), p. 10. 47

 AG Ltr to CG First Army et al., 21 May 35, sub:

AA defense of continental U. S. AG 660.2 AA (5-15-

35) (Misc.) E-M. 48

 Col Carroll O. Bickelhaupt, Use of Commercial

Communications Systems in the Aircraft Warning

Service, 18 Nov 37. SigC Hist Sec File.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 87

AN AIRCRAFT WARNING SERVICE FILTER CENTER during a practice alert

at Charleston, South Carolina.

Civilian observers spaced about eight

miles apart reported plane sightings to the

information center, which sent out orders

to military commanders and air raid

warnings to civilian defense agencies.49

Although successful in demonstrating the

participation of civilians as observers, an

aspect of aircraft warning which lost importance in later astonishing developments, the Muroc Lake tests faltered as

arguments for the use of existing commercial lines. The average time required for

transmitting a report that a plane had

been sighted was five minutes, far too slow

to be of any tactical value in sending up

interceptors.

In antiaircraft defense outside the country, radio developments had a somewhat

better opportunity. Panama had chief importance, and the Signal Corps was asked

to engineer a system there of 20 searchlight command posts, 24 antiaircraft batteries, 36 automatic weapons positions, 8

automatic weapons command posts, and

7 group command posts. Hard upon new

developments, however, a War Department board studying the Canal Zone defenses proposed a five-year program for a

unified signal communication system

"whenever the proper equipment was

perfected."50 The equipment was of

49

 Summary of the Cooperation of the Southern

California Edison Co. in Providing for an AWS for

GHQ. AF Maneuvers in 1937, Incl 7 with AG Ltr to

CG First Army et al., 23 May 40, sub: AWS continental U. S. AG 660.2 AA (5-22-40) M-WPD. 50

 (1) AAF Hist Study 42, Air Defense of the

Panama Canal, 1 Jan 39-7 Dec 41, pp. 49-50. AF

Archives. (2) Sig Office, PCD, Unit Hist, Signals,

Panama Canal Department, Vol III, No. 24, pp. 8-9.
88 THE SIGNAL CORPS

course the new pulsed detector which the

Signal Corps Laboratories were just then

designing, primarily for antiaircraft

searchlight control. Despite this promise,

the conception of the use of radio, even in

radio communications only, was still

limited. With a scheme of fixed defenses

in mind, radio's mobility appeared to be

an attribute of no consequence, and objections to it arose from a supposedly fundamental lack of security, the necessity for

electrical plants at every station, and the

requirement for specially trained operators. At various stages in the ensuing war,

swift ground or air action disposed of the

first objection by rendering it unimportant. Vehicular radios and handie- and

walkie-talkies eliminated much of the

second by making the generators as movable as the sets. The degree to which voice

replaced continuous wave went far to

solve the third.

Communications Spheres of Interest

Provision for radar was probably the

most important part of the Panama aircraft warning plan. In terms of the era,

however, there was significance in the Signal Corps Board's recommendation that

the Corps install and maintain the equipment but that the Air Corps operate it.

For the discrepancy in the scope of the

Signal Corps was measured more uncomfortably in relations with the Air Corps

than at any other point. Love and friction

made a prevailing climate for Signal

Corps-Air Corps liaisons almost all

through the period of the two world wars.

It is a major theme. The ties were close

but strained. Army aviation had been the

Signal Corps' offspring, and now bid fair

to be its arbiter, having grown to a height

which dwarfed that of all other components of the service but the Infantry.

The initial estrangement of divorce was

receding far into the past when another

contention arose to replace it, derived

from the sense of the future which simultaneously separated and united the Signal

Corps and the Air Corps. Each had in its

possession one of the new wonders of the

age: the Air Corps the means of flight and

the Signal Corps the means of communication through space. From the inevitable

time when the airplane and radio came

together, skirmishes set in anew. To the

Air Corps, the Signal Corps was slow and

unimaginative in adapting radio to aviation, particularly to air navigation. To the

Signal Corps, the Air Corps' restiveness

on the subject appeared grounded upon a

desire to take over a province of great

prestige. General Gibbs was leaving office

at just about the time when the aircraft

radio controversy commenced, in 1931;

Maj. Gen. Irving J. Carr departed in 1934

with it still going on; Maj. Gen. James B.

Allison forced it to a top-echelon decision

before he left in 1937; and Maj. Gen. Joseph O. Mauborgne, who had been on the

scene as the commanding colonel of the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, became Chief

in a succeeding false calm.

As might be supposed, the scene of the

controversy was a Signal Corps installation on an Air Corps base. Up to 1931, the

small Aircraft Radio Laboratory staff at

Wright Field was devoting its effort largely

to aircraft communication, as distinct

from navigational radio. The laboratory

was a potential site for advances in both

fields, and important work on radio

beacons had already come from it; but

navigationally it was behindhand. At

Wright Field then was Lieutenant Hegenberger, one of the pair of Army pilots who

had made the pioneer flight from California to Hawaii four years earlier. Navi-
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 89

gational radio aids specially rigged for

that flight had been so helpful that Hegenberger was a determined spokesman for

equipping all Army airplanes with radio,

at least to the degree of enabling them to

tune in on the beacons and ranges then

multiplying along the nation's airways.

"In the first and last analysis," it seemed

to Hegenberger, the matter "concerns the

effectiveness of the Air Corps to carry out

its mission as an arm of the National Defense. Avigation is a paramount problem

in carrying out all phases of this mission."

 51

 Upon this conviction, in the summer of 1931 the Air Corps organized a

Navigational Instrument Section in its

Equipment Branch at Wright Field, located it in the same building with the Aircraft Radio Laboratory, and placed Lieutenant Hegenberger in charge.

The Signal Corps assumed that the section was only intended to supervise the

service testing of navigational instruments

after the Aircraft Radio Laboratory had

developed them. Under this impression,

Captain Rives, the head of the laboratory,

lent the Air Corps section a civilian Signal

Corps employee who had begun to work

on a radio compass. But the co-operative

relationship altered and darkened. It

began to appear that the new section was

undertaking the actual development of

the compass. The employee lent to the Air

Corps was not coming back. The Aircraft

Radio Laboratory went ahead with one

form of radio compass, the Navigational

Instrument Section with another. Very

soon "a deadly serious fight was going

on."52 Lieutenant Hegenberger locked up

his part of the building, his engineers

charging that Signal Corps technicians

were appropriating their circuits; the

ARL officers and civilians, in turn, felt

that the compass being developed under

Lieutenant Hegenberger was actually

their own, and that Army regulations

clearly gave the Signal Corps sole responsibility for such development. They

pointed to AR 850-25. "While the Air

Corps officers appear to be conversant

with the provisions of AR 850-25," Rives

remarked, "they seem either hesitant as to

how to proceed under them or else they do

not desire to comply. . . ."53

The Equipment Branch sought first to

challenge this regulation with another

("Under AR 150-5, the Air Corps as the

using arm is authorized to carry on any

purely experimental development which

it sees fit to do. . . ."),54 then to change or

even to ignore it, holding that the thing to

do was to get aircraft radio and not allow

regulations to stand in the way. Matters

grew so strained that at one time Rives

went to the commander of Wright Field,

Brig. Gen. H. Conger Pratt, and requested

a court of inquiry into the charges being

made against him and the ARL.

In the midst of all this, a recommendation that all Signal Corps development

work of whatever nature be consolidated

at Fort Monmouth arrived like a thunderbolt. Col. Arthur S. Cowan, then commandant at Monmouth, and Major Blair,

51

 Memo, Capt Albert F. Hegenberger, AC, for Maj

Edward L. Hoffman, AC, President of Subcommittee

to AC Tech Committee, 21 Dec 34, sub: Disputed

functions of research, development, procurement, etc.,

between AC and SigC. AF 413.44 ARL Orgn,

Change, Research, Developments, 1931-38, USAF

Mat Comd Central Files. 52

 Ltr, Brig Gen Tom C. Rives, USAF Ret., to

G. R. Thompson, SigC Sec OCMH, 8 Jan 50. SigC

Hist Sec File. 53

 Ltr Memo, Capt Tom C. Rives for Maj Colton,

11 Aug 34. SigC 413.684 RDF's 7, Jan-Aug 34. 54

 Memo, Maj Hoffman, AC, Chief Equip Br Mat

Div, for Chief Mat Div, 14 May 34, sub: Radio and

navigation development. AF 413.44 ARL Orgn,

Change, Research, Developments, 1931-38, USAF

Mat Comd Central Files.
90 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the Laboratories chief, urged that the

ARL be returned to the status of a liaison

unit and that the whole research and development activity for the Air Corps be

centered upon Monmouth, where the Signal Corps did research and development

for all of the other arms. The merging of

the scattered laboratories of the Signal

Corps had been General Gibbs's policy,

and if unopposed would fill in one more

major chink in the structure. From the

standpoint of sound administration and

with plenty of good precedent, General

Carr was inclined to favor the consolidation; but before ordering it he sent Blair

with 1st Lt. Gilbert Hayden (still another

Signal Corps officer who was to be identified with the Aircraft Radio Laboratory)

to Wright Field, "for a thorough investigation . . . from all angles. . . ."55

A major shift in the Signal Corps Laboratories' research and development activity underlay the proposed transfer.

Hitherto, the Signal Corps had given out

contracts for the design of separate pieces:

an antenna, a power generator, a telephone. Now the tendency was toward assemblies rather than single items: a whole

field telephone system, a complete radio

set. Blair and Cowan felt that the Laboratories could best pursue such a policy of

system design and standardization, keeping in close touch with university and

commercial laboratories, and purchasing

commercial samples for study, but avoiding contracting for the central research

work. The Signal Corps should design

more of the Army's electric equipment

itself and depend less upon industry.

Cowan in fact maintained that the Signal

Corps Laboratories alone, and no other

organization, commercial or military, had

any adequate conception of the Army's

entire communications system.56

At Wright Field Blair confirmed his

opinion that the Air Corps relied too

much upon commercial development. He

thought this "the easier but less effective

procedure"; although it was possibly "entirely justified by the fact that it is rendering essential assistance to the relatively

new airplane industry," it could not eliminate the necessity for just such a plant for

laboratory research, testing, and installation as the ARL represented. He felt sure

that ARL could best function in close association with the other Signal Corps research organizations, especially because at

present it was "neither adequate nor

properly constituted to do development

and design work. It is primarily organized

for the work of consultation, installation

and test."57 At Fort Monmouth, it seemed

to him, development for all arms could be

co-ordinated, items simplified and standardized, and economy and general satisfaction be realized.

The men most immediately concerned,

the staff of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory,

did not at all agree with Major Blair's

minimization of their contribution. That

they were primarily organized for development and design work was exactly

what they wished to maintain. Rives was

convinced that the move would be wrong.

Despite his current vexations, which

might well have prompted him to clutch

at a way to break free of them, he argued

that development for the Air Corps had

its first cause in service to the Air Corps,

55

 Historical Report of the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories, July 1930-December 1943, pp. 19-

20. SigC Hist Sec File. 56

 Ltr, Col Cowan to CSigO, 3 Jun 32, sub: Reduction in number of R&D projs. AF 322.081 SigC

Activities, 1932-45, USAF Mat Comd Central Files. 57

 Ltr, Maj Blair to CSigO, 27 Jun 32, sub: Visit

to Wright Field. AF 322.081 SigC Activities, 1932-

45, USAF Mat Comd Central Files.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 91

and that such service could be rendered

only in proximity to the Air Corps. This

was another proof that those who dealt

with the Air Corps felt, almost as much as

did the Air Corps itself, that its problems

were unique, that a fundamental difference existed between it and the other

arms. The equipment used by ground

arms had an elemental first cousinship.

Equipment to be used in the air invoked

another element as well, and must not be

contemplated apart from the terms and

conditions of the air. An antenna array

which might be a comparatively simple

development for ground use could become

an extremely difficult one when it had to

be attached to the outside of an airplane.

Col. William L. Bayer, who, like Rives,

Murphy, 1st Lt. Francis L. Ankenbrandt,

and so many others, was a Signal Corps

officer made familiar with the problem by

close assignment to the Air Corps, later

explained:

Airplanes are rather precisely engineered

and anything which affects the outside contours or weight distribution is frowned upon.

[Consider] the enormous vibration to which

parts or accessories are subjected; and . . .

the difficulty of high voltage apparatus at the

low pressure of altitude. These are in addition to the normal space and weight limitations. . . . There is at least three to four

times as much engineering involved in the

developing of electronic equipment for air

use as for . . . the ground.58

Not only did Rives think that the Signal Corps and Air Corps should and could

be able to work out their disagreements

and produce aircraft radio equipment at

Wright Field, but he anticipated that

withdrawal of the Signal Corps would

leave the arena wholly in possession of the

Air Corps, which would very soon thereafter gain the entire responsibility for

aviation radio. He and his colleague, 1st

Lt. Herbert G. Messer, who was the only

other Signal Corps officer on duty in the

depressed and skeletonized Aircraft Radio

Laboratory of January 1932, accordingly

concluded that the disadvantages of a

consolidation at Fort Monmouth would

far outweigh any advantages.59 They got

telling support from the Air Corps. Upon

inquiry from Washington, General Pratt's

engineers came up with the same argument: that separating the research from

the aircraft themselves would present an

impossible situation, because no airborne

device could be properly designed without

constant flight experience and testing; and

in Washington itself, Maj. Gen. Benjamin

D. Foulois and Brig. Gen. Oscar Westover, Chief and Assistant Chief of the Air

Corps, expressed the strongest opposition.60

 This was the view which won out.

The move to Fort Monmouth had no support at Wright Field, from either service's

representatives there, and could not take

place without it.

The Navigational Instrument Section

continued with its development of the

radio compass, and bulwarked it with an

entire blind-landing program which included, by a strange irony, a project for

using microwave gear to prevent airplanes

from colliding with each other or crashing

into unseen obstacles. The irony dwelt in

58

 Comment written by Col Bayer, JCS, to SigC

Hist Sec, Aug 49. SigC Hist Sec File. 59

 Ltr, Capt Rives to CSigO, 7 Jan 32, sub: Consolidation of SigC ARL and SCL at Ft. Monmouth.

AF 322.081 SigC Activities, 1932-45, USAF Mat

Comd Central Files. 60

 (1) Ltr, Gen Westover to Gen Pratt, Chief Mat

Div, 10 Jun 32; (2) Maj Fred H. Coleman, AC, and

Capt Albert B. Pitts, AC, Mat Div Engr Sec Memo

Rpt 54-4-67, 28 Jun 32, sub: Proposal to move SigC

lab from Wright Field to Ft. Monmouth. AF 322.081

SigC Activities, 1932-45, USAF Mat Comd Central

Files.
92 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the fact that the project61 might have

become airborne radar, years before anything of the sort was developed, if the air

and ground radio work actually had been

in the close contact which Blair had

urged. The Monmouth laboratories went

so far as to hint that they had microwave

work in progress which might "eventually

be adapted as an aid for the prevention of

collisions,"62 but the preradar experiments there remained isolated by secrecy,

and the collision-prevention project withered under low priority for several years

until the Air Corps Technical Committee

discontinued it altogether.

The quarrel over navigational equipment had blazed right through this, and

had become a conflagration. Lieutenant

Hegenberger's superior, Maj. Edward L.

Hoffman, had entered it, although Hegenberger was by no means superseded. Signal

Corps and Air Corps were now being used

generically, each supposed to represent

only one point of view. The Signal Corps

(to speak in this mode) maintained that

all devices employing vacuum tubes and

radio circuits fell within its domain. The

Air Corps insisted that the only concern

which the Signal Corps could have with

Air Corps equipment was with communications devices in the most direct and

limited sense.

"In the beginning, the Signal Corps, as

its name implies, was charged with communication," Hoffman said. "They first

had the wig wag, heliograph; later the

telegraph, telephone, and now, radio,

[where] they should confine their efforts to

communicational radio. . . ." He in no

way considered that the Air Corps should

be obliged to follow the procurement procedures of the other arms, seeking out the

pertinent service, describing what was

wanted, and asking to have it developed.

"To go through military channels" would

render the Air Corps "powerless." He

emphasized this point, and broadened it

to include the Air Corps' connection not

only with the Signal Corps but with all

other "auxiliary branches."

 63

The Signal Corps did not think itself

auxiliary, but rather as much a part of the

Military Establishment as any other arm

or service. Nor did Major Hoffman's point

of view, although it was destined to mature into official Air Corps doctrine, have

the solid home support which he counted

upon. At the next level above him, Lt.

Col. Robert E. M. Goolrick posted a

dissent, coming to the root of the matter

by observing that navigational radio involves sending and receiving radio waves,

just as any other kind of radio does. Goolrick said he believed it wrong in principle

to charge two Army agencies with the

same thing, and saw no reason why, since

the experience and competent personnel

for the work were to be found almost entirely with the Signal Corps, the Air Corps

61

 "Collision Prevention: provide a means of showing

on a single indicator the location of other aircraft

within a range of 15 miles giving the bearing in

azimuth throughout 360° with an accuracy of 15°

and elevation within a range of plus/minus 30° from

the horizontal with an accuracy of 5°. It is suggested

that acorn tubes and micro rays be used for this purpose and that individual antennas be limited to 7"

in length and that the total drag of the antennas and

reflectors (if used) not exceed six pounds at 250

MPH." Ltr, Capt Hegenberger to Chief Engr Sec

Mat Div, 24 May 35, sub: Avigational radio development program for ARL, Item 6. AF 413.44 ARL

Orgn, Change, Research, Developments, 1931-38,

USAF Mat Comd Central Files. 62

 Ltr, Gen Westover to CSigO, 27 Sep 33, sub:

Co-ordination of AC research work with SigC, and

1st Ind, Maj George L. Van Deusen, Exec Officer

OCSigO, to Chief AC, 21 Oct 33. In same file. 63

 (1) Ltr, Maj Hoffman to Chief Engr Sec Mat Div,

8 Jun 33, sub: Handling of radio apparatus by SigC

and AC; (2) Memo, Hoffman for Chief Mat Div, 14

May 34, sub: Radio and navigation development. In

same file.
THE SCOPE OF THE SIGNAL CORPS 93

should not permit its radio equipment to

be developed as all the other branches of

the service did. "It only requires a little

cooperation on the part of the Air Corps

to make such a system work," Goolrick

observed.64 Which was much the opinion

of the War Department, when the controversy flared up that high. Called upon

to cite regulations, The Adjutant General pointed to AR 850-25, and specifically to paragraph 10 d on established procedures,65

 complaining as he did so that

"the interests of the Government would

be served better if the Air Corps and Signal Corps would cooperate with each

other. . . ."

Allotment of Public Works Administration funds to the Air Corps to finance the

radio compass program increased the

stake, and the travail when the President

called upon the Army to fly the air mail

increased the bitterness, for Air Corps

spokesmen were inclined to charge the

Signal Corps with a part in the fiasco.66

Conciliatory statements in the report of

the special War Department board of investigation headed by the World War I

Secretary, Newton D. Baker, made careful

note of the fact that "the most effective

and efficient communication equipment

should be provided for the Army AirCorps," and balanced the account by observing that "the radio equipment that

has been provided by the Signal Corps has

proved effective"; but these remarks had

small opportunity to temper the disagreement.67

With continued angry interchange, the

two sides charged bad faith. "As a result

of the Signal Corps handling radio, we

couldn't fly the Air Mail as well as commercial lines and we still can't," Major

Hoffman exclaimed. "When I hear Indianapolis talk to Dallas right now, I wonder if the Air Corps will ever be able to do

as well, with the Signal Corps handling

the radio."68 Hegenberger added other

arguments and Rives and Messer jointly

answered them, protesting: "Other arms

have accorded the Signal Corps their

wholehearted support in development

work rather than setting up development

establishments of their own in the effort to

be independent of all contact with other

arms. The Signal Corps and the Air Corps

can also get the desired results if their respective personnel have the will to work

toward this end in full cooperation."69

Matters had reached their worst by the

turn of 1934 into 1935, as General Allison

succeeded General Carr. Allison took direct action by proposing a conference to

General Foulois. The Chief of the Air

Corps agreed, and at the conference surrendered the program, acknowledging

that all radio development at Wright Field

should be centered in the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory under Signal Corps direction.

64

 Memo, Col Goolrick, Actg Exec Officer Mat Div,

for Chief Mat Div, 22 May 34. In same file. 65

 AR 850-25, 15 Jul 31. Paragraph 10 Estates that

the military characteristics for any item to be developed will be formulated by the using arm and coordinated through the appropriate technical committee. Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 18 Jul 34, sub: Radio direction compass. AG 413.68 (7-14-34) Misc. (D). Also

in SigC 413.44 Compasses 1, 1919-34. 66

 Ltr, Gen Pratt to Chief AC, 5 Feb 34, sub: Purchase of radio compasses or RDF's. SigC 413.684

RDF's 7, Jan-Aug 34. 67

 U.S. Special Committee on AC, Final Report of

War Department Special Committee on Army Air Corps, 18

Jul 34, p. 50. 68

 Maj Hoffman, comments on Memo of Capt Rives

for Maj Hoffman, 8 Dec 34, sub: Disputed functions of

research, development, procurement, etc., between

AC and SigC. AF 413.44 ARL Orgn, Change, Research, Developments, 1931-38, USAF Mat Comd

Central Files. 69

 Memo, Capt Rives and Capt Messer for President of Subcommittee to AC Technical Committee,

19 Dec 34, sub: Reply to Hoffman's Memo 12-6-34

and Hegenberger's Memo 12-8-34. In same file.
94 THE SIGNAL CORPS

The Air Corps completed the contracts let

with the Public Works Administration

money, but made no other arrangement

to enter into either the development or the

procurement of radio equipment.

An insubstantial victory never looked

more substantial. The Air Corps expansion undertaken in the ominous shadow of

1938 made inroads upon it which all but

reversed it. At the time, though, regulations had been vindicated. Behind that

fact fell into place all other parts of the

dispute: whether the Signal Corps had

been so laggard in its duty as not to begin

development of airborne radio to any adequate degree until stirred up to do so;

whether the Air Corps had raided Signal

Corps prerogatives and picked Signal

Corps brains; these and others receded

behind the essential law and prophet.

General Allison subsequently went out

of office in the satisfying persuasion that

the problem had been resolved. He complimented his successor, Mauborgne, and

told him: "I feel that we have accomplished a result that will reflect with great

credit upon the Signal Corps and the

Army as a whole, and I hope very much to

the benefit of the Air Corps, whom we

serve." General Mauborgne took office in

the equally hopeful prospect of a return of

good feeling. He was a new Chief Signal

Officer, Maj Gen. Oscar Westover a new

Chief of the Air Corps, and Westover had

praised his "spirit of cooperation" as director of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory.70

The clash of interest was still there, however, muffled though it was by wellwishing and good intentions. The essential

disharmony remained to grow clamorous

again and to renew a question of Signal

Corps boundaries. 70

 (1) 5th Ind, Gen Allison to Chief AC, 26 Feb 35,

and 6th Ind, Gen Foulois to TAG through CSigO,

11 Mar 35, on Ltr, TAG to CSigO, cited n. 65. (2)

Statistical Sec SigC Aircraft Sig Sv, Signal Corps Aircraft Signal Service History and Activities Compiled

as of 1 July 1943, p. 2. SigC Hist Sec File. (3) Ltr, Gen

Westovter to TAG through CSigO, 9 Jun 37, sub: Rpt

of functioning of ARL. AF 413.44 ARL Orgn,

Change, Research, Developments, 1931-38, USAF

Mat Comd Central Files.
The Army in Abeyance

There was an almost imperceptible

change in the Army as the Signal Corps

shifted leadership for the last time before

the emergency.1 The state of the world

made the Military Establishment uneasy.

The League of Nations had sickened upon

Mussolini's success in Ethiopia to the point

where Germany's reincorporation of the

Rhineland had aroused no counteraction.

President Roosevelt had suggested a quarantine of dictatorships. Spain's civil war

was producing studies of German and

Italian methods and weapons in the Army

service journals. Deeply concerned Navy

and Army intelligence watched a curtain

of secrecy fall around the Japanesemandated islands between Hawaii and

the Philippines, while at the same time

Japan renewed a war of conquest in

China. The extension to Tokyo of the previous year's Rome-Berlin Atis left other

capitals paralyzed; no move to build up a

military organization reached a popular

hearing even in the nations nearest to the

danger. However, the danger was strong

enough to begin beckoning the Army away

from the void over which it hung suspended and into the crystallizing national

policy. Individual services like the Signal

Corps were not yet affected, but there was

evidence that they would be, and that was

sufficient to change the atmosphere.

As a functioning agency, the Signal

Corps performed its task adequately. Existing administrative communications were

sound; a large part of the expansion to

occur in them could take place in terms of

what had been tried and found good. It

was as a planning agency that the Signal

Corps had its work to do. The impetus to

all Army planning, the demand above all

others, was the challenge to have the right

equipment with men trained to use it.

Signal Corps preparations walked on

these same two legs: equipment and men.

Its own problem of equipment loomed

from the radiation spectrum itself, which

held an infinite number of combinations.

There were times when every one of them

promised to materialize, relegating items

to obsolescence with as much indifference

as crude pulse radar was showing to the

finest sound detectors. Boehme radio was

another case in point. If it was to be replaced, a good deal of specialized skill

would go out the window and, as with

radar, a shift in equipment would shift

the plans in personnel and training. The

chief perplexity in setting the gauge for

expansion, in either equipment or strength,

was that no one could move it much without coming into the range of another's

expanding interest. Sometimes the obstacle was industry, sometimes the Congress,

sometimes a riddle of research, sometimes

statistics of manpower, sometimes one of

the co-ordinate arms or services.

The population growth of the District

of Columbia area in the 1930's had made

land scarce. At Fort Myer, the activities

1

 General Mauborgne succeeded General Allison

on 1 October 1937.
96 THE SIGNAL CORPS

of the Cavalry were more and more restricted to the equitation field itself. Col.

George S. Patton, Jr., the commanding

officer at Myer, objected on learning that

the increase in the Army communications

net, which had already crowded the transmitting station there part of the way out

onto the equitation field, would require

the station to encroach still further or

burst. General Mauborgne expressed the

urgent hope to put up a rhombic antenna,

in order to accomplish point-to-point

transmission to Seattle. Patton opposed

not only the rhombic but the whole Signal

Corps installation and sought to have it

propelled from the post which bore the

first Chief Signal Officer's name. Mauborgne prescribed a temporary rearrangement of facilities and meanwhile sounded

out the Navy upon the possibility of getting antenna space on the land of the

naval Arlington radio station just adjoining. He learned that the Navy would in

fact discontinue its station there and let

him have it; and in anticipation of the

transfer he obtained the Navy's permission to put up the Seattle rhombic and

another one to Puerto Rico as well. Colonel Patton objected to this arrangement as

much as to the first proposal, declaring

that the Navy site had been a part of Fort

Myer twenty-five years earlier, and ought

to be again. All of the radio towers and

telegraph poles with which WAR had encumbered the post should be swept from

view. In any case, he needed the Navy

buildings. The Adjutant General offered

to split the site, so that the buildings went

to Patton and enough land for the rhombics to Mauborgne. Now the Navy's willingness was fast ebbing, and no longer

took the form of outright transfer but only

of an offer on a revocable basis. This

was unsatisfactory, but further pressure

brought all negotiation to an end. Since

the Chief Signal Officer's original request,

enough time had elapsed to bring the

nation up to within a year of war, and in

the shadow of that emergency the Navy

withdrew its offer altogether.2 Here was a

sample of how strong the administrative

tug and pull was to get anything at all.

This was but a local expansion, however

importunate, and the Signal Corps' energy

in urging it yielded to others' energy in

resisting it. Other circumstances might

reverse the roles.

One or two instances of expansion from

outside sources met similar resistance, this

time on the part of the Signal Corps. In

the spring of 1938 aircraft warning exercises, similar to the earlier ones at Muroc

Lake, were staged within the domain of

Southern California Edison Company,

the large public utility concern there. In

the Signal Corps' opinion, the claims

made for the exercise were unrealistic.

Eighty observation posts, principally

manned by the Edison Company's employees, had theoretically intercepted all

approaching aircraft and had kept March

Field inviolate. Actually, the practice airplanes had flown a straight course along

the line of observer stations. The Signal

Corps also felt that the communications

provided under the arrangement with the

company were inadequate. In that California sector they might do, but in most

places it would be necessary to use the full

2

( 1 ) Ltr, OCSigO to TAG, 23 Feb 39, sub: Transmitting antenna, WD Msg Ctr, transmitting station,

Ft. Myer, and 3d Ind, Col Patton to CG Third Corps

Area, 9 Mar 39, and 6th Ind, CSigO to TAG, 11 May

39; (2) Ltr, CSigO to Dir Naval Com, 11 May 39,

sub: Transfer of Arlington radio station from Navy

to Army. SigC 602.3 Arlington. (3) Same file, passim.

(4) Pauline M. Oakes, The Army Command and

Administrative Communications System, Part I: War

Department Radio Net, 1920-1940, Oct 45, pp.

103-07. SigC Hist Sec File.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 97

range of facilities offered only by the telephone and telegraph system. The big disadvantage in using the communications

of the electric power utilities was that

whereas neighboring telephone lines intercommunicated, neighboring power lines

ordinarily did not.

If the Signal Corps was unimpressed

with Southern California Edison's contributions to the exercises, the company was

equally vehement about their value. Its

view was that the tests had been such a

success that the Federal Communications

Commission ought to allow expansion of

the company's radio network. Submitting

an aircraft warning program which encompassed this plan, A. A. Hopkins, an

officer of the company, raised two sore

points, implying that in this specific field,

at least, radio could do the work of wire

and Edison could do the work of the Signal Corps. "From what I have seen of this

branch it is not abreast of the public utilities, either in equipment or personnel," he

commented. The company envisioned

sixteen fixed and forty mobile radio stations under its control, which it would be

willing to associate with a system where

the Signal Corps would not "enter the

picture in any form." To this proposal

Hopkins got the indorsement of the GHQ

Air Force, which recommended that the

War Department make every effort to persuade the FCC to grant the extra radio

frequencies for the expansion of the company's network. Noting "one or two dirty

digs at the Signal Corps," Brig. Gen.

George V. Strong, at that time the head of

the War Plans Division of the General

Staff, sent the proposal on to General

Mauborgne.

The Signal Corps had communications

responsibility throughout the series of aircraft warning services, as the Air Corps

had for interception, both being subordinate from place to place to the frontier or

department commander concerned. This

was established fact. In addition, General

Mauborgne knew that the heavily secret

pulse-radio detection equipment had stunning promise and that the Laboratories

were nearly ready with the long-range

model which the Air Corps had requested

after the dramatic demonstration of the

SCR-268. In any event, he was dubious

about the ability of radio to serve as the

core of an administrative communications

system, and certainly not ready to see a

commercial organization improve its

position by climbing upon the Army's

shoulders.

I am of the opinion [he replied] that while

the War Department recognizes the practicability and desirability of utilizing the wire and

radio facilities of power companies to save

telephone company lines for other uses, no

assistance should be given such companies

towards securing radio frequencies from the

Federal Communications Commission for

their use. I think this is an underlying motive

back of this proposal on the part of the power

companies of southern California.3

Nevertheless, he did balance his objection. To a special committee appointed by

the President to survey the power facilities

of the nation, Mauborgne expressed the

hope that it would direct some attention

to the use of the utility companies' networks in the defense communication of

large cities.4 He could not risk committing

the Signal Corps wholly to one course of

action or association, and his emphasis

upon the importance to the Army of a

3

 (1) Ltr, A. A. Hopkins to [Gen Strong], 19 Jan 39;

(2) Memo, Strong for Mauborgne, 21 Jan 39; (3)

Memo, Mauborgne for Strong, 27 Jan 39. SigC 676.3

(AWS) Gen 1. (4) AG Ltr to CSigO, 10 Mar 39, sub:

AWS. AG 660.2 AA (3-8-39) (Misc.)-E. 4

 Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-3, 6 Jan 39. SigC

676.3 (AWS) Gen 1.
98 THE SIGNAL CORPS

nationwide network of commercial telephone and telegraph might be construed

as marrying the Signal Corps to the AT&T

till death them did part. He took a stand

against any connection, whether illicit or

blessed by law, which would deprive the

Signal Corps of all freedom of action in

dealing with the great commercial wire

system.

Hearings were beginning just then on a

Senate resolution to investigate the state

of the telegraph industry. The Postal Telegraph and Cable Company was seeking

reorganization under the Bankruptcy Act,

with engulfment by Western Union in

prospect. However anemic it had hitherto

been, the existence of Postal had preserved

the appearance of competition in the

industry. Absorption of the company

would render the telegraph system a

monopoly, Continental having already

dropped from view. Short of governmental

subsidy to Postal, however, the merger

was inevitable, and a subsidy was unacceptable because it would put the government into competition with a private business. Thus the prospect of a single telegraph system, which actually materialized

in 1943, had to be accepted.

To the next stage, the extension of this

merger to consolidation with the telegraph

and teletype systems of the telephone companies, opposition could be vigorously

entered.5 "In time of war we contemplate

a great use of the latest fast means of communication: for instance, the teletype,"

Mauborgne explained, testifying also to

the importance of double-tracking the

telegraph network so that it and the telephone system could both bear a vast wartime traffic.6

 Commercial communications

would be called into heavy use in emergency, especially in the corps areas, which

would feel the first burden of mobilization.

The Army expected to rent and lease a

"tremendous amount" of commercial

wire,7 not only in the East but also in

thinly populated sections of the United

States where the profits were so low that

only the possibility of competition kept

circuits in being.

A final point in the War Department's

opposition to any commercial expansion

which would put the whole wire system

under single control was the belief that

only competition could encourage the introduction of new models of equipment.

This was a matter corresponding in interest to the vital need for assurance that

there would be plenty of circuit lines, because much of the equipment for the Army

fixed communication system was adapted

directly from commercial stock.8

Everyone's ox was gored, everyone's

shoe pinched when it came to creating a

military establishment in abeyance. Interruptions to plans could come politically as

well as in any other fashion. The Congress

appropriated $220,000 in 1939 for a new

laboratory building at Fort Monmouth.

This was a satisfaction, but a difficulty

arose from the fact that the construction

had been authorized for two years. Now

5

 Ltr, SW to Chm FCC, 18 Dec 39. SigC 483.1 Gen

Telegraphy 3. 6

 Hearings Before the Subcommittee of Senate Committee

on Interstate Commerce, Senate, 76th Cong, 1st Sess, To

Authorize a Complete Study of the Telegraph Industry, 22-23 May 39, pp. 27-29. 7

 Ordinarily, telegraph and teletype circuits were

leased, telephone circuits rented. TWX service was

engaged as needed, whether on twenty-four circuits

between continually busy administrative centers or on

circuits between infrequently called points where

traffic was diverted from the civilian pattern only

when need arose. 8

 (1) Maj Gen Joseph O. Mauborgne, Signal Communications as a Requisite of Command, lecture delivered at Army War College, 4 Apr 38, pp. 5-6.

SigC AC 352.13 Speech Mat, 1943-44. (2) Senate Rpt

529, 76th Cong, 1st Sess, Study of Telegraph Industry.

(3) AG 676.2 (5-20-39) (1), passim.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 99

that the money was in hand for it, the situation had changed so much that Brig.

Gen. George H. Brett, commanding the

Air Corps Materiel Division, declared that

there was reason to "feel very bitter" that

a new laboratory building was to go to the

Monmouth installation rather than to

Wright Field, "where it is so sorely

needed." The Signal Corps acceded,

changed its plan, and obtained rulings

from the Judge Advocate General and the

Comptroller General that the appropriation could be spent in Ohio rather than

in New Jersey. G-4 withdrew the advertisement for bids on the intended construction at Fort Monmouth and substituted

advertisements for the work to take place

at Wright Field. This action drew objections from New Jersey. Representative

William H. Sutphin took exception to the

Judge Advocate General's opinion, and

was immediately joined by Senator W.

Warren Barbour. The New Jersey State

Building and Construction Trades Council passed a unanimous resolution protesting the transfer of the construction from

its state to another. Under these combined

pressures the Acting Chief of Staff, Brig.

Gen. Lorenzo D. Gasser, yielded and

directed G-4 to return the proposed

construction to Fort Monmouth.9

The expansion overriding all others was

that of the Air Corps. Not a service of the

Army or Navy escaped jostling in that

process. Statutory recognition of it began

in 1939 with an appropriation to the Military Establishment of a third of a billion

dollars to carry it out. The Signal Corps

allotted 90 percent of its available money

to procurement under the legislated program. Almost every item in the Signal

Corps budgets for the next fiscal year reflected the Air Corps' needs, supplemental

estimates to the regular budget calling for

more than five million dollars' worth of

airborne communications, and for nearly

another million to buy Air Corps equipment used on the ground.10

 Fixed equipment, both for navigation and control,

had to be planned for the new Army Airways Communications System. In such a

modest item as the budgeted amounts of

signal equipment needed at the various

service schools, the Air Corps required

$120,000 worth, the other arms not half so

much.11 For the first time, the Signal

Corps also sought funds to cover a 10 percent reserve supply of extra sets and spare

parts, so that pilots would not be obliged

to fly without radio whenever the equipment needed repair.

What the Signal Corps would have

liked to do was to equip the Air Corps

completely, stock a good reserve in each

signal section of each air depot, and then

begin to operate a supply system without

any of the makeshifts and inadequacies

which halfway measures produced. It had

an orderly scheme for achieving an organization which would procure, issue, store,

9

 (1) Memo, Col Clyde L. Eastman, Exec Officer

OCSigO, for CSigO, 27 Jul 39. AAG 322.081 SigCLiaison-Mat Div (Establishment of SigC Proc District

at Wright Field, lab and warehouse), AAF Mat Comd

Central Files. (2) Ltr, CSigO to TAG through Chief

of AC, 16 Sep 39, sub: Substitution of ARL building

Wright Field for extension to SCL Ft. Monmouth,

and (a) 1st Ind, Chief of AC to TAG, 22 Sep 39, and

(b) 2d Ind, TAG to CSigO, 18 Oct 39; (3) Msgs, William H. Sutphin and W. Warren Barbour to Judge

Advocate Gen, 11 and 13 Sep 39; (4) Memo, ACofS

G-4 to CofS, 2 Oct 39, sub: SCL Ft. Monmouth, and

associated memos, 12, 13, and 18 Oct 39. AG 580

(3-31-26) (1) Sec 3E, Aviation Expansion. (5) Publication 394, 75th Cong, and Publication 164, 76th

Cong. 10

 Hearings Before the Subcommittee of Committee on

Appropriations, HR, 76th Cong, 1st Sess, On the Supplemental Military Appropriation Bill for 1940, statement of Gen Mauborgne, 22 May 39, pp. 158-72. 11

 Ltr, CSigO to Chief of Inf et al., 31 Mar 39, sub:

SigC equip required for sv schools, and 1st Ind, Chief

of Inf to CSigO, 12 Apr 39.
100 THE SIGNAL CORPS

and maintain all the signal equipment

that the Air Corps used. This scheme

might have been realized if the war had

not exploded it and many similar plans.

The first step had been accomplished

under Air Corps prodding when the signal

air depot sections had been raised from the

single functions of repair to full-statured

supply units.12 This was paper preparation for the time when they would be

called upon to store, repair, and issue

equipment on a greater scale than was in

prospect.

When Air Corps expansion sharpened

the prospect, the Signal Corps took a second step and commenced to fill out the

outlines of the sections by decentralizing

to them some of the authority of the big

supply centers. The main depots at Brooklyn and Chicago held pre-expansion supplies, principally of ground arms signal

equipment, and were inconvenient to

many of the Air Corps bases, both old and

new, wherefore it seemed a necessity to

build up the air depot sections. To make

considerable Signal Corps investments in

the midst of Air Corps holdings was a risk.

It exposed the sections to the inevitable

day when they would be taken over by the

Air Corps—padlock, bin-stock, and barrel.

The fact that they existed solely to serve

the Air Corps would become the logical

reason for transferring them to the Air

Corps, a change which the approach of

the war delayed but which came about

later when the end of the war was in

sight.13 It was therefore broad necessity

rather than narrow self-interest which developed such signal sections as those at

Fairfield, Ohio, and San Antonio, Texas,

which were inherent parts of the Wright

and Patterson Field, Randolph and Kelly

Field air centers.

A third step followed when General

Mauborgne suggested that in order to

eliminate any contractual delay arising

from mere distance he would set up a new

section at Wright Field and move the procuring of air signal equipment there from

the New York Signal Corps Procurement

District. At a conference with their opposite numbers in the Air Corps, Signal

Corps officers went still further and agreed

to a major commitment of Signal Corps

supply in the Dayton area, Fairfield becoming the focal depot section of all the

air signal depot sections and the proposed

procurement section becoming a procurement district, equal partner with those in

existence since the early 1920's. General

Mauborgne, however, denied approval of

the procurement district, because he felt

that, along with the Fairfield build-up, a

section was enough.

The whole project then progressed, as

things always did, to the matter of funds.

To have found the money for the ideal

furnishing job, propeller hub to tail assembly, which the Signal Corps would

have liked to do for the Air Corps would

not have been much further out of reach

than to underwrite a small office and

25,000 square feet of warehouse space.

But the need for the office and warehouse

was so fundamental that General Brett

urged that it be considered a part of the

equipment expansion. The Signal Corps

accordingly reopened its supplemental

estimates for the next fiscal year and inserted a request for the funds. Coupled

with the request for the new laboratory

12

 Ltr, Actg CofS GHQ AC to TAG, 17 Dec 36,

sub: SigC supply sees in AC depots, and 2d Ind,

CSigO to TAG, 29 Dec 36. AAG 322.081 SigC

Activities, 1932-45. 13

 WD Cir 429, 3 Nov 44. See OCSigO, Report of

Transfer of Signal Corps Communications Equipment

Peculiar to the Army Air Forces, 31 Mar 45. SigC

Hist Sec File.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 101

building at Wright Field, and piled on top

of the original hope to have a new laboratory building at Fort Monmouth, it forced

a choice which General Mauborgne met

by deferring the Monmouth construction,

bestowing upon Wright Field the $220,-

000 which was to have been spent upon it,

and asking for yet more to build a warehouse at Patterson.14

 Then the objection

raised by the New Jersey legislators forced

still another revision of the budget and introduced another request to take care of

the Signal Corps Laboratories construction also.

Of all branches of the service, the Air

Corps was also most in need of training

films. It had only three. Between March

and May 1939, the Signal Corps schedule

for training films to be produced by mid1941 was extended from forty to sixty

reels, the increase representing what the

Air Corps sought.15 The Signal Corps'

capacity for making training films stood

further in abeyance than most of its other

activities. The photographic course at the

school had yielded only three graduates

the year before and had been eliminated

in favor of direct experience on the job at

the Photographic Laboratory.16 The

Training Film Field Unit at Fort Monmouth was newly organized and understaffed. Senior instructors at West Point

had studied the existing training films and

recommended that eighteen more be

made—none for the Air Corps.17 Eighteen

made as large a program as could be considered for a long time ahead, frivolities

like films of the military contingent at the

New York World's Fair being officially

discouraged.18

In attempting to satisfy the requirements of the ground arms first, the unit

came under criticism from the Air Corps,

which asked for a change in Army regulations to permit the organization of its

own motion picture agency.19 The request

took off from the argument that Signal

Corps photographers were not authorized

to make the aerial shots which no Air

Corps training film could do without.

Since experience had shown that the Signal Corps could neither keep one set of

photographic equipment for the Air

Corps and another for all the ground arms

nor maintain photographic units at every

air base in the Military Establishment,

the Signal Corps compromised. The Air

Corps might make the sequences involving aerial photography but the Signal

Corps would go on being responsible for

the whole.20 To implement the agreement,

the Signal Corps then established Training Film Field Unit Number 2 at Wright

Field and placed Maj. Frederick W.

14

 (1) Ltr, Chief of AC to CSigO, 4 Apr 39; (2) Ltr,

Chief of AC to CSigO, 17 May 39, sub: Handling

radio equip-expansion program, and Inds, 1-9. AAG

322.081 SigC-Liaison-Mat Div. 15

 (1) Memo, Actg CSigO for All Divs OCSigO, 27

Mar 39, sub: Tentative dir WD program FY 41. SigC

111 FY 41 Tentative Dir 1. (2) Memo, Exec Officer

OCSigO for Pers and Tng Div et al., 2 May 39, sub:

Preliminary estimates FY 41. SigC 111 FY 41 QMC 1.

(3) Mauborgne statement cited n. 10, pp. 170-71. 16

 Robert L. Eichberg and Jacqueline Quadow,

Combat Photography, 1945, p. 5. SigC Hist Sec File. 17

 Ltr, Brig Gen Jay L. Benedict to TAG, 24 Apr

39, sub: WD tng films, 004.52-TF West Point, and

2d Ind, CSigO to TAG, 27 Apr 39. SigC 004.52-TF

USMA (4-24-39). 18

 Ltr, CO Hq Camp George Washington to CG

Second Corps Area, 7 Aug 39, sub: Films of mil

activity N. Y. World's Fair, and 5th Ind, CSigO to

TAG, 1 Sep 39. SigC 004.52 Mil Activity N. Y.

World's Fair (8-7-39). 19

 Summary Report on Photographic Activities of

the Signal Corps ... in the Fields of Motion Pictures

and Visual Aid, 26 Feb 43, p. 443. SigC APS Div

File.

20

 Ltr, Chief of AC to TAG through CSigO, 4 Apr

39, sub: Proc of ground photo supplies for AC use,

and 1st Ind, CSigO to TAG, 12 Apr 39. SigC 004.52

Authority.
102 THE SIGNAL CORPS

A TRAINING FILM FIELD UNIT at work on a film for the Air Corps.

Hoorn, just back from a Panama assignment, in charge. He had only one other

man, one camera, and a basement room,

and unhappily met passive resistance at

the field.21

Training-film photography was thus a

fledgling. Tactically, photography was

nonexistent. Maj. A. E. Holland, a Reserve officer on temporary active duty,

prepared a study which emphasized public information, propaganda, troop information, and historical record as the wartime functions of military photography.

He did look ahead, nevertheless, to problems of tactical equipment and organization. In the former case he urged the

development of a lightweight sound camera, and in the latter proposed that photographic units be identically organized,

then assigned in varying strength to field

headquarters, base laboratory, zone of interior, and theaters of operation.

The report was well received, but laid

away because the Photographic Division

was in no position to put it into effect.22 It

was not possible to make sure that any

report would be read and applied to the

future. Another, in this instance a reaction

to the Southern California Edison aircraft

warning plan, never got beyond the immediate range of the Office division where

it was prepared, despite the fact that the

21

 Ltr, Maj Hoorn to Capt R. T. Schlosberg, O/C

Photo Div OCSigO, 4 Nov 38. SigC 004.52 TFFU

Wright Field Personal Correspondence. 22

 (1) Maj A. E. Holland, Report: War Plan for

Signal Corps Photographic Division, Incl to Memo,

Capt Schlosberg for Holland, 18 Jul 38, sub: Active

duty tng. SigC 000.7 Publicity Photo Div, Nov 29-

Mar 39. (2) Interv with Holland, 15 Mar 48, Washington, D. C.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 103

Signal Corps Board wanted to use it in

connection with an important study

brought on by the imminence of the new

SCR-270 radar. The report was denied to

the Board "pending staff action," which

was to say, "Because there is only one

copy and no typist to make another." The

Board of course went ahead and wrote up

its study as scheduled, but without any

light which might have been shed upon it

by the other material.23

Yet whatever the brake, large or trivial,

foreign or home-grown, the Army was

perceptibly getting into motion. Each succeeding report of the Chief of Staff or of

the Secretary made the fact plainer. More

than in the panoramic generalities, the

acceleration could be surely measured in

the details, the minutiae of the process—

such as rhombic antennas encroaching

upon equitation fields.

One of the preparatory devices was the

educational order, and the Signal Corps,

although slow to take it up, ultimately

placed two dozen of them.24 Western

Electric, General Electric, Stewart-Warner, Stromberg-Carlson, Farnsworth, U.S.

Rubber, Roebling, Anaconda, and others

on Signal Corps survey lists got the orders,

although few of those companies were

subject to education in the sense meant.

In announcing the plan, Louis Johnson,

the Assistant Secretary of War, explained

that the intention was to instruct a manufacturer in the demands which war might

make and to instruct the military agencies

in the amounts and rates of production

which they could look forward to.

This pair of conditions had little interest for the Signal Corps and its manufacturers. The connection established with

industry was so close and the industry itself so closely grouped that there was not

much doubt where production orders

would go. The Ordnance Department,

which seems to get the credit for conceiving educational orders, had observed this

circumstance in both the Signal Corps,

which had a commercial communications

industry to count upon, and the Air

Corps, which had a commercial aircraft

industry. Ordnance was interested in finding out how much munitions expansion

the nation's industry could absorb. There

was no civilian market to spur ordnance

development and manufacture, and time

of war would require production of weapons by manufacturers who had never

made anything like them.

This was not the problem for the Signal

Corps, or at any rate was not thought to

be. Undiscerned in its most chilling possibilities but at least detected on the horizon was the contest for raw materials

which educational orders could not resolve. Mica, quartz, rubber, and silk were

all going on the strategic list.25 In the

competition for them the most orderly

plan would falter. Yet it was still too early

for critical shortages to be apprehended

very clearly. The Signal Corps Laboratories had turned down acetate in favor of

pure silk for telephone insulation and the

outer wrapping of the telephone cord, although a number of concerns had indicated their willingness to use the substi23

 Ltr, SigC Bd to CSigO, 24 Jun 39, sub: Study on

AWS, and 1st Ind Reply, 28 Jun 39. SigC 676.3

(AWS) Gen 1. 24

 (1) Ltr, Louis Johnson, ASW, to CSigO et al, 20

Jun 38, sub: Program under educational order legislation; (2) Ltr, Col Harry K. Rutherford, OD, Exec

Officer Plng Br OASW, to CSigO et al., 21 Jun 38,

sub: Educational orders; (3) [Capt Byron S. Falk,

SigC], Educational Orders, 1936-37, MS. OCSigO

Proc Plng Sec File. 25

 Office of the Assistant Secretary of War Under

the Protective Mobilization Plan and the Industrial

Mobilization Plan, 15 Jul 39, pp. 16-18. AG 381 Mob

Plan.
104 THE SIGNAL CORPS

tute; and the Infantry was insisting upon

latex insulation of field wire, although it

had the double disadvantage of being produceable by only a few companies and of

demanding a highly strategic material.26

Beginning with the 1939 fiscal year,

Congress made an annual sum of $2,000,-

000 available for educational orders and

before the fiscal year was out amended the

legislation to permit $34,500,000 to be

spent on them within three years.27 The

Signal Corps' action was to settle upon

orders for items which required little retooling of the plant production line. Because its equipment, like that of the Air

Corps, was likely to change overnight and

require a whole new manufacturing process along with the change, there was no

question of placing an order to educate a

manufacturer in a course of production

which might never be used again. Accordingly, Signal Corps procurement planners

decided to emphasize the two items which

were least likely to change, the two which

were also the backbone of signal equipment: wire and telephones. The basic

design for field wire 110-B and for the

EE-8 field telephone had not changed for

ten years (and continued unchanged in

the war which followed).

Once begun, the educational orders

were a success. They streamlined specifications and indicated that the production

rate could rise by forty or fifty times. The

cost of the field wire program was $63,000,

a comparatively small expenditure for

such large returns. As a direct result of this

program, the Signal Corps placed other

orders for items like switchboard, cord,

and radio equipment for which requirements were known to exceed the surveyed

capacity.28 The program was a success

only by prewar standards, however. The

ultimate goal was underestimated by so

much that the effort toward it fell very far

short. The 1924 mobilization plan had

guessed at a need for 4,000,000 dry batteries monthly six months after an M Day;

the 1927 plan had knocked the guess

down to 1,500,000; the 1939 estimate put

it back and moved it beyond, to 5,000,000;

but the production during the ensuing

war twice reached 21,700,000. Although

it had perceptibly increased, procurement

was still under tight rein. The value of

Signal Corps obligations in 1939 was

$6,000,000 but in 1943 it was $3,000,000,-

000. The amount obligated to procurement for Signal Corps research and development in 1939 was a thousandth of what

it became in 1943.29

The Army could not read the future

any more closely in terms of manpower.

Mobilization estimates were a thoroughgoing piece of guess work—thoroughgoing,

but guesswork. Any plan, even the most

carefully engineered, had its feet in a bog,

its head in a fog. Yet the ability to respond

when events put the nation on guard, then

at defense positions, then on a full war

footing would have been unattainable

without the plans. Calculations of the rate

at which personnel could be obtained

26

 (1) SigC 400.1141 Gen 17, passim. (2) L. H. Drake

and F. W. Thomas, Production Div Phila SigC Proc

District, Industrial Summary: Signal Corps Procurement of Wire and Cable With Recommended Operating Procedures, 16 Jan 46, p. 13. SigC Hist Sec File. 27 Publication 639, 75th Cong, 1st Sess, 16 Jun 38;

amended in Sec. 13 of Publication 18, 76th Cong, 1st

Sess, 3 Apr 39. 28

 Brig Gen Calvert H. Arnold, Chief P&D Div

OCSigO, Procurement in the Signal Corps, lecture

given in Army Industrial College, Washington, D. C.,

26 Feb 46, pp. 2-3. SigC Hist Sec File. 29

 (1) Henry C. C. Shute, Production Div Phila

SigC Proc District, Industrial Summary: Signal Corps

Procurement of Dry Batteries With Recommended

Procedures, 15 Jan 46, pp. 7, 50. SigC Hist Sec File.

(2) Arnold lecture cited n. 28. (3) OCSigO P&D Sv,

Dry Batteries Supply and Demand, Mar and Apr 45.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 105

started off, like equipment-rate calculations, from whatever facts could be gathered. The numbers, being few, were

quickly arrived at.

Three and a half square divisions scattered over 130 Army posts pretty much

typified the land power of the United

States. There were sixty-two air squadrons, all half a dozen years behind the

fierce Luftwaffe. There was no independent battle fleet in the Atlantic, and Japanese naval strength surged in the Pacific.

The 188,000 Regular Army men in the

three and a half divisions, in the sixty-two

air squadrons, and in a multitude of administrative, service, and technical assignments constituted the nucleus of an initial

protective force. This force was to be

ready to defend the United States, Panama, and Hawaii within thirty days of the

mobilization call. At the second stage, the

Protective Mobilization Plan would assemble 700,000 more men, in consonance

with the Industrial Mobilization Plan

necessary to equip them. Third, augmentations would create a total force of

4,000,000 within about thirteen months

from the start of the process. The god of

war being willing, planned mobilization

could replace an overwhelming influx

with an even and balanced growth.30

The Signal Corps had approximately

1.5 percent of the officers and 2 percent of

the enlisted men of the Regular Army. In

the initial protective strength, this was the

Signal fiber. Strength was not a matter of

simple measurement, however. Personnel

figures appeared in several guises; one

could cite authorized strength, appropriated strength, allotted strength, active

duty strength, and still none would represent the actual strength. Authorized

strength was the figure set forth in the

National Defense Act and its amendments. It was wide of the mark, for the appropriations each year stopped well short

of maintaining it. The original figure authorized to the Army in the Thomason

Act, for one example, was 1,000, but the

1940 budget pared it to 500.31 An authorization was a promissory note; an appropriation was a savings account. Appropriations went to the War Department as

a whole, and the shares of the individual

services were allotted, usually in portions

a bit less than their appropriated strength.

From the allotted figure one subtracted

those who were in school, in transit, or in

hospital—men and officers who were

spoken of as being "in the pipeline" between active duty assignments. Subtract

them, and one reached the active duty figure, still not the actual strength, for the

absence of a substantial number on special details lowered the sum further.

Actual strength could have been calculated only by totting up morning reports,

a process which was not practicable.

When determined, it would have been a

long distance from the most sanguine authorization and not very near to the most

liverish.

By the end of June 1939, when the 1940

fiscal year commenced, the Signal Corps'

strength was still not above 4,000. (The

peak of war strength would put ninety

men in the place of every one.) The totals

in the end-of-the-year reports were 3,687

enlisted men and 248 officers (248 was

exactly the commissioned strength listed

30

 (1) Logistics in World War II, Final Report of the

Army Service Forces, 1 July 1947 (Washington, 1948),

p. 116. (2) WD Public Relations Br, Statement by

Brig Gen Harry L. Twaddle Before the Truman

Committee, 24 Apr 41. AG 381 (11-29-40) Sec 1. 31

 Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on

Appropriations, HR, 76th Gong, 1st Sess, On the Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1940, statement of Lt Col W. P. Wattles, 7 Feb 39, p. 659.
106 THE SIGNAL CORPS

a dozen years before, and in the interven- ing time the total had been lower). What

this represented was in effect actual

strength, as an analysis of the second fig- ure shows: 288 officers held commissions

in the Signal Corps; 56 of the 288 were

detailed elsewhere, principally to the Air

Corps; 232 Signal Corps officers were

therefore on active duty with the Signal

Corps; but in addition 16 had been de- tailed to the Signal Corps from other

arms; thus, 248. In the authorized figures, one officer out of every half dozen was a

ghost. The allotted officer strength, the

Signal Corps' portion of the 12,760 Regu- lar Army officers provided for in the fiscal

year 1939 appropriations, was 262; and

this paper figure was 38 officers short of

the 300 theoretically permitted under the

National Defense Act amendment of the

year before. The difference between the

authorized number of officers and the

number actually present to do the Signal

Corps' business was thus 52—the 162/3

percent discount on the promissory note.32

To the military strength of the Signal

Corps one could add the civilian em- ployees. In 1939 there were 863, working

in the laboratories, the depot sections, the

Chiefs office, through the continental

United States, and beyond in its terri- tories. Statutory paradoxes caused civilian

strength to wilt a bit, too. The Classifica- tion Act provided for systematic increases

in salaries, but the appropriation acts year

by year contained a clause which in effect

nullified the increase except for those with

the lowest seniority and sometimes with

the least competence. At the opening of

the fiscal year 1940, the outlook for civilians somewhat improved, with Congres- sional appropriation for small rises in pay

and a modest hope that ultimately em- ployees could dream of sixty-dollar promotions every four years.33

 Counting its

civilians lifted the Signal Corps closer to

five thousand than to four, but this could

hardly be called a prefiguration of a major

military service of a major power. A com- pany of Galahads equipped with Cadmean

dragons' teeth would have been more

like it.

Mauborgne pressed the contention that

Signal Corps increase under a defense

mobilization would have to be large. In

the first place, he argued, the Signal Corps

was a three-in-one in the Army; a combat

branch, a supply branch, and a headquarters branch, in the headquarters function

alone taking responsibility for signal intelligence operations, training-film production, and the War Department Message

Center. Second, the Signal Corps also

served joint Army-Navy policies, as the

recent need to create a Communication

Liaison Division demonstrated. Third, wartime indicated an important role in

civilian radio, and, as for wire, would

oblige the Signal Corps to become a lead- ing stockholder in long-distance telephone

lines, teletypewriter exchanges, and fac- simile circuits.34

 At that, the conception

was drawn in terms of a solely protective

force. Tests of the new triangular division

were conducted at peace strength and

under the assumption that the United

States could be involved only in protective

warfare. Secretary Woodring currently

took pride in the reduction of mobiliza- tion plans "to sensible working propor-

(1) SW, Annual Reports, 1939, 1940, 1941: Table A

in each case. (2) Capt Wilson G. Burden, Signal Corps

Strength, Nov 45, p. 8. OCSigO Career Management

File.

33

 Pers Control Book of the CSigO, FY 39. OCSigO

Central Files. 34

 Ltr, Gen Mauborgne to TAG, 24 Sep 38, sub:

Mob Plans WD Offices in Washington, D. C. SigC

381 Gen 10, 1938.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 107

tions." Eighty percent of the important

nonradio items required for inactive units

were for the Coast Artillery, a defensive

arm.35

Even under this assumption the Signal

Corps would need many persons. In radio

the demand would be for specialists who

had never been missed when all that was

required was the twiddling of a screwdriver to free a circuit. Even the men who

started off untrained would have to show

some knowledge of radio engineering. In

view of the fact, however, that the nation

was richly supplied with wire and all of its

advantages, radio was not dominant in

Signal Corps mobilization plans. Wire

was, especially in administrative communications which were much the larger part

of Signal Corps responsibility.

The fact that the administrative system

had now pretty generally changed over

from telegraph to teletype was a matter of

great pride. There were dissenters who felt

that the Signal Corps and the communications industry were making a mistake

in discarding Morse. Two promoters represented this point of view obliquely—

"technical etiologists" who proposed to lift

the Postal Telegraph Company from its

fatal illness, restore it to health, and within two years transform it into a flourishing

source of at least 50,000 trained Morse

operators for the Army to draw upon.36

They believed that the Signal Corps was

wrong to imitate the big commercial wire

trust in giving up telegraph for teletype,

because teletype would be unadaptable to

tactical situations.

Despite the forlornness of the etiologists' proposal to rouse a dead horse, gallop forward, and tilt at lances with the

giant Bell, there was a point to be made in

favor of retaining Morse. Wire might

have outgrown telegraphy, but radio had

not. Voice radio was not yet common;

most message sending over wireless went

by dit's and dah's from the clicking key.

The days were coming when because of

this fact hundreds of thousands of young

men—at Fort Monmouth, Camp Crowder, and the aviation cadet centers, for

example—would be learning "code." Air

operations would employ it heavily; and

on the ground advanced tactical communications would frequently need it and so

would much of the administrative system.

Fifty thousand telegraphers could then

have been welcomed. In a setting of defense, they did not figure, first because the

Army's need for skilled "fists" could presumably be met from its own ranks and

those of the organized amateurs, and second because the theater of action, the

home scene, would enjoy the full resources

of a universal wire system of telephone and

teletype.

The big commercial wire system was a

central part of the Signal Corps' plans. Of

the 20,000,000 telephones in the nation,

the Bell System operated 80 percent;

6,000 independent companies operated

the others. In December 1938 General

Mauborgne invited officials of AT&T to a

conference. As a result of the discussion

and a joint study by Carroll O. Bickelhaupt of the company and the war plans

unit in General Mauborgne's office, a new

35

 (1) Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 21

(April 10, 1939), pp. 10-14. (2) Congressional hearings cited n. 31, statement of Harry W. Woodring, 24

Jan 39, p. 2. (3) Chart: Important Non-Radio Items

Required for Inactive Units, 28 Nov 38, Incl with

Memo, Exec Officer OCSigO for ACofS G-4, 30 Nov

38; (4) Memo, Exec Officer OCSigO for ACofS G-3,

28 Sep 38. SigC 381 Gen 10, 1938. 36

 2d Ind, Exec Officer OCSigO to TAG, 9 Apr 38,

on Ltr, Frank Payne and D. Sherrill Talmage to

CofS, 4 Apr 38, sub: Dangers to national defense with

recommendations for averting leading causes thereof.

SigC 381 Gen 10, 1938.
108 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Affiliated Plan crystallized, evolving in relation to the Protective Mobilization Plan.

The PMP mapped out the organization

of seven signal battalions in addition to

the Regular establishment's two, a signal

construction battalion, two independent

signal companies, and three signal depot

companies. It looked ahead also to expansion of the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer, organization of a GHQ signal

service and of a GHQ Air Force signal

battalion, and provision of commissioned

and enlisted personnel to four field armies

and the headquarters of the Atlantic,

Pacific, and Gulf frontiers. Augmentations

of the PMP contemplated thirty more signal battalions and seventeen more signal

companies. All of these would require

telephone men.

The joint commercial-Army planning

assumed that the Signal Corps would

grow to 18,500 in the initial phase of mobilization and to 62,500 when the augmentations were complete. Bell had

78,800 male employees under forty-five.

According to expectation, Affiliated mobilization would probably take 5,659; the

rest would stay with the system, whose

position in the defense plan discouraged

the withdrawal of more. Of the 5,659

Affiliated men from Bell, 143 would serve

in the Chief's office, the procurement districts, laboratories, schools, training centers, and corps area headquarters. Everyone else would be assigned to units. To

nondivisional units. That is to say, to outfits primarily concerned with the administrative wire system, supply, and pole-line

construction.37

Divisional signal units, whose men

would be performing tactical signal functions, had an allotment from the Protective Mobilization Plan of 469 officers and

11,390 enlisted men, organized in fiftyfour signal companies for Infantry divisions and twelve signal troops for Cavalry

divisions and a thirteenth for the Cavalry

Corps. When mobilization brought these

units to life, they would need cadres

around which to grow. The intention was

to put trained specialists in as the nucleus,

because the remaining members of the organization would be new to their tasks. At

any stage before mobilization, most of the

potential cadremen were detailed to

duties in which they could be replaced.

Upon mobilization, according to plan,

they would transfer to the field, taking

their skills and their good physical condition to the new units, while limited-service

personnel or civilians moved in behind

them.

There were many possibilities for the

Signal Corps in such a plan. Many Army

assignments did not require a technician.

Noncombatants, whether men or women,

could undertake them. One of the greatest

advantages in changing over to teletype in

the administrative wire system lay in the

fact that the machine absorbed much of

the technical burden and required of the

operator only that he could type. The Signal Corps had employed women with

great success as telephone operators in

World War I; women would also serve expertly as typists, code clerks, laboratory

assistants, and in a multitude of other

zone of interior occupations. The "basic"

civilian, like the "basic" soldier, would be

most in demand; but accountants, lawyers, industrial specialists, statisticians

would join echelons of technicians, engi37

 (1) Ruth Sadler, History of the Signal Corps

Affiliated Plan, Aug 44, pp. 20-21. SigC Hist Sec

File. (2) [Carroll O. Bickelhaupt el al.], Report: Procurement of Signal Corps Personnel From the Bell

Telephone System in an Emergency; (3) Ltr, Actg

CSigO to TAG, 8 Aug 39, same sub. SigC 381 Affiliated Units 6.
THE ARMY IN ABEYANCE 109

neers, and scientists. If war were to make

the Signal Corps' military strength grow

at a rate of ninety to one, it would increase

the civilian strength in a nearly comparable proportion. But the time had not yet

come for that. The present outlook was

modest. In Signal Corps estimates, it was

1,376. This was the number of positions

held by its enlisted men which the Signal

Corps presumed civilians could fill. General Mauborgne doubted that a civilian

could replace an officer. The positions set

up to effect the civilian replacement of enlisted men would assign them as everything from janitors at $1,080 to radio,

sound, and telephone engineers at $3,200.

If all 1,376 positions were filled by civilians, the Congress would have to appropriate $2,253,920 every year to pay their

salaries.

 38

 But no one could move just yet,

whether Congressman, general, or common citizen. These were plans, not action,

the abeyance, not the world war; and

there were few persons who were eager to

hurry them into effect.

38

 (1) Memo, Exec Officer OCSigO for ACofS G-3,

cited n. 35(4). (2) 1st Memo Ind Reply, 30 Aug 39, on

Memo, Actg ACofS G-1 for CSigO, 25 Aug 39. SigC

OT 322 Gen, 1941.
CHAPTER V

Equipment Search and

Research

If manpower must remain in abeyance,

such was not wholly the case with matériel.1

 Plans could be made for the amassing of signal equipment without some of

the anxious implications of war which attended plans for manpower. In the first

place, a large bulk of the Signal Corps'

equipment was almost indistinguishable

from that which bore the nation's daily

interchange of commerce, news, entertainment, and correspondence. In the second,

the equipment which was developed solely

for the uses of war tapped electrophysical

knowledge of the widest consequence and

had a way of giving off peaceful by-products. The challenge of communications

equipment was a challenge in technology.

In this sense it stood apart from the search

for communications men, although not

farther away than the use which communications men had for it. Occasionally

developments like radar broke ranks, and

appeared ahead of a specific demand for

them. Otherwise the technological patterns of use determined, or at the least

molded, the equipment.

The determinants in producing signal

equipment were accordingly the requirements of the Signal Corps itself and of the

tactical users. The attributes of the Signal

Corps mission were largely administrative and the equipment required to carry

it out was therefore likely to be of commercial or near-commercial models. The

problems they created, certainly large

enough, were principally problems of

procurement—of planning the equipment, searching it out, and making sure

that enough would be on hand. The technical challenge resided in the other area of

equipment especially, the equipment for

tactical use in the field—by the Infantry

platoon sergeant, the Coast Artillery

searchlight station, the nine-man crew of a

heavy bomber, the regimental message

center. In this part of its responsibility the

Signal Corps took orders from the Infantry, the Coast and Field Artillery, the

Cavalry and Armored Force, the Air

Corps. One or another of the using arms

such as these asked for equipment of a

particular sort to meet a particular anticipated need; or the Signal Corps suggested

to them that it would be a good thing for

them to have if it could be developed.

Wire

To those who used the communications

equipment, whether it was of wire or wireless design mattered less than whether it

got the message through. Generally speaking, wireless only hovered at the edge;

wire had the central place. The superla1

 See Appendix, "Signal Corps Equipment, World

War II."
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 111

tive research which enabled a radio signal

to be relayed from a front-line handietalkie all the way back to the Chief of Staff

was at least a dozen years in the future.2

Even then, such a feat would not be accomplished without wire at several points.

In 1939 there was no question that wire

was the primary means of communication, likely to be dominant in both tactical

and administrative uses. That it lent itself

to secrecy (radio having to broadcast

everything it knew) was only one mark in

its favor. It also enjoyed the advantage of

long establishment and the related advantages of well-known and abundant

instruments. The lapse of years since

World War I had allowed time to solve

many of the problems of military wire and

to make wire equipment and wire organization familiar throughout the service, while to all those coming into the

Army it was the familiar means of communication known everywhere in the

nation.

The list of Signal Corps wire items in

this year between the Munich blitz and

the panzer blitz began with the wire or

cable itself and opened out three ways,

into telegraphy, telephony, and the new

teletyping. Telegraphy was characterized

by the fact that it sent its messages in

Morse code. The telephone instrument

carried the human voice. Teletypewriters

transmitted messages in printing, or in

inked or perforated symbols which were a

specialized substitute for printing. Each of

the three forms had its equivalent radio

version. Radioteletype was too new to take

into account. Radiotelephony was the

area upon which the most concerted effort

centered. Radiotelegraphy was temporarily the farthest along of the three, as

was to be expected in the normal course of

development, which achieves code transmission before voice. Wire telegraphy still

held the field in many uses; the six-pound

manual telegraph set TG-5 was a familiar

item of equipment in World War II. At the

main points of a communications system,

however, wire teletype now replaced wire

telegraph; and radiotelegraph forced a

total abdication of wire wherever it could

not go—into the air, or in a wireless region

like so much of Alaska. Wire telephony

was uppermost in all employment of voice

communication. Wire teletype was so well

liked that it had even regained ground

from radio, by widely supplanting the

Boehme high-speed system.

The standard field wire which the Signal Corps offered was W-l10, the standard assault wire, W-130. These were

lightweight twisted pairs with limited capacity and range, but they could be laid

rapidly from reels carried by the construction crewmen or payed out from the rear

of a truck.3 A mile of twisted-pair field

wire weighed 130 pounds, the same

amount of assault wire, 30 pounds. The

reels upon which wire was wound varied

in size. Two men could carry a small one,

turning it as they went in order to dispense

the wire. The RL-27A, for example, an

axle, weighed but 5 pounds, although

when loaded with a half mile of wire, at

the outset of a wire-laying stint, it was

heavy indeed. The RL-31 weighed 30

pounds and was also hand-cranked. The

large, gasoline-powered RL-26, which replaced horse-drawn wire carts, had to be

carried in a vehicle, because, when it was

loaded with two miles of W-110, it weighed

nearly 600 pounds.

2

 Brig. Gen. Wesley T. Guest (Chief of Sig Plans

and Opns Div OCSigO), "Planning Integrated Signal Communications," and Col. Edwin R. Petzing

(Chief Engr and Tech Div OCSigO), "Engineering

the Integrated Communications System," Radio and

Television News, December, 1950. 3

 TM 11-487, Electrical Communication Systems

Equipment, 2 Oct 44, p. 118, par. 614.
LAYING FIELD WIRE from the horse-drawn cart (above) and from the truck-mounted

RL-26 (below).
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 113

A BATTERY-POWERED TELEPHONE, the EE-8A. (Photograph taken

in 1943.)

The battery-powered telephones used

in the field were like standard commercial

ones. Development was complete on the

universal stand-by of the ensuing war, the

EE-8A. The sound-powered telephone,

that interesting return to the first principles of Alexander Graham Bell, had met

with some success in the testing of the

Navy and commercial models, and now

became the TP (for telephone)-3. It was

later modified so that the bell which gave

its position away to an enemy was replaced by a small light. Any field telephone was carried about in a stout case,

made of leather until the oncoming rationing forced the use of cord and fabric

instead.

Although the wire, reels, and telephone

instruments of tactical communication

had changed considerably since World

War I, no comparable redesign had occurred in switchboards. The Laboratories

could have set up projects for new ones except that there was already more pressing

business. There were three basic types all

taken from French models of World War I.

The BD (for board)-71 had six "drops,"

 4

the BD-72, twelve; both were regimental

boards. For division headquarters there

was a 40-line unit, the BD-14. All of these

field switchboards were heavier than they

needed to be, partly because of the storage

battery which was necessary if the board

were to be part of a common battery system. Although it was helpful if a field telephone could operate in such a system, so

that it could be put on a desk or hung on

a wall, ordinarily its prime use was in circumstances where there were no desks or

walls and where a local battery, just to

serve the switchboard, was enough. These

switchboards worked on local batteries

only: that is, they depended upon the dry

cells contained in each field telephone set

and in the board itself. The originator of

the call had to crank the handle which

rang up the switchboard operator, who in

turn cranked up enough energy to ring the

telephone of the person being called.

The switchboards for the next higher

echelons were in course of development.

The Signal Corps Laboratories had

recently begun work on the BD-89, for use

between the division and corps headquarters. A replacement for the BD-14, it

was a compact 60-line unit which could be

used in part or in whole, either as a few

sections or as the entire set all at once. For

4

 That is to say, six lines. The drop is specifically

the small shutter above the plug opening, or jack.

When someone rings the switchboard, the ringing

energizes an electromagnet to release the shutter,

which drops and thereby signals the operator to plug

in for the call.
114 THE SIGNAL CORPS

A TWELVE-DROP SWITCHBOARD, the BD-72, in a communications dugout.

(Photograph taken in 1943.)

the field army there was to be a full telephone central set, the TC-1. Its switchboard, the BD-80, had been in process

since 1933, three models having been received for testing in January 1938. It, too,

was planned for partial use as required,

with multiples up to six installed side by

side; its capacity was 100 lines. The field

telephone central sets like the TC-1 were

usually transportable by truck, and when

in place provided a complete telephone

exchange for headquarters requiring the

capacity of three-position BD-80's. The

fixed telephone equipment of the rear

areas was of course like any of the great

central office sets to be seen in the city terminals of the Bell System, as the administrative wire telegraph and teletypewriter

equipment was similarly to be seen in the

offices of Western Union.

The Signal Corps Laboratories had

looked into the possibilities of using teletype in the field as well, starting in the

early 1930's when it was called telegraph

printer and when the industry first

changed over to using the sort of teletype

which spun out the message on paper

tape. Other armies, the German, for instance, were exploring the same possibility. When page teletype replaced tape

commercially, the Laboratories tested

several page models. Of these, the Tele-
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 115

type Corporation equipment seemed best

and, slightly altered, became standardized

as the TG-7. With auxiliary parts such as

power supply and rectifier, the TG-7

formed both the mobile field teletypewriter, EE-97, and the fixed equipment,

EE-98. The military teletypewriter employed the neutral system, which required

fewer parts than the polarential system

generally used in commercial teletypewriters. Neutral operation alternated

pulses of current with breaks when no

current flowed. Each letter which the

transmitting operator struck on his keyboard was translated, according to the

five-unit code, into a combination of current flow (mark) and of current break

(space). This coded combination actuated

the corresponding combination at the receiving teletypewriter, which automatically typed the letter almost at the same

instant as the transmitting operator was

typing it many miles away.

The biggest problem in the early development of a military field teletypewriter

was a reliable power supply which would

put out the stable flow of current necessary

for mark-and-space operation. The cycle

rate could be twenty-five a second or sixty

a second but in any case had to be unvarying. Even so little as a 3 percent shift

of frequency would affect the printing, for

the electrical impulses had to keep both

the sending and receiving printers in

perfect synchronization. Of six commercial power units that the Signal Corps

Laboratories had tested, none proved satisfactory. The resultant efforts to develop

a reliable field generator led to the PE-77,

a 70-pound d-c generator. Frequently the

300-pound PE-75 which provided commercial alternating current was also used

to power the mobile teletypewriter set

EE-97. The fixed EE-98 was identical

with the EE-97, except that it lacked this

power unit. Being intended for fixed use,

it could be plugged into commercial

power lines.5

This was the outline of U.S. Army wire

equipment just before World War IL Of

the imminent foes, neither Japan nor Italy

was comparably developed; and what was

known of German equipment made this

pattern look entirely adequate. The Germans employed light and heavy wires

similar to the Signal Corps' 130 and 110.

Whereas W-130 was a double conductor,

much of the equivalent German light wire

consisted of a single strand, and the return

was by way of the ground, a method which

the American Army did not employ.6 The

two-conductor light wire, which the Germans did have, used the metallic return

that was universal in American practice.

As for field cable, the Germans had produced one item of marked importance.

Manufactured in lengths which could be

5

 (1) Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 1 (April,

1934), pp. 7 ff., No. 10 (July, 1936), pp. 13-17, No.

13 (April, 1937), pp. 8-9, No. 15 (October, 1937), p.

7, No. 18 (July, 1938), p. 12, No. 22 (July, 1939),

p. 12, No. 24 (January, 1940), p. 9. (2) Signal Corps

Technical Letter, No. 38 (January, 1945), p. 24. (3)

SCL, Annual Reports, 1936, pp. 21-22, 1937, p. 31,

1938, pp. 33 ff., 1939, pp. 42 ff., 1941, pp. 30-31. (4)

Historical Report of the Signal Corps Engineering

Laboratories, pp. 149-56, 161-62; (5) Hist Sec E&T

Divs OCSigO, History of Signal Corps Research and

Development in World War II, 1945-46, Vol. V, Pt.

1, Proj (510) 2-4, Pt. 3, Proj 532 (4.32.1), Pt. 4, Projs

574-A, 574-B. SigC Hist Sec File. (6) Rpt, C&E Coordination Bd OCSigO to Chief Com Coordination

Br, 26 May 42, sub: Case 17 types of W-110 concentric vs. parallel lay. SigC C&E Case 17 Com Coordination Br Types of W-110. (7) TM 11-487, Electrical

Communication Systems Equipment, pp. 55 ff. (8)

Maj. Gen. Roger B. Colton, "Army Ground Communication Equipment," Electrical Engineering, LXIV,

No. 5 (May, 1945), 173-74. (9) Interv, SigC Hist Sec

with Col James D. O'Connell, CO SCEL, Belmar,

N.J., 14 Apr 47. 6

 Partly because it makes the line easy to tap, by

electrical induction. FM 11-35, Signal Corps Intelligence, 2 Sep 42, pp. 17-18.
116 THE SIGNAL CORPS

readily handled in the field, their cable

could be laid quickly and joined by means

of pluglike connectors two inches in diameter. Loading coils which much increased

conductivity, range, and general efficiency

could be inserted into the connector. This

was the subsequently famous four-conductor or "quadded" cable captured and

copied by the British and still later adapted

by the Signal Corps as spiral four.

Standard German field telephone sets

were a No. 26 and a No. 33. No. 26,

powered by two battery cells, utilized a

hand-cranked magneto generator and a

buzzer for calling; it weighed about fourteen and one-half pounds. No. 33 used

only one battery cell and weighed twelve

and one-half pounds. The Signal Corps'

superior EE-8 weighed but about ten

pounds. For small-scale switching in the

field, the German army had a two-line

board which measured only six by six by

two inches and had been developed to the

stage of replacing the bell or buzzer with a

light. The Signal Corps had nothing so

convenient until well along in the war,

when the small plastic SB-5 was produced. The Germans used two types of

lightweight ten-line switchboards, one

with shutter indication, the other with

audible calling, which compared to the

Signal Corps' regimental BD-71 and BD72. The heavy field switchboard, for

thirty lines, fell in the same category as the

American division boards, BD-14 and

BD-89. In communications for their

higher units, both nations were replacing

hand-keyed Morse code with teletypewriters, the Germans having adopted the

Siemens and Halske telegraph printers as

standard.7

Radio

Wire was the primary means of communication because so much of the entire

activity was administrative and rear-area

traffic. For combat, however, an area was

now forming between the divisional wire

and the light assault wire where conventional means were being supplanted. The

twin doctrines of mechanization and mobility promised to send troops out of reach

of the rear wire very soon after a campaign

began; and so long as they might be moving, there would have to be a link between

the men at the back where the fixed equipment was and the men at the front with

the sound-powered telephones and the

lightest wire. Ultimately, this link was

accomplished either by spiral-four cable

or by radio relay. To the astonishing degree that voice radio came into use, however, displacing telegraphy and wire telephone everywhere in the forward echelons,

radio became the dominant tactical

communications equipment.

Until that stage was reached, the radio

equipment which the Signal Corps provided was a subordinate or an appendage

to the wire system. Radios were designed

for the specific uses of artillery batteries or

infantry divisions or interceptor squadrons; they were modeled according to a

conception of warfare which did not

require that they be able to bear the main

load or to intercommunicate extensively.

For the most part, the radios worked on

tone or continuous wave signals and in

the middle and high frequencies. Develop7

 They also used radioteletype in the war. See

Mobile Field Interrogation Unit 2, Prisoner of War

Intelligence Bulletin No. 2/18, 9 Dec 44, p. 18.

OCMH Foreign Studies Br File.

TM-E 30-451, Handbook on German Military

Forces, 1 Sep 43, pp. 159-83. This handbook describes

equipment in use several years earlier than 1943. The

tables outlining German radio sets, opposite page 168,

are identical with tables drawn up by the British, entitled German Wireless Transmitters and Receivers,

and extracted from Periodical Notes on the German

Army, No. 22, Jun 40. SigC ET 413.44 German Sets

(Wireless Transmitters and Receivers), Copy 5 of 7,

T 1324.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 117

ment had reached the stages beyond, but

the equipment in the hands of the troops

necessarily represented a point several

years behind research. The hand-cranked

generator was usual, the small loop antenna common, and manual tuning nowhere replaced by pushbutton control.

The equipment was generally bulky and

heavy, even pack sets being "two-man

portables" often enough, and vehicular sets

being more precisely transportable by horse

or truck, from which they were removed

to the ground before setting up in business.

In none of these aspects was the equipment

obsolete; almost all of it was soundly designed and much of it was in wide use in

the forthcoming war. It was obsolete only

in the laboratory, where engineers perceived a multitude of refinements which

could be made in it, and, overshadowed by

the threat of war, felt pressed to put them

into effect.

The chief users of the tactical wireless

equipment were the infantry division with

its supporting ground and air artillery; the

cavalry division and later the armored;

the coastal defense site; and the air group

or squadron. The three oldest sets—no

older than much of the wire equipment,

although they could not, like the wire, go

through an approaching war unchanged—

were the SCR's 131, 161, and 171. The

remarkable SCR-131 did see some wartime service in training camps, but with

its companion sets had already been overtaken by later development. These three

were continuous wave, short-range, loop

antenna, portable or semiportable, regimental sets, the 131 being intended for

the Infantry and Cavalry, the 161 for the

Field Artillery, and the heavy 171 for

ground-to-air control and even division

headquarters use.

A second group of ground radios could

be distinguished by their intended use for

point-to-point and ground-to-air communications, as well as by the fact that they

employed the superheterodyne receiver.

These were the series 177-78-79 and the

188. They, too, were designed for stationary ground use, but at longer range. All

were heavy enough to need to be carried

about in a vehicle, or, in the instance of

the 179, which was an already obsolete

version made for the Cavalry, by a horse.

The SCR-177 was primarily a Coast Artillery Corps set, the 178 was for the Field

Artillery, and the SCR-188 was thought of

as an Air Corps set. The transmitters had

power up to 75 watts, which was sufficient

to send Morse code by continuous wave or

tone signals for distances approaching one

hundred miles, especially in the air, where

the signal could be received much farther

than ground receivers could discern it.

The voice transmission of these sets was

limited to twenty miles or so. Utilizing the

upper reaches of the middle frequencies

and the lower reaches of the high frequencies, they operated chiefly in the region

just above the broadcast band, except for

the 188. This Air Corps ground set, originally calibrated for the range between

6,200 and 7,700 kilocycles, subsequently

extended its frequency coverage down to

1,500 kilocycles and up to 12.5 megacycles.

Any of these sets, each weighing hundreds

of pounds, had to be operated from the

ground, drawing its power from a gasolinedriven generator and a dynamotor and

radiating its signals from an antenna

supported by a thirty-foot mast.

The same disadvantages attached to

comparable radios in other armies—the

German 80 W.S.2, for example—but the

knowledge that such was the case in no

way diminished the compelling need to

overcome them. Thus, although the SCR177 and the SCR-188 were in frequent

use for several years to come, the function
118 THE SIGNAL CORPS

THE SCR-131 in operation at Fort Monmouth in 1941.

which they were principally intended to

serve was changing as dramatically as all

other aspects of the use of air power, and

as a result they seemed far out of date

when highly portable sets, mobile sets,

crystal-controlled sets, and frequencymodulated sets appeared. Under the pressure not only of the Air Corps but of the

Armored and Infantry arms, the drive for

equipment to meet the sudden new tactical concepts replaced most of the Signal

Corps radios in the 100 series, filled the

200 series, left the 300's and 400's almost

entirely open in case daring changes

should be reconsidered and drastic decisions recalled, and went on to the 500's

and 600's for a whole scale of brilliant

development.8

The rapid change was very greatly more

marked in airborne radio, which was still

an almost wholly new field. If the SCR8

 (1) Signal Corps Information Letter, Nos. 1-16

(April, 1934-January, 1938), passim under Development of Equipment. (2) SCL, Annual Report, 1941,

p. 71. (3) R&D hist cited n. 5(5), Vol. VIII, Pt. 3,

Projs (823) 10-11, 833-A. (4) C&E Cases No. 3, Purchase of 1500 Additional SCR-288 Radio Sets, 15 Nov

41; No. 6, Substitution of Radio Set SCR-284 for

Radio Set SCR-290 for the Coast Artillery Corps, 14

Nov 41; No. 55, Tab D, Signal Equipment Suitable for

Standardization Within and Between Corresponding

U.S. Army and British Commonwealth Army Units,

18 Nov 42. SigC Files. (5) TM 11-227, Radio Communication Equipment, 10 Apr 44, passim. (6) Interv,

SigC Hist Sec with Capt W. W. Van Winkle (formerly

assigned with com systems in Panama), Signal Corps

Sidelights, Vol. I, Pt. 1, pp. 222-26. SigC Hist Sec File.

(7) CSigO, Annual Report, 1945, p. 398. (8) History of

the Philadelphia Signal Corps Procurement District,

III, 627 ff. SigC Hist Sec File.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 119

131 continued in use, its contemporaries

in air equipment did not. Aviation in 1939

was too different from that of the 1920's

for items to be carried over from the earlier

period. The old 134, the liaison set for

bombers, had been replaced by the 187

and a 287 modification. The SCR-187

had been initiated at the first inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when it was

used in a nationwide broadcast of an air

view of the ceremony; and in the next

year, 1934, SCR-187's had been aboard

the pioneer flight of Air Corps bombers to

Alaska. This long-range airborne communications equipment was very sound. Its

transmitter was so dependable that it was

employed for ground use as well, as a

component of that work horse of early

vehicular radios, the SCR-193. Its receiver

was notable as the first airborne receiver

to incorporate the superheterodyne circuit

successfully. The 187 did not begin to be

replaced until late in the ensuing war, and

even then the receiver component continued in use on long-range aircraft. One of

the reasons for its long life was its adaptability to frequency changes. For instance,

to obviate the development of a new set

whenever the Air Corps shifted to a different frequency band, the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory used plug-in tuning coils, so

that all that was needed in order to change

frequency was to remove one coil assembly

and plug in another.

The opposite number of the long-range

liaison set was the short-range command

set, in this period the SCR-183. Like the

SCR-187, the 183 had been designed to

operate on the 12-volt storage battery then

standard in aircraft. By this time, a 24-volt

battery had become standard, and accordingly an SCR-283 was being readied to

supplant the 183, just as was true of the

287 and the 187. The SCR-183 weighed

somewhat less than fifty pounds. This was

one point which outmoded it, for aviators

had a dread of anything that increased

the weight of their craft. "The attitude of

most of the flying people," a Signal Corps

officer remarked with rueful bias, "was

that when war came, the radio equipment

would be left out of the plane and the corresponding weight would be used to carry

more machine gun ammunition or more

bombs."

 9 Another mark against it was

that its maximum range—a continuouswave range—was forty-five or fifty miles.

The newer pursuit planes could pass beyond that in a few minutes of flight. True,

the pursuits were still on the drafting

board, and hard reality kept the SCR183/283 in standard service until 1943.

Nevertheless, aircraft radio design had

to keep up to aircraft design, and accordingly the Air Corps Technical Committee

proposed a command set of a radically

different sort, which the Signal Corps began to develop as the SCR-240. This was

a noteworthy departure. Nothing like it

had yet been introduced in ground equipment; for both the transmitter and the

receiver were to have crystal control, in

the new sense of a presetting of the crystals

for automatic finding of the frequencies.

To extend the range of a command set

outward toward one hundred miles, as

would be true of the SCR-240, was a great

advantage, but it was an even greater one

to make possible a quick and easy selection of channels. Relieved of the tedious

and delicate business of dial tuning, the

operator would have only to flick a switch

or press a button. Inasmuch as the operator in a pursuit craft was the pilot himself,

this was an improvement which the Air

Corps awaited with understandable impatience. The 240, however, was not destined

to fill the bill. Its development, standard- 9

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Lt Col W. G. Eaton,

SigC, ARL, 25 Oct 44.
120 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ization, and procurement lost time all

along the way, and two years elapsed before the Signal Corps let contracts for it.10

Only a few SCR-240's were produced before they, with their 24-volt partner, the

SCR-261, gave way to the crystalcontrolled command set of the World

War II period: SCR-522.

Meanwhile, the search for a satisfactory

command set took two other turns. First,

the Signal Corps standardized one of its

own Aircraft Radio Laboratory highfrequency models which the Navy was

already having manufactured. Designated

SCR-274-N, for Navy, despite its origin in

Signal Corps design, it became one of the

most widely used command sets of the war.

Although it was manually tuned and

weighed seventy-five pounds, it had the

advantage of a range which reached out

to 150 miles. The Aircraft Radio Corporation, Colonial Radio Corporation, and

Western Electric built thousands of them,

the last alone turning out 100,000 by the

end of 1944. Plans for another command

set, which was to have been the very high

frequency SCR-264, faded; but they did

result in a model which illustrated the

Laboratories' first attempt to move above

the conventional, crowded, high frequencies into the then almost untapped very

high frequencies.11

To the command, or short-range, sets

and the liaison, or long-range, sets which

provided airborne communications, radio

compasses added a navigational complement. Navigational radio was an outgrowth of World War I direction finding,

which had taken two divergent paths, one

for signal intelligence to follow in the

locating of enemy radio stations, the other

to develop the means by which both ships

and airplanes might take bearings upon

radio communication stations. It was the

second form which included both the

radio compass in the airplane and the

navigational aids on the ground. On an

instrument panel, the airborne compass

looked like the familiar magnetic compass, although it pointed not to magnetic

north but to the ground transmitter to

which it was tuned. The radio compass,

SCR-186, which had threatened to split

the Aircraft Radio Laboratory apart had

now become a dead issue, and the SCR242 was the model in general use. A radio

compass was necessarily light—the one

used with the SCR-274-N weighed only

six pounds—but the ground navigational

aids were proportionately heavy because

they had to receive a comparatively weak

signal from an aerial distance. The ground

set which the Signal Corps then had in use

was a Navy item. A cumbersome apparatus mounted on a tower, and employing a

large H-shaped Adcock antenna which

had to be rotated by hand, it was nevertheless excellent equipment, and, after

there had been deliberation over it until

the war was already begun, it did get into

wide service.

10

 Exhibit A to Memo Rpt, Lt Col Alfred W.

Marriner, Asst Tech Exec Air Mat Div, for Tech

Exec, 6 Aug 41, sub: SigC deficiencies. AF 322.081

SigC Activities 1932-45. 11

 More than anything else, the crystal problem

seemes to have blocked early German development of

very high frequency airborne transmitters. The Germans used only the lowest frequencies of the VHF

band, those between 38.2 and 42.6 megacycles. In the

course of the war, they did use frequencies running

above VHF into the UHF span. They did so, for example, in radio link equipment comparable to the

so-called antrac (AN/TRC) sets of the Signal Corps.

(1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with 1st Lt Lloyd A.

Severson, Signal Corps Sidelights, Vol. I, Pt. II, p. 309.

SigC Hist Sec File. (2) MID WDGS, Mil Attache

Rpt 59499, London, 4 Aug 43, sub: German UHF

beamed coms radio type, with incls. (Inclosure 2 dates

the examination of the captured equipment at 7-14

December 1942.) SigC 413.44 German Sets (ET)

T 1324.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 121

The development of radio compasses,

radio beacons, radio ranges, and other

types of navigational equipment had led

also to apparatus for instrument landing

systems, by which "blind" pilots could be

precisely lined up with the airstrip, directed down the glide path, and safely

landed. The equipment had to be accurate

to the nth degree and the ground components highly mobile so that they could be

shifted from one runway to another as the

wind changed. The Aircraft Radio Laboratory had begun to work on the earlier

forms of this equipment, particularly devices to indicate angle of descent, and to

show, on the compass itself, deviations to

left or right. Microwave indicators held

the most promise, and, awaiting only the

delayed approval of the National Academy of Sciences, the Signal Corps and Air

Corps had already chosen Sperry Gyroscope equipment developed in collaboration with Stanford University and the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

All of this radio gear, whether for air or

ground, was essentially for heavy tactical

use rather than for the light, mobile, and

lower-echelon demands in sight since the

Texas maneuvers had tested a new ground

conception and the Spanish conflict had

demonstrated a new and deadlier capacity

of air power. There were in addition to

these dozen sets or so another half dozen

which were becoming as important singly

as many of these together. They were the

sets of the immediate future: the vehicular

radios SCR-193 and SCR-245, the first

walkie-talkies SCR-194 and SCR-195,

and the last long-range ground set before

the achievement of coupling range to motion, the SCR-197. Even more significant

of the prospect were the beginnings of frequency modulation, the Link FM equipment SCR-293 and SCR-294. The impact

of emergency gave all of these sudden

impetus.12

Radar

But the most futuristic of all radio sets

was unquestionably radar. Few knew

about it, but those who did were certain of

its importance. The two years of development which had followed the dramatic

tests of May 1937 had consolidated the

SCR-268 and brought forth two other

models of ground detector equipment, the

mobile SCR-270 and the fixed SCR-271.

These were the first generation of descent

from the parent equipment; and, like

them, all of the future airborne radar,

MEW radar, and radar countermeasure

devices of the Army, each creating families

of its own, traced their heritage in a direct

line from the SCR-268.

The early demonstration had been successful enough to provide justification for

the first serious expansion which the Laboratories had been able to undertake in

anticipation of the war. Promptly a Radio

Position Finding Section had been formed,

to work solely on improving the SCR-268.

The day after the demonstration, the project engineers had begun to dismantle the

12

 (1) Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 1 (April,

1934), p. 9, No. 2 (July, 1934), p. 9, No. 9 (April,

1936), pp. 10 ff., No. 7 (October, 1935), p. 9, No. 13

(April, 1937), p. 8, No. 16 (January, 1938), pp. 12 ff.,

No. 17 (April, 1938), p. 11, No. 18 (July, 1938), p.

16, No. 20 (January, 1939), p. 23, No. 21 (April,

1939), p. 8. (2) ARL, Annual Reports, 1931, pp. 23,

32, 34, 1932, Projs 6, 9, 10, 1933, pp. 16, 21, 23, 1934,

pp. 13, 19-20, 1937, p. 11, 1938, pp. 7, 18, 1939, pp.

9 ff., 19, 1940, p. 22. (3) R&D hist cited n. 5(5), Vol.

III, Pt. 2, Proj 304-A, Vol. I, Pt. 3, Proj 105-A, p. 7,

Proj 101-A Proj 304-B, p. 7. (4) John A. Miller, Men

and Volts at War; the Story of General Electric in World

War II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,

Inc., 1947), p. 158. (5) Ltr, Asst Chief of AC to CSigO,

10 Oct 39, sub: Proc of instrument landing system,

with 19 inds. SigC 160 Gen Contract 26.
122 THE SIGNAL CORPS

equipment preparatory to moving it, because the Chief of Staff, Gen. Malin Craig,

although impressed by it, had also been

impressed by what he felt was an inadequate amount of secrecy for it. After a

brief period of negotiations, the equipment

had been established at Fort Hancock on

Sandy Hook, where, along the holly-grown

dunes of the lonely spit reaching toward

one of the most densely populated areas

of the world, Captain Corput, the project

officer, and Paul E. Watson, the civilian

chief of the new section, set the scene of

the work.

In many ways Sandy Hook was a

natural choice. Fort Hancock was a reservation of the Coast Artillery, for whom the

work was being done. The spot was, moreover, not far from Fort Monmouth, and,

because it lay athwart heavily traveled

military and commercial air routes, would

have the same advantage for detecting airplanes by radio pulses as it had had several

years previously for detecting ships by

heat transmissions. Finally, the location

had the advantage of being a peninsula

from which the curious could be easily

warded off, inasmuch as there was but

one land approach. Disadvantages, however, were almost as great. Sandy Hook

barely clears the ocean; so that the effort

to get the antennas up high enough led to

expedients like the use of four 100-foot

spruce poles, and, a little later, to a request

for room in the Coast Guard lighthouse

station at Navesink, where the Atlantic

Highlands reach a peak of 225 feet. Sandy

Hook also was wholly exposed to the

weather—a baking summer heat, an icy

winter, and seasonal gales which reached

their peak in the devastating hurricane of

September 1938. The most distinct drawback of all was the mere fact of the transfer; it caused a loss of several months

which, to the impatience of the principal

customers, the Air and Coast Artillery

Corps, had to be added on at the other

end of the research span.

The initial stage after the move had

settled down involved a thorough redesign.

Continuing to test the equipment in the

laboratories, after the important visitors

had departed, the project engineers proved

to themselves again what they already

knew: that there was much to be done before the device could be called an accurate

antiaircraft aid. The thermal element

almost immediately proved disappointing, and the step-by-step motor which

powered the vertical antenna broke down.

"You will see," Lt. Col. William R. Blair

explained to General Allison, "that the

equipment is still mechanically crude and

not very reliable, but it is remarkable that

most of our troubles have been mechanical

rather than radio. . . ."

 13

 The pulse-andecho theory was as sound as the theory of

the compression engine. It needed only

the mechanical contriving to make it work.

Both Blair and Allison moved off the scene

just then, Allison leaving office and Blair

being overtaken by an illness which caused

his retirement a year afterward.

Along the mechanical labyrinths indicated, the growing staff continued the

work. One engineer remade the transmitter, another experimented with a cathoderay oscilloscope receiver, another built antennas. Among those who made significant

contributions, although not necessarily

this early, were Harold A. Zahl, who pioneered in the development of an ultrahighfrequency vacuum tube; James Moore,

who principally worked out the valuable

double-tracking or lobe-switching system;

13

 Memo, Dir SCL for CSigO, 26 May 37, sub:

Tests of AA detection apparatus. SigC FM (SCL)

413.684 Proj 113.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 123

John J. Slattery, who constructed transmitter antennas; John Marchetti, who

contributed to the final design of the keyer;

Melvin D. Bailer, who developed the final

form of the SCR-268's transmitter; John

Hessel, the engineer of some of the earlier

models of the receiver; and Arthur Vieweger, Robert Heller, and Paul Watson,

the chief, who made equivalent contributions to what became the SCR-270.14

A detachment of men of the 62d Coast

Artillery Regiment, Antiaircraft, stationed

at Fort Hancock, augmented the manpower, not merely by guarding the secret

site but also by helping to build the equipment and try it out. They were representative of the skilled enlisted man who would

be expected to cope with the new detector,

and it was invaluable to see how they met

its problems. Their commander, 1st Lt.

Albert F. Cassevant, also threw in his lot

and built an experimental transmitter

which worked well enough to be put to

use in the course of the ensuing service

tests.15

The project continued at first in both

the 110- and 240-megacycle versions, and

with the heat-detector unit as well. All

three disappeared before the third and

final type of the set had been achieved.

For the oncoming service test, which had

been set for the end of the fiscal year, June

1938, the availability of tubes determined

choice of the 110-megacycle model over

the 240-megacycle, which could go no

farther, it appeared, without a specially

designed transmitter tube. To generate the

enormous amount of power needed to send

a pulse hard enough so that there would

still be something left of it when it rebounded was a matter of the greatest concern. A series of tests on all available highfrequency tubes was resolved temporarily

in favor of the RCA model used at the

May demonstration, despite the fact that

it took such excessive voltage that its average life was less than twenty hours. A

transmitter using six tubes instead of the

original two was decided upon, and a

model built after the RCA transmitter

design. Meanwhile, the Laboratories let a

contract to Westinghouse for a more

powerful tube.

Interested visitors watched the progress

of the work. In January 1938 the Chief

Signal Officer came and departed well

satisfied; in February the General Staff

sent another representative; and in March

the Chief of Coast Artillery paid a call. By

this time, a number of odd, desolate buildings, half hangar, half barn, had been

planned for the gale-swept reservation.

They had to be high, because they were

antenna shelters; and except for nails, they

could contain no metal much above

ground level because of the misleading

echoes which metal would produce in the

equipment. Both Western Electric and

Westinghouse were to take up firsthand

positions at the site, the government to

put up eight of the antenna shelters for the

former company and a large trapezoidal

structure for the latter.

Experiments and dry runs increasingly

pointed toward final elimination of the

thermal element. Its claim had been accuracy. Project engineers now believed that

they could achieve a comparable accuracy

without so much trouble. A method known

as lobe switching, suggested by the principle of the radio range station, brought

14

 Heller subsequently drowned while on duty in

Panama for the installation of some of the first SCR271's. Watson died in 1943. 15

 Cassevant's long experience with radar later

caused him to transfer from the Coast Artillery Corps

to the Signal Corps, where, among other assignments,

he subsequently became commanding officer of the

Evans Signal Laboratory.
124 THE SIGNAL CORPS

about this change. Whereas two towers of

a range station transmitted an A signal

and the other two an N, thus creating two

dot-dash and two dash-dot lobes of coverage which merged at their outer margins

and told the pilot that he was "on the

beam," the same principle, applied to the

detector equipment, suggested building

the receiving antenna in double array,

each to cover the lobe of the angle at

which it was erected. An antenna system

which could be switched from one lobe to

another received not one echo but two,

which could thus be co-ordinated on the

oscilloscope with considerable precision.

Again, the theory was sound, and again,

the challenge lay in solving the mechanical

difficulty.

In June 1938, Colonel Colton became

director of the Laboratories.16 At the same

time, the opening of a new fiscal year made

an opportunity to redefine the program,

to give substance to developments which

had been apparent all through the past

year. The work split four ways, although

with the emphasis still almost wholly upon

the original project, the one now officially

designated SCR-268 in a secrecy as impenetrable as the Fort Hancock site. What

emphasis was left was directed to the first

offshoot, which was to become the SCR270/271. The Radio Position Finding Section was not yet in a position to do much

about the third and fourth segments of the

radar program. These two projects merely

left room to expand in later on. The main

work had not reached them. The third

was intended to explore the avenue left

open by the experiments, earlier in the

decade, to detect enemy surface vessels as

they approached a friendly coast; it eventually led to equipment called the SCR296.17

 Experience with radar having

already been sufficiently dazzling to suggest that anything might be possible, the

fourth was a miscellaneous category, from

which emerged in time, and among other

items of equipment, the range-finder

SCR-547.

Although the work had begun with the

single goal of producing a searchlight-laying device for antiaircraft batteries, there

had been many evidences that the equipment ought to go beyond that stage and

lay the guns directly, without the intermediary of searchlights. If specifications

could be changed in order to permit it,

and if the forthcoming service test could

be hurdled, there was hope that the primary project would mature as a shortrange, mobile gun layer. Since the Naval

Research Laboratory was much more advanced than the Signal Corps in shortrange radar, as much consultation occurred as mutual secrecy tolerated.18

The entry of the Air Corps as an interested customer determined the need for a

model of longer range, to provide early

warning to interceptor squadrons. A

change was taking place in this area also.

Mobility, important to a detector in use

by an antiaircraft crew, did not seem essential to one intended to scan at long

range from a permanent defense site.

Range rather than mobility was the prime

requirement there. In theory, an airplane

93 miles away could be detected at a

thousandth of a second,19 but an airplane

930 miles away would take ten times as

long to be detected: a full hundredth of a

second. These were the postulates; but the

16

 Lt. Col. George L. Van Deusen and Capt. David

E. Washburn had served as interim directors. 17

 SCEL hist cited n. 5(4), pp. 316-18. 18

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Gen Mauborgne, Ret.,

Washington, D.C., 1 Dec 48. 19

 I.e., the radio impulse traveling at the speed of

light, 186,000 miles per second, and going out from

the detector and coming back to it.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 125

increasing speed and range of aircraft,

and hence the need to find them earlier

and farther, was a sharp reality. Watson

was accordingly designing the great fixed

towers which became characteristic of the

SCR-271, in the hope of extending the

range as far as line-of-sight coverage permitted. Mobility was nevertheless quite

urgent enough to be retained in the specifications, and as a result the Air Corps

equipment, soon after it became a separate project, subdivided into what

became known as the SCR-270 and the

SCR-271, the mobile and fixed early

warning detectors.

The need for mobility had forced SCR268 development into higher megacycle

bands: from 110 as far as 240, although it

settled at 205. Because the early warning

equipment did not have to be primarily

mobile, it could work with the large antenna which the use of longer waves made

inescapable. The SCR-270/271 work

started out with the RCA long-wave

transmitter first built before the gun-laying and early warning functions had

become distinct. In August 1938 a preliminary model found a bomber at seventyfive miles, but more was looked for as of

the time when the Westinghouse tube

would be ready. This item now belonged

to the 270/271 effort; the contract had

been let with the specific anticipation that,

although the work in progress at the time

might not need such tubes, the long-range

detector certainly would. In October, the

company delivered the first samples,20

and there was hope that the range specification could be more than doubled. It

was set at 50 miles, and the engineers

wanted to extend it to 120. Many of the

engineering problems on the equipment

were made simpler by virtue of the SCR268 work which had already occurred.

The circuits were in 110 megacycles, for

example; and for another, there was no

need for double-tracking accuracy, or

hence, for lobe switching. Even height

finding was not called for in the Air Corps'

original specifications.

Experiments to use a single antenna

system for both transmitting and receiving began in that same autumn, and by

spring were consolidated in a noteworthy

contribution made by Dr. Zahl, who, by

applying the spark-gap principle to the

joint switching mechanism, for the first

time made it possible to switch the power

from the transmitter to the receiver and

back again. The design of the SCR-270/

271 was good enough altogether for the

transmitter to serve all through to Okinawa and the end of the war. Okinawa

was not thought of then. At the outset of

the project, Panama was the first-priority

destination as soon as the equipment could

be made.

The Fort Monroe weather was overcast

and uncertain in November and December 1938, just as in 1919, when it had

frustrated Hoffman's early thermal tests

at nearby Langley Field. As a result, the

heat-detector unit did not prove itself.

More than 4,000 readings brought the

conclusion that the SCR-268-T1 fell short

of the mark in accuracy. The specifications called for a maximum deviation of

one degree in both azimuth and elevation,

but the average error was nearly four degrees (70.9 mils) in azimuth and more

than two in elevation. Actually, the error

was not so great as that, for the figures averaged readings taken at all angles. It was

then imperfectly understood that radar's

sharp eyesight became blindness at low

20

 The Signal Corps nomenclature given to the tube

was VT-122. It remained standard in all World War

II SCR-270's and 271's.
RADAR. The SCR-268 is shown above in action in the Nettuno area of Italy, and the

SCR-270, below, is shown installed in the Ryukyu Islands.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 127

angles. From this point of view, a shortrange set was especially likely to fail. Yet

although the azimuthal error was indeed

bad, the elevation error was not: it was

close enough to the deviation allowance

to be encouraging. The heat-detector element nevertheless could not survive this

demonstration, and again and finally

went out of the specifications for both of

the Coast Artillery Corps detector

projects, this and the SCR-296. The engineers willingly dispensed with it, for lobe

switching gave them a much better

substitute.

If the SCR-268 had faltered in this aspect, however, in others it had won

through. For the first time, the flight of

artillery shells was reflected upon an oscilloscope; and, after a bad moment when a

relay jarred open, the equipment appeared to be rugged enough to withstand

the shock of nearby gunfire. Its range, furthermore, was distinctly superior to what

was required, another fact which led to

the stepping-up of work on the longerrange SCR's 270 and 271. An experimental pressure-cabined bombardment

airplane, precursor of the B-29, had flown

in to Langley from Wright Field; and this

short-range set tracked it to thirty miles.

The most unexpected triumph of all came

during trials with a B-10-B which was

being used in one of the regular night

tests. The pilot was supposed to keep within a 160-degree arc over land; but without realizing that he was being blown off

course by a high gale he got sixty miles

out to sea before he surrendered to the

urgent warnings of the SCR-268 engineers

who had him exactly plotted on the oscilloscope. This misadventure helped to persuade Air Corps opinion that the equipment could be considerably more than an

intermediate accessory to air patrol.

Radar gave promise of patrolling at as

long a range as an airplane could, at the

same time giving the skies a much finer

combing. Most noteworthy, however, was

the fact that in this return of the hapless

B-10 to the safety of land, radar heralded

its use as an aid to air navigation.

In little more than a month after the

service test was over, the Coast Artillery

Board wrote up its decision. Electronic

detectors would replace their sound locators so soon as they could be standardized and produced in quantity. The time

lapse between a service test and general

field use put this prospect some distance

into the future, and sound locators did not

forthwith collapse on the junk heap, to be

replaced by the newest thing in radar.

Even farther in the future was the hope to

eliminate searchlights. Searchlight-control radar remained standard throughout

the oncoming war.21 Further, since the

device could give an ack-ack crew the

data for firing, the board could hope to

put aside the searchlight specification, in

order to plan in terms of the magic invisibility which was its true spirit.

With lobe switching reducing the antenna size, a 205-megacycle SCR-268-T2

model was ready by May 1939. It was

never service tested, because the beginning of war in September left no question

of the priority of the early warning set. Instead, Type 3—the SCR-268-T3, a genuinely mobile set even if short of what had

been hoped for—was quickly standardized and put into production on the unimpeachable ground that something

would be better than nothing. The SCR268 "assumed an odd role" in the war.

Nobody liked it very much but everybody

wanted it very badly... . Its performance

21

 AN/TPL-1.
128 THE SIGNAL CORPS

was satisfactory for pointing searchlights, although it was considered too bulky. It was

not quite accurate enough for precision gunlaying, but it was the only available American set that permitted an effective antiaircraft barrage through overcast. Its power

gave it greater range than necessary for

either of these . . . purposes, but not quite

enough ... for ... early warning. . . 22

By June 1939 the early warning radar

was undergoing daily tests from the twotowered Navesink lighthouse station, the

"Twin Lights" of the coastal region. It

tracked Mitchel Field aircraft out to

ranges approaching 150 miles, but no

more than 80 could be relied on. The first

of the Westinghouse tubes had now been

built into the transmitter. It was a very

large water-cooled triode, oscillating at

the 110 megacycles determined for the

equipment; at its peak, it gave the extraordinary output of 100 kilowatts. However, 110 megacycles indicated a wavelength of nearly nine feet and proportionately large antenna size. If electronic

detection were to achieve variety and flexibility, large rotating antennas and huge

towers were out of the question. The British were using even very much longer

waves; their emerging Chain Home system, a chain of 240-foot and 350-foot

towers fencing in the homeland, housed

radar constructed in the 23-megacycle

band.23 But with thirty times as much

area to protect, the continental United

States could not consider anything so

fixed. Microwaves looked like the answer.

The original research had begun in microwaves. If a tube could be evolved which

empowered microwave transmissions, the

whole course of radar development could

change.

The two versions of the early warning

equipment were now confirmed. It was

the SCR-270 particularly which was

being tested from the Twin Lights station;

the set was to be trailer-mounted and at

least as mobile as trucks and highways

could make it. The other series, the SCR271, was intended for fixed locations, usually in permanent buildings. The course

of the war which made fixed radar vital

to the United Kingdom passed it by so far

as the United States was concerned. The

SCR-268 and 270, not the SCR-271, were

sets which saw the wider use, for the very

fact that they were movable, and the

SCR-270 remained standard throughout

the war. In that final peacetime summer

it was approaching its service test, at a

rate considerably accelerated over the

schedule of the SCR-268. Whereas more

than a year and a half had elapsed between the day when the original 268 was

shown to the high command and the day

when the Fort Monroe readings began,

the SCR-270 service test and its preliminary unveiling were almost simultaneous.

This event took place late in the year.

The war had begun in Europe; Poland lay

conquered. Again Secretary of War

Woodring, Gen. George C. Marshall and

Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, and other

official visitors were present for a demonstration. This time two models of equipment were used and two sites chosen, one

being Twin Lights, the other, West Peak

in Meriden, Connecticut, a thousand-foot

rock formation not far from the center of

the state. From the eastern tip of Long

Island to the New Jersey coast beyond Atlantic Highlands, the two sets tracked target aircraft, one following the northeastward course, the other the southwestward,

and consolidating their information by

22

 Harry M. Davis, The Signal Corps Development

of U.S. Army Radar Equipment, Pt. II, 1945, pp. 96-

97. SigC Hist Sec File. 23

 Rowe, One Story of Radar, p. 32.
EQUIPMENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH 129

telephone for it to be plotted. At one

point, the Twin Lights station suddenly

went off the air, but a sigh of relief followed when Secretary Woodring was discovered to have brushed the stop button

on the rectifier unknowingly. Continuing

tests through December proved the set,

and in May 1940 the Army adopted it.

Thus the Army arrived at the onset of

war in possession of radar. Barely in possession, but in the race with competitors.

British radiolocation research jumped

ahead under the stimulus of war, just as

did American work two years later, when

the United States felt the impact. Lord

Beaverbrook picturesquely compared the

Chain Home system to the golden cockerel which crowed at the enemy's approach. In the close alliance formed by

war, Britain opened some of its secrets to

France. Neither the Soviet Union, Italy,

nor Japan had radar, but in 1940 the Japanese began to employ pulsed radiations

and by 1942 produced early warning sets

comparable to the SCR-271 and 270,

these being the Taichi-6 and 7 respectively.24

 Germany had not only the Wuerzburg and Freya, but also other types in

process at various stages from blueprinting

to initial manufacture. When the combatants began to use airplanes in World

War I, the Wrights' invention was eleven

years old and had been in the public domain during that time. When World War

II began, radar was less than four years

old and a heavy secret. To those confronted with the problem of getting American radar into full-scale action in the

conflict, the comparison had some point.25

24

 Taichi means land-based. R. I. Wilkinson, "A

Short Survey of Japanese Radar," Electrical Engineering, LXV (August-September, 1946), 370-77 and

455-63. 25

 A number of sources other than those already

cited for this section are pertinent to it, the work of the

late Harry M. Davis, in fact, being continuously valuable. Among the sources are: (1) Davis, The Signal

Corps Development of U.S. Army Radar Equipment,

1945, Pts. II (already cited) and III; (2) A Brief History of the Development of Aircraft Detection Equipment by the Radio Position Finding Section of the

Signal Corps Laboratories, Ft. Monmouth, N. J.,

1945; this appears also as Chapter X of the Historical

Report of the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories;

(3) A Brief History of Early Radar Development in

the U.S. Army, 1945; in a slightly abridged form, this

is to be found also under the title Early Radar Development Work by the Signal Corps. All in SigC Hist

Sec File. (4) Ltr, President SigC Bd to CSigO, 22 Nov

39, sub: Demonstration of SCR-270-T1 scheduled for

29 Nov 39, Incls 1 and 2, draft speeches. SigC CE 334

Case 312, Folder 1. (5) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with

Arthur L. Vieweger, Tech Staff Evans Sig Lab,

Belmar, N.J., 15 Apr 47. (6) Notes on German Radar

and on Ultra and Infra-Red Equipment, 29 May 45,

6824 DIC (MIS)/M. 1168. OCMH Foreign Studies

Br File.

The following are printed sources: (7) Harold A.

Zahl, "From an Early Radar Diary," Coast Artillery

Journal, XCI, No. 2 (March-April, 1948), 8-15. (8)

Roger B. Colton, "Radar in the United States Army:

History and Early Development at the Signal Corps

Laboratories, Fort Monmouth, N. J.," Proceedings of

the IRE [Institute of Radio Engineers], III, No. 11

(November, 1945), 740-53. (9) "Radar: the Technique," pp. 142, 144-45, 196, and (10) "Radar: a

Primer," p. 140, both in Fortune, XXXII, No. 4

(October, 1945). (11) I. E. Mouromtseff, "A QuarterCentury of Electronics," Electrical Engineering, LXVI,

No. 2 (February, 1947), 171-77. (12) M. J. Kelly,

"Radar and Bell Laboratories," pp. 221-55, (13)

"Radar: a Story in Pictures," pp. 256-82, and (14)

F. R. Lack, "Radar and Western Electric," pp. 283-

94, all in Bell Telephone Magazine, XXIV (1945-46).

(15) "The SCR-268 Radar," Electronics, XVIII

(1945), 100-108. (16) David O. Woodbury, Battlefronts of Industry, Westinghouse in World War II (New

York and London: J. Wiley, 1948), pp. 104 ff., 268 ff.

(17) A. H. Sullivan, Jr., "German Electronics in

World War II," Electrical Engineering, LXVIII, No. 5

(May, 1939), pp. 403-09.

PART TWO

THE LIMITED AND UNLIMITED

EMERGENCIES

CHAPTER VI

The Pace of Emergency

The whole military arithmetic multiplies "Men, Material, and Me," the useful

catch phrase of West Point lectures. Infinite variety resides in them. Apart from

Me—a matter of personal concern, vital

but up to the individual—the other two

represent the aims of military preparedness at any stage. Men and equipment,

equipment and men, are the two ends of

the same quarterstaff, the striking power

of the Army.

To the 1939 Signal Corps the problem

of men was not so much acquiring them as

training them. Numbers were less significant than capability. The organization was

certainly smaller than it wanted to be; but

so long as war stood off at a distance there

was no prospect of extreme increase, and

the important thing was to make sure that

the men on hand could execute the signal

mission. This mission was performed with

equipment which in the case of the Signal

Corps was always specialized and often

intricate enough to throw the whole

schedule of training well back of the point

at which an emergency would create a demand for finished products. The readying

of equipment could be measured at the

successive stages of laboratory test, service

tests, field tests. The relative preparedness

of the human side of the equation could be

tried out in field problems, maneuvers,

and ultimately in "games" whose imitation of war approached the actuality.

Since its reduction after World War I,

the Signal Corps tactical mission had

stood virtually unchanged. Tactical theory

had not. New developments pressed in,

particularly ground mobility and air

power. The provisional Infantry division

typified one, the accelerated importance

of aircraft warning, the other. In the persisting point of view of the Signal Corps,

both gave more exigency to the old question never settled to its satisfaction, the

argument for a unified field signal system.

Communications were by nature single,

and responsibility for them ought not to

be divided: in essence, this was the Signal

Corps position.

Still spelled out in the words of 1921,

the Corps' ground tactical mission carried down only through the divisional

level. During two decades when no higher

echelon than a division existed, and when

even divisions existed only in fractions,

this arrangement seemed effectually to

wipe out all Signal Corps tactical responsibility and to alter its position as a combat

arm. Responsibility for construction, operation, issue and basic maintenance stopped

short of the brigade; and from there on,

the Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry, not

the Signal Corps, carried communications

forward "to the barbed wire" (the Signal

Corps could never forget that General

Pershing had given his signal officer, Brig.

Gen. Edgar Russel, responsibility "for all
134 THE SIGNAL CORPS

communications from St. Nazaire to the

barbed wire").1 Controlling their own

communications, the combat arms moreover devised their own signal organization

and conducted their own signal training.

Apparently, then, the tactical duty of

the Signal Corps was chiefly a matter of

developing and supplying equipment

which it was not to use, and of training

men whom it was not to supervise. Signal

Corps officers frequently found themselves

wishing that the whole determination

rested with them. They felt that they

could be trusted to know what was best,

because they were the Army's communications experts.

The Signal Corps was charged with the

training of specialists and of special units.

Such technical supervision, carried

throughout the field forces,2 was a duty of

long standing, and existed in other technical services, but it often put the Signal

Corps in a quandary. When developments

advanced signal equipment into the realm

of electronics and signal tables of organization to the stage where specialists and

special units were listed well front in the

order of battle, as seemed to be foreshadowed in radar, aircraft warning companies, and radio intelligence companies,

there was one problem. When, on the

other hand, improvements made signal

equipment simpler, then the Signal Corps'

argument for specialists was weakened

and, in its effort to control tactical communications, it had less reason to plead

operational complexities and the need for

detailed training. If, for example, page

teletype were to supplant Boehme, or

pushbutton voice sets take the place of

continuous wave, then the Signal Corps

mission could be almost limited to development, installation, and maintenance.

These were service functions, not tactical.

Yet the Signal Corps had always been

an arm as well as a service. Was it to

abandon its dual role? Should not the Signal Corps once again furnish all communications in the Infantry, and communications in the Field Artillery at least

through the regimental level? "It is not my

intention to present any new argument,"

General Mauborgne wrote to General

Craig.3 "The War Department is thoroughly familiar with the entire subject

and what has been done." He merely

wanted to say that he had learned that an

informal survey taken during the Texas

tests of the proposed triangular division

had shown the Infantry predominantly in

favor of the Signal Corps view, the Field

Artillery against it, and corps area commanders "about equally divided pro and

con." Why not effect a compromise, "turning over Infantry communications to the

Signal Corps and leaving Field Artillery

communications unchanged? " 4

He had no more success in extending

Signal Corps tactical boundaries than any

of his predecessors had had. The General

Staff did declare his proposed signal company satisfactory for the new division,

allowed a division signal officer a small

reserve of signal troops to move about

from one duty to another, and gave radio

intelligence companies a place in the table

of organization for field armies. But the

General Staff did not change its view that

field communication is an instrument of

field command, and that communications

1

 Memo, Maj Gen George S. Gibbs, Ret., for Gen

Marshall, 27 Jun 40, sub: Sig coms requirements in

preparation for war. SigC 381 Gen 16, Mar-Aug 40. 2

 FM 100-5, Tentative Field Service Regulations:

Operations, 1 Oct 39, par. 86. 3

 AG Ltr to CSigO, 24 May 37, sub: SigC troops

for test of proposed inf div. AG 320.2 (5-5-37)

(Misc.)-C. 4

 Memo, CSigO for CofS, 13 Jun 38, sub: Coms for

Inf and FA. SigC 676 Gen, 1918-38.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 135

troops should belong to the field arms in

which they serve.5

Uniform training and co-operative staff

action were therefore all the more worth

stressing. Actual use of the walkie-talkie or

the sound-powered telephone, as well as

the simple training required for them,

would be in the hands of the forward

troops. Use of SCR-268's, 270's, and 271's

would require special training, of units

which the Air Corps or Coast Artillery

Corps would probably take over. Middleand long-range transmitting and receiving

equipment and all the network of wire

where tactical communications approach

the strategic would, like radar, require the

closest possible technical supervision. For

tactical signal officers who might feel frustrated by an apparent obligation to make

up systems composed of differently trained

men, the answer would lie in their ability

to serve two masters: their branch of the

service and their field assignment. The

obligation of officers assigned within the

Signal Corps itself was to think in terms

flexible and various enough to satisfy the

needs of all arms and integrated enough to

respond to the entire Signal Corps

mission.

Somewhat the same situation existed

with aircraft warning. It should have been

expected to fit squarely within the framework of national military planning. Unlike the triangular division, which was a

weapon being forged to strike an offensive

blow, an aircraft warning system was a

defensive measure. Defense of the homeland in the most unassailably moral sense

it was, and therefore public support was

not lacking for it. Nevertheless, the Aircraft Warning Service was something of a

maverick within the armed forces. Nobody was quite sure who owned it. Responsibility for air defense, including the

Aircraft Warning Service rested with the

commanding generals of the four continental armies and of the overseas departments.

Studies made in 1931 for erecting a

warning service upon the existing AntiAircraft Artillery Intelligence Service had

produced the conclusion that it would be

a mistake to assign anything so extensive

to a single arm or service, because it would

embrace both military and civilian agencies and would merge telephone, telegraph, and radio facilities.6

 Aircraft warning was a command function, like tactical

communications. In relation to it the

Chief Signal Officer found himself in

much the same position as with Infantry

or Cavalry responsibility. There had to be

aircraft warning equipment to suit both

the Coast Artillery Corps and the Air

Corps. The Signal Corps was preparing

ultimately to offer SCR-268's, 270's, and

271's, but no frontier or sector commands

existed, as must be the case if these radars

were to be assigned, their sites chosen, and

their crews trained. The general assumption was that individual aircraft warning

services would cover the nation's coastal

frontiers and oversea possessions, in terms

of large, fixed defense installations.

Already composed of sound locators,

searchlights, harbor artillery, mines, and

5

 (1) AG Ltr to CSigO, 3 Aug 38, sub: Requirements for SigC pers. AG 320.2 (3-2-38) (Misc.)-C. (2)

WDGS WP&T Div, Texas Infantry Division Reorganization Training Tests, Sec 3, Signal Communication, pp. 95-109. 6

 Eventually the Air Corps came to be the party

most concerned, although especially after the invention of radar the Signal Corps was scarcely less involved. (1) Memo, ACofS WPD for ACofS G-3, 30

Nov 31, sub: G-3 study 6 Nov 31 on rpt of joint ACAA exercises Langley Field Mar 30. WPD 3640. (2)

Arthur P. Watts, History of the Air Defense Command, pp. 92-98, and Apps. 1, 4, 5, 6. AF Archives

COMD-AD-AAF-HI, 26 Feb 48 (1804-1).
136 THE SIGNAL CORPS

interceptor airfields, these aircraft warning sites would be further enhanced by the

new electronic detectors.

The aircraft warning program was up

for study simultaneously with the communications problem of the new ground

army. The Signal Corps was told to plan

aircraft warning companies for both the

fixed defenses and the mobile forces,

"making the maximum use of existing

facilities, including commercial, military

and naval installations."

 7 Extensive preparation for detector sites, information

centers, and the aircraft warning units

began in the summer of 1939. At the same

time, the last of the series of peacetime

maneuvers got under way.

Testing Tactical Communications

War was now close enough so that

maneuvers seemed less strange to the localities where they occurred, although

often still unwelcome. Citizens who denied

the approach of war were likely to object

to the presence of any army at all; and

those who felt it near found no comfort in

the thought of being defended by this one.

To the altogether uninitiated, the maneuvering was no more than a few summer

Guardsmen picnicking in the open and

staying off the highway when told not to

jam up the Saturday traffic to the beach.

Faced with shortages in equipment and

personnel, signal officers usually drew on

the local market for both. Thus, as often as

not, exercises which had been designed to

train the Army under modern conditions

of war used a civilian wire communication

system, with rented civilian equipment

and with pole lines constructed by civilian crews, and dependent largely upon

civilian switchboard girls, teletypewriter

operators, telephone installation and

maintenance men, linemen, and clerical

help.8

When communications troops arrived

for maneuvers, their officers ordinarily

had only about three weeks to train and

organize them into headquarters signal

sections, first in groups according to their

duties and later as signal sections under

supervision of the signal officer. Location

of command posts was a lame compromise. Commanders realized that sites in the

field would give valuable training, afford

a basis for testing equipment and for

ferreting out weaknesses in organization,

put factors of time and space in proper

perspective, and give desk officers a feel of

the ground. But the proper thing was not

easy to do. Communications troops were

required not only to conduct the theoretical problem but also, as an immediately

practical mission, to put in a communication system for the umpires and keep it

going; construction by commercial contract was unrealistic; temporary lancepole lines were undependable in bad

weather; and a want of enough leased

trunk lines between army and corps

would in part defeat the object of the exercise. Consequently, command posts

often were placed, not in actual field position, but instead in the nearby town or on

the military reservation, in order to be

served by the existing cables.

Troops were still practicing with old

equipment and often setting themselves

7

 (1) AG Ltr to CSigO, 10 Mar 39, sub: AWS. AG

660.2 AA (3-8-39) (Misc.)-E. (2) WPD file 3640,

passim. The Chief Signal Officer submitted an initial

study on 26 June 1939 and estimates on 28 August

and 3 November 1939. 8

 See, for example, (1) Wisc. Telephone Co., Communications Report, Second Army Maneuvers, August 1-31, 1940; (2) Traffic Dept, Southwest Bell Telephone Co., Report on Commercial Telephone Communications for Anti-Aircraft Warning Service, U.S.

Army, etc., 7-11 May 40. SigC 354.2 Second Army.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 137

problems which had mellowed out of

World War I. To make an exercise look

like even a moderate success, commanders

assumed existence of conditions which

some of them knew would not exist when

the troops were committed to war. The

few airplanes sounded like eggbeaters, and

in any case the maneuverers fought a

ground war. Except in the airplanes and

for the horse cavalry, radio was wholly

contingent upon wire. There was no frequency problem with wire, whereas the

radio art as it then stood, with every band

allocation crowded, did not permit operation of an entire army net without interference. One maneuver report after

another emphasized the importance of

wire—wire in constantly increasing

amounts, because good voice communication was to be vital to any army whose improved vehicles allowed it to stretch over

a wide area. Yet if troops were to traverse

a wide area, a wireless system would seem

to be indicated, and gradually the reports

began to present this view also. "There is

a real need for securing new data on the

use of radio in a war of movement," a

Third Army signal officer had anticipated

long before, and he was not alone.9

The summer of 1939 was no climate for

war plans and war maneuvers. Talk of

foreign quarrels emphasized the fact that

they were foreign. Defense measures such

as a program for 5,500 airplanes blew

gustily about in Congress; the military

held up a wet finger, not sure what the

weather was to be and remembering the

last tempest uncertainly. Newsreels of a

mighty parade down the Champs Elysées

suggested that France had an invincible

army; and the fact that there had been no

world war after any of the crises of the

past decade softened the alarm felt as the

Germans produced a sinister six-month

schedule of them. March 1938, September

1938, March 1939 had threatened and

passed over. There was no reason to know

that September 1939 would bring the final

crisis.

Remarks made by Maj. Gen. Hugh A.

Drum in anticipation of his first Army

maneuvers showed the state of things

military clearly enough. "The First Army

as it has taken the field this month," he

said, "is not in fact an army." It was a collection of individual units, partially

equipped, "woefully short" in almost

everything which experience suggested

was essential. There were no corps or

army headquarters. Division headquarters

were skeletons. If he filled in the gaps with

antiaircraft and coastal defense troops,

and from the National Guard, the ROTC,

and the Reserve, he did so by sacrificing

their normal duties and training them in

functions other than those they needed

practice in.10

Yet the exercises must be held, whatever

their shortcomings. In them, in an effort to

imagine a situation which did not exist,

which nobody wanted to exist, but in

which the Army found its reason for

existence, the mission of each branch of

the service stood out clearly. It was hard

to know whether the mission were being

executed. How know, for instance, whether

you were successfully killing any of the

men opposite you when you had distinguished none of them as enemies? Devoid

of the fears and suspicions which alone

give war a meaning, war games had fundamentally none. Much of the routine

aspect of Army peacetime maneuvers

9

 Ltr, Col James H. Van Horn, Sig Officer IV

Corps, to CSigO, 23 Oct 36, sub: Rpt on Third Army

command post exercise. SigC 354.2 Third Army,

1936. 10

 Congressional Record, 76th Cong, 2d Sess,

LXXXV, App., p. 237.
138 THE SIGNAL CORPS

came directly from this lack of source.

They were a double negative.

Negatively they could test many things.

If, for example, assault wire worked in

Wisconsin, it might or might not work in

Burma; but if it did not work in Wisconsin, it could certainly not be counted upon

for the ruggeder use of war. Even the

prospect of maneuvers could show up

wants. The two especially urgent signal

equipment needs were radio communication for vehicles in motion, and wire systems which could carry heavy message

traffic at longer ranges than customary.

Wire systems always took precedence in

the maneuver planning. Consideration of

teletypewriter equipment was much in the

foreground because of the obvious need to

speed up telegraphy. The TG-5 was right

enough for the telegrapher himself, but

field commanders were loath to use it

because of the inconvenience of having to

write the message out by hand and get an

operator to pound it out. The Signal Corps

Laboratories had been tentatively working on their lightweight field printer for

several years.11

Now the First Army maneuvers, at

Plattsburg in upper New York State,

toward the end of August 1939, put commercial teletype equipment to field tests.

Colonel Colton, who was there as an

observer, thought it impracticable in rapidly moving situations and urged continued development of the Laboratories'

field printer, the TG-7-T3, which he preferred to any of the commercial printers

then in use.12 To the extent that the maneuvers had been heavily dependent upon

leased teletypewriter service, he was right,

for no army could afford to assume that

the Bell System would be on hand wherever needed. Colton also felt that the chief

signal deficiency during the Plattsburg

maneuvers was the lack of standardized

telephone switchboard facilities at division, corps, and army level. Everyone

praised the EE-8 field telephone, and

Colton spoke well of W-110 field wire.

Army and corps message centers at Plattsburg handled no radio traffic. Their radio

was set up only on an emergency basis, so

supplementary to wire that it was not

called into use at all during the maneuvers.

But despite the pre-eminence of wire,

vehicular radio was a much more pressing

question. Artillerymen and infantrymen

alike used the obsolescent loop-antenna

ground radio sets SCR-131 and 161, as

well as the longer-range 171. The operators themselves rather liked these old

radios because they could take hard

knocks with very little need for repair. But

they were continuous-wave sets only, and

like the field telegraph made it necessary

for all messages to be written out upon a

blank form and then sent in International

Morse code. Voice communication was

to be desired, and to a degree it was available. The SCR-193 and SCR-245 were

vehicular equipment with which it was

possible not only to communicate at sixty

miles by the conventional continuous

wave, but also to get fifteen-mile communication, by voice and while in motion,

over the headset and microphone. These

were standard equipment, but the sounds

received were often forced to swim through

a sea of static.

For its maneuvers, the First Army had

been provided with too few SCR-245's

and, at that, with no homogeneous sets. In

at least one case, an organization went all

11

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 9 (April,

1936), p. 12, and No. 14 (July, 1937), p. 9. 12

 Ltr, Col Colton, Dir SCL, to CSigO, 20 Oct 39,

sub: Observers' rpts on First Army maneuvers at

Plattsburg 20-26 Aug 39. SigC 354.2 First Army 3,

1938-Oct 39.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 139

the way through the maneuvers without

benefit of vehicular radio. This was the 1st

Tank Company. About a week before

departure for Plattsburg, the company

had received ten SCR-245's, but the sets

lacked cords and could not be installed.13

The Signal Corps had been able to issue

components only piecemeal as they were

developed and procured, now a transmitter, now a receiver, now an antenna, now

a battery. Public economy still required

the Army to exhaust old equipment or

parts before obtaining and issuing anything new. Consequently, field units had

to request individual components over a

period of several months before they could

assemble any kind of set, and the result

was generally heterogeneous. Ordinarily,

moreover, the field troops had not sufficiently trained their men to install the

radios. The only unit which met this problem at all well was the 7th Cavalry Brigade

(Mechanized), probably because of the

presence of Capt. Grant A. Williams, an

officer who claimed a pioneer's part in the

development of tank radio.

In this field, the SCR-193 and 245 were

not ideal. Williams said that "the old

SCR-193 . . . bears almost the same

relations to communications as the Springfield Rifle does to the Infantry."

 14

 It added

200 pounds to the vehicle which carried it

and had to be manually tuned, with the

ever-present likelihood of cutting in upon

somebody else's frequency. Signal Corps

engineers got much experience in suppressing vehicular radio noise from their

troubles with the 193, which they could

never get to work satisfactorily in a moving

vehicle until they discovered ways of

eliminating the crackling static created

both by the tank's electrical system and by

the friction of the treads.15

Along with the SCR-177 and 188, the

stationary ground sets, the SCR-193 and

245 were among the early Signal Corps

equipment to employ the superheterodyne

receiver. Hitherto, Army receivers had

used only the tuned radio-frequency circuit, which was simple and sturdy but not

very sensitive. When the initial patent

rights to superheterodyne radio expired

and better tubes began to be made, the

Signal Corps Laboratories had developed

two new receivers, and it was the second

of these, the BC-312, which both the 193

and the 245 employed. The SCR-245 was

even heavier than the SCR-193, and its

operator had to manipulate no fewer than

seven tuning regulators. But at the wish of

the Infantry, Cavalry, and Field Artillery,

the Signal Corps had equipped it with

both crystal and master oscillator circuits.

As the Laboratories' initial step toward

the use of crystals to control the frequencies in combat radio, the SCR-245 had

specific significance; and in any case,

despite their cumbersomeness or interference or the annoyance of having to assemble them in driblets, both of these vehicular

radios were points of advance.

A really promising pair of items of

Signal Corps equipment in 1939 maneuvers was the SCR-194 and 195. They were

the first walkie-talkies. They were the

Laboratories' earliest experiment in shortrange radiotelephone transceivers, the

13

 Memo, Capt James D. O'Connell, O/C Radio

Com Projs SCL, for Dir SCL, 16 Oct 39, sub: Comments on First Army maneuvers Plattsburg. In same

file.

14

 Ltr, Col Grant A. Williams, Ret., to Dr. G. R.

Thompson, OCMH, 3 1 Dec 49, p. 9. SigC Hist Sec

File.

15

 Yet even after the advent of its successor SCR506, the 193 remained in very wide use for infantry

divisions. Of the nine vehicular sets assigned to the

radio section of the signal company of an infantry

division as late as 1944, eight were SCR-193's. TM

11-227, Radio Communication Equipment, 10 Apr

44.
140 THE SIGNAL CORPS

THE SCR-177. Receiving position showing the BC 314-C and BC 312-C receivers.

fused word transceiver indicating alternate

transmitting and receiving on the same

two tubes. Crystal calibration was built

into them. The 194 operated in a Field

Artillery frequency range of 27-52 megacycles. The 195 was set at 52-65 megacycles for the Infantry. Both were thus

experiments in very high frequency. Designed for use on the ground, in a vehicle,

or on a soldier's back, model sets weighing

about twenty-five pounds had been tested

as early as 1934. At that time the Laboratories had decided to take out tone transmission, for Morse code, and make them

voice sets only. In this way they became

field radiotelephones, and shadows of

things to come. Equipped with dry batteries and whip antennas, revised models

had passed Infantry and Field Artillery

service tests in 1935 and 1936, and were

supposed to have gone into production

and first issue in 1937. Short of being produced under a wartime program, however,

and issued to a wartime army, they

remained all but nonexistent. The interesting difference between them and some

of the other items developed during the

mid-1930's was precisely in their promise.

They were distinct efforts at mobility,

notably divergent from conceptions of

immobilized warfare.

The SCR-194 and 195 represented,
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 141

moreover, determined attempts to break

through the frequencies barricade. The

frequency bands allotted to military use

seemed chock-full. To serve the conventional ground arms with them had appeared to be as much as could be hoped

for. Then when the expansion of the Air

Corps began, when Infantry communications were pinpointed almost to the individual soldier, and when an armored force

took shape, the demand for frequency

allocation threatened a nightmare. When

the 1st Armored Division, for example,

wanted one hundred radio channels, the

Radiofrequency Control Section could

assign only forty-five. At that, "the congestion which will occur within the Armored Force will be extreme," the section

chief, Maj. Wesley T. Guest, commented.

"[It will] tax to the fullest extent the

capabilities of the SCR-245 and SCR-193

sets."

 16

The efforts to escape overcrowding had

been prodding radio to notable advances.

One was the increasing attractiveness of

crystal control, because a process which

disciplined a radio, as crystals could, into

remaining strictly upon its own frequencies

saved other sets from cross drift and somewhat eased the congestion simply by helping to get the most use out of each frequency. Along with this, the effort to open

more channels had driven radio development into ever higher frequency bands.

Supposing a channel to be 10 kilocycles

wide (10,000 cycles), there would be 100

channels in the span of 1 megacycle

(1,000,000 cycles). Thus if equipment

could be successfully set at megacycle calibrations, there would be room in the very

high frequency and ultrahigh-frequency

bands for all sorts of special purposes. To

the Signal Corps, parceling out the Army's

allotted bands, so much to one service, so

much to another, this meant that while

the long-range corps and division sets had

to remain where they already were, a

whole segment of short-range sets all the

way to platoon radios could be transferred.

The lower section of the frequency band

would be relieved; the upper section would

not be filled up for some time.

This line of reasoning presumed an

orderly development. It did not take into

account an upheaval in communications

which would throw upon American military radio a burden as big as the globe.

The Laboratories engineers had turned

their attention to stretching the rigid allotment by developing equipment in the very

high (or ultrahigh) ranges, when peace

exploded. The Germans roared into war,

the United States entered a limited

emergency.

FM

One cast of opinion, within both the

Signal Corps and its using arms, held that

war abroad and maneuvers at home

argued for basic changes, possibly for a

whole new body of equipment to meet the

new tactical organization and doctrine

now winning acceptance. Colton, being in

a position to do so as director of the Laboratories, and urged by Watson, Capt.

James D. O'Connell, Hessel, William S.

Marks, and others, frankly set about to

create a demand for more effective radio

communications, especially for better stabilized tuning and for radio sets which

could be precisely held to frequency by

the use of crystal control. Assembling into

a display almost everything which the

Laboratories had ready, he started it off to

16

 Memo, Maj Guest for CSigO, 19 Aug 40, sub:

Armored Force radio com. SigC 413.44 Armored

Force (Sets) 1, 1940.
142 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the combat arms.17 "Compared to the

equipment that was to come, his 'bag of

tricks' was small indeed. He did have an

SCR-245 with an actual bona fide crystal,

an SCR-197, an enormous thing in a truck

tractor and a big house trailer, some primitive forms of microwave beam equipment

and a pilot model of a ... Police set

built under Armstrong."

 18

 The destination

was Fort Knox, Kentucky, headquarters

of the Mechanized Cavalry Board. For

three weeks in October and November,

1939, the Signal Corps showed its equipment. Ultrahigh-frequency models in 400,

600, and 1,200 megacycles were the

particular object of pride.

But what was most to ease the problem

of frequency congestion, although its early

limitations and untried potentialities as

yet denied it more than a scattering of

Signal Corps support, was also on display

at Fort Knox. It was frequency modulation. Army radio equipment was amplitude-modulated. If all that could be done

to escape overcrowding was to move development from high frequencies to very

high and from very high to ultrahigh, the

ultimate prospect was not encouraging. A

solution to the problem of producing a

radio free from interference and static

involved not merely moving to very high

frequencies but finding better ways of

using them as well. Stormy weather, lightning, and summer humidity all affected

radio reception, and the roaring, sputtering, and snapping set up by the unshielded

spark-plug system of gasoline engines

made vehicular radio almost impossible.

Skilled operators in attendance upon the

fixed equipment at a remote receiving station could often capture a message through

static and interference but were resigned

to being blacked out from time to time.

Vehicular radio was constantly beset. Even

when the truck or command car which

carried it was not in motion and its engine

not running, any other vehicle passing by

caused trouble and a march column made

the radio all but unusable.

Edwin H. Armstrong appeared to have

found a solution. He had by this time been

making contributions to radio science for

thirty years, his name being spoken with

Marconi's. His more recent experiments

had come to a visible climax in a great

steel tower transmitter set on the Palisades

at Alpine, New Jersey, and overlooking the

Hudson opposite Yonkers. This was the

first frequency-modulation transmitter.

The electronic industry had soon begun

following up Dr. Armstrong's invention,

and the General Electric Company had

made FM receivers and erected two FM

transmitters, one on the roof of its plant in

Schenectady, the other on the thirty-onestory State Office Building in Albany,

fifteen miles away.

In the autumn of 1938 Comdr. Joseph

R. Redman, USN, had seen the General

Electric equipment tested in Schenectady.

"He believes thoroughly," Colonel Crawford told General Mauborgne, "in the

future of frequency modulation as applied

to the requirements of the military serv17

 (1) SCL, Annual Report, 1940, pp. 24-25. (2)

Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj Gen Roger B. Colton,

Ret., New York, N. Y., 14 Feb 50. 18

 Ltr, Williams to Thompson, cited n. 14, p. 4.

"Colonel Williams' description of the last named set

was an error. It was originally intended for aircraft

work." MS comment by Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong, 17

Nov 51. SigC Hist Sec File.

Maj. Gen. James D. O'Connell subsequently

pointed out that the "bag of tricks" was a sizable one

at the time, representing major accomplishments in

FM. The microwave beam equipment was primitive

only in the sense that it represented the earliest form

of practical microwave radio. Actually, in production

at the Signal Corps Laboratories, it was running

ahead of the radio art of those days. MS comment by

Gen O'Connell, Deputy CSigO, 1953. In same file.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 143

DR. EDWIN H. ARMSTRONG receiving the Legion of Merit from Maj. Gen. Harry C.

Ingles, Chief Signal Officer, in 1946.

ices, particularly aircraft," and added his

own recommendation "that the Signal

Corps investigate frequency modulation

with a view to possible adaptation for

Army needs."

 19

 The Signal Corps did so

at once. Redman's suggestion of airborne

applications prompted the dispatching of

Lt. Col. Hugh Mitchell, director of the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, to look at the

Schenectady equipment. At the same

time, Oliver Lewis, a radio engineer in the

Research and Development Division, expressed his opinion that the disadvantages

of FM "far outweigh any advantages

claimed for increased power and freedom

from noise interference." In part, he cited

the wide frequency band which satisfactory operation would require, and Maj.

Tom C. Rives agreed with him.20 The

continuous incubus of Signal Corps engineers was frequency congestion; they

could not be expected to shake it off

readily.

For some fifty miles in the vicinity of

the transmitters at Schenectady and Albany, Mitchell rode in an automobile

19

 Memo, Col Crawford for CSigO, 8 Oct 38, sub:

FM. General Mauborgne added a note on the same

date, directing the memo "to R&D: for consideration." SigC 413.44 FM 1, 1938-39. 20

 Memo, CSigO for Dir ARL, 12 Oct 38, sub: FM,

with Buckslips, Oliver Lewis to Maj Rives, and Rives

to Lt Col Louis B. Bender, 12 Oct 38. In same file.
144 THE SIGNAL CORPS

containing a receiver capable of picking

up AM signals as well as the FM. The

contrast was impressive, especially in the

suppression of noise and interference. The

signals from the two FM transmitters did

not overlap, although they were being

radiated simultaneously on the same

41-megacycle frequency. One transmitter

operated with an output of 50 watts, the

other with three times as much, yet the

receiver would pick up now one, now the

other, the stronger always eliminating the

weaker despite the slight difference between them, whereas an AM signal needed

to be a good twenty times stronger than

any other competitor on the same frequency. Mitchell passed his enthusiasm on

to Mauborgne in a long and detailed

report. Not only was the prospect of noise

suppression in view, but with FM the same

frequencies could be used over and over

again in areas not very far apart. Mitchell

had no doubts about the immediate desirability of setting up a frequency modulation project at once in the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory.21 Presently a diversion of

funds would enable the Signal Corps Laboratories to add FM to their active projects. And from the Research and Development Division, Rives recommended that

the Signal Corps test it for use as ultrahighfrequency command equipment, mechanized vehicle equipment, and as a replacement for the SCR-194 and SCR-195.22

On 27 and 28 April 1939 the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory tested airborne FM receivers upon transmissions from the Schenectady and Albany transmitters and also

from the original FM tower in Alpine. The

Signal Corps representatives were again

impressed.23 Mitchell expanded the Aircraft Radio Laboratory project for the

very high frequency command model

SCR-264 so that the new set would be

both amplitude- and frequency-modulated, and at the same time gave General

Electric an order for FM sets. But frequency modulation did not find airborne

applications. Even two years later, by mid1941, General Electric had not delivered

the equipment. Throughout World War II

airborne radio remained amplitudemodulated.24

Thus it was that frequency modulation

would make its great military contribution in the field of vehicular radio. Deprecation from Western Electric-Bell Laboratories was overborne by endorsements from

his own staff, and Colton directed the

Signal Corps Laboratories to buy an FM

receiver from General Electric and to

make a mobile 50-watt transmitter. When

the Fort Knox show came up, the receiver

was not very sensitive, and the transmitter

was not very reliable because it was

reactance-modulated. Armstrong's aid

and pocketbook willingly entered the

scene, and a set was hastily put together

and flown to Kentucky.25 It was not by

any means the center or cynosure of the

collection because at this early period in

FM development, the equipment failed to

demonstrate marked superiority for military use. A few months later much better

performance was obtained. The Signal

Corps therefore put more of its time and

21

 Ltr, Col Mitchell to CSigO, 1 Nov 38, sub: Demonstration of FM vs. AM sigs. In same file. 22

 Memo, Maj Rives for Col Bender, R&D Div, 20

Apr 39, sub: Rpt on demonstration of AM-FM at

Schenectady 13 Apr 39. In same file. 23

 Memo, Capt Gilbert Hayden, Chief of Com

Unit, for Dir ARL, 3 May 39, sub: FM tests at

Schenectady. In same file. 24

 ARL, Annual Report, 1941, Proj 47, Item 3, p.

15.

25

 Intervs, SigC Hist Sec with Col James D. O'Connell, Dir SCEL, Shark River Hills, N.J., 14 Apr 47,

and Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong, New York, N.Y., 13

Feb 50.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 145

persuasive efforts into demonstrating the

other items up for view. Somewhat to his

surprise Colton encountered almost more

demand for better radio than he had expected. Captain Williams had been exploring crystal control and similar possibilities with other radio enthusiasts, a

course which had led him to Fred M. Link,

a young promoter and small manufacturer

of special emergency mobile radios. Link's

company had built the amplitude-modulated radios for the Connecticut State

Police, and was due to get the contract for

their frequency-modulated sets in the year

following.

Few demonstrations can have brought

together the inventor, potential civilian

and military users, and manufacturers as

the Fort Knox occasion did. The audience

as a whole was paying scant attention to

FM because it was not yet ready to prove

its case. A heater to provide an ample

supply of boiling water for field kitchens

excited much more interest, thanks to "an

enterprising Quartermaster Officer who

crashed the Signal Corps demonstration

and temporarily stole the show."

 26

On the afternoon of 16 November 1939,

frequency modulation received its first

demonstration before an all-military audience. A Link police transmitter and receiver provided the AM contrast. The

results seemed not altogether conclusive.

"Frequency modulation," read a subsequent report, "gives some promise of providing a somewhat greater discrimination

against ignition interference than the peak

noise limiter used in amplitude modulation. It does not appear in its present state

to be a complete cure-all which will permit noise-free reception of weak signals in

the immediate presence of [an] unshielded

ignition system."

 27

For some months after these Fort Knox

demonstrations, the Signal Corps Laboratories were unable to push FM. "Enthusiasm was high, but the means available did

not permit all-out pushing."28 Radar

research at the time outweighed radio and

the Radar (RPF) Section at the Laboratories got the lion's share of available

funds. Radar funds could no longer be

diverted to communications, and therefore

radio development was much slowed down

from November 1939 to August 1940.29

Meanwhile, Signal Corps radio engineers, having to content themselves with a

"wait and see" attitude, watched the commercial progress of Armstrong's new development. Colonel Mitchell, Director of

the Aircraft Radio Laboratory, said early

in 1940, "Frequency modulation equipment which we have on order with General

Electric has not been delivered to date so

our information on the subject is limited

for the present to work performed by

others."

 30

As the Fort Knox disappointment had

shown, the earliest versions of FM were

26

 MS comment by Gen O'Connell cited n. 18. The

amusing intrusion of the water heater was attributed

by Col. Grant A. Williams to Capt. C. Elford Smith,

Quartermaster of the 7th Cavalry Brigade. To quote

Williams: "He [Captain Smith] had purchased a type

[of inversion gasoline heater]developed in the upper

Middle West for use in freezing weather to keep water

in the tanks used for watering cattle from freezing.

He had set three of these up in G.I. cans and the water boiled furiously . . . attracting far more attention

from the spectators than the radio, much to the disgust of Col. Colton. Ample hot water was something

all could appreciate, radio was still a mystery to all

except a few experts and higher commanders." Ltr,

Williams to Thompson, cited n. 14, p. 4. 27

 SCL Engr Rpt 701, Summary of Demonstrations

and Tests of Radio Communication Equipment, 25

Nov 39, p. 9. SCEL, Ft. Monmouth. 28

 MS comment by Gen O'Connell cited n. 18. 29

 MS comment by Maj Gen Roger E. Colton, Ret.,

19 Nov 51, p. 7. SigC Hist Sec File. 30

 (1) Ltr, Col Mitchell to Maj Armstrong, 26 Apr

40. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40. (2) SCL, Annual

Report, 1940, Proj 10-a, p. 25.
146 THE SIGNAL CORPS

less efficient than they later became. The

first sets used reactance modulation, which

was not very stable and which could not

operate in motion. Vehicular FM became

really practicable for the Army with Armstrong's perfection of phase shift. At first,

too, the power output compared unfavorably with that of AM sets. At the time of

the Fort Knox demonstrations, it took 50

watts of FM to equal 10 watts of AM.31 A

year later the relation reversed in favor of

FM. There was a very serious drawback in

the fact that a single FM channel required

a band many times wider than an AM set

needed. Since it was not yet widely comprehended that a good many FM transmitters could all "work" the same frequency—this being the attribute which

would have erased the objection—and

since frequency channels were at a premium, the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer was prompted to plug its ears

against frequency modulation and listen

through static. These considerations,

which made some Signal Corps officers

reluctant to adopt FM too hastily during

early 1940, may have been further conditioned by the fact that the large radio

chains and much of the communications

industry opposed it, and were successful,

indeed, in delaying its general acceptance

even after World War IL Frequency modulation threatened them because it gave

promise of reopening commercial broadcasting to competition.32

 Amplitude modulation protected the commercial chains

against encroachment because the Federal

Communications Commission could not

permit a rival station to begin broadcasting on a frequency which would interfere

with the established station. In stocks of

home radio sets, all amplitude-modulated,

there was also a very large investment.

The Chief Signal Officer could not of

course commit his organization to FM

until he had proof that it was unquestionably superior in military short-range radios

and until he knew that industry was able

to manufacture intricate FM equipment

in vast quantities. He had to know that

frequency modulation was going to be

good enough to warrant total discard of

the SCR-131, 178, 194—standard and

well-tried sets. He had to be sure that each

of the arms wanted it enough to be willing

to come together on a few models, for the

War Department's annual appropriations

made him believe that multiplicity was

out of the question. Finally, crystal control would be vital for very high frequency

31

 It should be noted that the 10 watts of AM was

the unmodulated power. When the transmitter was

modulated, the peaks would go up to 40 watts power.

MS comment by Armstrong cited n. 18. 32

 RCA and its subsidiary, National Broadcasting

Company, particularly resisted FM. See: (1) Deposition of Paul A. de Mars, 2 Jan 42, Interference No.

79, 216, Armstrong vs. Hansell, U.S. Patent Office,

Washington, D.C., p. 186. (2) Hearings Before Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Senate: 78th

Cong, 1st Sess, On S. 814, A Bill to Amend the Communications Act of 1934, and for Other Purposes, 3

Nov-16 Dec 43; 80th Cong, 2d Sess, On S. 2231, A

Bill to Limit AM Radio Broadcast Stations to 50,000

Watts and to Provide for Duplication of Clear Channels, 5-23 Apr 48; 80th Cong, 2d Sess, On Certain

Charges Involving Development of FM Radio and

RCA Patent Policies, 30 Mar, 23 Apr, 12-13 and 21

May 48. (3) Hearings Before Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Senate: 80th

Cong, 1st Sess, On S. 1333, A Bill to Amend the Communications Act of 1934, and for Other Purposes, 17-

27 Jun 47; 81st Cong, 1st Sess, On S. 1973, A Bill to

Amend the Communications Act of 1934, as

Amended, 16-17 Jun 49. (4) Hearings Before Committee

on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HR, 80th Cong, 2d

Sess, On H. J. Res. 78, A Joint Resolution Relating

to Assignment of a Section of the 50-Megacycle Band

of Radio Frequencies for Frequency Modulation

(FM), 3-4 Feb 48.

(5) [Milton B. Sleeper, ed.], FM Radio Handbook

(Great Barrington, Mass.: FM Company, 1946), Ch.

I (Testimony of Major Armstrong before Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, 6 Dec 43), pp. 2, 6.

See also (6) "Revolution in Radio," Fortune, XX

(October, 1939), 86 ff.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 147

radio. The frequency would have to be

found precisely, because no manual tuning

could do in a jolting tank or jeep. Conversion of Army radio equipment to FM in

any degree at all would call for quantities

of crystals, machine-cut to the thousandths

of an inch in thickness. But quartz crystal

was an item of major strategic importance;

almost the whole supply came from Brazil,

and there was yet no proved method for

producing crystals synthetically. Another

year went by before demand forced the

decision.

Moves During the Winter

As the abrupt spectacle of the September conquest of Poland dimmed, the sense

of urgency which it had brought to military preparations in the United States

faded. Western Europe was supposed to

have settled into a contemptibly ineffective

war behind the Siegfried and Maginot

Lines. U. S. plans were adequate if they

met hemispheric defense. That in itself

was a long martial step away from defense

solely of the continental United States and

outlying possessions, but, to mention signal

units alone, there were not enough for the

tactical communications of even one army

in one land area. To contemplate manning the western Atlantic from Greenland

to Brazil and the eastern Pacific from the

Aleutian to the Galapagos Islands was out

of the question although only a year away.

The Protective Mobilization Plan envisioned relatively local limits to any theater

of operation, and thought of field forces in

terms of the four regional armies and the

GHQ reserve. It assumed, among other

things, that special organizations or equipment would not be necessary, and that air

superiority would be maintained.33 It did

not recognize the extent to which air

superiority might depend upon special

radio and radar services almost as important as the airplanes and pilots. Signal

Corps officer requirements under the Protective Mobilization Plan totaled only

319: 106 to serve with troops in the United

States, 22 with National Guard divisions,

48 for overseas service, 67 in the Office of

the Chief Signal Officer, 30 for corps area

commands, 10 for detail to the Air Corps,

31 for detail or assignment to other offices

of the War Department, and 5 for liaison

with the schools of other services.34 Overseas garrisons were not included in the

initial protective force, nor did any provision exist for mobilization assignments of

enlisted men.35

Despite what was generally called

"expansion,"

 36

 the situation spoke of unreadiness, inadequate supply, obsolete

equipment. Substituting vicarious for firsthand experience, the Army did its planning and training by guesswork, hoping

that the guess was good. There was cautious development of the triangular division, the mechanized Cavalry, and the

Aircraft Warning System. In the Signal

Corps there was cautious assessment of

FM and crystal control.

Along with other arms and services the

Signal Corps campaigned for recruits, not

very successfully. The campaign sought to

33

 Memo, Col Harry L. Twaddle, Actg ACofS G-3,

for CSigO et al., 10 Feb 41, sub: GHQ, reserve troops.

G-3/44984, and also SigC 326.21 Gen 1, Jan-Jul 41. 34

 Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-1, 14 Feb 40, sub:

Budget of SigC officers WD PMP 1939, with 1 incl.

SigC 381 Gen Mob 15, Jan-Feb 40. 35

 1st Ind, CSigO to CG Fourth Army, 10 Aug 40,

on Ltr, CG Fourth Army to CSigO, 2 Aug 40, sub:

Mob assignments Fourth Army hq. SigC 381 Mob

Assignment Gen 2. 36

 E. g., "The Signal Corps Expands," an official

release at a time when expansion could be measured

in inches. Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 107 (JanuaryMarch, 1940), pp. 51 ff.
148 THE SIGNAL CORPS

lure the unskilled young man with the

offer of technical training, a dignified approach which often foundered on the

young man's lack of an elementary education. There was no way to remove this

obstacle. To send and receive messages, he

had to be able to read and write. The

promise of Reserve strength was comparably uncertain. The Signal Enlisted Reserve

Corps, a perfunctory organization still on

the books from World War I, had dwindled in a statutory half-light from a peak

never better than 118, and now contained

nine men. It disappeared in the general

1940 suspension of reserve enlistments.

The Regular Army Reserve had been reestablished the year before as a preparedness measure, and offered real encouragement.37

 Yet it held only 473 signalmen.

The Officers' Reserve Corps contained

2,200 Signal Corps names; it was a certainty that not all of them would be available in an emergency. Although some

1,700 radio operators were members of the

Army Amateur Radio System and a few

thousand more had received AARS training, they could not be counted in precise

strength figures because there was no way

of knowing how many would be eligible

for Army service, nor any provision for

channeling into the Signal Corps those

who were.38

Tables of organization in general were

of little help. The allotment of men depended upon appropriations. Seldom did

the allotments fit the tables, and Col.

Dawson Olmstead said flatly that tables

were so detailed and so rigid that scarcely

a unit in the Army followed its table of

organization. He recommended that the

tables be abandoned entirely in favor of

organization charts, personnel allotments

being cited on the charts as a guide. These

charts would specify organizations, but

the commander could determine the

assignment of his available strength. Noting a weakness in this plan as it pertained

to the assignment of specialists, Mauborgne nevertheless sent it to the War

Department with his concurrence, but

tables of organization continued in use

and it became not a whit less difficult to

effect changes in them.39

The 51st Signal Battalion turned out to

be the nucleus for what expansion was

taking place or about to take place. Its

contribution toward the future of the

Army became clear after the United States

was involved in the war, when 82 percent

of its 1939-40 complement had become

officers and 16 percent sergeants of the

three highest grades.40 In the last three

months of 1939 the battalion gave up eight

officers and fifty-three enlisted men to

form cadres for new units, including, for

the first time in many years, another signal battalion, the 62d, activated at Fort

Sam Houston. The prewar expansion persistently borrowed from the left hand to

fill the right. The 1st Radio Intelligence

Company, less than a year after its own

activation, supplied a cadre of eight men

for the 3d when that company was organized in October. Students from the Signal

Corps School often filled up the ranks of

the 51st when it was needed at working

strength. Improvising a unit in this fashion,

to meet the demands of an exercise and

37

 "Today the number enrolled exceeds 20,000

men." SW, Annual Report, 1939, p. 28. 38

 Pauline M. Oakes, Army Command and Administrative Communications System, Pt. II, 1945, p. 61.

SigC Hist Sec File. 39

 Ltr, Col Olmstead, President SigC Bd, to TAG

through CSigO, 1 May 40, sub: Simplification of

T/O's, and 1st Ind, CSigO to TAG, 9 May 40. SigC

320.3 Gen 9, 1940. 40

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Lt Col Frank E. Herrelko, Phila., Pa., 12 Mar 47.
THE PAGE OF EMERGENCY 149

then to be dissolved, was a misleading

practice because it made things look better

than they were. Certainly it served no useful training purpose, because an improvised organization lived for its day only

and then died.41

Following the Plattsburg maneuvers,

the 1st Signal Company left Fort Monmouth to winter in Georgia. Unexpected

snow and ice added discomfort and, presumably, greater value to the field training, but so low was the strength of the

company that forty-nine recruits had had

to be assigned. They were given four weeks

of concentrated training before being put

on signal duty.

The new signal aircraft warning company emerged with the first of the year.

Having just seen the SCR-270 tests at

Navesink, Secretary Woodring announced

that a command would soon be set up in

the northeastern part of the United States

to prepare warning and defense against

air attack. The new command would coordinate Air Corps pursuit planes, Coast

Artillery Corps antiaircraft guns and

searchlights, and Signal Corps detection

and communication equipment. This was

the first move to give specific character to

the Aircraft Warning Service. For the initial tactical defense frontier within the

Aircraft Warning Service the War Department designated the nation's most valuable and concentrated target area, the

area approximately that of the First Army.

The Signal Corps now knew a little better

where it stood with the aircraft warning

function. Instead of serving an amorphous

coast-to-coast paper organization, it would

serve an Air Defense Command whose

headquarters were at Mitchel Field, Long

Island, and whose chief, Brig. Gen. James

E. Chancy of the Air Corps, would be an

immediate subordinate to General Drum.

Not only would it provide radar and other

equipment but supply and train the aircraft warning units as well.42

The very first such unit was not for the

northeast Air Defense Command, after

all. That headquarters came into being

on 26 February 1940,43 whereas on 1 January the War Department had established

a Signal Company, Aircraft Warning,

Panama and had ordered it to get ready

for transfer to the spot which defense

strategy most wanted to guard. Created

with an authorized table of organization

of ninety-three men, this company went

into training. At the secret preserve, the

men practiced the strange and uncertain

business of electronic detection, using the

fixed version, the SCR-271, and without

any promise that there would be radar for

them by the time they got to the Canal

Zone.

For General Chaney's new command,

General Mauborgne planned two aircraft

warning companies.44 One unit would be

designated a Signal Company Aircraft

Warning, the other a Signal Company

Operation. The former would have six officers, the latter five, and each 125 enlisted

men. Three of the officers would be Regular Army men, the remainder Reservists

called to duty for this assignment. The 250

41

 Col Owen S. Albright, "Army Signal Communication, Army-Navy Landing Exercise, Fourth Army,

January 15-22, 1940," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 108

(April-June, 1940), pp. 44-66. 42

 AG Ltr to CG First Army, 23 May 40, sub: AWS

continental U. S. SigC 220.3 ADC. 43

 For an account in full, see (1) Watts hist cited n.

6(2). (2) Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds.,

The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. I, Plans and

Early Operations: January 1939 to August 1942. (3) Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Defense of the

Western Hemisphere, a two-volume subseries in preparation for the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II. 44

 Memo, CSigO for Air Defense Bd, 25 Jan 40,

sub: Orgn of SigC troops for ADC. SigC 220.3 ADC.
150 THE SIGNAL CORPS

enlisted men would derive, the Chief

Signal Officer hoped, from an increase of

that amount in the Signal Corps. The

Signal Company Aircraft Warning would

operate both the detector equipment and

the information center, and organize and

supervise the ground observer system. The

Signal Company Operation would install,

maintain, and operate the usual signal

facilities other than its twin company's

special equipment. To an extent, it still

was true that, as Signal Service troops of

an Air Defense Command, these companies were neither Signal Corps fish nor

Air Corps fowl. Their commander was to

be Maj. Paul S. Edwards, signal officer on

General Chaney's staff.

Mauborgne assured General Strong of

the War Plans Division that, if the War

Department could recruit the 250 men

and authorize them to the Signal Service

of the Air Defense Command by the end

of February, they could be trained and

ready for the July maneuvers.45 This was

a real promise, because there was only one

SCR-270 to train them on. It was for lack

of another that the men destined for Panama were using a 271. The General Staff

had authorized the construction of a second 270 set, but no one would see it before

May.

General Mauborgne called attention to

the fact that each of the men must be

trained in Signal Corps specialties before

he could begin team training for his role

in the Air Defense Command. In order to

get them through the curriculum of the

Signal Corps School without delay, he offered to give priority to the men of this

group over all others who were waiting for

the course. He estimated a schedule of

forty-five days for school training, thirty

for combined training, and then assignment to field or maneuver training. The

Laboratories thought the minimum time to

train them even sketchily to install and

maintain an SCR-270 was ninety days.46

Few military men and few civilians were

acquainted with the intricacies of the new

development, because it had no commercial counterpart.

Conforming to these plans in most details, the 1st Aircraft Warning Company,

Signal Corps, and the 1st Operation Company, Signal Corps, came into existence

on 1 March 1940. The Signal Corps had

got a 1,600-man increase under the Protective Mobilization Plan in February, so

that there was no question of its carrying

the further request for the 250 men. The

1,600 were hypothetical, the 250 had to

be real; but there was still no question.

Signalmen from other units manned the

two new companies.

The center of Signal Corps attention to

the aircraft warning program now shifted

to Fort Monmouth, where Olmstead, as

commandant of the school, undertook the

work in co-ordination with the Air Defense Command.47

 Suppressing his dislike

for tables of organization and tables of

basic allowances, he began to have them

prepared for aircraft warning companies

all over the defense zone. To serve in

Puerto Rico: 4 radar stations linked by

45

 Memo, CSigO for Gen Strong, 27 Jan 40, sub:

SigC units for ADC. SigC 381 Gen-Mob 15, JanFeb 40. 46

 OCSigO R&W Action 2, R&D Div to P&T and

Supply Divs, 31 Jul 41, sub: AWS technicians Panama. SigC 353 Gen MT-38, Feb 39-Dec 41. 47

 (1) AG Ltr to CO Ft. Monmouth, 27 Feb 40, sub:

Activation of SigC cos. AG 320.2 (2-12-40) M (Ret)

M-C. (2) Memo, CSigO for Lt Col Harry L. Twaddle,

ACofS G-3, 2 Feb 40, sub: Allocation of increase of

1,600 enlisted men in PMP for SigC. SigC 381 Gen

Mob, Jan-Feb 40. (3) 2d Ind, CSigO to Chief of AC,

27 May 40, on Ltr, Capt John L. Hitchings, CAC

(Cav), to TAG, 20 May 40. SigC 676.3 (AWS) Gen

1. (4) Ltr, CSigO to CG ADC, 10 Jun 40, sub: ADC.

SigC School Hq 220.3 ADC.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 151

radio and (with one exception) by wire

also to the information center. To serve in

Alaska: 4 stations all communicating with

the information center by radio. To serve

in Hawaii: 8 stations, 3 communicating to

the center by wire, 5 by radio. For the

United States itself: 10 frontier companies,

of which 5 would have 2 stations each, 3

would have 3 stations each, and 2 would

have 4 stations each. Such was the Signal

Corps schedule for aircraft warning. The

number of men needed for the frontier

companies alone was 3,786.48

Fortunately, strength was now accumulating. Enlisted rolls had increased to six

thousand and the ratio of officers to enlisted men was one to twenty. Four times

as many Reserve officers were taking

fifteen-day tours of duty as had the year

before. Revitalization of the Reserve had

begun, officers being weeded out because

they were over the maximum age for the

rank which they held. One hundred and

forty-seven names fell under the red pencil. Nevertheless, the Reserve officer rolls

contained the names of 173 who had been

commissioned within the year, and 13

cadets in the Military Academy were due

to be appointed in the Signal Corps at the

end of the term, so that there was both

Reserve and Regular new blood.49

In May, the men of Signal Company,

Aircraft Warning, Panama left for the

Canal Zone. The SCR-271 with which

they had trained followed them.50 For

Alaska and Hawaii, two more aircraft

warning companies, similarly named, entered the activation stage of planning.

Although there was no radar for them,

and would be none until well on into

1941, these units were at least to prepare

the sites and set up communications nets.

At a time when the British were about

to use radar in order to detect the preinvasion Luftwaffe, American aircraft warning was part of an unreal cotton-batting

world. To say so is not to diminish the

stature of the defense effort, which had

scarcely begun to grow at all, but merely

to place it in time. Antiaircraft exercises

alerted several Southern States in the second week in May. They occurred in a

state of mind which urged that "the utmost care [be] employed . . . not to leave

any feeling of alarm or uneasiness over the

purposes behind these maneuvers." Even

when the circumstances were predetermined, civilian observers already posted,

and the bombers flying only two miles a

minute, it took forty-five seconds to report

them from fairly close by.

Subsequent history gives mournful

overtones to the words of that period,

when peace was the declared aim and it

was still possible to say, "Experience in

matters of this nature [seems to have] considerable merit, especially in view of the

current situation in Europe."

 51

 It was a

period when the chairman of the House

Subcommittee on Military Appropriations thought the nation might "hope" to

have a "defense" force "in the next two or

three years."

 52

 General Mauborgne felt

that he could assure an inquiring Senator

48

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to Comdt SigC School, 23 May

40, sub: T/O and T/BA for aircraft warning orgns;

(2) 10th Ind, CSigO to TAG, 20 Sep 40, on Ltr, CO

Harbor Defenses of Puget Sound and 14th Coast Artillery to CG 9th Coast Artillery District, 27 Jul 40,

sub: Aircraft warning cos; (3) Memo, OCSigO for G-3

Sec WDGS, 24 Oct 40. SigC 676.3 (AWS) Gen 1. 49

 SW, Annual Report, 1940, App. B. 50

 In June. It went into operation at Fort Sherman,

guarding the Caribbean approach to the Canal, early

in October, thus becoming the first radar in the American defense system. Davis, History of the Signal

Corps Development of U.S. Army Radar Equipment,

Pt. III, pp. 33-37. SigC Hist Sec File. 51

 Southwest Bell Telephone rpt cited n. 8(2), p. 14. 52

 Statement by Hon. J. Buell Snyder in Congressional Record, 76th Cong, 3d Sess, 3 Jan 40-3 Jan 41,

LXXXVI, 316.
152 THE SIGNAL CORPS

that "the Signal Corps development program is progressing as rapidly as funds

appropriated for the purpose will permit,"

but had to say once again, as so many

times in the past, that "many development projects are inactive due to lack of

funds which, if activated, would insure

more rapid progress in the equipment of

Signal Corps units with modern communication apparatus."53

 And General Marshall, the new Chief of Staff, spoke very

bluntly to a House of Representatives subcommittee. "We have not been allowed to

learn how to fight, except theoretically,"

he charged. "It is important that we do

learn."

 54

 His words contained the paradox in which the whole nation struggled.

With perfect military propriety, he pressed

for the most unmoral pursuit the human

race is addicted to.

The Weight of Field Demands

In the narrower sense, he was not referring to war at all but to the first of the

great Louisiana maneuvers, which was

about to engage 60,000 troops along the

Sabine River boundary with Texas. Preceded by IV Corps maneuvers at Fort

Benning, this May exercise tested tactical

communications more thoroughly than

anything else had since World War I. As a

result, it re-emphasized their inadequacy.

The absence of numbers of men all properly trained and equipped raised the specter of failures which could occur in war.

The 51st Signal Battalion again doubled and redoubled in brass. General

Allison had remarked one time to an

audience at the Army War College that

they probably knew every man of the 51st

by name, because the battalion had had

to furnish communications at every

maneuver in the country.55 In large-scale

maneuvers the battalion men were sure to

be spread thin, for they not only had to set

up the administrative and tactical systems for the army but also provide aircraft

warning communications and man the

signal supply depot. What strength was

left over went to corps communications.

Again, they had only a few men left for

corps use. This was a deficiency in

strength, and in the echelons beyond Signal Corps responsibility there was a degree

of deficiency of training. Most important

of all, there was a default in equipment.

Mobility and air power, indeed, had

outrun signal tactical equipment. Speed,

wide separation, and frequent change

characterized all the units of the striking

force which the Army was trying to imitate from the object lesson overseas; and

these characteristics had to exist under the

constant threat of air attack. Equipment

which had seemed possible in the summer

of 1939 was antediluvian in the spring of

1940.

Just as the Sabine River maneuvers

were commencing, Germany tore the cotton-batting world apart again. The

maneuvers took place almost in loneliness,

because the eyes of spectators were turned

toward the grim and rapid disaster sweeping through northwestern Europe. For

that sort of fighting, the conventional tactical communications system being shown

at maneuvers was unsuitable. It was, for

example, still heavily dependent upon

53

 Memo, CSigO for ACofS WPD, 3 Feb 40, replying to Ltr, Senator Elmer Thomas (Okla.), Chm Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in charge of WD,

to SW, 15 Jan 40. SigC 676.3 (AWS) Gen 1. 54

 Hearings Before the Committee on Appropriations,

HR, 76th Cong, 3d Sess, On Military Establishment

Appropriation Bill for 1941, 23 Feb 40, p. 44. 55

 "Organization Day of the 51st Signal Battalion,"

Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 105 (July-September,

1939), p. 108.
THE PAGE OF EMERGENCY 153

LOCATOR EQUIPMENT AT THE LOUISIANA MANEUVERS

commercial systems. Given a situation

where no commercial facilities were available, what would happen? A Signal Corps

colonel took note of the fact that divisionto-corps wire communications were hampered during these Southern maneuvers,

despite the fact that the area was one

which already had commercial communications. Although more than most

battle areas would be likely to provide,

they were less than signal officers were

used to. Yet, granted "warfare of this nature," the colonel conceded, "the limited

amount of wire communication that was

available was probably what might be expected. . . ." Extending one probability into another, he went on: "It is doubtful whether much reliance can be placed

in time of war on the extensive use of

commercial communications systems, especially"—adding one more possibility—

"in areas where the civilian population is

unfriendly."56

The maneuvers brought out varying

views of wire equipment. Colton had

spoken well of the field wire W-l10 in the

1939 New York maneuvers. But in 1940

Maj. William O. Reeder, who was then

signal officer of the IX Corps, reported

56

 Lt Col Edgar L. Clewell, "Signal Communications in Fourth Corps During Spring Maneuvers,

1940," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 109 (July-December, 1940), pp. 31-32.

The amount spent in renting commercial communications facilities for the maneuvers conducted by

the four armies that year (over $100,000 by the Third

Army, $98,000 by the First, and lesser amounts by

the Second and Fourth) would have met the enlisted

payrolls of two signal battalions for a year. SigC Bd

Case 327, 25 Jul 40, sub: SigC units required for the

Army and T/O's and T/BA's for these units. SigC

Files.
154 THE SIGNAL CORPS

that W-110 showed up poorly in Louisiana. Wet weather cut its talking range in

half. Its insulation suffered damage from

motor traffic, and from cows, which found

the insulating compound much to their

taste.57 The insulation had been vulcanized either too much, so that it grew brittle

and cracked easily, or not enough, so that

it tended to melt and become sticky.

Reeder felt that the Laboratories had developed the wire with too much of an eye

to the theories of electrical properties and

too little to the realities of field use, and

recommended, among other things, that

"quibbling over the dielectric capacity of

field wire insulation should be dropped in

favor of finding an insulation that will resist the mass effect of modern truck transportation passing over the wire."

 58

The 1940 maneuvers reversed Colton's

1939 stand on field teletypewriters. Commercial printers worked well. They handled, for instance, nearly half of the IV

Corps message center traffic in Louisiana.

Reeder urged that the "development of a

field printer should be discontinued at

once in view of the proven excellence of

the teletypewriter now standard in the Bell

System." The Signal Corps Laboratories

did not drop their own design of a light

field printer but did adopt the TG-7, the

the model built by the Teletype Corporation, and began development of a switchboard for field teletype, BD-100, and a

complete teletypewriter center set, TC-3.

Of telephone switchboards, the divisional

BD-14 appeared entirely inadequate. The

number of incoming calls often averaged

150 an hour for hours on end, and overtaxed the operator beyond endurance.

Both Colton in 1939 and Reeder in

1940 put wire far ahead of radio. Colton

had summed up the observations of Signal

Corpsmen at the 1939 New York maneuvers to the effect that the greatest need

was standardized switchboard equipment

for headquarters. Reeder in 1940 stressed

the need for better field wire, together

with repeaters to increase its range and H

carrier systems to increase its traffic capacity. That they followed the established

view, relying on wire for message centers

and regarding radio as a stand-by, was to

be expected, since Signal Corps responsibility was to communications in higher

headquarters, which were relatively fixed.

In the Louisiana maneuvers the IV Corps

message centers handled but 296 radio

messages out of 8,977 messages in all.

Even more to the point in Signal Corps

thinking was the fact that wire offered far

less chance for interception than radio

did. When radio was used, too often messages went out in the clear. The temptation to use plain English over radiotelephones was nearly irresistible. To go on

the air at all, even in code, gave away the

location of the radio transmitter to any

listening post equipped with good direction-finding equipment. And to encode or

encipher a message was time consuming,

especially when the Army was using a

field code widely condemned as archaic.

Troops simply would not use it. Without

a mechanical cipher device which would

be fairly secure from the prying of enemy

Cryptanalysts and which might encipher

57

 Pigs, by contrast, preferred spiral-four cable.

They liked what advertising would call its chewy

goodness. A Signal Corps lieutenant who recalled

Reeder's remark suggested that it would be a good

idea to lay W-110 in pig country and spiral four in

cow country. Memo, 1st Lt G. W. Good for Maj

Arthur A. McCrary, 21 Oct 42, sub: Rpt of sig activities during Second Army maneuvers 12 Oct. SigC

451.7 (RL-31) No. 2, 1940-43. 58

 Annex Rpt 10, Maj Reeder to IX Corps, Rpt of

Third Army Maneuvers, 1940. AG 353 (10-20-38)

Sec 1-E Rpts on 1940 Army Maneuvers.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 155

and decipher at the rate of five words a

minute, Reeder declared, "the radio is

more dangerous than it is useful."

 59

Security considerations could not, however, keep radio merely an emergency adjunct to wire in tactical uses. Co-ordination of fighting machines in rapid motion,

whether on the ground or in the air,

required radio contacts. Obviously wire

was impossible. What was needed was redesign, for tactical radio communications

were failing too often. Contact between

vehicular units was poor. Contact with

airplanes was worse: an army headquarters could not communicate directly with

them; battalions and regiments, using the

SCR-161, could receive continuous-wave

signals from an airplane but could not

readily answer except by spreading colored panels upon the ground. There was

an immediate need to lengthen the range

of corps and division equipment and to

get it to work on wheels. A radio which

had to stop, hoist its antenna, generate

power, and get everything all set before it

could serve the corps and division headquarters was outdated if meanwhile the

headquarters were rolling on ahead of it,

moving farther out of range with every

minute. "A hundred miles in motion" was

the catchword.

Another demand existed for close-range

sets: pack sets for the Infantry, tank sets

for the embryo Armored Force, air-toground and air-to-air sets for the Air

Corps. "Walkie-talkie" and then "handietalkie" became the catchwords there.

Changes were in order if the methods, organization, and equipment of tactical

communications were to meet the exigencies of the new war of movement.

Signal Corps policy had supposedly

been fixed for the past two years against

appeals for a wider use of crystals; but the

claims made for them kept breaking

through with fresh importunities. The apparently unyielding circumstance which

had set the policy was that the world's deposits of good quartz were almost entirely

in Brazil. Joint study undertaken by the

Supply and Research and Development

Divisions had produced the reluctant belief that neither would the quartz already

imported and on hand meet the initial

demand if crystal control were to be extensively introduced nor would a continuing demand be assured of an uninterrupted supply in case of war. Nevertheless,

mobile radio seemed to call for nothing

else, and the pressure for crystals increased.

More and more, the staff at the Laboratories felt that a way must be found for

a greater use of crystals than the visible

supply seemed to countenance. Finely cut

quartz, able to prevent a frequency from

drifting, had such value that even partial

crystal control promised to free Army

radio from the domination of frequency

meters and to make radio as easy for nonsignalmen to use as a telephone. With a

prospect of thousands of unskilled users

not very far in the future, this was a strong

talking point. Thus the Laboratories recommended crystals for the SCR-197. The

Office of the Chief Signal Officer said no,

because the SCR-245's were about to

take a large amount. Colton pursued the

matter, and cited Dr. H. C. Dake, editor

of The Mineralogist, to the effect that "there

seems to be no reason why domestic quartz

crystal could not be used." This was a

mistake, for the Research and Development Division asked both the National

Bureau of Standards and the Naval Research Laboratory for comment on Dake's

59

 Ibid.
156 THE SIGNAL CORPS

opinion. They agreed in repudiating it.

Only Brazilian quartz was of sufficiently

high quality to produce the piezoelectric

effect. Yet whatever the obstacles to getting them, crystals seemed to be the only

door opening upon good vehicular radio,

and essential to very high frequency

development and frequency modulation.60

The Signal Corps had made little progress in testing frequency modulation. The

technical staff in the Office of the Chief

tended to think conservatively, absorbed

by problems of frequency allocation and

of assigning military frequencies in such a

way that no two transmitters in a given

area could interfere with each other.

Col. Louis Bender, the head of the

Research and Development Division,

went with General Mauborgne and Major

Rives to look at a demonstration staged in

the Washington Hotel through the efforts

of Armstrong and engineers of the Stromberg-Carlson Company, and remained

passive. This was on 12 January 1940, and

on the next day he went to another in the

auditorium of the Smithsonian Institution,

where Armstrong showed that his FM

equipment not only would transmit with

high fidelity but could simultaneously accommodate a teletypewriter channel.

Bender commented: "This was an interesting demonstration, but I see little

practical value in it." RCA was promising

television in order to obtain new frequency allotments from the Federal Communications Commission, and Bender

suspected that the purpose of Armstrong's

demonstrations was to win Army backing

in FM's struggle for the same frequencies.

He acknowledged frankly that nothing of

the sort had been hinted, but did think

that "the frequency modulation people"

probably would offer to strike a bargain in

the 44-56 megacycle band. But, he concluded, "We are not nearly so ready to

make use of it [FM] as the broadcast

people appear to be."

 61

The Infantry and Field Artillery had

got quite the opposite impression from the

conferences which had followed the Fort

Knox demonstration. The Field Artillery

Board was sufficiently convinced to be

thinking of FM as "the most promising

line of future development." The Infantry

joined with equal enthusiasm, and, since

the mechanized Cavalry was already on

record, three powerful arms of the service

were now urging the Signal Corps to exploit the possibilities of FM without delay

for use "across the forward fire-swept

areas." The Research and Development

Division rebuffed them with the contention that "the radio system referred to,

while attractive in some respects, has certain known deficiencies that make its

use . . . questionable." Anyway, whose

job was it to bring out the Army's communications equipment? Was it not the

Signal Corps'? Of course, replied the other

arms, but surely it was proper that they

not be required to wait for whatever the

Signal Corps produced for them but instead be able to exchange queries and suggestions in mutual interest? Shrewdly

enough, and capitalizing upon the difference of opinion within the Signal Corps

itself over frequency modulation, the Field

Artillery cited the Signal Corps Bulletin's

own wholehearted appreciation of it.

Colonel Bender privately observed that he

did not at all consider the Bulletin authoritative, and maintained that the

60

 SigC file 413.44 Crystals 5, 1940, passim. 61

 (1) OCSigO R&W Action 1, "WTG" [Wesley T.

Guest], Com Liaison Div, to R&D Div, 29 Aug 40,

sub: Assignment of radio frequencies. SigC 413.44 Development 9, 1940-41. (2) Memo, Col Bender for

CSigO, 15 Jan 40. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40.
THE SCR-195, WALKIE-TALKIE
158 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Radio Corporation of America had "developed some pertinent facts that the enthusiasts for this system had conveniently

forgotten to publicize [and which] took

much of the wind out of the broad claims

made."62

Colonel Bender did concede that frequency modulation might yet be found

helpful, especially in vehicular and air

uses. Since vehicular uses—forward, mobile uses where a quiet radio could be a

godsend—were exactly what the ground

arms had in mind, they were left the

winners of the debate: the Signal Corps

Technical Committee would have something ready for them by May. But there

was a wide gap between this modest first

victory and any general capitulation. In

the long run, FM got no further than primarily tactical ground uses; it did not

establish itself in naval, air, or (except for

certain radio link equipment) ground administrative applications. In the immediate run, Bender warned the Chiefs of

Infantry and Field Artillery that they

could expect no funds to be available until

more than a year had passed.

With this or other considerations in

mind, the Laboratories matched the hesitant attitude of the Research and Development Division. When in advance of

the maneuvers the Laboratories outlined

the requirements of the using arms, they

proposed the SCR-245 for tanks, its frequency range moved up to 3,700 kilocycles; the 131, with a voice channel

added, for rifle platoons; the 161 and 171

on 2,000-6,000 kilocycle range for Field

Artillery tactical uses, and so on.63 Colton's

report that year, as director of the Laboratories, made a point of the fact that lack of

funds had prevented any development of

FM. He had passed up an opportunity to

send an observer to New York in April for

a special test of the Armstrong equipment,

despite the fact that General Mauborgne

had thought it a good idea.64 Thus, neither

in the Washington headquarters nor at

Fort Monmouth was the Signal Corps

extraordinarily alert to the possibilities in

frequency modulation.

Meanwhile, under Armstrong patents,

the Radio Engineering Laboratories of

Long Island City, New York, had built

twenty-eight FM radio sets incorporating

the phase shift improvement. Put to use in

the First Army's summer maneuvers of

1940, they at once intensified the demands

from the field. Simultaneously, the Connecticut State Police tried out the FM

radios which Link had recently begun

building, also under Armstrong patents.

The immediate success of these new police

sets added to the pressure. In rapid order,

the Chiefs of Field Artillery, Infantry, and

Coast Artillery asked the Chief Signal

Officer for service test sets. Further pressure was in store from the successor to the

mechanized Cavalry, the Armored Force.

The Link police sets were about to become

62

 (1) Ltr, Office of Chief of FA to TAG through

Chief of Inf, 2 Jan 40, sub: Improvement of Inf-FA

liaison radio com, with 6 inds among TAG, OCSigO,

Chief of Inf, and Chief of FA, 12 Jan-27 Apr 40, and

associated OCSigO R&W's. SigC 413.44 Development 9, 1940-41. (2) Capt. K. M. Soukaras, "Frequency Modulation," Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 107

(January-March, 1940), pp. 24-30. 63

 (1) Ltr, Col Colton to CSigO, 1 May 40, sub:

R&D recommendations by FA, Inf, and CAC; (2)

OCSigO R&W Action 4, J. M. [Mauborgne] to Exec

Officer 13 Mar 40, sub: FM hearings. SigC 413.44

FM l, Jan-Sep 40. (3) SCL, Annual Report, 1940,

pp. 24 ff. 64

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to Dir SCL, 14 Mar 40, sub:

Demonstration of FM equip; (2) Msg, Mauborgne to

Lab Ft. Monmouth, 9 Apr 40; (3) Msg 76 WVPAC

9 WD, Colton to Signals, Washington, D.C., 9 Apr

40. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 159

the prototypes of the SCR-293 and 294,

the small, short-range vehicular sets which

were to go into the tanks of the 1st and 2d

Armored Divisions. They were the Army's

first FM.65

There remained the other of the two

most urgent equipment needs, a truly

mobile, long-range, 100-mile radio set.

The development had proceeded only so

far as the laboratory model of the truckand-trailer SCR-197 contained in the Fort

Knox exhibit of the preceding fall. The

origin of the SCR-197 went back several

years to a request from the Air Corps for a

big and powerful radio which might be

transported in a truck or airplane. The set

had originally been planned to operate on

the ground over a universal frequency

range, and to possess sufficient power

whether on continuous wave, tone, or

voice to attain a distance "approximately

equal to the transmitting range of the

radio set installed in aircraft to which it

must communicate." This meant a power

output of hundreds of watts if the set were

to equal from the ground the range of the

airborne liaison radio SCR-187. An output of 300 watts had first been offered but

had failed to satisfy needs.

In requesting a still more powerful set,

the Air Corps had made the important

recommendation that it be installed for

operation, not temporarily on the ground,

but permanently in its truck and trailer

transport. The Signal Corps Laboratories

had accordingly followed this proposal.

The engineers blueprinted the set so that

a 400-watt transmitter, antenna equipment, rectifier, and emergency gasoline

generator would all go into a single truck,

and so that the trailer would hold two receivers, two telegraph printers, and a

forty-line telephone switchboard. Remote

control equipment, field wire, and telephones were included in order to permit

the trailer message center to be located as

much as seven miles away from the transmitter truck.

By 1939 the project, "Radio Equipment

for Moving Stations," was in order. The

Signal Corps arranged with the Quartermaster Corps for truck and trailer, installed the equipment for the Plattsburg

maneuvers, reported that it worked "very

satisfactorily," and contracted with the

Federal Telegraph Company to begin

manufacturing it. Unluckily, the SCR-197

was soon proved somewhat less than satisfactory. Field forces found that the mobility of the carriers was poor; the truck

was underpowered for its load and the

trailer was overcrowded. There were bugs

in the transmitter; the power supply did

not work well. Above all, the transmitter

65

 (1) Ltr, Col Crawford to CSigO, 19 Sep 40, sub:

Frequency assignments for 25-watt mobile radiotelephone equip. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40. (2) Col.

John C. Moore, Signal Officer Headquarters, Second

Corps Area, Governors Island, New York, reported

on these sets without particular enthusiasm on 17

October. Ltr, Col Moore to Col Colton, 17 Oct 40.

SigC 413.44 Radio Sets, Armored Force Bd File,

Folder 2. (3) Ltr, 1st Lt J. J. Davis, 80th FA Regtl

Com Office, to CG 6th Div, Ft. Snelling, Minn., 27

Aug 40, sub: Radio recommendations, and 1st Ind,

Lt Col Clift Andrus, CO 80th FA, 18th FA Hq, Ft.

Des Moines, Iowa, to CG 6th Div, 30 Aug 40; (4) Ltr,

Chief of FA to CSigO, 19 Aug 40, sub: FM equip, and

2d Wrapper Ind, Col Colton to CSigO, 6 Sep 40; (5)

Ltr, Chief of Inf to CSigO, 19 Sep 40, sub: Test of

FM radio; (6) 1st Ind, Chief of CAC to CSigO, 4 Oct

40, on Ltr, Col William S. Bowen, President CAC

Bd, to Chief of CAC, 12 Sep 40, sub: Commercial FM

radio equip; (7) OCSigO R&W Action 1, W. T.

G. [Guest], Com Liaison Div, to R&D Div, 19 Aug 40,

sub: FM system rpt of test by FCC, and Incl Memo,

E. L. White to Chief Engr of FCC, 16 Aug 40, sub:

FM system of Conn. State Police. SigC 413.44 FM 1,

Jan-Sep 40. (8) SCL, Annual Report, 1941, Proj 11-

9.3, p. 83. (9) Ltr, CSigO to Dir SCL, 11 Sep 40, sub:

Radio sets for armored forces. SigC 413.44 Armored

Force (Sets) 1, 1940.
160 THE SIGNAL CORPS

could not operate while the truck was in

motion.66

Yet the Signal Corps had taken a step

which interested not just the Air Corps

but all of the rest of the Army, and especially the mechanized Cavalry. One of

four basic types of vehicular sets which

Williams and others of that service were

proposing was a voice-and-continuouswave, long-range radio of this sort. The

concept of a large transmitter which could

operate in a moving truck seemed to lie in

the realm of fantasy, although most communications men were familiar enough by

now with medium vehicular transmitters

such as the 193 and 245. The May 1940

Third Army maneuvers, and the German

blitz across western Europe, led military

observers to realize that the Army must

have a radio—self-contained, power and

all, in a truck and trailer—which would

be able to transmit and receive over ranges

of at least 100 miles even while the truck

and trailer bounced along highways or byways. Either the SCR-197 must be made

truly mobile, or a new and better set must

be developed.

The Third Army maneuvers brought

signal matters to a head. "There were numerous and painful failures of signal communication . . . which subjected the Signal Corps to continuous criticism."

 67

 What

had the criticisms been? "Generally inadequate"; "complete reorganization necessary"; "inadequate and insufficient";

"complete modernization necessary";

"certain modifications necessary"; "present facilities inadequate"; "generally inadequate." Courtney H. Hodges and

Adna R. Chaffee had been among the

critical generals; Olmstead, Ingles, Clewell, Reeder, and Matejka among the

critical Signal Corps observers. Signal

communications were inadequate not

merely for the oncoming war but even for

a play war, which, although the largest

yet staged by the peacetime Army, was

still not comparable to the sort of force

which was just then overpowering northern and western Europe. The Signal

Corps position was that little more could

have been expected. Manpower shortage

had accounted not only for the wide and

expensive use of commercial facilities, but

also for the absence of trained signalmen.

It hardly needed to be said, either, that

when the telephone company's men were

hired, the telephone company's men got

the training.

The principal concern, though, was not

yet a matter of training, but of personnel

and equipment. There lay the prime insufficiencies. From the Chief's office an

urgent appeal went out to the Signal

Corps Board. Undoubtedly, the appeal

explained, the War Department would be

calling for a thorough report, so the board

must be ready with the answers. If Congress authorized the Army to expand to

375,000, including men for two armored

divisions, the Aircraft Warning Service,

GHQ aviation, and universal mobility,

the Signal Corps must know exactly what

units to ask for. Board membership was

high-powered just then. Olmstead was

president and Colton, Ingles, Milliken,

and Back were members. All soon became

66

 (1) SCL, Annual Reports, 1937, p. 13, 1938, pp.

24-25, 1939, p. 30, 1940, pp. 23-24. (2) C&E Case 12,

Mobile Communication Centrals, 9 Jan 42, p. 9. SigC

Files. (3) Memo, Lt Col David E. Washburn for O/C

R&D Div, 15 May 41, sub: Radio set SCR-197 in

C&E Case 27 reduction in types of equip. SigC C&E

Case 27. (4) Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of

Signal Corps Research and Development in World

War II, Vol. VIII, Pt. 4, Proj 832-A, p. 5. SigC Hist

Sec File. 67

 SigC Bd Case 327, 25 Jul 40, cited n. 56.

For a brief description of these maneuvers see Lt

Francis G. Smith, History of the Third Army, Hist

Sec AGF Study 17, 1946, pp. 6-7.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 161

generals and Olmstead, Ingles, and Back

became Chief Signal Officers. They received the case on 11 June and reported it

out on 25 July.

In personnel, they made two kinds of

recommendations. One was to increase

the number of signal units, the other to increase the number of men in each unit: a

signal battalion, for example, being

strengthened by ninety-eight more enlisted men and three more officers. "The

many difficulties experienced in our

peacetime maneuvers are not due to

deficiencies in the proper allotment of

tactical signal communications to Army

units but due to the fact that the signal

organizations required are generally not

in existence and those that are active are

too small to perform their functions." A

simple citing of percentages proved this

assertion. Whereas during World War I

signal units had represented 4.5 percent of

the total, and in foreign armies the proportion was comparable,68

 the National

Defense Act permitted them to constitute

only 1.8 percent of the Army. In May

1940 there were four authorized signal

battalions. Double that number, the

Board said, and the annual expense of hiring temporary maneuver communications

will be cut three fourths. What was more

important, communications soldiers would

be serving and training with each of the

field armies, ready for "the sudden dispatch of an expeditionary force" as in

1917.

As before, the Signal Corps intended to

rely to a degree upon National Guard

units. The National Guard then had

eighteen signal companies, one signal

troop, and one signal battalion (the 101st

in New York); and two Guard infantry

battalions were to be converted into signal

battalions.69 For a citizenly duty such as

aircraft warning, the Guard units would

be especially suitable. They could study

the SCR-270 in their armories, and in the

field could practice against observation

planes, which had metal fuselages like

bombers and were much less scarce. Reaffirming the plan for aircraft warning

companies, in the GHQreserve and elsewhere, which would be large enough to

man seven stations apiece, the Board

urged that two-station, three-station, and

four-station companies be organized in

the Guard for every state where the Aircraft Warning Service was setting up an

SCR-270 or 271. Thus a Guardsman

would join in the air defense of his own

section of the country, quite simply defending his own home in the tradition

descended from Lexington and Concord.

Not only were strength recommendations to be made. The Board had also a

matter of equipment before it. Anyone

aware of the swinging door which the Germans had opened upon France at Sedan

and had closed at Dunkerque could see

that changes in all types of American military equipment would be necessary in

order to meet the standards which the

Germans were imposing. Equipment

changes, the Signal Corps Board said,

must be brought about immediately.

"Time is the essence," they underlined it.

June 1940, like June 1942, was a period

when everyone expected the worst at any

minute.

Colonel Olmstead had returned from

Louisiana with the controversial 100-

68

 E. g., the proportion of the Royal Signals to the

British Army as a whole was 4.1 percent in 1939, 5.1

percent in 1945. Col T. B. Gravely, The Second

World War, 1939-1945, Army: Signal Communications, British War Office, 1950, p. 13. Copy in

OCMH. 69

 Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 109 (July-December,

1940), p. 3.
162 THE SIGNAL CORPS

miles-in-motion set in mind: a supervehicular radio, a large van load of radiotelephone and radiotelegraph apparatus.

This project he laid before General Mauborgne, who turned it down. Although

commandant at Fort Monmouth and

number two man in the Signal Corps,

Olmstead accepted the decision and prepared to go back to Red Bank. Maj.

Frank C. Meade, who was well down the

line in rank but strategically located on

the staff of the War Plans and Training

Division of General Mauborgne's office,

proposed instead that Colonel Olmstead

write a justification for his idea which,

rather than striking head on and falling

back, would come in through a side door,

clear the Signal Corps Board, and hope

for success with a chorus of approval

behind it.70 Meade was not merely artful

in making a suggestion of this sort. Olmstead was president of the Signal Corps

Board, and as its head was of course able to

exert considerable weight in its proceedings; but in this matter he had the strong

support of the other members. They concurred in the need for 100-miles-in-motion

ground radio.

In doing so, they did not abandon the

emphasis upon tactical wire communications to which they subscribed along with

most other Signal Corps officers, of both

older and younger groups. Their recommendations included not only the big

radio but also portable power for field

teleprinters; switchboards for field teletype; repeaters for field telephone systems;

wire-throwing devices for dispensing

W-110 in a hurry; and, with only two

dissents, trailers in which field message

centers could be established and taken

wherever the troops went.71

The Board report did not forsake wire for

radio, or the complementary relationship

of one with the other. But the recommendations in wire equipment were all tributes

to mobility; and in urging tactical mobility

for long-range radio, the members went so

far as to declare that for much of the time

the new triangular divisions and their

combat teams would have to depend

wholly upon wireless. The Signal Corps

was proud of the SCR-197 as a long-range

radio; but the 197 would not do, either for

the Infantry or for the Armored Force.

"The Board believes that Radio Set SCR197 is not suitable radio equipment for an

armored division and urgently recommends that the use of this set be regarded

as a temporary expedient until a vehicular

set capable of operation in motion and

with sufficient range to meet requirements

can be developed."

 72

So they declared for "Olmstead's baby"

(a term applied with emotions varying

from impatience to tempered admiration),

which was to be a stopgap put together

from military and commercial materials

on hand. In a panel truck, a light oneand-a-half such as laundries or florists use,

Laboratories engineers would bring together a Hallicrafter HT-4 transmitter, of

450 watts, the antenna rig, and the original Signal Corps superheterodyne receiver, BC-312, plus the BC-342. A twowheeled trailer cart would hold the power

equipment.73

70

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Brig Gen Frank C.

Meade, Ret., Chicago, III., 12 Sep 49. 71

 This trailer development resulted in the K-35;

the field teletype switchboard became the BD-100; the

repeaters, EE-89 and 99. 72

 1st Ind, Col Olmstead to CSigO, 19 Jul 40, on

Ltr, OCSigO to SigC Bd, 13 Jul 40, sub: T/O for sig

com, armored div SigC Bd Case 328. SigC 320.3

Armored Force and Armored Div, 1940-43. 73

 One of the most interesting of all the equipment

recommendations was based on the Board's belief that

a single standard trailer could be used "for all Signal

Corps purposes where it is necessary to make equipment entirely mobile."
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 163

In the meantime, conferences under the

aegis of the General Staff were considering

the needs of both the Air Corps and the

Armored Force. The program for raising

the Air Corps to a strength of fifty-four

combat groups by 1 April 1942

 74

 was increasing the pressure upon the Signal

Corps. At first, discussion gave some

thought to creating a large number of

skeleton signal aviation units, scattering

them widely throughout the Air Corps,

and bringing them gradually up to

strength as the Signal Corps turned out

trained technicians. No doubt such thinking was influenced by the universally necessary practice of carrying organizations

on paper until an emergency should force

their activation as live units, but now an

emergency was here. A new plan concentrated all of the trained signalmen available for Air Corps assignment into a few

signal aviation companies of full strength,

rather than into many skeletal ones. The

Signal Corps would make an effort to include a variety of specialists in each, and

the Air Corps, assigning one company

apiece to each wing or higher command,

would detail detachments to signal maintenance, to service as air base platoons,

and so on. This plan seemed to offer the

double advantage of administrative simplicity and of maximum use of personnel.75

The forces of change soon obscured it.

General Arnold of the Air Corps headed

it into a new direction by outlining "a

scheme for ... a complete ground system of Signal Corps communications all

the way from GHQ to the foremost air

unit, and practically paralleling Army

and other systems." Mauborgne was not

convinced that such duplication of facilities was necessary, and suspected that

Arnold's purpose was to use the results of

the committee's study to capture a force of

Signal Corps units. Moreover, he knew

that a Signal Corpsman operating a

ground radio for the Air Corps might

often be getting fifteen dollars a month

less than he would if he "wore an Air

Corps hat cord" while doing the same

kind of work. Yet the suggestion was too

near to the Signal Corps' dearest hope to

be opposed. Mauborgne directed Lt. Col.

Richard B. Moran to play ball to the extent of studying the matter.76

Looking toward the advent of the

Armored Force, which was due to be

created in July, he began also to confer in

Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews' office with

Brig. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee. General

Andrews was then G-3 and Chaffee the

architect of the new armored command.

Mauborgne asked for a statement of

Armored Force requirements which he

might study. He had in mind the fact that

the new signal troop, mechanized, which

had just reached the table-of-organization

stage, was in process of being superseded

by the signal company, armored division.

The Signal Corps Board had revised the

strength of an armored signal company

from 4 officers, 141 enlisted men, to 4 officers, 196 enlisted men, and then had

revised the revision in order to ask for

6 officers, 206 enlisted men. Before Mauborgne got the statement he asked for, the

War Department moved the figures up to

6 officers, 218 enlisted men.77

74

 AG Ltr to Chief of AC, 29 Jun 40, sub: Army's

first aviation objective. AG 580 (6-28-40) MF. 75

 Memo, Col Clyde L. Eastman, Exec Officer

OCSigO, for ACofS G-3, 16 Jul 40. SigC 320.3 GHQ

AF C&E Equip Gen. 76

 Ltr, Lt Col Cedric W. Lewis, Sig Officer GHQ

AF, to CSigO, 13 Aug 40, and Reply, 16 Aug 40.

SigC 676 Gen 1, 1940-42. 77

 Memo for File by Maj Washburn, 20 Jun 40,

sub: Conference on formation of armored (panzer) div

(continuation of conference started 10 Jun 40). SigC

320.3 Armored Force and Armored Div.
164 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Two omissions were already apparent,

nonetheless. The radio section of the company would need more men; and it looked

as if there would not be enough drivers for

the vehicles assigned. "This is the same

outstanding weakness that occurs quite

generally in Signal Corps tables of organization," warned Maj. George I. Back,

then secretary of the Board. "In all other

arms and services chaffeurs are provided

for all self-propelled vehicles."

 78

Chaffee mentioned the 100-miles-inmotion equipment. Such a development,

Mauborgne felt, would demand a redesigning of antenna and transmitter—in

short, a fresh start. How could a makeshift be expected to serve? Mauborgne

thought of signal equipment in terms of

the complete, complex, and beautiful

product it often was. He displayed the

affectionate perfectionism of the engineer

and technical scientist. He did not quite

see that the Signal Corps could neither go

into the war with some of the equipment

it had nor take the usual length of time to

develop replacements. At his urging,

Chaffee agreed to accept SCR-197's even

though they would need to come to a halt

in order to permit communication, but he

strongly hoped that the Signal Corps

would be able to come forth with a substitute which would continue to work while

moving.79

Chaffee's requests epitomized the new

Army. Everything he spoke of turned upon

the principle of tactical swiftness. When

Mauborgne raised the question of the

amount of wire communication a mechanized division would need, "General

Chaffee stated that the only time that wire

would be used would possibly be at night

or in rest areas."

 80

 In agreeing to try the

SCR-197 until something better was

ready, he computed his need at five to a

division, rather than the three which the

Signal Corps estimates called for; the Signal Corps representatives yielded, pointing

out that this meant two more vehicles and

ten more men in the armored division table

of organization and equipment. Because

his forces would be subject only to radio

control, Chaffee asked for as many frequencies as could possibly be allotted to

him. And, reaching the climax, he sought

an FM command set for every two scout

cars he had.

For the Research and Development

Division, Colonel Mitchell deplored such

a request. "The number of radio sets estimated for an armored division appears to

be quite high," he cautioned. "Channel

congestion and interference may be expected, particularly where more than one

armored division is ... in the same general area."

 81

 Succeeding weeks consolidated the decision nevertheless, and a final

conference on the whole matter, shifted to

General Chaffee's headquarters at Fort

Knox, produced characteristics for an entire vehicular series with the initials of the

Armored Force and combining the past

year's requests from the two components—Mechanized Cavalry and Infantry

78

 1st Ind, Maj Back to CSigO, 22 Jun 40, on Ltr,

CSigO to President SigC Bd, 20 Jun 40, sub: T/O for

sig co armored div. SigC 320.3 Sig Co Armored Div. 79

 Memo for File by T. C. R. [Maj Tom C. Rives],

R&D Div OCSigO, 13 Jun 40, sub: Conferences on

formation of armored (panzer) divs. SigC 320.3

Armored Force and Armored Div, 1940-43. 80

 Memo for File by Washburn cited n. 77. The

Armored Force planners were underestimating their

need for wire. "Later in action in Northern Europe

the Armored Divisions of First Army used almost as

much wire as an Infantry Division (something we

could not visualize at that time)." Ltr, Williams to

Thompson, cited n. 14, p. 13. 81

 OCSigO R&W Action 1, Col Mitchell, Dir R&D

Div, to CSigO, 26 Jun 40. SigC 320.3 Armored Force

and Armored Div, 1940-43.
THE PACE OF EMERGENCY 165

Tanks—which had merged to make the

new command.

For AF-I, the projected 100-mile set,

the Laboratories tried to convert the SCR197 to permit communication on the

march, but the effort met with only partial

success. The Signal Corps Board recommendation was rushed into development,

and matured in eighteen months into the

SCR-299, one of the most usable journeyman sets of the war.82

 In the war, ironically enough, the SCR-197's were stopgap

equipment, whereas the stopgap equipment which had been proposed to do what

the 197 could not do served throughout

the conflict.

To serve as AF-II, a reliable, 40-mile,

medium-range set, the Signal Corps

offered the SCR-193 and the SCR-245;

they were yet new and others liked them,83

but they did not suit the user, either.

Tanks were too cramped to have space for

them and tank crews too busy to adjust the

delicate controls. Smaller size and simpler

operation looked mutually incompatible,

because crystal control, which could introduce easy tuning, would probably require

more space. Two-way police radios temporarily provided a solution, especially after

being acclaimed during the Second Army's

Wisconsin maneuvers in August. In advance of those maneuvers the Signal

Corps leased a 50-watt fixed set and

twenty-five vehicular sets of 71⁄2 watts, all

amplitude-modulated, from the Galvin

Manufacturing Corporation, assigned the

fixed equipment and a dozen of the vehicular sets to the umpires, and turned over

the remaining ones to the cars of the reconnaissance squadron. Everyone was delighted, although the sets were instruments

of essentially shorter range and were AM.

The usual communication distance with

them, depending upon the terrain, was

from ten to thirty miles. It was the elimination of all intricacies of tuning which

was a boon. Anyone could use them,

without previous experience or training.84

The advantage of crystal control for

the mobile forward uses was now so apparent that the time had arrived for a major

decision. The other sets in the Armored

Force series called for crystals, too. In the

case of the AF-III, the Signal Corps was

asked to produce a short-range radio for

use at from five to seven miles. The AF-IV

was to be even smaller and to have an

even shorter range. Both emerged as FM

radios in the remarkable SCR-508-9-

and-10 series.

The era in which sullen peace had

flared into urgent war preparations had

begun in a professional sense, it was now

possible to see, with a reorientation of tactical theory. The mobile Infantry, the

alerting Air, the mechanized Armor were

now discernibly emerging, and these "500"

radios epitomized their demands, for they

were compact and crystal-controlled; they

were frequency-modulated; they carried

the human voice; and they brought airborne command maneuverability to vehicles on the ground. The only flaw in them

was that they were still nearly two years

off—and time was short.

82

 (1) SCL, Annual Report, 1941, pp. 89-90. (2)

Ltr, Defense Aid Sec OCSigO to British Air Comd,

Washington, D. C., 16 Jan 42, sub: Mobile W/T

equips. SigC 475.7 No. 5. (3) S. I. Nieman, "Vehicular Radio," Signals, I, No. 7 (September-October,

1947), pp. 28-34. (4) Oliver Read, "The Army's

SCR-299," Radio News, XXX, No. 2 (August, 1943),

17ff. 83

 Far on into the war. E.g., Maj S. T. Martin rpts,

Jan-Dec 44. SigC 413.44 RDF 2. 84

 Lt Col Leland H. Stanford, Sig Officer Second

Army, Final Rpt, Tab 12, Vol. II of Report of the

Second Army Maneuvers August 1940. AG 353

(10-20-38) Sec 1-E Rpts on 1940 Army Maneuvers.
CHAPTER VII

The Propulsion From Limbo

Accumulating Production

Shortness of time in 1940 was not a fact

the armed services could conjure with but

a guess they must submit to. Enough time

had followed the first declaration of emergency for them to begin to brace themselves. The collapse of continental Europe

shook not only their attitudes but intellectual positions throughout the country. The

amount of room left in which to pursue

national policy had markedly shrunk. At

its center was the nation itself, with the

territories and dependencies. At the next

layer was the hemisphere; and farthest

out, Great Britain and such shreds of the

Continent as Vichy France. Policy, including military policy, took the shape of

these three outlines.

At the core, preparedness was based

upon defense of the United States, in a

wider conception upon hemispheric defense, and, in the least defined area, upon

the possibility of preserving those potential allies which had not yet gone under.

The second conception was generally replacing the first, and was conclusively

confirmed in September by the announcement of the exchange of destroyers for

bases in British western Atlantic possessions. The third conception, confirmed in

the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 only

after many weeks of earnest debate, was

still quite out of reach. The immediate

goal was to assemble men and material

within the national region and in the aims

of the Protective Mobilization Plan and

its associate, the Industrial Mobilization

Plan.

Material in the mass being less malleable than men, time pressed, if at all,

harder upon the production program than

upon the schedule for raising and training

the new Army. Industrial mobilization

plans contemplated that American war

production would need about two years to

reach a satisfactory output—an optimistic

estimate.1 The burden of bringing it about

was the three-way concern of the Army,

industry, and the public at large. It was

particularly incumbent upon the Army

and industry; for public sentiment, increasingly unsettled by events abroad, was

being reflected in Congress by substantial

grants of funds to the military organization

and in both the legislative and executive

branches by unreserved encouragements

to capital. Endeavoring to give the Army

what was needed, individual Congressmen

called repeatedly for estimates upon which

they could base supplemental appropriations, often faster than the military

agency itself was prepared to move. In the

1

 (1) Troyer S. Anderson, "Munitions for the Army,

1940-1945," Infantry Journal, LIX, No. 4 (October,

1946), p. 14. (2) R. Elberton Smith, Army Procurement and Economic Mobilization, a volume in preparation for the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 167

Supply Division of the Office of the Chief

Signal Officer, members of the staff found

themselves working long hours to provide

these estimates. Capt. Eugene V. Elder in

one week prepared thirty-nine budgets for

signal units.2

None of these was in existence, yet

almost all were to be combat organizations. War had not materialized, but the

necessity was present in the reinforcement

of the Panama Canal Zone and similar

defense actions being taken. The decision

to establish Borinquen airfield, Puerto

Rico, invoked the need for a signal depot,

installation of the post and administrative

wire and wireless systems, stations and

networks for airport control and the Army

Airways Communications System, and

accordingly for all the signal units required for the work. In a dozen other

cases of the sort, units being created had

to be equipped—equipping being a considerably longer process than creating and

an expensive one to the taxpayer: hence

the estimates. All deficiency appropriations for the fiscal year 1940—$10,000,-

000 worth—were going for equipment,

and $5,128,185 of the basic appropriation of $7,828,804; so that all together

the Signal Corps was spending approximately $15,000,000 on defense material.3

When General Mauborgne appeared at

hearings for the 1941 appropriations,

however, the lull in the war had not yet

been broken by the German invasion of

Denmark and Norway, let alone by the

catastrophe to France. He asked for

$11,000,000 less than the amount obligated throughout the preceding year.

There would not be so much need for

equipment, he reasoned, when the demands for aviation expansion, augmentation of the Canal garrison, and Protective

Mobilization Plan requirements had been

met.4 It seemed to him that whereas 1940

was proving a costly fiscal year, 1941

would be a normal one like 1938 or 1939.

It seemed so to the House Appropriations

Committee, too, which reduced an Air

Corps request for 166 airplanes to 57 and

then nearly eliminated the Signal Corps'

budget item calling for radio equipment

for the 57. Before the fiscal year 1941

ended, the Signal Corps was going to have

$256,652,964 available; and in 1942, it

was to have more than $3,500,000,000.

Signal Corps requirements, therefore,

were not yet great enough to tax the productive capacity of industry, and far from

enough to sound out its limits. The industrial and military economies were both

almost at the starting line. In May the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer provided

the Assistant Secretary of War with a list

of obstacles to mass production which the

planning staff foresaw in the event of a

greatly enlarged procurement program.

First on the list was a personnel shortage,

a shortage of both officers and civilians.

Two-week active duty periods of limited

numbers of Reserve officers were not to be

thought of as training enough officers to

meet an emergency. As for civilians, the

Signal Corps would need accountants, industrial engineers, statisticians, lawyers,

and inspectors to deal with a large-scale

procurement program. It would need them

in a hurry, already trained, in larger numbers than the Civil Service lists could provide, and freed of the constricting provisions of legislation which held down

Washington employment. The function

2

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col Eugene V. Elder,

Washington, D. C., 28 Sep 49. 3

 Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on

Appropriations, HR, 76th Cong, 3d Sess, On the Military Establishment Appropriations Bill for 1941, HR

9209, p. 643. 4

 Ibid., p. 641.
168 THE SIGNAL CORPS

was one which could not very well be

transferred away from the Chief's Office.5

The next obstacle was the system of

making contracts, especially the requirement for competitive bids, which the Signal Corps procurement officers considered

inefficient in both time and money. Their

opinion was that they lost weeks in waiting for bids to come in and thereafter

compounded the loss of time, first because

the obligation to make the award to the

lowest bidder sometimes prevented making it to a bidder who, they felt, was

already "tooled up" and trained to produce the order, and second because they

could not farm out the contract to several

bidders at one time. The Signal Corps

was also feeling the pressure for other

changes in the contractual relationship

between government and business. Mauborgne reported that his contracts officers

were finding manufacturers reluctant to

bid on military orders before they were

guaranteed protection against rising costs

and wages. He endorsed the proposed

introduction of an escalator clause, a formula to protect the contractor's margin by

allowing for changes in material and manpower costs during the life of the contract.

A third reservation was still at the stage

of possibility. The repeal of the armsembargo provisions of the 1937 Neutrality

Act and the substitution of a cash-andcarry policy presumably opened the way

for other armies than our own to buy on

the American market. The Chief Signal

Officer foresaw a time when foreign orders

might occupy American manufacturers to

such an extent that the Army's augmented

procurement program would come off

badly. He felt misgivings that manufacturers upon whom he counted would prefer foreign orders because of larger profit,

and that if they accepted Signal Corps

contracts at all, they would do so only on

schedules of delayed delivery and at

greatly increased prices. He recommended

special legislation which would require

contractors with the government to deliver

War Department orders before foreign

orders whenever the interests of the defense

program demanded it.

In the ultimate analysis, all of the

problems came to a head in materials and

manpower, just as they did in the Army in

equipment and men. It seemed probable

that government control over raw materials would be necessary. The War Department's list of strategic materials now

included those which had been merely

"critical" a few months before. Nine of

the fourteen items on the list were widely

used in Signal Corps equipment. The

combination of large foreign orders with

increased military procurement at home

would result in serious shortages. The

shortage of skilled toolmakers and artisans

created by the depression years in which

there had been little demand for them

was beginning to show up in delays. In

this view from the Signal Corps, accordingly, the Congress must permit the Secretary of War to suspend labor legislation

limiting the workday and the work week.6

Toward legislative curbs upon business

and industry, Signal Corps spokesmen

were generally disapproving, not liking

the Vinson-Trammel Act's imposition of a

5

 Memo, CSigO for ASW, 10 May 40, sub: Pers for

proc in an emergency. SigC 381 Gen. 6

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ASW, 15 May 40, sub:

Measures to expedite proc. SigC 400.12 Gen. (2) Mob

Plan OASW under PMP and IMP, 15 Jul 39, pp. 16-

18. AG 381. (3) Byron Fairchild and Jonathan Grossman, Industrial Relations and Labor Problems, a volume in preparation for the series UNITED STATES

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. (4) Hearings Before the

Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, HR,

76th Cong, 3d Sess, On the Military Establishment

Appropriation Bill for 1941, 23 Feb 40, p. 99.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 169

12-percent profit ceiling upon contracts

for military air material, liking even less

any proposal to tax excess profits, and

conversely supporting the escalator clause,

cost-plus-a-fixed-fee contracts, provision

for easy amortization, 30-percent advances

at the outset of contracts, relaxation of

terms for Reconstruction Finance Corporation loans, and government underwriting of private plant expansion. Their point

of view was fixed by lifelong association

with business and industry in both military and commercial circles, and sharpened by such legislative proposals as one

which would have required the Secretary

of War to oversee and approve every purchase made for more than one hundred

dollars. (Lt. Col. Clifford D. Cuny

described this bill as "particularly obnoxious.")

On the other hand, Congress was

obliged to make sure that so vast a governmental spending agency was held within

the public interest. At a time, for example,

when small business was the subject of

efforts to improve its place in the expanding military procurement program, Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts elicited the information that

the Signal Corps had obligated $8,000,000

in contracts with five large companies,

especially General Electric, during the

calendar year 1939.7 The Signal Corps

had its closest relations particularly with

the "Big Five": General Electric, Western

Electric, Westinghouse, RCA, and Bendix.8

 The Eastman Kodak Company was

the prime producer of photographic

equipment.

"Our big push in procurement did not

begin until September 1940," Robert P.

Patterson later recalled before the Truman

Committee.9 Along with a number of other

actions urging maximum production after

the Allied disaster of May, President

Roosevelt set up an Advisory Commission

to the Council of National Defense to help

guide the production program about to be

set in motion. The Industrial Mobilization

Plan had envisioned something more like

an administrator than an adviser,10 and

ultimately the administrators—William S.

Knudsen, Donald M. Nelson, James F.

Byrnes, Jesse Jones, Henry A. Wallace,

William L. Batt, Harold L. Ickes, Harry

Hopkins, William N. Jeffers, and others—

did appear. But for the time being, the

7

 (1) SigC File .032 Legislation 7, 1939-40, passim,

especially: Ltr, SW to Chm HR Judiciary Committee,

4 Apr 39; Memo, CSigO to ASW, 21 Apr 39;

OCSigO R&W Action 1 by CDC [Lt Col Clifford D.

Cuny], 2 Feb 40; Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 4 Mar 40. This

file comments upon HR's 4236, 7545, 8152, 1082,

8509, 4236, 74th Cong, 1st Sess, and S. 59, 3515. (2)

Memo, CSigO for ASW, 10 Aug 40. SigC 160 Contracts Gen 30. (3) Memo, Current Proc Br OASW to

CSigO et al., 18 Sep 39, sub: Closing agreement formula developed by Treasury to facilitate work under

contracts affected by the Vinson-Trammel Act; (4)

1st Memo Ind, OCSigO for ASW, 27 Sep 39, on

Memo, OASW for CSigO et al., 23 Sep 39, sub:

Direct current proc. SigC 160 Contracts Gen 26. (5)

Brig Gen Calvert H. Arnold, Procurement in the Signal Corps, lecture given in Army Industrial College,

26 Feb 46, p. 3. SigC Hist Sec File. (6) Ltr, Hon. John

W. McCormack to SW, 31 May 40; (7) Memo,

CSigO for ASW, 7 Jun 40, with Incl, draft of Ltr to

McCormack and ASW, 14 Jun 40. SigC 400.13 Gen. 8

 The "Big Five" was a catch phrase in Signal

Corps procurement to refer to the giants with whom

it made most of its contracts. Like the "Big Ten" of

university football which for a time became the "Big

Nine," the "Big Five" in many uses became the "Big

Four," Bendix being omitted as not of equivalent

gigantic stature, although the Signal Corps had considerable business with the Bendix Corporation, especially when acting as the Air Corps' procurement

agent. Another variation in the use of the term was

that Western Electric, Graybar Electric, and their

controlling company, American Telephone and Telegaph, appeared interchangeably. 9

 Hearings Before Special Committee Pursuant to Senate

Resolution 71, 77th Cong, 1st Sess, Investigation of the

National Defense Program, 15 Apr 41, Pt. I, p. 21. 10

 Senate Doc 134, 76th Cong, 2d Sess, Revised

I.M.P., 24 Oct 39.
170 THE SIGNAL CORPS

direct responsibility, as well as much of

the power, for the defense production program was in the hands of the Assistant

Secretary of War. With the 1940 presidential campaign, Henry L. Stimson succeeded Harry Woodring as Secretary of

War, and Patterson joined Stimson as

Assistant Secretary. Patterson, then, was

the official with whom the Signal Corps

and other supply agencies worked.

It was just as well to have in Patterson a

new broom, for the explosion abroad had

made debris of most previous planning.

Everything had to be reconsidered. The

supply planning groups of the Signal

Corps had begun the period of limited

emergency with the strength of former

months unchanged. Maj. James H. B.

Bogman and five women clerks comprised

the Procurement Planning Section in the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer, and

there was one planning officer in each of

the three active Signal Corps Procurement Districts. This staff had spent much

of 1939 endeavoring to meet the terms of

the revised Protective Mobilization Plan

going into effect on 10 April 1940. In the

interests of acceleration, Bogman had

acquired his first officer assistant, Capt.

Robert E. Burns, that spring, but still

needed a production engineer who could

help guide the planning through the maze

of electronic developments.

Their planning now identified two signposts not hitherto marked. One was the

fact that the Protective Mobilization Plan

revision provided reasonably accurate tables of basic allowances for the first time;

the other, that a Strategic Materials Act

had authorized the stockpiling of strategic

and critical materials.11 Now the relaxing

of peacetime contractual regulations in

the procurement of experimental, test, and

secret equipment constituted another advantage to them, for planners had consistently anticipated that in time of emergency

they would be allowed to drop open bidding and replace it by the direct or negotiated awards which they felt sure would be

a short cut.

Except for radio compasses and wire

and cable, foreign orders were proving

negligible. The cash-and-carry policy denied U.S. material in any abundance to

almost every nation, because those which

might have afforded the cash did not have

or could not spare the navies to carry the

material. The few foreign orders were

proving of positive benefit, however, contrary to expectations, particularly because

they helped to alert both the Signal Corps

and its manufacturers. The latter usually

notified the Chief Signal Officer even

before requesting a Munitions Board permit to sell, and the Chief Signal Officer

either urged manufacturers to follow military design where possible or himself released the design to the interested nation,

as in the case of granting the British access

to the aircraft radio compass. Release of a

design to one country permitted the manufacturer to sell it to any other nation, and

so to increase his productive potential

even while he committed current operating capacity. Thus production of military

signal equipment in greater quantities

than the Signal Corps would absorb was

slowly placing industry in a better position

to meet war.

The Signal Corps had been slow with

educational orders, partly because of the

assumption that the half-dozen companies

dominating communications manufacture

were well in command of the situation.

Inquiry now showed such disturbing facts

11

 (1) Pub. 117, 76th Cong, 1st Sess. (2) Report of

Second General Procurement Planning Conference,

9-14 Oct 39. SigC FM 186 Plng Gen ASW.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 171

as a serious shortage of machine tools and

of men trained in the skill to use them.

Again, for field wire, that subject of more

than twenty years of supply planning,

there appeared to be only two companies

in the United States capable of making it;

and neither had done so. Under suggestion from the Office of the Assistant Secretary, the Signal Corps now reversed its

position on educational orders and entered upon the first of a series: a contract

with John A. Roeblings' Sons for 500 miles

of W-110-B wire a month. Eventually

eleven firms learned through educational

orders to make this wire, at a combined

rate of 8,500 miles a month.12 This was

still far from enough. How far, could be

measured by the fact that the planning

which followed World War I had called

for twice as much.

To be awarded an educational order, a

company had to complete a detailed production study which showed a scheme for

conversion of the plant to emergency military production and listed in full the machine tools, dies, jigs, fixtures, and gauges

needed, with indications of where they

could be obtained; components and accessories to be purchased from designated

contributory sources; and the number of

workers, with the time required for training them. Under the terms of the order,

the manufacturer also estimated what the

cost of manufacture in quantity would be

if the "educational" method were employed on a mass production line. In short,

the award of an educational order could

give the Procurement Planning Section the

information that production surveys had

not drawn out.

The stand-by equal in importance to

wire, the EE-8 telephone which the entire

Army used, constituted another invitation

to educational orders. American industry's capacity to produce it was fifty a day.

Its manufacture involved hand cutting

and sewing of leather cases; special processing of kangaroo skin used in the cover

section of the case; individual production

of plastic parts, like the handles, which

could be mass-made; and altogether a

watchmaker's skill on the part of the artisans. The cord was figuratively strangling

production of the telephone, because only

one manufacturer knew how to make it.

Educational orders which set three facilities to work on the EE-8-A developed new

sources of supply for the cord and streamlined the manufacture by introducing machine sewing and finishing of the cases,

substituting cowhide or even processed

canvas for the kangaroo, and devising

rapid assembly lines. Maximum daily production rose from 50 to more than 2,000.13

Military radio equipment, often having

little in common with civilian items, presented a serious procurement problem

even when ordered in small lots, let alone

in quantities. Radio is never wholly amenable to mass-production techniques. Its

manufacture is essentially not an industry,

but a craft; and radiomen echo this feeling

when they speak of their work as the radio

12

 (1) Report on Problem No. 3, Analysis of Basic

Industry, Committee E, The Machine Tool Industry,

1938-39 course, Army Industrial College, Dec 39. (2)

H. D. Hausman, Procurement Planning and Industrial Mobilization, 1920-1940, Pt. II, p. 162 and

passim. OCSigO Industrial Mob Br File. (3) "The

Crowell Board [Brig Gen Benedict Crowell, Chm]

Report on Educational Orders for Peacetime Munitions Production," Army Ordnance, XX, No. 117 (November-December, 1939), 167-70. (4) Maj J. H. B.

Bogman, Chief of OCSigO Proc Plan Sec, A Procurement Study of the Influence of Educational Orders on

Wire W-110-B, 21 May 40; (5) 4th Ind, CSigO to

ASW, 4 Jun 40. SigC 160 Contracts Gen 29. 13

 (1) Lt. Col James H. B. Bogman, Current Problems in Signal Corps Procurement, Army Industrial

College Short Course 3, Jul-Sep 41, pp. 14-15. (2)

Hausman study cited n. 12(2), Pt. II, pp. 240 ff.
172 THE SIGNAL CORPS

art. Radio manufacture had become an

industry, undeniably, but industrial mass

production had brought such a cheapening of the product that workers in the big

plants would have to be trained to do

better work. They were so used to a standard which cut corners, eliminated certain

parts, adulterated others, accomplished

the wiring or soldering hastily, and assembled components without the necessary

repeated testing of both the individual

parts and the whole radio that, confronted

with a call for carefully made equipment,

they had no experience with which to

start. It was desirable to apply massproduction techniques in order to meet a

wartime demand for military radio, but

there was a serious risk that they would

turn out botched equipment. To satisfy the

extraordinarily technical requirements of

the armed forces, companies which had

been making thousands of radios would

have to learn to make thousands of good

radios. Toward this end, their employees

would have to be metamorphosed from

assembly-line automatons to painstaking

craftsmen: an irony quite the reverse of the

need in EE-8-A telephone manufacture.

For this reason as much as because the

field was considered to have been finally

partitioned by a few companies, it had

been against Signal Corps policy to place

educational orders for radio. Bogman's

office now had a production engineer who

had reinforced this policy by reporting

that it was impractical to compute radio

requirements under the Protective Mobilization Plan because design changed too

fast. Accordingly, the Signal Corps withheld educational orders until designs could

be frozen long enough to make the production test worth while. But May 1940

changed that. General Mauborgne sought

$2,665,000 for educational orders to cover

nine of the most important items of radio

equipment which the Signal Corps procured for troops.14

The Chief Signal Officer had already

asked the Senate, on May 10, to restore

funds permitting the fifty-seven aircraft to

be equipped with radio. Six days later

President Roosevelt threw all previous

estimates to the winds by asking for 50,000

airplanes within the coming fiscal year.

At the same time funds became available

to let a secret contract for $1,000,000

worth of SCR-268 searchlight-control

radars. The sum was unheard of for investment in a single item, and industry

was unprepared to deal with it. A few of

the great companies had worked with

radar on an experimental basis in their

laboratories (RCA notably, as General

Electric had with FM), but they were reluctant to contract for large-scale production of sets. Eventually Western Electric

took up the contract.

There was more in this incident than

the frequent refusal of industry to participate in the defense program unless all

risks were removed and top profits guaranteed. Manufacturers did sometimes

accept contracts which later proved to

have disadvantageous specifications. This

was almost the situation—a situation rescued for a happy ending—with reference

to a contract which the Allen D. Cardwell

Manufacturing Company made to produce frequency meters. A frequency meter

is an essential in electric communications;

and the one which the Cardwell firm produced turned out to be "super-delicate"

and "of the most accurate precision." In

14

 (1) Milton B. Sleeper, "War Revises Radio Industry," FM [later FM and Television], II, No. 6 (January-April, 1942), pp. 5-6. (2) Proc Plan Sec Supply

Div OCSigO, Data for Bi-Weekly Conference, 23

May 40. SigC PP 381 Plans Acceleration, May 40.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 173

making it so, the manufacturer had accepted requests from the Laboratories not

actually incorporated into the specifications; this had thrown him far behind

schedule; and he became liable to heavy

damages despite the undenied fact that he

had produced a much better item than

the government had contracted for. After

due negotiation, he obtained a remission

of damages, but the call was close.15

In taking up the million-dollar SCR268 contract, Western Electric was in no

such danger. It had a cushion of capital

resources, its own laboratories, a firm

understanding with the Signal Corps, and

an almost impregnable position in the national business economy.

With this order for radar and the prospect of equipping 50,000 airplanes, the

Signal Corps passed a milestone on the

way to the tremendous procurement program of World War II. In the ensuing

month, the New York Signal Corps Procurement District alone let more than

$2,000,000 worth of contracts.16

It became evident that in order to meet

the quotas of the new fiscal year's upstepping procurement, one-shift plants

would have to go onto two-shift schedules,

two-shift plants go to three. It became further evident that plant space as well as

plant manpower must grow, and on June

25 Public Law 664 authorized government financing of such expansion through

the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

The Signal Corps' first arrangement of the

sort was for the Bendix Radio Corporation, in the production of radio compasses,

frequency meters, direction finders, and

other items of the Air program.

On June 27 the President established

the National Defense Research Committee "to correlate and support scientific research on the mechanisms of warfare" and

to contract with individuals, educational

or scientific institutions, and industrial

organizations for studies, experimental investigations, and reports. NDRC was the

forerunner of OSRD, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and the

chief civilian governmental agency to

which the Signal Corps looked during the

war.

On June 28 Public Law 671 effected

more of the measures which military procurement had looked for: in this case,

priority of Army and Navy contracts over

civilian and export contracts, and suspension of the provisions of the Walsh-Healy

Act

 17

 at need, particularly the limitation

to an eight-hour day.

And on July 2 Public Law 703, another

in the urgently mounting list "to expedite

the strengthening of national defense,"

greatly enlarged the area where negotiated contracts would be permitted. The

charge was now definitely upon big industry and the Military Establishment to

equip the nation for war, for major curbs

hitherto applied in the public interest had

been removed.

At first, the War Department handled

this grant of authority with extreme caution, the Office of the Assistant Secretary

drawing up and distributing rules to

govern it. Negotiated contracts involving

$500,000 or more, as well as cost-plus-afixed-fee contracts, could be made only

with the approval of the Assistant Secretary and subject to the further approval

powers, if he exerted them, of Donald M.

Nelson, the chairman of the Advisory

Commission to the Council of National

15

 SigC File Contract W-221-SC-1123, passim. 16

 Ltr, Actg O/C N.Y. SigC Proc District to CSigO,

18 Jul 40, sub: Monthly status rpt. SigC 400.13 Gen

18.

17

 See Fairchild and Grossman hist cited n. 6(3).
174 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Defense. A set of standards stated by the

commission would guide the War Department's procurement, Patterson announced. Speed was the foremost of them,

but not to the extent that the devil could

take the hindmost. The military economy

was cautioned to maintain itself wholly

within the civilian economy, statutory

guarantees to labor being preserved, commitments toward social welfare being safeguarded, and industry and venture capital

being protected by government subsidization at every possible point.

In August, letters of intent were developed, to expedite production still further

by anticipating even negotiation of a contract; a letter of intent gave a manufacturer assurance that the government

would bear any costs resulting from getting production under way. The manufacturer would not be out of pocket if the

subsequent negotiation failed to produce

a contract. In actual fact, a letter of intent

was as good as a contract, for a procurement agent who had committed the government to the initial expense was not

likely to see it go for naught. Contract restrictions were still tight enough so that

the procuring agency was reluctant even

to acknowledge an occasional bad bargain

and terminate it, with the result that once

in a while good time and money were

thrown after bad. And always beyond the

awarding and completion of a contract

stood the General Accounting Office, requiring to be satisfied on any changes, any

extensions, any remissions, any exceeding

of sums.18

The Mirrors of Defense Effort

Half glare, half shadow, the emergency

provided an imperfect light by which to

look at preparedness measures, but there

was no doubt of the elements to prepare.

There were simply the elementary oneand-one: men and equipment. The men

would come from the nation as a whole.

Equipment must come from those who

manufactured it. Procurement of men was

a universal issue, far beyond the reach of

the Signal Corps or any other single

agency, although all eyes turned for its solution to the forthcoming conscription.

The burden of equipment, however, lay

directly upon those charged with assuming it. As in 1941 the provision of men was

uppermost of the two essentials, so in 1940

was the provision of equipment. The

probability that defense would prove to be

an urgent euphemism for war footing subordinated everything else to the necessity

to amass material.

Thus the specific procurement demands

of the customers, especially of the Air and

Armored branches, forcibly turned the

course of signal development into some

18

 (1) Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, HR, 76th Cong, 3d Sess, On the

Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1941,

HR 9209, p. 655. (2) Hearings Before Special Committee

Pursuant to Senate Resolution 71, 77th Cong, 1st Sess, Investigation of the National Defense Program, 15 Apr

41, Pt. I, pp. 27-29. (3) Memo, CSigO for ASW, cited

n. 6(1). (4) Arnold lecture cited n. 7(5), p. 3. (5) Bogman course cited n. 13(1), p. 10. (6) Col George P.

Bush and Martha E. Manning, History of Procurement Planning, 1920-1940, MS, 1942, p. 19. OCSigO

Industrial Mob Br File. (7) Memo, Dir Current Proc

Office OASW for CSigO, 10 Jun 40, sub: Approval

of important purchases by Council of National Defense; (8) Ltr, ASW to CSigO, 12 Jun 40, sub: 1941

proc program; (9) Memo, Dir Current Proc Office

OASW for CSigO, 13 Jun 40, sub: Approval of important purchases. SigC 400.13 Gen. (10) Memo,

ASW for Chiefs of WD Supply Svs, 27 Sep 40. SigC

160 Contracts Gen 31. (11) Ltr, Dir SCL to CSigO,

24 Sep 40, sub: Contract W-1077-SC-320 Sound

Products, Inc. SigC 160 Contracts Gen 30. (12) 1st

Ind, Lt Col Clifford D. Cuny, OCSigO, to Chief of

Audit Div GAO, 29 Oct 40, on Ltr, Chief of Contract Exam Sec GAO to CSigO, 7 Oct 40. SigC 160

Contracts Gen 31.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 175

channels it had not yet taken. The example of foreign, civilian, and naval new material was increasingly bearing upon the

laboratories of both Monmouth and

Wright. The probable use of hundreds of

standard commercial models of communications equipment almost without

change drastically modified the freedom

of choice also. Often these influences conflicted. In procurement there was no sole

cast of countenance. Many lines cut across

the main furrows.

Emergency was a galvanic word, but it

had not brought a unified effort into existence—the sort of well-muscled national

right arm which the posters showed to be

brandished against danger. With the loss

of continental Europe, many more persons in the United States had doubts

about the remoteness of the war, yet much

was unready. A part of the public, part of

the Congress, part of the business world,

part of the military world was apathetic;

other parts were divided against themselves. A nation accustomed to peace was

resisting war. In Congress, the first peacetime conscription in the nation's history

was being hauled back and forth between

the goals of necessity and liberty. In commerce and industry, many executives were

waiting for their own terms to be met. In

the Army, mobilization and procurement

had picked up but little momentum, and

that at an uncertain rhythm. The place to

measure it was in the experience of the

last war and in the tryouts of the next.

Asking a former Chief Signal Officer,

General Gibbs, for his opinion on preparedness measures which the communications service could take, General Marshall heard, among other things, that the

country's communications specialists, particularly the 48,000 members of the American Radio Relay League, should be

theoretically allotted without delay, so

that the Signal Corps could know what

strength it had to count upon in competition with Navy, air, and ground force

communication.19 "This personnel must

be highly trained to perform useful service," Gibbs emphasized. "Poor service is

worse than a disappointment. It may

bring disaster."

General Mauborgne, his successor, estimated that he could substantially equip

and maintain the signalmen for an army

of 1,200,000 by 15 November 1941, of

2,000,000 by 1 June 1942. He hedged his

bet by pointing out the probable absence

of enough men trained to carry out the

program, by citing manufacturers' resistance to the Vinson-Trammel Act and the

cost-accounting system required by the

Treasury Department, by expressing his

hope to see strikes repressed by legislation,

and by voicing concern over a quick

shortage in raw materials if foreign demands were allowed to grow.20

For the time being, until the issue of Selective Service should be settled, he had

no way of knowing whether he was right

or wrong in manpower estimates. In

equipment, field exercises revealed some

of the answers. Before maneuvers were

complete, there was an occasion under the

Protective Mobilization Plan to look at

tactical signal equipment again. Which

were the absolute essentials? Their procurement must be expedited, if there were

any question that a state of war would put

them in short supply.

Looked at on a basis of total cost, radio

was the essential, without quibble: the

19

 Memo, Maj Gen George S. Gibbs, Ret., for Gen

Marshall, CofS, 27 Jun 40, sub: Sig coms requirements in preparation for war. SigC 381 Gen 16, MarAug 40. 20

 Memo, CSigO for ASW, cited n. 7(2).
176 THE SIGNAL CORPS

dozen major points of expenditure were

all for radio sets. Looked at so far as quantities of items were concerned, radio was

nothing of the sort: the vital needs were in

wire and, remarkably, in visual equipment. Radar and vehicular radio were

dominant; so were flashlights, panels, and

telephone instruments. It is of sufficient

interest to cull from the whole listing of

Signal Corps essential items the top dozen

in several categories, for the illustration it

offers of divergent interests, conflicting demands, good and bad guesses. Listed according to their total procurement cost in

each case, the twelve leading items in the

Signal Corps' estimates were:

 21

SCR-245 (vehicular radio)............ . $7,080,000

SCR-274 (aircraft command set)....... . 6,450,000

SCR-268 ("radar"—searchlight controller). ............................ . 5,180,000

SCR-259 (soon abandoned aircraft liaison

set). ............................ . 4,180,000

SCR-193 (ground forces) ............. . 2,822,400

SCR-177 (ground-to-air) ............. . 2,400,000

SCR-283 (aircraft command set)....... . 2,400,000

SCR-270 and SCR-271 (aircraft interception "radar")..................... . 2,275,000

SCR-287 (aircraft liaison set).......... . 1,980,000

SCR-210 (receiver only).............. . 1,668,800

SCR-269 (radio compass)............. . 1,400,000

SCR-183 (predecessor and partner to

SCR-283)........................ . 1,320,000

Listed according to individual cost,

these items led:

SCR-270 and SCR-271 ................ . $65,000

SCR-268 ............................ . 35,000

SCR-197 (truck-and-trailer long-range

radio) ............................ . 20,000

Sound-ranging equipment, GR-3 ........ . 11,000

Telephone central TC-2 ............... . 8,000

Spotting set PH-32 .................... . 7,000

Truck and earth borer ................. . 6,200

SCR-177 ............................ . 4,800

SCR-188 ............................ . 4,800

SCR-259 ............................ . 4,400

SCR-287 ............................ . 4,400

SCR-193 ............................ . 4,200

Listed according to unit quantity:

Flashlight TL-122 ................... . 176,526

Lamp LM-35 ....................... . 72,000

ClipTL-123 ........................ . 50,000

Headset HS-23 ...................... . 30,000

Panel AL-120 ....................... . 25,000

Wire W-l 10 (mile lengths) ............ . 22,000

Chest BC-5 ......................... . 16,000

Head and Chest Set HS-19 ............ . 14,000

Cord CD-190 ....................... . 14,000

Telephone EE-8 ..................... . 8,000

Panel AL-119 ....................... . 8,000

Filter Equipment RC-32 .............. . 6,000

After the last of the series of maneuvers,

General Marshall put another question.

Having asked what the Signal Corps

thought it ought to do (Gibbs had doggedly replied with the traditional plea for

unified responsibility), he now asked what

it could do. The Germans were apparently

using radio a great deal, all the way down

to companies. Was the Signal Corps going

to pursue that? Commercial equipment

was probably better than that of the Signal Corps. Was the Signal Corps prepared

to contract for it on a large scale? Would

it not be well to imitate the Air Corps

practice of competitive design? And how

was the Navy handling its communications procurement? Marshall was disturbed that the maneuvers of the summer—first each of the armies, starting

with the Third in Louisiana during May,

then all four in August—had shown tactical signal communications to be inadequate.22

 The onus of inadequacy was not

solely the Signal Corps'—combat communications was a field in which the Signal

Corps largely took, rather than gave,

21

 Incl with AG Ltr to CSigO, 12 Jun 40, sub: Expediting program for critical items (PMP) and essential items (existing units)—SigC. AG 112.05 (6540)

M-D, and also in SigC CH 11-106 Proc Program,

1941. 22

 Memo, CofS for CSigO, 7 Sep 40. OCS 16281-6.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 177

orders—but, Marshall asked, within the

limits which were the Signal Corps' responsibility, were things as good as they

should be?

Signal Corps observers, still as much

worried as in the preceding year's maneuvers, said "No." Bluntly: "The reputation

of the Signal Corps is at stake."

 23

 This was

the conclusion after the Camp McCoy,

Second Army exercises at Wisconsin, although the man who made it, Lt. Col.

Richard B. Moran, qualified it by advancing the familiar demand for more

men. It was "pitifully inadequate," he felt,

to assign only part of a battalion to do

everything, as the 51st Battalion detachment had been expected to do at Camp

McCoy. But there was even less strength

in equipment than in troops: fewer than

half a dozen vehicular sets; no Aircraft

Warning Service, let alone aircraft warning equipment; and a tendency on the

part of the tactical air cover, after waiting

for good weather, to ignore its radio and

drop messages over the side.

Maj. Jerry V. Matejka was another

Signal Corps officer who was obliged to

take note of improvisations and inadequacies. At both the First and Second

Army operations he had observed "a general lack of modern . . . radio . . . particularly of vehicular sets such as the

SCR-245, which . . . assume great importance in rapid movement of troops."

 24

Although he was told that telegraph

printers, the improvement which had

been strongly recommended in the 1939

maneuvers, were sending messages from

the divisions back to the corps, he found

out that they were not in use at all. The

whole wire system was still based upon

easy access to local facilities; men of the

51st had spent half of July, ahead of the

Camp McCoy maneuvers, in building a

pole line tributary to the one already settled into the Wisconsin countryside, running circuits to the airports, and connecting with the telephone buildings in Sparta

and other nearby towns.25

Truth to tell, however remote this action

was from Attu or Tunisia, it was not a

world away by any means. Typical of

American military operations is the fact

that wherever they do not find the scene

they are used to, they create it. In the

sense that a barn "improves" an acre of

land, they "improve" the Aleutians or the

desert or the jungle with buildings, roads,

vehicles, and an abundance of mechanical

equipment which sooner or later brings

into being the kind of situation where the

teletype in the general's field office works

as matter of factly as if there were not a

thousand miles of undeveloped land outside. Thus many of the signal communications men of the forthcoming war would

be set down in conditions at least as established as those of the various maneuvers.

As for the men who would be the first on a

scene not yet provided with all the conveniences, there was ample reason to presume that they could meet the test,

summoning both the stamina for hardship

and the ingenuity for mechanical improvisation.

At these same much-criticized Second

Army maneuvers, for example, an infantry officer noticed that men of the 11th

Infantry, wanting a vehicular set, had

mounted an old SCR-171 in a half-ton

truck, rigged an antenna, and contrived a 23

 Lt Col Richard B. Moran, SigC, Rpt on Exec No.

5, 2d Army Maneuvers, Gamp McCoy, Wisc., 24-27

Aug 40. SigC 354.2 (2d Army) No. 2, 1938-3 Mar 41. 24

 Memo, Lt Col Jerry V. Matejka for Brig Gen

Lesley J. McNair, 30 Aug 40. AGF 324.2 Maneuvers

1, 1940-41. 25

 Rpt, Participation of the 51st Signal Battalion in

2nd Army Maneuvers, 1940. SigC 354.2 (2d Army)

No. 2, 1938-3 Mar 41.
178 THE SIGNAL CORPS

power supply out of dry batteries they

had salvaged from SGR-195's. Thus transformed, the 171 not only got around in its

own vehicle but even functioned a bit

when the truck was in motion.26 In little

instances of this sort lay much encouragement.

They could not be permitted, however,

to lighten the burden of the Signal Corps,

which was the duty of seeing that equipment did not have to be improvised or

men worked at double duty. Enough

equipment, enough men. . . . The peacetime conscription bill was closer than ever

now; that should open the supply of men.

For equipment, mass procurement was

similarly near. The valuable upshot of the

maneuver season was that leading categories of new equipment distinctly

emerged. The catalog of "essentials" became a thing of the past wherever it emphasized anything outside these categories.

Teletype. Vehicular radio. Air radio.

Radar.

Unknown to the men on maneuvers, air

radio and radar developments of the most

extraordinary kind were under discussion

on an interservice, international scale.

The Armored Force was suing for and

getting Signal Corps commitments to vehicular radio with all the drive of a new

organization. The Air Corps was suing for

and getting its radio equipment with all

the force of the Air Corps. The ground

arms saw clearly the desirability of communications which could move: walkietalkies, radio in motion, light wire, compact teletype. The final report on the First

Army maneuvers epitomized this awareness, counting off its elements: 100-milesin-motion, abundant wire above the regiment, abundant radio below, mobile

teletype for divisions and corps, and

especially—FM.

FM Confirmed

Word of mouth was bruiting the merits

of FM. Some of the support came from the

field, some from the Signal Corps, some

from manufacturers. Among the last were

those whom Armstrong had licensed to use

his patents, plus the inventor himself, who

took every opportunity to lend the Army

his equipment. He had provided the First

Army's maneuvers with the twenty-eight

sets from the Radio Engineering Laboratories, which was his own outlet. In part, a

demand had been sown within the Signal

Corps. The demand which settled the

matter, however, came from the field

arms, for no amount of drive either from

manufacturers or from individual proponents in the service could establish FM

tactically if the tactical users did not want

it.27

They did. Against such remarks as the

Laboratories', that there was "no need at

the present time for the development of

any special frequency modulation equipment,"

 28

 chiefs of one component after

another were persisting in their inquiries,

and the Signal Corps' own chief, General

Mauborgne, occasionally added his. The

26

 Ltr, Maj I. M. Oseth to Chief of Inf, 16 Sep 40,

sub: Rpt by inf observer at Second Army maneuvers

24-27 Aug 40. AG 353 (10-20-38) Sec 1-E Rpts on

1940 Army Maneuvers. 27

 On all of these points, see intervs, SigC Hist Sec

with: (1) Col Edward A. Allen, SigC Bd, Ft. Monmouth, N.J., 10 Feb 50; (2) Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong,

New York, N.Y., 13 Feb 50; (3) O. M. Brymer, Government Sales Representative Western Electric Corp.,

New York, N.Y., 15 Feb 50; (4) Maj Gen Roger B.

Colton, Ret., New York, N.Y., 14 Feb 50; (5) C. M.

Jansky, Jr., Radio Engr Consultant, Washington,

D.C., 16 Nov 50; (6) Fred R. Lack, Vice-President

Western Electric Corp., New York, N.Y., 15 Feb 50;

(7) Fred M. Link, Link Radio Corp., New York,

N.Y., 15 Feb 50. 28

 1st Ind, Maj Rex V. D. Corput, Jr., to CSigO, 12

Sep 40, on Ltr, CSigO to Dir SCL, 19 Aug 40, sub:

FM equip. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 179

general pleasure in the twenty-eight sets

tried out at maneuvers was such that the

signal officer of the Second Corps Area

(which served the First Army) pressed for

permission to keep them.

No one in the Signal Corps who was

concerned with the FM decision wanted

to approve these sets just yet. Colonel

Colton cited the need for "further tests

looking to authorized tactical use." Major

Guest in the Communications Liaison Division raised the question of frequencies

again, saying that the available ones were

already "barely adequate" for the authorized equipment, the SCR-194. The

prospect of a radiotelephone at hand in

every Army car unsettled him, too; the

convenience of it suggested that the demand would be enormous. Colonel

Moran, in the War Plans and Training

Division, recommended that the sets be

used only under the specific authorization

of the Chief Signal Officer; and Colonel

Mitchell, for the Research and Development Division, agreed that "continued use

for tactical purposes cannot be countenanced." Temporarily, they went back to

the builder.29

With noteworthy unanimity of time and

circumstance, however, the demands consolidated immediately after the close of

the maneuvers season. In much the same

way that a captain in a mechanized

cavalry brigade had raised one call from

the grass roots, a lieutenant in a field

artillery regiment raised another. "[Although] the present type of transmission used in the Army is called amplitude

modulation," 1st Lt. John J. Davis, communications officer of the 80th Field

Artillery Regiment at Fort Des Moines,

argued, ". . . an entirely new type of

transmission called frequency modulation . . . has many distinct military advantages." The sets could be smaller and

lighter, he said; they operated over such a

wide band that the network possibilities

were manifold; they did not compete for

the crowded bands, but transmitted in the

ultrahigh-frequency area; they did not

require exclusive frequency assignment,

for if transmitters of equal power were

operating on the same frequency, only the

nearest would be heard; they were difficult to jam; and—a "self-evident" advantage—they were free from vehicular

interference and atmospheric shutdowns.

The Chief of Field Artillery agreed to the

extent of saying that Davis expressed

"almost the unanimous opinion of artillery

commanders that field artillery communications are archaic and woefully inadequate."

 30

At that date, the SCR-194 was the

standard radio for light and medium gun

batteries and the fifteen-year-old SCR-161

for regiments. For vehicular use, the Field

Artillery employed the SCR-245, when it

could get one. Both the old and the new

were amplitude-modulated; and the

Radio Corporation of America, the solid

opponent of frequency modulation, was

manufacturing another AM set intended

to replace the 161.31

29

 SigC File 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40, passim. 30

 (1) Ltr, Col William S. Bowen, CAC Bd, to Chief

of CAC, 12 Sep 40, sub: Commercial FM radio equip,

with 1st Ind, Chief of CAC to CSigO, 4 Oct 40; (2)

Ltr, Chief of Inf to CSigO, 19 Sep 40, sub: Test of FM

radio; (3) Ltr, Lt Davis to CG 6th Div, 27 Aug 40

sub: Radio recommendations, with 3d Ind, Chief of

FA to CSigO, 3 Oct 40; (4) Ltr, Chief of FA to CSigO,

19 Aug 40, sub: FM equip, with 2d Wrapper Ind,

Col Colton to CSigO, 6 Sep 40. SigC 413.44 FM 1,

Jan-Sep 40. 31

 The SCR-285, then under development, but so

similar to the SCR-284 that it was subsequently

dropped. Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of Signal Corps Research and Development in World War

II, 1945-46, Vol. VIII, Pt. 3, Proj. (823) 10-11. SigC

Hist Sec File.
180 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Signal Corps equipment policy had

seldom had such a decision to make. Disruption theatened the vital relation between research and procurement. If research went ahead with a development

not supported by the Signal Corps' major

outlets for manufacture, how could the

item be procured in the quantities which

a war would impose? If procurement

made sure of mass production by remaining within the fold of the mass producers,

would not the Army be denied one of the

most promising communications advances

in years? There were many cross currents

to the decision. For example, even the inventor himself questioned whether FM

would lend itself to small portable sets—

which, because they were small and portable, had transmitters of possibly too low

power. The SCR-509 and SCR-510 later

banished doubts on this score, when the

Signal Corps Laboratories revived reactance modulation and combined it with

crystal control.32

Another deterrent to quick decision appeared in the fact that a decision had to be

made on crystals first. The pressure for

them was becoming all but irresistible. At

ever more frequent intervals it unsettled

established policy and reopened closed

verdicts. To the near consternation of a

considerable body of opinion both in the

Signal Corps and in industry, the Armored

Force asked for 100 channels for its tank

sets, the AF-III, any 10 to be available in

advance of an operation. Mechanization

indicated the need for that much choice,

because moving vehicles would cross into

many assigned frequency areas. Experience had shown that it was extraordinarily difficult to change frequencies on a

master-oscillator vehicular set when the

vehicle was in motion. The simplest possible means of operation was essential, and

the Armored Force therefore felt that crystal control was the obvious answer: immediate, pushbutton finding of the frequency at the center of the channel.

So did the Signal Corps. But theory

came up against practice. A 10-crystal

radio posed as delicate an engineering

challenge as a 24-jewel watch. That challenge could be met, but what of the still

brittle fact that quartz was one of the most

strategic of strategic materials? If crystal

control were to be introduced everywhere

at the rate the Armored Force was proposing, not all the quartz in Brazil might be

enough. Surveys in the Laboratories and

the Procurement Planning Section of the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer counted

up all of the known sources, even to the

amount in American museums.

The Signal Corps made up maneuver

test models with everything the Armored

Force officers wanted, almost expecting

that such an array of quartz would discourage them. The more crystals, went the

argument, the more space required in the

set; therefore the larger the set; therefore

the more space which an already crowded

vehicle would have to sacrifice to it. Could

every tank make room for a cubic foot of

crystals? That was the approximate

amount which 100 channels would necessitate. Lt. Col. Edward A. Allen, the signal

officer of the Armored Force, himself felt

that there was no need for so many channels; 6, rather than the 10 being sought,

would give a comfortable scope in which

to plan an armored operation. The problem was not comparable to that of a

32

 (1) Memo, Maj John Hessel, SigC,. for Col Eugene V. Elder, 1 Nov 42, sub: Pertinent info concerning development of SCR-300. SigC 413.44 (SCR-300)

No. 1, 1942. (2) MS comment by SCL [Mar 42]. SigC

Hist Sec File. (3) John J. Kelleher, "VHF and Microwave Military Communication Systems," Signals, I,

No. 4 (March-April 1947), 44-48.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 181

mobile police radio system, as some of the

enthusiasts seemed to think. All cars of a

police system worked on the same channel, and each set needed to receive only

that one. Armstrong, Colton, Allen, Fred

R. Lack of Western Electric, and others

would all have recommended fewer channels, and eventually the Armored Force

did drop its requirement from 100 to 80.

But General Chaffee and his staff held

firm to the center of their demand, which

was for crystals. Whether 100 or 80, tankset channels must be crystal-controlled.

Laboratories proponents of crystals

sought a firmer bulwark. Their belief in

American quartz had not been supported

by the careful judgment of the National

Bureau of Standards, the Naval Research

Laboratory, and the Signal Corps' own

Research and Development and Supply

divisions. This time, the Laboratories obtained an estimate from some of the companies in the market. Although not leading crystal suppliers, three companies

(Western Electric, Radio Corporation of

America, and American Gem and Pearl)

calculated that they could get a million

and a half radio crystals out of the contemporary U.S. stockpile of Brazilian

quartz, and that Brazil could provide

600,000 more a year. Once again, the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer divisions

refigured the supply. They could arrive at

nothing like such large figures. Their

arithmetic showed 480,000 rather than

1,500,000 and 300,000 rather than 600,-

000. If this were true, the Signal Corps

could not commit itself to an extensive

crystal program. It viewed with alarm any

such prospect, and urgently reminded the

Laboratories that this was the case. Colton

assured the Washington offices that he

had not been flying in the face of their

policy. "As a matter of fact," he declared,

"we did not suggest the use of crystals

originally to the Mechanized Cavalry."

Even so, Laboratories opinion was markedly favorable to crystals, and the using

arms were all but clamoring for them.

Maj. James D. O'Connell succinctly said,

"Without crystals, you have radio; with

them, communications." Along with the

Armored Force went other users of vehicular radio. Even the Air Corps was

building up to the SCR-274 and other

very high frequency equipment which

would tax the crystal supply.

Almost suddenly, a way out appeared.

O'Connell, Colton, and Lack, consulting

on the matter, proposed that the Signal

Corps underwrite a new method for making four crystals out of every one. Fine cutting and a reorientation to the use of

crystals smaller than hitherto thought

feasible would quadruple the supply. In

addition, there was a possibility that

"seeding," or growing artificial crystals

around a core in a laboratory solution,

would provide a synthetic abundance in

case the natural supply should be cut off.

The matter was given to the National Defense Advisory Committee. Every interested agency of the Signal Corps recalculated the visible supply and the invisible

demand, figuring the latter in association

with the Laboratories' insistence that if

crystals were to be used at all they must

not be used partially or meagerly. On a

basis of four for one, it might be possible to

go ahead.

The long discussion culminated on September 18 and 19, at conferences held at

the Signal Corps Laboratories over Armored Force equipment.

... It was concluded that . . . the United

States' stock pile of quartz plus one year's

supply from Brazil, was sufficient quartz for

1,000,000 normal size crystals. If an extra
182 THE SIGNAL CORPS

stage of amplification is used, crystals can be

cut to 1⁄4 normal size and if half the amount

above were cut to the 1⁄4 size, we would have

2,500,000 crystals available. It was estimated

that the Armored Force could be equipped

. . . using only about 9% of the immediately

available supply. ... A total of 405,000

crystals for Types III and IV and IV-a sets

for the Armored Force . . . is only 10.1% of

the 4,000,000 crystals (1⁄4 size) available in

the United States plus one year's supply from

Brazil.

On September 25, the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer approved a 100-

channel type III and a 50-channel type

IV. The decision had been made, and

Army vehicular radio was committed to

crystals. It was satisfying to contemplate,

and risky. O'Connell, later assigned the

wartime mission of fulfilling the program

decided upon in 1940, had a success which

removed all doubts; but on at least one

occasion he looked at the predictions

which he and his colleagues had made and

ruefully observed: "For a good laugh,

read this."

 33

In this fashion one major problem,

crystal control, had been settled or at least

alleviated. The decision closely related to

it, where and how much to use frequency

modulation, remained formally unresolved, but was actually so close to an

answer that in the minds of many it, too,

was a settled issue. First, the Radio Engineering Laboratories sets of the late summer maneuvers moved to the forefront

again. The Signal Corps Laboratories

agreed to ask for only three of them, and

Lt. Gen. Hugh A. Drum successfully dislodged the other twenty-five for "urgent"

use in infantry command and staff cars

and in infantry-artillery liaison. "It is

assumed," he assumed, "that crystals

could be furnished and the sets adjusted

so that they could be operated on a frequency that could be authorized."

 34

 At

this, the entire Signal Corps gave a sigh.

Shortage, however, had not put off the

Armored Force; neither could it the Infantry; and along with agreeing to provide

the crystals, the Signal Corps assigned the

37-39 megacycle band to the twenty-five

sets.

Thus was the field demand making

itself felt and covering in a stride or two

the conventional, slower route toward

acceptance which Army regulations obliged the Signal Corps to follow. The

Armored Force, like the Infantry, also

demanded similar sets. The Signal Corps

was reluctant to permit Captain Williams

to borrow six Link police sets, as he had

asked. There was no reason to do so, the

Laboratories maintained, when Armored

Force specifications were still for amplitude modulation (accordingly, the Signal

Corps' first order upon Western Electric

for three service-test samples of the AF-III

radio, the SCR-508, called for amplitude

modulation). In addition, there was some

feeling that the sets would certainly be less

satisfactory than could be developed in the

normal course of research on the "500's."

Moran suggested that it would be a good

idea to let the Armored Force find out for

itself; and Mitchell commented, "We are

33

 (1) SigC File 413.44 Crystals 5, 1940, passim. (2)

Brig Gen James D. O'Connell, Deputy CSigO, personal file on crystals (untitled), passim. (3) MS comment by Maj Gen Roger B. Colton, Ret., 19 and 24

Nov 51; (4) Ltr, Col Williams to Dr. Thompson, 31

Dec 49; (5) Ltr, John Hessel, Chief of Br SCEL, to

Colton, 30 Nov 51. SigC Hist Sec File. (6) Intervs

cited n. 27. (7) M. L. Melia, The Quartz Crystal Program of the Signal Corps, 1941-1945, 1945, passim,

especially pp. 1-20. SigC Hist Sec File. (8) Vance

Hilliard, "Radio Telephones Guide the 'Blitz Buggies,' " Bell Telephone Magazine, XXIII (1944), 52 ff. 34

 4th Ind, Col Crawford to Sig Officer First Army,

3 Dec 40, 5th Ind, Gen Drum to TAG, 5 Dec 40, and

7th Ind, CSigO to TAG, 4 Feb 41, on missing basic

Ltr. SigC 413.44 FM 1, Jan-Sep 40.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 183

getting a bear by the tail but it can't be

helped." Federal Communications Commission engineers contributed to the resolution of the problem by producing a

favorable report of the FM sets installed in

the cars of Connecticut State troopers.

They had tested the sets in the presence of

Link, the manufacturer, and Dr. Daniel

E. Noble, the designer. The report won

the support of Guest,35 in the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer, and he forwarded

the papers to Colton for "earnest consideration." Colton, O'Connell, and several

of the civilian radio engineers went off to

Connecticut to have a look for themselves.

The look strongly favored FM. Next, the

Signal Corps Laboratories ran off tests of

their own, late in 1940. FM was confirmed

as more efficient and more effective in

short-range mobile radio. At once the

Signal Corps asked Western Electric to

build FM versions of the SCR-508. Superior FM radios for the Armored Force

became assured.36

This plunge into frequency-modulated

radio together with the commitment to

crystal control constituted two daring ventures by the Signal Corps and its Laboratories. The more basic decision, upon

which all higher-frequency radio awaited,

involved crystals of quartz. The decision

was made in the face of great odds; the

great need for simple dependable tuning

was pitted against a critical scarcity of

quartz and wholly inadequate facilities for

producing the crystals. There were many

misgivings and doubters. "One day in

1943," Colton subsequently reminisced,

"when it looked as if we would have to

shut down many of our radio manufacturing lines [for lack of crystals], I could not

but remember their warnings."

 37

 But the

warnings fortunately went unfulfilled.

Pending the manufacture of Western

Electric's SCR-500 series of FM radios,

the Link Connecticut police sets were

standardized in 1941 as the SCR-293,

transmitter and receiver, and the SCR294, receiver only. They did not, of course,

meet the military requirements for which

they had not been designed. They were

experimental, four- and five-channel sets,

never intended for field use, but for training. Such, however, was the exigency of

the production, the long route between

deciding upon an item of equipment and

getting it abundantly into the hands of

troops, that the SCR-293 and 294 not only

got first to North Africa but were also the

first frequency-modulated radios any35

 Guest, like Bender, harassed with frequency allocation problems (too few frequencies available for the

multitudes of army radio needs), had hitherto viewed

FM skeptically because of the very wide frequency

band width each FM radio channel requires. 36

 (1) OCSigO R&W Action 1, W. T. G. [Guest],

Com Liaison Div, to R&D Div, 19 Aug 40, sub: FM

system rpt of test by FCC, and Incl Memo, E. L.

White to Chief Engr of FCC, 16 Aug 40, sub: FM

system of Conn. State Police. SigC FM 1, Jan-Sep 40.

(2) Ltr, F. H. Schnell, Radio Engr Radio Sec Conn.

Police, to Bureau of Criminal Info and Statistics, 21

Oct 40, sub: Request of Col Colton, Dir Ft. Monmouth. Copy in SigC Hist Sec File from file of Edwin

H. Armstrong. (3) SCL File, Proj 11-9.3-12, Rpt, 16

Dec 40. (4) R&D hist cited n. 31, Vol. VIII, Pt. 1,

Proj 802-A, and Pt. 2, Proj (812) 11-9.3, pp. 6-7. (5)

Ltr, Col Colton to Maj Edwin H. Armstrong, 16 Nov

40. SigC 314.7 Armstrong-Colton FM Folder, SigC

Hist Sec File. 37

 MS comment by Gen Colton, 19 Nov 51, p: 3.

SigC Hist Sec File. Armstrong wrote in 1944:

"I think it is no overstatement that the decision to

rely on FM in the mobile and portable fields of use

was probably the most difficult decision in the history

of radio which anyone was ever called upon to make.

History will show . . . that the decision which you

made was the correct one." Ltr, Armstrong to Colton,

29 Jun 44. SigC 314.7 Armstrong-Colton FM Folder,

SigC Hist Sec File.

Speaking of ... the problem of obtaining crystals

by the millions, Williams wrote, "Col. Colton . . .

in my opinion is responsible, more than anyone else,

that we eventually had an adequate supply." Ltr,

Williams to Thompson, cited n. 33(4).
184 THE SIGNAL CORPS

where in combat use. A National Guard

separate tank battalion hastily equipped

with them in the state of Washington

reached the Philippines only to be captured a month or two later.38

The stopgapping SCR-293 and 294

symbolized the Signal Corps' and the

Army's FM commitment as a whole. Like

many such decisions, this one was expediently compromised. That the demand

could be fragmented and dispersed, satisfied in part and without alienation of essential sources of manufacture, helped the

Signal Corps to meet it. First, the "500"

series for the Armored Force began to stem

from the Type III plan, the ArmstrongNoble-Link police sets for the Connecticut

troopers, knowledge of Navy experimentation,39

 the direct assistance of Armstrong,

and the work of the Signal Corps Laboratories. Setting up the "600" series for the

Field Artillery appeased a second demand.

For the three other principal combat

branches, there were other answers. The

Coast Artillery was sponsoring radar. The

Infantry was getting a dramatic addition

at each end of the scale: handie- and

walkie-talkies for short-range use, and

truck-and-trailer SCR-299's for 100-milesin-motion.

But the Air Corps, the largest and most

exacting customer of all, wanting dozens

of radio wonders for missions unimagined

in ground warfare, wanted no FM. This

was a wry but not unexpected reaction. In

ground-to-air communications, frequency

modulation was no more than 10 percent

better than amplitude modulation, a difference which the Air Corps did not believe warranted a vast and fundamental

change. Another talking point which FM

lost with the Air Corps was its freedom

from static interference, for Army airplane

engines had long been shielded. Its supporters responded to the first of these criticisms that 10 percent could be as much as

an inch on the end of a nose, and to the

second, that shielding was expensive,

hampering to aircraft design, and less than

impressive in operation. They also offered

a suggestion which grew out of the discovery that an AM receiver tuned slightly to

one side of an FM frequency can hear the

FM. Colonel Allen, among others, hoped

that the Air Corps would introduce this

change, especially for tactical air support

communications, so that the air cover

could hear the mechanized ground.

Nothing came of the proposal, however.

Air radio remained amplitude-modulated.

So did Navy and British equipment. British radio engineers steadfastly maintained

that hills or buildings obstructed FM signals,40

 although a vehicular transmitter or

receiver is expected to move and therefore

is only briefly interrupted. The U.S.

Navy's fundamental objection to FM was

no more nor less than a heavy commitment to the established design, but there

also existed a mistrust of the "capture

effect." That is to say, the belief that the

nearer transmitter would capture the air

for itself caused naval apprehensiveness

that an admiral might find himself

blocked out by a junior lieutenant. The

question of capture effect was never raised

during the ensuing war, when even the

Navy ordered thousands of frequencymodulated ship-to-shore sets; and of

38

 (1) SCL, Annual Report, 1944, p. 83. (2) Ltr, Col

Colton to Maj Armstrong, 2 Nov 40. SigC Hist Sec

File. (3) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Link, 15 Feb 50. 39

 Ltr, T. McL. Davis, Radio Engr NRL, Anacostia

Station, to Chief of Bureau of Engineering, via Dir

NRL, 3 Jun 40, sub: Rpt on demonstration of FM vs.

AM model CXAB transmitter and CXAC receiver.

SCL File S-13. 40

 The British later adopted FM as standard in forward Army units.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 185

course it was one of the features of FM

which the ground forces considered a boon.

First Answers in Air Radar

The Navy's requirements were formed

not by ground but by water, and the air

was yet another element. Like the Navy,

the Air Corps could plead a uniqueness in

dissenting from what suited the ground

arms—and did so, whenever airplanes

were spoken of as flying artillery or cavalry. Aviators had now won usual acceptance of the fact that air responsibilities,

training patterns, and equipment were

divergent. Yet years of making themselves

heard had put a shrillness in the Air Corps

voice which somewhat overemphasized

uniqueness. In the field of signal communications the shrillness at times became

stridency, for there the doctrine entered

the central area of Signal Corps-Air Corps

relations. The Signal Corps had no operational responsibility in the air like that

which it possessed among the ground

forces. The Signal Corps' air duty was to

install, maintain, and operate administrative radio only, at GHQ, wing, and base

headquarters, but no more.41 Otherwise,

the Air Corps held control over communications operations, tactically everywhere

and administratively in the newly organized Army Airways Communications System. The chief point at which the Signal

Corps met (or split from) the Air Corps

was therefore the development and procurement of equipment.

In their separate views of this mission,

some of the Signal Corps officers remained

earth-bound, some of the Air Corps officers

never touched the ground at all. Some, on

both sides, were slow to realize the significance of airborne electronics, and fliers as

a class were impatient with most of it.

Leaders of the air service, however, were

restlessly alert to every hint of technical

advance from commercial or foreign

sources, to anything which the services

supplying them might not have proposed,

to developments with which other armies

or other branches of the Military Establishment of the United States might put

them at a disadvantage. They felt their

mission keenly, and by the time that the

emergency was reaching mid-course, the

keenness was becoming razor sharp so far

as the Signal Corps was its object. It first

pricked the thin skin grown over the

wounds of the dispute about navigational

equipment. As a result of the decision

made then, the impetus for development

was expected to come from the Signal

Corps, especially from project officers and

engineers of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory.42

The task of equipping 50,000 airplanes

a year posed a dramatic reversal to this

convention, which further actions broke

into too many pieces ever to put together

again. For the Signal Corps, such an expansion of the Air Corps involved, in the

first place, a staggering number of command and liaison sets. At the same time,

air navigation items began to divide and

multiply like amoebae before the demands

of the defense program. They became the

hub of airborne development for a time,

and within their own category the radio

compass, the issue of the former day, was

replaced as the focus of attention by the

radio altimeter.

Paradoxically, air navigation radio

might have become the field in which the

41

 AR 105-15, Signal Communication, General, 17

Apr 40, par. 3. h. (3) (a) (b) (c). 42

 Comment by Col William L. Bayer, SigC, on MS

of SigC Hist Sec, Aug 49. SigC Hist Sec File.
186 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Air Corps adopted frequency modulation,

for until mid-1940 most of the altimeter

experiments made at the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory employed the beat method of

radio reflection, a method in which the

modulation of frequency is inherent. Of

the many navigational devices under development at ARL, including several originally undertaken in the rival Navigational Instrument Section before the

clearing of titles, one to prevent collisions

had given way to a twin brother called

obstacle detection. In the collision-prevention project, ARL had touched pulse

radar, and in its successor it approached

beat radar. Both then took second place to

a radio altimeter which also used the beat

method and proved to be the forerunner

of airborne radar in the United States. No

one in ARL or anywhere else had any

knowledge that this was the case. Radar

was a term not yet devised. The ARL

projects were radio projects, and that in

itself was sufficiently venturesome. It was

still true that, in relation to its position five

years later, little was known about how

radio behaved in the air.

Aviators were using the barometric or

aneroid type of altimeter. It was not only

imprecise but of no help to blind flying,

because it measured altitude from sea level

rather than from the ground underneath

the airplane at a given moment. What was

wanted was a device which would give a

continuous account of the terrain below—

a terrain indicator, an absolute altimeter.

In a period when most of them still preferred to fly by the seat of their pants, airmen did not welcome another dial on the

instrument panel, and certainly did not

want anything which increased the weight

of the airplane so much as to alter its performance.43

 Nevertheless, the Air Corps

took great interest in the projected radio

altimeter, which promised to follow the

actual terrain closely by reflecting radio

waves against it and measuring the time

required for them to get back to the airplane. If this could be accomplished, the

radio altimeter would then be the foremost navigational aid, so important as to

be called "the greatest single invention in

aviation radio,"44 and with its importance

enhanced by the further, exclusively military possibility that it could be the pivotal

aid to air bombardment. High-altitude

bombing was the Air Corps' single most

controversial mission; to accomplish it,

bombsights would be of little use at great

heights, however, unless the altitude were

exactly known. A barometric altimeter

gave a bombardier only a rough approximation of height and even then required

that his maps tell him what the elevation

of the land target below might be. To

measure height exactly, far above the

target, called therefore for radio reflection.

As if condemning itself, the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory's first radio altimeter

was a low-altitude set. It was good below

3,000 feet, but the Air Corps Technical

committee had specified one which would

function up to 15,000. The Western Electric Company came forward with another

beat altimeter, good up to 12,000 feet.

Tests of this set confirmed the realization

that airborne radio reflection equipment

held other possibilities than measuring the

distance to the ground, for when its output

was shown in an oscilloscope, the contours

of the terrain stood revealed. Still, 12,000

feet was too low.

43

 (1) ARL, Annual Report, 1938, Proj. 31, Radio

Absolute Altimeter RC-24, p. 35. (2) Interv, SigC

Hist Sec with Maj. E. A. Massa, ARL, 9 Oct 44. 44

 Roberts, Aviation Radio, p. 292.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 187

But the Navy, likewise interested in

developing an altimeter for an exact fix on

a target, had turned from beat to pulse.

This was a true irony, because the Navy

was not interested in high-level bombardment, where pulse was at its best, and the

ARL, trying for high-altitude equipment,

was using low-level devices. Secrecy was

so fast that Navy altimeter engineers knew

no more about their own service's principal radio reflection work than did the

ARL men about the SCR-268, 270, and

271. At the Signal Corps Laboratories,

pulse radar remained ground radar; at the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, air radar remained beat radar. Having now learned

of the Navy altimeter work, furthermore,

ARL voluntarily continued with beat, in

order not to duplicate what the Navy was

doing.

The ARL director, however, Colonel

Mitchell, strongly recommended that the

laboratory should investigate the Navy

work, specifically the model under contract to the Radio Corporation of America.

For a while, lack of money delayed the

Signal Corps' joining the Navy-RCA project; and the delay came just at the time

when the British, as the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory was soon to learn, were commencing to make long strides in airborne

radar. Up to this time, although unknown

to each other, American and British radar

had progressed equally in both ground

and airborne applications. The U.S. work,

compartmentalized, now fell behind, for

without interrelation or even consultation,

ground pulse radar was shut up in secrecy

at Fort Hancock, airborne beat radar at

Wright Field, and airborne pulse radar at

the RCA Laboratories in Camden.45

RCA, competing with Bell-Western Electric, was just as secretive about its work as

was either of the Signal Corps laboratory

centers.

The company demonstrated the Navy

pulse altimeter twice at Wright Field, and

each time the Signal Corps officers there

longed to have the money to buy it. It

looked the best of all that they had seen

thus far, even to offering a possibility of

reviving the moribund double project for

obstacle detection and collision prevention, because it could indicate objects in

front of an airplane as well as below. The

Air Corps was equally anxious to have it.

But "the approximate price for one equipment has been placed at $20,000," Mitchell's successor, Maj. John H. Gardner,

Jr., reported. The Signal Corps disconsolately cast about for funds, even turning

to the Air Corps for assistance, only to be

reminded of chapter and verse in the

1937 concordat. By pooling all available

funds from four projects, Gardner got

$7,000 together; the joint arrangement

with the Navy was made; and finally the

Air Corps did enter, after all. The Radio

Corporation of America put the price

down to $14,800, and with a total sum of

$32,000 there was enough to purchase two

sets.

Thus the pulse altimeter crept in

through the back door. Although the purchase contract was let in April 1940, the

models were not received until that

autumn, nor the first service tests made

possible until January 1941. The device

was good, for all that, which was what

counted. It weighed only 90 pounds and

was accurate to .005 percent up to 20,000

45

 Promptly after the first successful demonstrations

of the SCR-268, the Research and Development

Division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer had

imposed secrecy upon the ARL radio reflection projects, but without fully explaining why.
188 THE SIGNAL CORPS

feet. The Signal Corps quickly standardized it as the SCR-518 and, working with

RCA, ultimately got it down to 30 pounds

and up to 40,000 feet.46

The pattern of pulse and beat work in

the Aircraft Radio Laboratory's altimeter

projects amply illustrated the fluctuations

of research. ARL's early work with pulse

had had a low priority because of absence

of Air Corps support. Since the laboratory

was a servant to the Air Corps, and the

Air Corps felt certain that it did not want

anything heavy, which seemed to be all

that pulse could offer, this decision was

perfectly within bounds. Yet the Air Corps

would now soon adopt airborne pulse in

various British and commercial forms developed during the time when the Signal

Corps work had been suspended.

Another contradiction lay in the fact

that beat altimeters, too, could have

served an air arm well. But in this case,

the obstacle was a major concept of the

Air Corps. The planners of the Air Corps

associated low-level air attack with air

support of ground operations, and associated this, in turn, with subservience.

They took up instead the concept of highaltitude bombing, where their independence was unchallenged and where their

contribution would be undeniably valuable under prevailing strategic plans of

continental defense.

High-altitude bombing naturally associated to itself pinpoint accuracy: hence

the emphasis upon precise instruments for

computing altitude, for determining a target through the intervening overcast lying

between the airplane and the earth, and

for minutely integrating the data affecting the release, trajectory, and detonation

of the bomb. The last of these three types

of equipment, the precision bombsight,

the Air Corps put wholly in the hands of

the Sperry, Norden, Bendix, and other

commercial concerns. The first two, radio

or radar altimeters and BTO, or bombing-through-overcast, were sought not

only in commercial development but also

in the work of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory, the Telecommunications Research

Establishment of the United Kingdom,

and the Radiation Laboratory of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and

Development.

The possibilities of following land contours which the radio altimeter had indicated led without delay to the initiation

of a BTO project at the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory. Afterward, when the work at

the Fort Monmouth laboratories had been

made fully known to them, the ARL engineers expressed the opinion that perfection

of airborne detection and tracking, upon

the basis of ground detection and tracking, should certainly have come first. To

try to begin bombing before finding the

target was to put Z before A. Nevertheless, the development of BTO equipment

began as altitude work and with a series

of commercial items all on the beat prin46

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with John Keto, Chief

of Electronics Subdiv ARL, USAF Mat Comd,

Wright-Patterson Air Base, Dayton, Ohio, 20 Jul 49.

(2) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col Bayer, Washington,

D.C., 26 Apr 50. (3) ARL, Annual Reports, 1936, p.

14, 1937, p. 30, 1938, p. 35, 1939, pp. 34-41, 1940,

pp. 45-53. (4) Henry E. Guerlac, Hist Div OSRD,

Radar, Sec. A, Ch. VIII, pp. 31-34 (in consecutively

paged copy, pp. 344-47). Photostat of 1945 MS in

SigC Hist Sec File. (5) Signal Corps Information

Letter, No. 25 (April, 1940), p. 11. (6) Ltrs, Col

Mitchell, Dir ARL, to CSigO, 8 Nov 38, sub: Western

Electric radio absolute altimeter, and 26 Jul 39, sub:

Radio absolute altimeter, with 1st Ind, CSigO to Dir

ARL, 29 Jul 39, bearing a note initialed L. B. B.

[Louis B. Bender]; (7) Ltr, CSigO to Dir ARL, 10

Aug 39, sub: Radio altimeters; (8) OCSigO R&W

Action 1, R&D Div to Exec Officer, 6 Sep 39; (9) Ltr,

Chief of AC to CSigO, 20 Oct 39, sub: UHF radio

ranges, with 4 inds; (10) Ltr, Dir ARL to CSigO, 24

Nov 39, sub: Radio type absolute altimeter. SigC

413.44 (RB-1514) SCR-518.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 189

ciple. In view of the emphasis upon highaltitude bombing, this was fated to be a

wrong approach. A beat altimeter would

be useful for low-level attack, because it

could be exact right down to the ground,

as the pulse type could not be. It could

not follow upward with the pulse altimeter, though, which could be extended

into the high altitudes where the Air

Corps wanted its bombers to fly.

The bombing-through-overcast project

started as a stab in the electronic dark and

not until the war was already exploding

in Europe. Because of the defensive concept which dominated American strategy,

the range specification was not great, the

maximum target distance being set at 500

miles. Also in defensive terms, the prime

urgency for the device lay in the ability to

attack submarines, raiders, and other vessels. Recollections of the first U-boat war

were sharp; the second war had commenced with a demonstration, in the German pocket battleships, Deutschland and

Graf Spee, of the danger of raiders; and

American involvement, of any kind,

would expose U.S. shores, military convoys, and sea commerce.

Sizing up the problem for which they

were to try to find an answer, the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory engineers noted that

the project fell into three stages: first, to

find means to navigate the bomber to the

vicinity of the target; second, to locate the

target precisely; and third, to bomb it. In

the case of area bombing, the second stage

mattered little; but area bombing of a

surfaced submarine was idle. The egg had

to be laid in its periscope. Hence, the precise fix of the target was the center of the

problem. With a radio (or radar) altimeter, a bombardment crew could take the

airplane near the target. With a bombsight, they could strike the target. The

middle stage, finding it exactly, was the

challenge.

The earliest proposals to meet it were of

three kinds. The RCA Laboratories suggested automatic triangulation of radio

beams, thereby bringing up to date for the

new war the ground radio goniometry of

the old one. The International Telephone

Development Corporation proposed position finding by the intersection of very

narrow, ultrahigh-frequency beams.

It was partly in this connection that

General Arnold, the Air Corps chief, insisted upon inquiry into the possibilities of

a portable radio range. "We wasted a lot

of effort on it," Col. William L. Bayer recalled.47

 But for a time, the hopes of both

the Signal and Air Corps were centered in

the notion of the portable range, of ultrahigh-frequency design. "This appears to

offer great possibilities as an aid in area

bombing, particularly when the objective

cannot be seen," Mauborgne thought.

The Air Corps even, with an untypical

clumsiness, sought details from the embassy of the German Reich. When further

examination, however, brought out the

fact that it required special marker beacons, and because there seemed little

prospect of getting an enemy to co-operate

in his own destruction by putting the beacons up, the idea died a-borning. In any

event, the development would have cost

$100,000, and the Signal Corps, with Air

Corps approval, preferred to try, for one

fifth of that sum, for a test model of the

RCA pulse altimeter.

A third approach hazarded was the use

of a pathfinder plane to fly below the

overcast and direct the bombers flying

above it. This notion was quickly disposed

of, the second more slowly; hesitatingly,

47

 Bayer comment cited n. 42.
190 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the project directors settled upon the first.

There was a wavering toward a scheme

for letting a television camera down

through the cloud stratum in order to

relay the target information photographically to the bombardier, but Mauborgne

ruled against it and urged research into

radio reflection.

Following up this direction, the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory looked into the available commercial equipment first. Time

was short, and the International Telephone crossbeam equipment would have

to serve unless something better proved

itself soon. In March 1940, ARL tried out

a beat device prepared by the Sperry

Company and, in August, one developed

by Western Electric. The project engineers

tried both of these in the air, and in the

latter instance hooked up an oscilloscope

as well. The equipment indicated a real

possibility for sharp beam transmission,

but the reflections on the screen were imprecise and the range simply too short.

Yet radio reflection using the pulse

method invariably produced equipment

which was too heavy. Aircraft design

could not allow it. ARL thus continued to

look for ways to give beat equipment the

range needed, because no one could yet

visualize the other solution of making

pulse equipment light of weight.48

The range and altitude increases in airplanes which made BTO not only possible

but desirable had been accompanied by

increased speed. Pilots, artillerymen, and

others were taught to recognize aircraft by

looking at them, carefully distinguishing

the shape and position of the nacelles, the

set and sweep of the wings, the single,

double, or triple style of the empennage;

but high speed, great altitudes, and night

flying threatened to make much of the instruction meaningless. Particularly in view

of the fact that antiaircraft artillery crews

now had in radar the means for learning

of the presence of airplanes but did not

have the means to tell which were friendly,

it was vital that a way be found for swift

mechanical recognition. Airplanes were

already falling victim to the fact that their

own side could not distinguish them as

friends. Over the Thames estuary, that

very spring of 1940, Spitfires had shot

down a Coastal Command reconnaissance

Hudson, and a Hurricane had brought

the crewmen of a French Potez to their

deaths.

Solution of the problem became the object of a third principal navigation project

in the Aircraft Radio Laboratory. Intelligence reports had revealed something of

two devices which the British had in use.

One of these, called pip-squeak, signaled

for fifteen seconds of each minute over one

of the channels of the command set which

the British airplanes used. The other, a

device which gave its name to all development work in this line in the future,

responded to the great Chain Home

radars. It was the Mark I version of an

IFF, identification, friend or foe. Hearing of

these, the Air Corps asked the Signal

Corps to set up Project 63C.49

The project engineers gave some

48

 (1) Ltr, Chief of AG to CSigO, 20 Oct 39, sub:

UHF radio ranges, and 1st Ind, CSigO to Chief of

AC, 16 Dec 39. AAG 676.3A Wireless Radio Systems.

(2) Ltrs, Dir ARL (Mitchell) to CSigO, 21 Mar 40,

sub: BTO, and to Col Bender, OCSigO, 11 Apr 40;

(3) Ltrs, Dir ARL (Gardner) to CSigO, 14 Jun 40,

sub: Detection through overcast, and 29 Aug 40, sub:

Tentative specification proj 61C, with Incl, Tentative Specification, A Device for Detecting and Tracking Objects Through an Overcast, 9 Aug 40. SigC

RB-1910. 49

 Ltr, CG GHQ AF to Chief of AC, 27 Apr 40,

sub: Airplane identification, with Incl, Extracts from

G-2 rpts regarding identification of aircraft, and 1st

Ind, Actg Chief of AC to CSigO, 11 May 40. SigC

413.44 Identification 1, May 40-May 41.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 191

thought to equipping airplanes with resonant antenna rods, in the hope that these

would reflect ground radar pulses sharply

enough to make a positive identification

on the radar scope. This solution required

that a ground search set be obtained for

experiments, but at that time the only

SCR-270's in existence were the actual

laboratory models. Manufacture had not

yet begun. In any case, the 1st Aircraft

Warning Company was relying heavily on

the equipment for training. An attempt

was made to move a detachment of the

company to Ohio to help the identification project, but the air defense program

as a whole was a matter of greater urgency

than any of its parts. In order that the

testing of the resonant rods would not

have to mark time, the engineers mounted

the antennas on a B-18 and flew to Fort

Hancock. They made a number of test

flights over Sandy Hook, and tried out antennas which were resonant to the SCR268 as well as to the SCR-270.50

The results were encouraging, but

meanwhile a General Electric-Navy design had shown itself to be better. It was a

system providing for interrogator-responsors on the ground and "transponders" in

the aircraft, and had the great advantage

of using its own frequencies instead of

those of the radar set. This arrangement

made it usable with any radar, whereas

the resonant-rod system could be used

only with the type to which it was

geared.51 American development called

this device RR, for radio recognition; but the

time was at hand when it would become

Mark IV IFF. For British airborne developments, and British names with them,

were at that very time about to unite and

mingle with American research and

equipment in an extraordinary and

dramatic alliance.

The Tizard Mission

No other part of the Army was to figure

in this union more closely than the Air

Corps, and the Air Corps drew the Signal

Corps along in its slipstream. The Battle

of Britain was about to open, the expected

mass attacks being prefaced by coastal

bombings. Each passing week which was

apparently building up to another dread

climax was also indicating that British air

defense possessed a vital secret. In addition

to the Spitfires, searchlights, barrage balloons, flak curtains, there was something

else. In the United States, popular conjecture worked at large, but electronic scientists and the inner circle of government

could pin the answer down. On the British

side, there was a similar shrewd understanding of the areas of research which

other countries might be exploring. But

the intelligence channels which inform

one government of another's secret activity run in only one direction. Both countries had every motive for opening up a

two-way passage, defense being the common denominator in their policy.

Upon instructions from his government,

the British Ambassador to the United

States, the Marquess of Lothian, broached

the matter. The British "would greatly

appreciate" it, Lord Lothian said, if the

Americans, being given the "full details of

any [British] equipment or devices, . . .

would reciprocate by discussing certain

secret information of a technical nature

which [the British] are anxious to have

urgently." A startling rearrangement of

Atlantic power was even then being com50

 Ltr, Lt Col John H. Gardner, Jr., Dir ARL, to

Comdr R. P. Briscoe, Asst Div NRL, 25 Sep 40, sub:

Special flight tests at Ft. Hancock. In same file. 51

 R&D hist cited n. 31, Vol. II, Pt. 1, proj. 203-A,

pp. 8-11.
192 THE SIGNAL CORPS

posed, under the color of the exchange of

destroyers for island bases. What was

asked was that the two nations break tradition in another field, in order to exchange carefully guarded technical information.

Lothian hoped to avoid the show of a

bargain; and, indeed, there was no need

for any, because unlike the plan for the

United States to take over the strategic

defense of the western Atlantic, this agreement would not be—could not be—submitted to public discussion. In fact, he

proposed to the President, "Should you

approve the exchange of information, it

has been suggested by my Government

that, in order to avoid any risk of the information reaching our enemy, a small

secret British mission consisting of two or

three service officers and civilian scientists

should be despatched immediately to this

country to enter into discussions with

Army and Navy experts." Thus only a few

would be party to the vital secret, and of

those few, all would be "perfectly open"

in telling what they knew, without jockeying for leverage.

Some on the American side were suspicious of this; some, even, subsequently felt

that they had been required to surrender

national advantage. The Army and Navy

held back their hearty concurrence. "[The

proposal is] aimed at getting full information in regard to our airplane detector,

which apparently is very much more efficient than anything the British have," was

the Army's point of view, which nevertheless also recognized that the British had

their own detector and gun layer, as well

as the pip-squeak system for identifying

aircraft.

Some on the British side were inclined

to assume that they had little to learn from

the Americans. The relation would be an

exchange of British headwork for American handwork. Lothian made it plain

that what Great Britain was particularly

anxious for was permission "to employ the

full resources of the [U.S.] radio industry

. . . with a view to obtaining the greatest

power possible for the emission of ultra

short waves."52

This statement directed American concern to patent rights and to the demands

which might be made upon industry. Its

deepest significance, which was contained

in the reference to "the greatest power

possible for the emission of ultra short

waves," was temporarily passed over, not

to be understood until the actual discussions brought it out. Both sides had more

to learn about the other than they

realized. The truth was that probably

neither would have brought electronics to

the maturity it quickly reached had they

not got together. And had electronics

lagged in the crucial two years before the

free powers joined military forces in

Africa, the effect upon the war would

have been grave.

However much basis existed for misgivings, the circumstances of the moment

overrode them. The air was electric with

peril. The President therefore lost no time

in approving the plan, and, so soon as

they could be chosen and prepared, the

members of the secret technical mission

set out. The mission was given the name

of its chief, who was Sir Henry Tizard,

rector of the Imperial College of Science

and Technology and adviser to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and the other

civilian members were equally close to

52

 (1) Aide-memoire, the Marquess of Lothian to the

President, 8 Jul 40; (2) Memo, Gen Strong, ACofS

WPD, for CofS, 19 Jul 40, sub: Gen interchange of

secret tech info between US and British Government.

WPD 4340, Exchange of Info with British Government.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 193

their country's research effort and to the

unnamed equipment which was fending

off the Germans.53

Along with three officers of the Royal

Air Force and Navy, this group arrived in

the United States late in August 1940.

They were scheduled to confer first with

the Army (which was to say primarily the

Signal Corps) and the Navy, then with

the civilian National Defense Research

Committee. On September 2 Tizard and

Professor R. H. Fowler met the armed

forces representatives, in General Mauborgne's office. The principal guest was

Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Green, the Chief of

Coast Artillery, the branch for which

American military radar had been instituted. Maj. Wallace G. Smith, specially

detailed there by General Arnold, represented the Air Corps. The Navy had sent

three junior officers. The seasoned radar

men were in the Signal Corps contingent.

It was an extraordinary moment. National security, the most powerful of official taboos, was about to be lifted.

Neither the Army nor the Navy had

caught up with the unusual circumstances

of the Tizard Mission enough to authorize

full disclosure, with the result that talk

was fenced at the outset. Another result,

ultimately of astonishing effect upon the

position of the Signal Corps, was that,

with the British scientists speaking more

fully and being unhampered by the necessity to disclose how much of what they

were describing existed, a seed of suspicion

imperceptibly took firm root. Quite without any Machiavellian intent on anybody's part, the impression arose, never

thereafter to be dislodged, that Signal

Corps equipment was inadequate, insufficient, belated, lamely derivative, and

unworthy of any place in the same league

with British equipment.

Hindsight makes it possible to say what

position each was actually in at the time.

Both had pulse radar equipment for the

ground (although far from enough of it to

be emancipated from sound locators)54

and both possessed the basic types, the

searchlight-control, gun-laying, and early

warning sets. American searchlight control was probably better than that of the

British; neither gun-laying set was good;

the aircraft detectors had reached equal, if

differing, stages of development. That of

the British gave a better definition on the

oscilloscope and also indicated the height

of the target to some degree. U.S. technicians were still in the process of working out height-finding characteristics, but

they had devised lobe switching and antenna tilting, and their equipment was

mobile.

In airborne radar, both nations, again,

had been working in basic types, except

that only the Americans had created an

altimeter. Apart from the altimeter, these

types represented efforts at air-to-surfacevessel detection, air-to-air detection or

53

 They included Professor J. D. Cockcroft, nuclear

physicist at Cambridge University, adviser to the War

Office and chief of the team which had installed the

Chain Home radars; Dr. E. J. Bowen, the chief expert in airborne radar at the Bawdsey Research Station; Messrs. Wallace, Pearce, and Nutt; Mr. C. R.

Fairey, aircraft manufacturer; and Professor R. H.

Fowler, the representative in Canada for the British

opposite number to National Defense Research Committee, the office of the Director of Industrial and

Scientific Research. Ltr, Air Commodore G. C. Pirie,

Air Attache British Embassy, Washington, D. C., to

Col John A. Crane, Foreign Liaison Officer, WDGS,

12 Aug 40. SigC 350-05 Brit Tech Mission 1 (RB1156).

For more about the Tizard Mission, see Baxter,

Scientists Against Time, Ch. VIII, passim. See also

Rowe, One Story of Radar. 54

 See, for example, Gen. Sir Frederick A. Pile,

Ack-Ack: Britain's Defence Against Air Attack During

the Second World War (London: Harrap, 1949), pp.

151, 313 ff.
194 THE SIGNAL CORPS

interception, and identification of friend

from foe: respectively jargonized as ASV,

AI, and IFF. In the airborne types, however, the Americans had used beat reflection in their experiments. The British had

airborne pulse equipment, to which the

Americans were just turning after their

disappointments in the beat method, at

that early stage of imperfect understanding of its possibilities. Moreover, Great

Britain had airborne pulse equipment

beyond the development stage and actually in operation. The sets were plaguedly heavy and cumbersome, like the U.S.

experimental models, but they were in

service in the war. All in all, therefore,

Great Britain and the United States had

followed separate routes to approximately

equivalent spots, eleven months of touchand-go warfare having put the British a

milestone or so farther along. None of this

was precisely assessed at the time, and the

tally of British items made an enormous

impression.

At the first meeting, both sides began

somewhat guardedly, referred to their

facsimile, teletype, and speech-scrambling

devices, and arrived rapidly at the fact

that radio reflection was a mutual secret.

It was, as a matter of fact, not a secret at

all. The Japanese had just begun to shift

from the Doppler method to pulse;55 the

Graf Spee, scuttled so soon after the outbreak of war, had had radar; and the

British themselves had shared much of

their own work with Frenchmen now subject to German pressures. A very long distance intervened, nevertheless, between

the fundamental principle, which was

known in so many scientific circles, and

the applications of it, wherein secrecy was

vital, and wherein lay a victory in a

deadly race.

When the Signal Corps representatives

heard that the British had apparently

solved the baffling problem of satisfactory

airborne radar, they were immediately

impressed. It was air-to-surface-vessel

equipment, Tizard disclosed; it worked on

the pulse principle, as the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory experimenters had believed

would have to be true; and, although details would have to be forthcoming from

another expert more familiar with them,

it used a 200-megacycle wavelength. Two

hundred megacycles indicated a wavelength of a meter and a half, with correspondingly long antenna, one of the very

things that the Signal Corps had been trying to get away from; nonetheless, the

British had about fifty sets already installed and operating, and the equipment

had shown that it could find surfaced submarines within a radius of five miles and a

considerably larger target like a battleship

as much as forty miles away. Such a development had tangibly brought British

radar down from the eleven meters of the

enormous, fixed Chain Home towers to

one and one-half.

American radar, which was mobile,

had got down as far; but, Mitchell explained, the Aircraft Radio Laboratory

"had never tried pulse transmission in the

air."

 56

 Colton interposed that possibly the

Signal Corps Laboratories had slighted

microwave pulse, but to go up into the

superhigh frequencies introduced "extreme difficulties"—one of which, Mitchell

came in again to say, was a reliable vacuum tube. The problem which they had

in mind was that microwaves, which may

55

 R. I. Wilkinson, "Short Survey of Japanese

Radar," Electrical Engineering, LXV (August-September, 1946), 370-77. 56

 Lt Col Hugh Mitchell, Notes on the Meeting with

the British Mission, September 2, 1940. SigC 350.05

Brit Tech Mission 1 (RB-1156).
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 195

be expressed also in very short wavelengths—roundly, 10 centimeters—would

use proportionately short antennas. To receive an echo from a pulse sent out over a

very large antenna mounted on a height

or a tower was one thing, but to achieve a

good echo from small antenna equipment

would be quite another. In the first instance, the transmitting area was big

enough to accommodate an outsized tube

which could produce outsized power, and

send the pulse out hard enough for some

of it to be left to be caught on the rebound.

In the second instance, everything would

require a smaller scale yet the power

would have to be as great as ever. Mitchell

thought that a small tube developing big

power ought to be feasible, but acknowledged that it had not yet been "completely

developed."

All of this no doubt fascinated Tizard

and Fowler. They had brought over a

model of just such a tube. British electronic research, goaded by exigency

which American research had not yet felt,

had turned to and solved the problem

with a tube which time later showed to be

the greatest single contribution to radar.57

It was the resonant-cavity magnetron, an

electronic vacuum tube, a tube specially

created for a new science.

In 1928 the Japanese scientists Yagi and

Okabe had discovered that a split-plate

magnetron could oscillate at extremely

high frequencies, yielding wavelengths as

short as 21⁄2 centimeters; but the power

output was very low. The same had been

true in 1931 and 1932 of the Westinghouse

10-centimeter magnetron. But from the

split-plate magnetron a research team at

the University of Birmingham had now

evolved a multicavity magnetron, which

not only produced microwaves but produced them with force. This resonantcavity magnetron thus was at hand, internationally, ready to give life to a multitude of microwave radar devices. It was

the heart of the transmitter; the klystron

tube, which amplified the echoes of the

pulse, was the equivalent vital organ in

the receiver.58

On the cavity magnetron, accordingly,

the two great powers came electronically

together. At their second meeting, this

time in Ohio, at the Aircraft Radio Laboratory, both sides showed much less

reticence. The Signal Corps had got G-2

clearance to reveal practically all classified technical developments, including

homing and instrument-landing methods,

means of aircraft recognition, bombingthrough-overcast, filter control networks,

absolute altimeters, underwater and

ground sound ranging, artillery spotting,

and everything else in the whole range

from wire throwers to "death rays."59 The

British delegates explained that their electronic establishment had made considerable progress with 600-megacycle (1⁄2-

meter) equipment, but this frequency was

still not far enough up in the spectrum.

Later in the war it turned out that in

many uses, the longer radar waves were

preferable to the shorter. The 11-meter

Chain Home stations, for example, could

detect the German rockets of 1944 and

57

 Although far from being "the most valuable

cargo ever brought to our shores," as one historian

permitted himself to say in an unguarded moment.

Baxter, Scientists Against Time, p. 142. 58

 (1) "Unseen Victories of Radio; Secret Manufacture of Radar Equipment," Record of British War

Production, 1939-1945 (London: London Times, 1945),

p. 18. (2) I. E. Mouromtseff, "Progress in Electron

Tubes," Electronics Digest, No. 6, pp. 41-42. (3) Harry

M. Davis, The Signal Corps Development of U.S.

Army Radar Equipment, Pt. III, 1945, pp. 9-13.

SigC Hist Sec File. 59

 Ltr, CSigO to Brig Gen Sherman Miles, ACofS

G-2, 3 Sep 40, sub: Exchange of SigC info with British

Mission, and Memo Reply, 4 Sep 40. SigC 400.3295.
196 THE SIGNAL CORPS

1945 better than microwave equipment

could.60

But both nations had long-wave radar.

What they wanted was the microwave applications. The 200-megacycle British airto-surface-vessel detector was limited

simply to finding the vessel; a visual

bombsight took over from there. Pinpoint

bombing would require radar of no more

than one tenth that wavelength. The same

thing was true of any other form of precision bombardment. Wellingtons, making attacks upon Germany which motion

pictures like Target for Tonight suggested

were ruinous, actually were dropping two

thirds of their bombs at least five miles

wide of any worth-while target.61 Great

Britain felt an urgent incentive to work

out also an airborne set capable of detecting other aircraft: an AI. Here, the large

antennas which they had managed to

make the best of in ASV were quite out of

the question, for the airplanes to carry AI

would not be big patrol bombers. They

would be fighters, and small. Anything

larger than microwave antennas would

also project too broad a beam for this purpose, because the earth would intercept

the pulses which one wished to be repulsed only by objects in the air.62

Radio could never reach variety and

flexibility until it could get rid of great

weight and length and size, without losing

any of the power which went with those

qualities. This was a matter of developing

a giant's strength in a dwarfs arm. The

resonant-cavity magnetron ultimately

wrought the feat and revolutionized what

was already a revolution.

But the magnetron was so new that the

blueprints were still wet. Deep anxiety

showed in the haste with which the Tizard

Mission had been dispatched to obtain

mass production of the magnetron in the

United States' industrial outlay and multiform application of it in the United States'

fertile research organizations. The newest

of these, the National Defense Research

Committee, was about to set up a Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology; to this agent

would be handed the challenge of microwave radar. The Aircraft Radio Laboratory would limit its own microwave efforts

to engineering the equipment; and the

Signal Corps Laboratories would keep

their research below about 600 megacycles, the area of relatively long-wave

radar in which the SCR-268, 270, and

271 had demonstrated the Monmouth

laboratories' authority. The immediate

future of radar, which lay in pulsed microwaves, above all in their airborne applications, became the specialty of Division 14

of the Radiation Laboratory, as well as of

its only real rival in the United States, the

Bell Laboratories, where the first American version of the British resonant-cavity

magnetron took shape in the closing

months of 1940.

This commercial development was of

course a Signal Corps choice; there was no

question of the Signal Corps' having

abdicated its prominence in radar. The

ensuing connection between the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory and the Radiation

Laboratory became extremely and necessarily close; and the Signal Corps Laboratories afterward entered the microwave

field in connection with Division 14's gun60

 Because layers of air at different temperatures can

refract microwaves as a prism refracts light; thus an

aerial object passing from one layer into another may

disappear from the scope altogether. Interv, SigC Hist

Sec with Col Rex V. D. Corput, Jr., Dir Sig Plans and

Opns Div OCSigO, Washington, D.C., 16 Feb 49. 61

 Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, p. 279. 62

 "The Evolution of Radar," Engineering, CLX

(August 31, 1945), 176-77.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 197

laying set, SCR-584, the hairbreadth hero

of the Anzio beachhead.63

In this summer after Dunkerque, however, with the Luftwaffe and the Royal

Air Force building up to the Battle of

Britain, urgent attention was settled more

upon air devices than ground. While the

Tizard Mission remained in the United

States, there was much discussion about

IFF. Air combat over the British Isles

daily demonstrated the need for it. The

presence of increasing numbers of airplanes in the sky compounded the risk

that friendly ones might be shot down, foes

allowed to penetrate. How important it

might be to know one from the other,

Pearl Harbor would show. IFF could have

drastically diminished that disaster.

Still an unknown number of months

short of a war of their own, the Americans

had an identification development in

initial stages only; this was the RR, the

Navy's interrogator-responsor system of

radio recognition. The British had gone

from their Mark I model of an IFF to a

Mark II version—also in initial stages—

but relied principally and riskily upon a

system of direction finders which intercepted a plane's coded radio transmissions, took bearings upon them, and, from

a general knowledge of both code and

position, identified the craft. Both the

Mark I and the Mark II of the British IFF

involved merely a receiver-transmitter

aboard the airplane. Normally in a receiving position, the set commenced to

transmit when a radar signal alerted it, returning another signal along with the

normal echo. The effect was to intensify

the reflection which the airplane itself was

making on the oscilloscope of a ground

detector.64

The first order of business after the

opening talks with the Tizard Mission was

to follow the British example and put

pulse equipment, however cumbersome,

in the air. The visiting scientists had

acknowledged that their own airborne

pulse radar had to be "nursed along in

order to keep in operation."

 65

The Signal Corps had the means to do

as much as that. Arrangements promptly

got under way for elements of an SCR-268

to be tried out in an airplane. There was

no question of including its antennas. "No

one ever believed airborne antennas

(Yagis) would be feasible at 2 or 3 meters

[the SCR-268's antenna length]. Even

when the British sets were first received at

ARL there was much doubt as to whether

anyone would take up a U.S. plane with

them."

 66

 The engineers on the project

temporarily rigged up a single horizontal

dipole and mounted it on the nose of a

B-18. Then, since an airplane could go to

the radar set more easily than the radar

set could go to the airplane, the engineers

had the B-18 flown to Red Bank airport,

where they attached the receiving antennas along the sides of the fuselage.

There followed a hurriedly designed

transmitter, the SCR-268 receiver, a commercial oscilloscope, a modulator to pro63

 (1) R&D hist cited n. 31, Vol. IV, Pt. 3, Proj. 424

12-15.1, pp. 4-6. (2) Historical Report of the Signal

Corps Engineering Laboratories. SigC Hist Sec File.

(3) Guerlac hist cited n. 46(4), in consecutively paged

copy, pp. 699-719. (4) Baxter, Scientists Against Time,

pp. 114-15.

64

 (1) Ltr, Col Gardner, Dir ARL, to CSigO, 9 Sep

40, sub: Exchange of SigC info with British Mission.

SigC 350.05 Brit Tech Mission 1 (RB-1156). (2) Notes

on Meeting With Members of Sub-Committee No. 3

(NDRC) and British Mission, 3 Oct 40. SigC 334.8

Notes on Meetings With British Mission (RB-2214).

(3) Louis N. Ridenour, "The Future of Radar in

Artillery," Coast Artillery Journal, LXXXIX (September-October 1946), 23-32. 65

 Mitchell notes cited n. 56. 66

 Bayer comment cited n. 42.
198 THE SIGNAL CORPS

vide 4,000 pulses a second, and a gasolinepowered generator.

On October 2, a date coincident with

the departure of the mission, preparations

at Red Bank were complete. Bad weather

prevented test flights there, the B-18 went

back to Wright Field for no better luck,

and it was the beginning of November

before airborne trials could commence. In

advance of them, the crew kept the

bomber on the ground and shot pulses at

a basic training plane five or six miles distant in the air. The results were distinct,

for the basic trainer reflected pips upon

the oscilloscope. Had the B-18 been flying,

this application would have approximated

AI. On November 4 it did fly, from

Wright Field over Lake Erie. Now the

equipment was being tested as an ASV.

Up in the air, it surpassed the 6 miles of

the ground test and attained 17 against an

ore boat, 23 against shore lines and

islands. This was only half the distance the

British claimed for their ASV, but for a

first try it was encouraging. That the

patchwork of components worked well at

all was proof of the soundness of the

SCR-268 and of the engineering skill

which had adapted it.

The Aircraft Radio Laboratory experimenters were under no illusions about

what they had.

For practical aircraft use the transmitter, keyer, receiver, indicator and power supply

would all need to be completely redesigned

mechanically. . . . Until a pulse less than a

micro-second is obtained with the [Signal

Corps Laboratories] equipment or until

equipment modeled after the 500 megacycle

[Naval Research Laboratory] pulse altimeter ... is completed, flight tests on aircraft

detection will be suspended.67

This was the view of the ARL director.

The Air Corps view at Wright Field was

more sanguine, with the chief of the Experimental Section declaring that "the results obtained from this equipment were

very encouraging and show that a means

of detection of surface vessels from airplanes is available. To be made practicable, this equipment needs only to be reduced in size and weight."

 68

British ASV arrived at the field within

a fortnight of the Lake Erie tests, though;

and, inasmuch as it was supposedly ready

to be Chinese-copied, it was given right of

way over any attempt to modify the

SCR-268 for the same purpose. Thus the

airborne SCR-268 experiment did not

bear fruit as it might have, if it had been

tried several months sooner. The Aircraft

Radio Laboratory did continue the work,

with a number of sets under the nomenclature SCR-519; one of these utilized the

lobe-switching technique of the SCR-268,

but none of them materialized. The first

ASV and AI radars to see service in the

Air Corps were copies of British designs.

Great Britain had first experimented

with putting radar aboard aircraft in

1937.69 The Signal Corps had had radar

by then. What were the obstructions

which had so long blocked the Americans? Lack of free communication must

bear part of the responsibility. No doubt

can remain that with a readier flow and

exchange of knowledge, American Army

radar would have had a much shorter infancy. "The 268 projects were kept so

secret that few at ARL knew of them. I did

not," was the remark of Col. William L.

67

 Ltr, Col Gardner to CSigO, 6 Nov 40, sub: Detection of water-borne target Proj 61C-1. SigC 400.112

Location of Waterborne Target. 68

 Memo, Lt Col Franklin O. Carroll, AC, Chief of

Experimental Sec Mat Div, for Chief of Mat Div, 20

Nov 40, sub: Location and tracking of water-borne

target (part of BTO proj). AF 413.44 BTO, 1939-40,

USAF Mat Comd Central Files. 69

 "Radio-Location Convention," Engineering,

CLXI (March 29, 1946), 307.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 199

Bayer, one of the half dozen who first

tested the SCR-268 components over

Lake Erie. Lack of funds, absence of basic

research, unflagging Air Corps attempts

to absorb the Aircraft Radio Laboratory

also contributed barriers. But the main

reason why nobody up to this point had

got pulse radar up into the air was doubtless that nobody had thought of it—a

reason which directs admiration toward

the British scientists. "It is easy to say now

that the weight and size limitation might

have been overcome but it would not have

been easy to visualize the 268 as flyable.

How the British [imagined] it still baffles

me.." Bayer's tribute came from a man

who knew the problems.

Assessing the relative progress of British

and American radar is a matter of balancing one extreme against the other. In the

first place, radar research in the two countries differed significantly in origin, and

this difference may be assumed to have

advanced airborne radar rather more in

the United Kingdom than in the United

States. British radar was developed from

the first for Royal Air Force uses.70 In the

Signal Corps development the interests of

the air had been secondary, if not in demand at least in point of time. No radar

undertaking specifically for the Air Corps

had begun until after the Coast Artillery

set, the SCR-268, had shown itself to be

good. Then, although expressing itself

vigorously in favor of the work, Air Corps

policy had made little more room for electronics than for radio. This observation is

no sooner stated than it is overmatched by

another, which must also be taken within

the context of the era. Research and development for the Air Corps which was

carried on in other branches was no more

hampered than in the Air Corps itself; the

list of airplanes with which the Air Corps

entered the war suffered even more by

comparison with foreign design than did

many other categories of equipment. And

this exception must in turn be excepted to.

No part either of the Army or of the public

thought to fight the sort of war which

called for the impossible, at once—a war

fought close to the shores and thousands

of miles away; an air, ground, and sea war;

a high-, middle-, and low-altitude war; a

tropical war and an arctic war; a long war

and a succession of short wars. It could not

justly be expected that everybody would

be ready for everything, everywhere.

The Germans were not, even after half

a dozen years' head start. Neither were

the British. If British scientists suggested

that Britain was advanced in all forms of

electronics, they were drawing a long bow.

If the members of the Tizard Mission

talked about what they were going to

have as if they already had it,71 they did

so possibly because, being scientists, they

thought of the blueprint as the end product. In the field, in action in the Battle of

Britain, "radio-location was in its infancy," "the teething troubles with radar

were enormous," "it was bitterly disappointing," "the S.L.C. radar sets, designed

for searchlight work, were not due to come

forward until the end of February [1941],"

and so on.72

Hard on the heels of the Tizard Mission's arrival in the United States, American observers left for Great Britain. They

reported with conviction on what they

saw. In the extreme of Signal Corps Labo70

 (1) "Radar," Flight, XLVIII (August 23, 1945),

208-11. (2) "Radar," Mechanical World, CXVIII

(August 24, 1945), 216-20. 71

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col Corput, Washington, D.C., 16 Aug 49. 72

 Pile, Ack-Ack: Britain's Defence Against Air Attack

During the Second World War, pp. 151, 173, 183, and

passim.
200 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ratories opinion, gullibility and superficial knowledge misled some of the observers, especially in the Air Corps, into

seeing more in British radar than actually

existed or would be suitable to the very

different needs of the United States. The

Laboratories radar men came to this conclusion after they learned that the Chain

Home's range was less than they had at

first understood, that its height-finding

qualities were rough, and that the whole

gear sacrificed mobility.73

Against any line of argument which

might have belittled British accomplishment simply in order to exalt the U.S.

achievement stood not only the fact that

the British had radar much farther in use

but also the fact that they had it more

efficiently in use. The Telecommunications

Research Establishment represented a

pool of scientific knowledge from which

Army, Navy, and Air alike might draw.

British methods of research and development were sometimes more flexible and

appropriate than American methods.

Their scientists did not carry the laboratory work on a project too far or continue

it too long. When a Mark I had emerged,

they cut short further development, and

the interested arm or service tried out the

equipment, incomplete though it was.

Meanwhile, the laboratory would start

working on a Mark II, incorporating

changes in it as the tests of Mark I showed

the need for them. Mark III would presently succeed Mark II. In this way, a series

of improved versions might come out rapidly, logically, and with a minimum of

misunderstanding between technicians

who might otherwise grow too remote

from immediacy and users who might be

oblivious both of the problems and the

difficulties of solution.

The actual military organization for

aircraft detection in Britain was highly

effective also; it showed few of the shortcomings which often left the impression,

especially in 1941 and 1942, that the

American equipment, rather than its operation, was inadequate. Moreover, although

the Germans attacked the Chain Home

from the beginning, the stations were hard

to damage. General Chaney, a special observer of the Battle of Britain, visited one

of the CH sites a day or two after an attack

which had knocked out two legs of a tower,

burned some of the buildings, and killed

several girl operators. The station still

functioned, guy wire holding up the tower,

and there were wooden dummy towers

adjacent, both to confuse the enemy and

to serve in the event of further emergency.74

Chaney was an Air Corps officer, one of

several who became devotees of British

radar.75 Major Edwards, a Signal Corps

representative, also liked British design

and recommended immediate purchase of

the IFF and ASV equipment, as well as of

the very high frequency command radios

which the Royal Air Force used.76 By far

the most important sizing up was a quick

trip undertaken jointly by Maj. Gen. Delos

73

 Intervs SigC Hist Sec with: Col Corput, Washington, D.C., 16 Aug 49, Col Gilbert Hayden, Dir Electronics Subdiv, AF Mat Comd, Wright-Patterson Air

Base, Dayton, Ohio, 21 Jul 49; W. G. Eaton, Tech

Asst Electronics Subdiv AF Mat Comd Wright-Patterson Air Base, Dayton, Ohio, 22 Jul 49; Maj F. L. Holloway, SigC, Electronics Div ARL, Dayton, Ohio, 4

Oct 44; Lt Col Albert F. Cassevant, Dir, and John J.

Slattery, Evans Lab, Belmar, N.J., 10 Feb 50. 74

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj Gen James E.

Chaney, USAF Ret., Washington, D.C., 14 Jul 49. 75

 On Air Corps interest in British equipment, see

Martin P. Claussen, AAF Hist Div, Development of

Radio and Radar Equipment for Air Operations,

1939-1944, and AAF Hist Study 50, Materiel Research and Development in the Army Air Arm, 1914-

1945. Air Hist Archives, Air University. 76

 Msg, Brig Gen Raymond E. Lee, US Mil Attache, London, to MID WDGS, 22 Oct 40, sub: Radio

equip. Air Intelligence Library US 9510.
THE PROPULSION FROM LIMBO 201

C. Emmons of the Air Corps and General

Strong, the chief of the War Plans Division

of the General Staff.

Emmons and Strong found an England

which everyone presumed would be invaded and which some feared would succumb. They were therefore all the more

impressed by the evidences of order, system, and progressive refinement which

they saw in the British defenses and scientific establishment. The design, construction, and organization of the command

posts which formed the corpuscles of British defense struck them particularly.

The secret of the success of the operations

[there, they noted] is rapid, reliable and accu- rate channels of communications. The British

have installed a very elaborate system of

communications, consisting of the telephone, the teletypewriter and the radio. This . . . must have been extremely expensive and

required years, but it is the framework upon

which the defenses of Britain are built. If

England successfully resists an invasion it will

be because of this. . . . The fact that an air- plane can be picked up by a radio watchman

and its position, direction of flight, and so

forth reported to a fighter station in a matter

of seconds is illustrative of the care with

which this system has been designed and of

its value.77

Emmons and Strong also learned of the

AI and ASV, respectively the air-to-air

detector and the air-to-surface-vessel detector. They did not see an AI, and the

British confessed that it was "in limited

use at the present time." Actually, the first

one had just been ordered.78 They saw the

pip-squeak method of identification, with

its use of a visual signal, a plume of smoke

shot from the tail of the fuselage when the

airplane was coming over a friendly antiaircraft battery or wanted to signal that it

was about to attack. And above all, they

saw the three principal sets, roughly corresponding to the three which the Signal

Corps had developed. They liked all three,

and urged that the Signal Corps delay not

an instant in dispatching a man to learn

from the British book.

Thus one of the most significant Signal

Corps involvements of World War II began. In less than two months' time from

the arrival of the Tizard Mission, Signal

Corps research had forsworn the sandspit

isolation where it had wielded its own

radar and had been irrevocably committed to full participation in a world conflict. Departing from the United States to

return to England, Tizard said:

From our point of view our visit has been

a great success, and I hope it has also been of

value to [the Americans]. The British Gov- ernment are only too anxious to have as full

as possible cooperation in all scientific and

technical developments and I hope the inter- change of important technical information

will not cease or diminish on our departure.

It did not. Under the example of the

leaders of the two nations, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, cooperation was the order of the day in all

enterprises, an order unchanged year after

year. The Tizard Mission and the simultaneous Minerva-birth of the National

Defense Research Committee (Dr. Vannevar Bush was Jupiter) had pointed up one

form of co-operation aside from the international. This was the desirability for collaboration between soldiers and civilians.

Englishmen associated from the beginning

with the Telecommunications Research

Establishment have not hesitated to say

that its great work could never have

brought so many victories had the Air and

77

 Memo, Gen Emmons, CG GHQ AF, and Gen

Strong, ACofS WPD, for CofS, 25 Sep 40, sub: Observations in England. G-4 No. 4368. 78

 "The Evolution of Radar," Engineering, CLX

(August 31, 1945), 244-45.
202 THE SIGNAL CORPS

War Ministries not recognized their dependence upon civilian intellectuals who

were following what often seemed undisciplined courses of thought. Science had

advanced by the co-operation of scientists,

and military science could advance only

by encouragement of the same freedom of

investigation and intercourse. At the least,

the double collaboration between science

and army, Great Britain and the United

States, rescued millions of persons from

agonized prolongation of the war.79

79

 (1) Ltr, H. T. Tizard to Brig Gen Sherman Miles,

Actg ACofS G-2, 30 Sep 40. SigC CE British Equip.

(2) Rowe, One Story of Radar, Foreword by Air Marshal Lord Tedder and passim.
CHAPTER VIII

Selective Service

All through that summer of 1940 the

Burke-Wadsworth bill was under intense

debate. In the year since the Army had

totaled 174,000, Congress had moved the

ceiling up to 210,000, then to 227,000 with

an additional National Guard strength of

235,000. The authorized Army thus stood

short of the half million which represented

the initial protective force of the current

plan for mobilization. At the rate at which

German power was threatening, support

in depth would need to be built behind

the authorized defense establishment. Legislation under discussion in the midst of

the excitement of May and June, when

every overseas safeguard appeared to be

crashing, contemplated a lift in the allowed

ceiling to 255,000, then to 375,000. The

figure was still not enough. The Military

Establishment felt that the American public and their representatives would not fail

to see that at the very least the defense of

their own hemisphere rested upon the

United States and that the Selective Service program set forth in the BurkeWadsworth measure ought to be passed.

Speed was the watchword, from that point

of view.

To the nation as a whole, the decision

struck too deep at the roots to be taken

hastily. Every principle of the country's

history said "No" to peacetime conscription, and only a reluctant "Yes" to any

conscription at all. The last forced association of the civilian public with the military had also left a residue of wariness

which was still perceptible. Yet it was vital

that bygones be bygones. Danger was real,

and universal. Except legalistically, the

era was not peacetime: it was an uneasy

grace for preparation, which might be put

to an end at any moment. The existing

Army and Navy were not the force which

would be defending the country: they

were a sketch whose outline and bulk must

be filled in by the citizenry.

At last the step was agreed to, a first

step but a long one, which authorized an

armed service of 1,400,000 men. Of these,

630,000 were to come into service through

the process tactfully referred to as "selection," 270,000 more through the National

Guard, the civilian army thus coming to

900,000. For the rest, Congress raised the

Regular Army ceiling to 500,000.1 With

whatever regrets at putting tradition aside,

and with whatever jokes, both raucous

and rueful, about it, the public at large

supported Selective Service, and on

16 September 1940 the act became law.

On October 16, males between twentyone and thirty-six registered. By Thanks1

 "Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff of the

United States, July 1, 1939, to June 30, 1941," SW,

Annual Report, 1941, pp. 48-53.
204 THE SIGNAL CORPS

giving, the first "selectees" were drawing

equipment.

Signal Strength

If equipment involved first creating the

items, then getting them, manpower was

a problem solved the other way around.

The thing was to get the men first—a matter the public was now complying with—

and then to create them. They had to be

created, to begin with, as a standardized

machine, a "You're in the Army now"

mass; next, as units in the mass, a stage

which to the Signal Corps suggested construction battalions, aircraft warning companies, wire platoons; and last and most

importantly, as the trained soldier, the

specialist, the man who could be counted

on to work a bad radio signal, the man

who could take a clear photograph, the

man who could catalogue depot stock, the

man who could keep cryptographic information secret. Manpower was a matter

first of numerical strength and then of

training.

At the end of the fiscal year just closed,

30 June 1940, Signal Corps strength had

stood at 6,543.2 To come up to strength in

the Selective Service expansion, the Signal Corps had 30,000 to go. Every man

must figuratively move far enough apart

from every other man to give five new

men space between. At the end of the next

fiscal year, the 6,000 strength should be

36,000. If the same proportions were applied to the Signal Corps as to the Army as

a whole, approximately 7,200 (20 percent)

of the 36,000 would be National Guardsmen; 12,600 (35 percent), Regular Army

personnel; and 16,200 (45 percent), civilians drafted under the Selective Service

law.

If the Signal Corps could have had its

way, all of them would have been specialists. That was quite out of the question;

since it took even the Army from five to

fifteen months to specialize a man, the result represented invested wealth. Still,

there was no bar against trying to get as

many as possible. For this sort of strength,

the ranks of the existing Regular Army

did not offer much of a reservoir, because

both in total size and in apportionment of

quotas among its competing branches the

Army was strictly regulated. Recruitment

also met with little success, particularly

when the Marine Corps, the Air Corps,

and the Navy were passing the king's

shilling at the very doors of the draft

boards. And Selective Service men were

in service for only a year, most of which

would have to be spent in training them.

Otis tests were likely to disqualify the less

intelligent of the new soldiers; and of the

2

 No personnel calculation is sure at any number

greater than 1. The conflict among official sources

makes it necessary to strike a mean among them on

occasion. At other times, it is advisable to select one

source and adhere to it. On this basis, the figures contained in Signal Corps Strength, a monograph (Nov

45, OCSigO Career Management File) by Capt

Wilson G. Burden, have proved very generally useful.

To make a quick comparison possible, the following

figures are brought together:
SELECTIVE SERVICE 205

brighter ones, few showed any interest in

an Army career. Further to handicap it in

the race for specialists, the Signal Corps

had no high ratings to offer for inducement as the Navy had for its communications men, yet the requirements for signal

training were about comparable to those

for officer candidacy.3

Nevertheless, and despite a slow start,

Selective Service, once set in motion, like

the sorcerer's broom brought thousands of

men in, and thousands upon the thousands, imparting to the parched Army

first a sense of incredulity, then one of delight, then, with the flood unstanched and

running over, something like dismay. The

influx did take just this form. The National Guard was mobilized promptly, in

swift orders from September on; then for

several months few came into the service

except voluntary enlisters. The nation had

to set up a mammoth apparatus of draft

boards, the registered men had to fill out

questionnaires and take physical examinations, and the Military Establishment

had to get as much construction done in a

hurry as it could achieve. This was

negligible, and men arrived at old and

new posts alike which had no housing for

them. With a relative smoothness creditable to the whole country, however, the

machinery of conscription went into gear

and by 1941 every community was sending off its tribute. If they were not specialists, they were manpower, and it was this

fact that drove in with such engulfing

force. In January the strength of the Signal Corps grew to 16,000; by April it rose

to 32,000.

Nor was there any difficulty in filling

up the officer ranks. As the demand widened, so did the possibilities for meeting it.

Mobilization of the National Guard

brought scores of new officers into the

Signal Corps. At the outset of 1941, there

were fourteen vacancies in the Thomason

Act allotments, which provided another

possibility. Still another opened in the opportunity to commission a few officers in

the Reserve, tacitly for the statutory fiveyear period only, but practically making

them very accessible in case of a need

which would override all normal considerations.

For any active duty short of war, the

span of service of non-Regular officers, as

of non-Regular enlisted men, was a year.

No Reserve officer could be recalled without his consent unless a state of war

existed. Sometimes this was a vexing provision. The Bell System, thought of by the

Signal Corps as the best potential source

of Reserve officers, used the ground that

war had not been declared in resisting

requests for them.

From the one-year limitation also arose

the odd fact that the demand for officers

was greater than the need, simply because

it was important to have a successor on

hand before a Reserve officer went back

to civilian life; overlaps of several months

could come about in this way. With whatever cross-purposes and delays, however,

the Reserve list constituted the immediate

source of officers beyond the National

Guard addition, and stopped the breach

until officer-candidate training began. By

March there were 69 Reserve officers on

duty with the Signal Corps, of whom eight

3

 (1) Ltr, CG Hq SCRTC, Ft. Monmouth, to

CSigO, 22 Jul 41, sub: Recruiting for Regular Army.

SigC Hq SCRTC 341 and also in WD 341 Gen Recruiting 2, Apr-Dec 41. (2) 1st Ind, CSigO to TAG,

12 Feb 40, on Ltr, TAG to CSigO et al., 8 Feb 40, sub:

Loss replacements. SigC 381 Gen Mob, Jan-Feb 40.

(3) Frederick Lewis Allen, "Drafting This Army,"

Harpers, CLXXXIV, No. 1106 (July, 1942), 113 ff.
206 THE SIGNAL CORPS

were in the field grade and 61 in the company grade.4

Because the Signal Corps looked for experience, officers in the field grades were

hard to get. The company ranks were

easier to fill. A hundred or 150 automatic

additions came into the Reserve at each

graduation season from the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. To meet the main

objective of Signal ROTC units, which

was to produce a young man qualified to

command an infantry or cavalry communications platoon, there were 350 advanced and 1,400 basic signal ROTC

students in eleven universities. Many of

these, because their classroom instruction

had not yet rubbed off, were thought to be

superior technically to the National

Guard officers. Whether they were or not,

the ROTC was an essential reservoir:

when, for example, G-1 proposed that

Fort Monmouth train 50 ROTC students

in the summer of 1941, the Chief Signal

Officer recommended that Monmouth

take eight times as many. Again, Signal

Corps planners were agreed that the 10-

percent increase in the Reserve allotment

was too low, and urged that the figure be

raised to 25 percent. A few officers materialized from the Army Amateur Radio

System; and a few more entered the Signal Corps upon graduation from the Military Academy. Of the 425 cadets graduated in the class of 1941, 17 went to Signal Corps units.

This tally of auxiliary sources brought

the list back again to Selective Service and

the creation of officers from among its

numbers. So long as the existing Reserve

was being called up, Selective Service was

still not thought of as offering a quick

prospect of officers. But the time was not

far away. Even had all 1,809 officers on

the Reserve list been available, consenting

to return for a year, experience had shown

that probably fewer than half could meet

the charge of active duty. Some were overage in grade and not susceptible to being

lifted a grade, some had dependents whom

they could not leave, some would fail the

physical examination. In June the War Department ruled that men classified 1-A by

draft boards would not be eligible for commissions under the Affiliated Plan. Few

Affiliates were in 1-A status, anyway, so

that the Affiliated potential was not much

narrowed, but the order did serve to direct

further attention toward the untapped

springs of the selective conscription.5

4

 (1) Carroll O. Bickelhaupt, Vice-President AT&T,

Brig Gen, SigC, Ret., excerpts from office diary,

passim, e.g., 26 Feb, 4 and 17 Sep, 1 and 7 Oct 40, 9

Jan, 12 Mar, and 28 May 41. SigC Hist Sec File. (2)

Ltrs, TAG to All Corps Area Comdrs, 28 Oct 40 and

19 Nov 41, sub: Allocation of Selective Sv men to arms

and svs by reception ctrs. AG 324.71 (10-28-40) EA

and (11-19-41) EC. (3) 1st Ind Reply, 31 Dec 40, on

Ltr, CSigO to Comdt SigC School, 16 Dec 40, sub:

Tng of candidates for commissions in SigC Reserve;

(4) Memo, Maj Frank C. Meade for CSigO, 16 Jan

41, sub: Proc of officers for SigC units and installations. SigC 353 Gen, MT-38 Feb 39-Dec 41. (5)

Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R.

Keast, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II, The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, 1948), p. 327. 5

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 13 Jan 41, sub: Recommendation for transfer of SigC Reserve officers to

Thomason Act status. SigC 326.21 Transfers. (2)

Memo, Brig Gen William E. Shedd, ACofS G-1, for

CofS, 30 Oct 40, sub: Officer candidate schools. AG

352 (9-19-40) (1) Sec 1. (3) Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 5 Jun

41, sub: Appointment of Reserve officers in Affiliated

units and installations. AG 381 (5-29-41) RE-A. (4)

Ltr, CSigO to Comdt SigC School, 13 Nov 40, sub:

Tng of civilian components ROTC students and

CMTC candidates at exempted stations 1940, with

1st Ind Reply, 16 Nov 40, and Ltr, CSigO to TAG,

18 Nov 40, same sub. SigC 381 Gen 17. (5) Ltr,

CSigO to TAG, 23 Jun 41, sub: Assignment of graduates 1941 class U. S. Mil Academy. AG 210.31

(4-22-41) Sec II. (6) SigC Bd Case 446, Controlled

Items, 13 Oct 41. SigC 400.12 Controlled Items 14.

(7) Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 25 Mar 41, sub: Active duty

tng for SigC Reserve officers having Affiliated status,

with 1st Ind Reply, 8 Apr 41. SigC 326.21 and also in

AG 353 ORC (3-25-41) M. (8) Ltr, CSigO to TAG,

7 Jul 41, sub: Officers' peacetime proc objective for

mob SigC. SigC 381 Gen 18.
SELECTIVE SERVICE 207

When the mass influx of men into the

Army commenced in the spring, the total

active duty officer strength of the Signal

Corps was 320. Approved plans called for

2,715 officers, 1,700 of whom, in the

grades of 1st and 2d lieutenant, were

made necessary by aircraft warning plans

alone: most of these were destined for the

Electronics Training Group, a unique

project already well formulated and about

to take shape. Into the enlisted ranks Selective Service was pouring thousands of

inductees, not only doubling the strength

between January and April but climbing

uninterruptedly beyond that point to the

mark of the Initial Protective Force allocation. This was the projection of Signal

manpower in mass.

The next stage, while the first continued

beyond the goal of the initial force and

beyond that and still beyond, was the

creation of units from the mass. This

process called into use the cadre system of

withdrawing from old units enough

trained men to make the framework for a

new one, then filling in the spaces.

Though the established unit might feel

anguish at seeing its working pattern disrupted, its sense of identity violated, there

was small doubt that the best way to absorb thousands of new men was not to

isolate them but to work them in among

those already initiated into Army

mysteries.

The Signal Corps had five types of

units. By far the most important to its mission were the organizations for providing

all of the standard forms of signal communication; much less numerous were supply

and repair units; and then, making up

only a sliver, came signal intelligence,

photographic, and pigeon organizations.

Every unit of whatever type was open to

the full and upheaving force of emergency

preparations.

The triangular division, the motorization of the Cavalry, and the expansion of

air activities all called for new units, new

types of units, and differences in established units. A new signal repair company

was growing out of the wide variety of developments in equipment. A signal company, signal depot was on the way in

order to meet different methods of supply

operation. The signal troop, mechanized,

which had just reached table-of-organization stage, was in process of being superseded by the signal company, armored

division. More aircraft warning companies—still an experiment—were being

created; and there were units to be designed for air divisions, air wings, and air

bases.

Even before the draft legislation had

passed, the Signal Corps had forecast the

activation of twenty-eight signal aviation

companies and five signal aviation maintenance companies. Under the pressure of

the times, unit after unit was brought into

being, cadre upon cadre withdrawn upon

which to shape them. In addition to the

51st Signal Battalion, for many years the

only unit of its kind, a dozen more arose.

Beside the original 1st Radio Intelligence

Company, half a dozen other radio intelligence companies came into existence. A

dozen signal companies served with infantry divisions, and more than a dozen signal aviation companies with air wings.

Under the cadre system, units propagated

by a sort of vertical fission. In three

months' time, the long-established 15th

Signal Service Company gave up 66 men.

The structure of the 1st Aircraft Warning

Company was created by combining a

cadre of 30 from Fort Monmouth, 10

culled from other stations, and 43 recruits.

Eight organizations were drawn upon to

provide a 14-man detachment of the 12th

Signal Service Company for Jamaica.
208 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Almost no unit, new or old, was up to

table-of-organization strength; and all of

the new depended heavily upon the seasoned cadremen and such experienced

men as might come in from industry.

The Protective Mobilization Plan took

it for granted that for several months after

a war began, the Army would have to

make the best of units at peacetime

strength. In the case of the division signal

company, the difference was 150 enlisted

men rather than 202, and 6 officers instead of 8. In bloc after bloc, the second

manpower stage appeared, as the Signal

Corps activated units to meet its obligations to the Protective Mobilization Plan.

Inescapably, paper obstacles and red tape

hindered the process. To get new patterns

authorized was difficult; to develop tables

of organization for them, in view of the

fact that they were untried, was also difficult. G-1's table of occupational specialists

became obsolete rather quickly. In some

categories it omitted essential specialists,

in others it allowed for too few. And all

cases necessarily awaited a full revision of

the Protective Mobilization Plan, because

each change set up so many others that to

admit one threatened to disrupt the plan.6

Along with the activation of units according to plan, others came into existence

in response to an emergency which cut

across the most orderly provisions. Simultaneously with Selective Service, the continental commitment of the United States

openly became hemispheric. The defense

range moved outward to Newfoundland,

Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland, and

from Florida passed over the Caribbean

arc; on the Pacific side, it swept most of

the coast of North and South America.

The Hawaiian and Philippine Islands and

the unfortified scattering which included

Guam, Wake, and Howland extended the

commitment far beyond the hemisphere.

Mobilization—for that is what was occurring—demanded task force and theater units for all of these areas. In February

Secretary Stimson approved the organization of three task forces, numbers 1 and 2

to occupy bases in the Caribbean and

number 3 to join Canadian forces in the

defense of Newfoundland. A few months

later the War Department created a pool

of units for these task forces, and gave it

priority in equipment, training, and

organization.

The signal component of this pool included four battalions, a construction battalion and two construction companies, an

operations company, a photographic company, a pigeon company, two depot companies, a repair company, four radio

intelligence companies, three aircraft

warning companies, three air companies,

and eight air platoons. In the same way

that these and other units sprang into

being from many sources, so they divided

among the steadily growing number of

6

 (1) Ltr, TAG to CSigO et al., 8 Feb 40, sub: Loss

replacements, and 1st Ind Reply, 12 Feb 40. SigC 381

Gen Mob, Jan-Feb 40. (2) Ltr, Budget Office WD to

Chief of Estimating Agencies WD, 2 Jun 40, sub:

Suppl estimates for increase in strength of Regular

Army from 280,000 to 375,000. SigC 111 Suppl FY

41, No. 1. (3) "Editor's Observation Post," Signal

Corps Bulletin, No. 109 (July-December, 1940), p.

107. (4) Ltr, Chief of AC to TAG, 30 Aug 40, sub:

Provision of sig maintenance cos aviation for air divs

operating in support of an army or expeditionary

force. AG 320.2 SigC (8-30-40). (5) Pers Div OCSigO,

Charts 1-9, 1 Mar 41, sub: SigC units First Army,

SigC units Second Army, etc. SigC 063.1 Charts. (6)

Capt Frederick Reinstein, Study of Signal Corps

Officer Schooling, 1939-1944, 1945, App. A,

Growth—Army and Signal Corps. SigC Hist Sec File.

(7) Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 21 (April 10,

1939), pp. 10-12, and No. 25 (April 10, 1940), p. 24.

(8) Memo, CSigO for Lt Col James R. Townsend,

WPD, 2 Jun 41. SigC 381 Gen 18. (9) Ltr, President

SigC Bd to CSigO, 25 Jul 40, sub: Occupational specialists required for WD PMP 1940. SigC FM 381

SigC Bd.
SELECTIVE SERVICE 209

regions being brought under the protection of the United States. Whether in

areas long inside the defense perimeter or

newly included, they served in another

kind of limbo, neither peace nor war.

Alaska, for example, a huge subcontinent,

had only one aircraft warning company

(which had arrived at Fort Richardson,

the raw new base at Anchorage, on 14

March 1941) and that company had no

radar. Neither did the Signal Company,

Aircraft Warning, Hawaii.7

Signal Training

Throughout the peacetime years Signal

Corps technicians, along with occasional

communications men from the rest of the

armed forces or from foreign armies, had

got their training at the Signal Corps

School at Fort Monmouth. Fitted into a

galaxy of northern New Jersey communities, a region of ocean resorts, manufacturing, estates of the retired, and home.s of

commuters, Monmouth was the particular center and epitome of the Signal

Corps.

The laboratories which had developed

Army radar represented one chief aspect

of the post, the school the other. Enlisted

men assigned there to study took a ten

months' course; the officers' work lasted

nine months. Enlisted men followed the

radio or wire curriculum much as in a

trade school, without emphasis upon textual learning but with a great deal upon

direct tradesmen's applications. Although

the curriculum had shown little variation

from year to year, the 1935 move to adjust

the student's advancement to his ability

and the concomitant 1936 establishment

of a continuous schedule had primed the

school for what was coming.

The training given to officers—foreign,

Regular Army, National Guard, and Reserve—was correspondingly matter-of-fact

and directed toward producing communications officers rather more than signal

officers. It anticipated, that is to say, that

they would be concerned with tactical

more than with administrative signal

work. This seemed a sensible orientation

because relatively few Regular officers of

the Signal Corps ever got to the school but

perforce learned their administrative

duties on the job. Developments were to

prove, however, that there were flaws in

the assumption that tactical communication, which was not the essential responsibility of the Signal Corps, could be allowed to fill the course of study at the

expense of administrative communication,

which was. To some degree, the tactical

subjects were too much based on the war

of the past; to a greater one, administrative

signaling was not properly appraised in

terms of the war ahead; one result was

that the World War II need for great communications systems with an abundance

of heavy equipment and a complex organization of personnel, took the Signal Corps

by surprise.

Tactical instruction consisted of lectures,

conferences, and field exercises; technical

instruction proceeded by means of conferences and workbench exercises on equipment. Chalk and a blackboard necessarily

served in place of the ample training aids

of the forthcoming wartime instruction;

simple true-false, multiple-choice, and

7

 (1) Ltrs, CSigO to TAG, 29 and 31 Mar 41, sub:

Orgn of emergency expeditionary forces; (2) Incl,

Signal Corps Equipment for Emergency Expeditionary Forces, 10 May 41, with Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 21

May 41, sub: Orgn of emergency expeditionary

forces. SigC OT 381 Gen Emergency Expeditionary

Forces. (3) AG Ltrs, 27 Feb and 28 Aug 41. In same

file and also in AG 381 (2-27-41) M-D-M and

(7-28-41) MC-E-M.
210 THE SIGNAL CORPS

completion questions made up the examinations, as would continue to be the case.

Noncommissioned officers gave the

courses in the Enlisted Department; after

a perfunctory briefing in training methods, Signal Corps officers conducted the

officer courses. The commandant paid

weekly visits to the classrooms, and liaison

officers detailed from the Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery, and Marine Corps

watched the instruction.8

Then came the limited emergency of

September 1939. Word went out that the

standard course for officers must not be rescheduled after the current one came to

an end; the War Department held that

the Army had too few officers to allow

them time for special schooling during a

growing crisis. The order set a deadline of

1 February 1940. To come within it, and

to end coincidentally with the conclusion

of the nine months' course, the Signal

Corps School scheduled an extra one only

a third as long.

When February arrived the situation

had changed enough to permit a second

three months' course, which thirty-three

National Guard and Reserve officers were

completing when alarm at the desperation

of France and the Low Countries darkened the emergency in May. More and

more of these officers were entering the

service, and for them—and theoretically

for any new West Point graduates who

could be spared for it—the school now

made the three months' training period a

continuing part of its program.

For Regular Army officers, the deepened emergency cut allowable training

still further, to one month, whereupon,

making a virtue of a necessity, the Officers Department arranged for one-month

bird's-eye views of wire, radio, radio intelligence, aircraft warning, photography

and pigeons. Cursory as this training was,

it was nevertheless to make of the rare individual who elected it a one-eyed man in

the kingdom of the blind. The 65-percent

increase in the school's officer enrollment

which 1940 showed over 1939 was accounted for almost entirely, however, by

National Guard and Reserve students.9

During the same 1939-40 period, a

similar set of adjustments occurred in enlisted training. G-1 directed that except

for a few courses intended to train radio

and telephone electricians and teletypewriter repairmen, the ten months' course

for enlisted men must be curtailed after 10

July 1940; most students thenceforth entering the Enlisted Department would

have to come under a different regimen.

The first response to the change was to organize a replacement pool at Monmouth,

giving a five months' basic course, and the

second was to institute a four months'

schedule in the Enlisted Department.

This, too, so shrank at the crisis abroad

that as of the deadline, 10 July 1940, and

in concert with an Army-wide action, the

Signal Corps set up a schedule designed to

train enlisted signalmen in three months.

This drastic decision provided "the

most important announcement at the Signal Corps School since the middle

8

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj Gen Francis

H. Lanahan, Jr., CG Ft. Monmouth, 10 Feb 50. (2)

Capt Frederick Reinstein, Study of Signal Corps Enlisted Schooling, 1939-1944, 1945, pp. 2-3, (3) Study

of Signal Corps Officer Schooling, 1939-1944, 1945,

p. 6, and (4) Summary Chapter on Signal Corps

Training, 1939-1944, 1945, p. 2. SigC Hist Sec File.

(5) OCSigO Instruction Cir 2, 1 Sep 39. 9

 (1) Brig. Gen. W. O. Reeder, ''Training at Fort

Monmouth, World War II," Signals, I, No. 5 (MayJune, 1947), p. 6. (2) SigC School, Commandant's file

of graduates. SigC 352.17 Ft. Monmouth. (3) Ltr,

TAG to CSigO, 7 Oct 39, sub: Proposed closing special sv schools and C&GSS. AG 352 (10-3-39) M-C.

(4) SigC File 353 Ft. Monmouth, passim.
SELECTIVE SERVICE 211

1930's."10 The "ninety-day wonders"

whom it produced were to be rivaled only

by the ninety-day-officer wonder, as objects of easy ridicule in every branch of the

service where the experiment was tried.

Maj. Gen. Spencer B. Akin, a postwar

Chief Signal Officer, whose experience

with them dated from the opening days of

the war in the Philippines, recoiled from

the recollection.11

Yet after a long shaking down—a

period when unfortunately many products

of highly uncertain training had to be

shipped out, and gave such men as Akin

basis for exasperation—the process more

than proved itself. The best argument for

it was that there was no other way to do.

Beyond that elementary fact, however, lay

unexpected advantages in obtaining thousands of signalmen on a production-line

basis and in capsuling instruction to a

point often emulated by the teaching profession itself. The inescapable trait of so

short a course was specialization. Singleness is a better word, for there was no

question of a new man's becoming a signal

specialist in the old sense of the term. He

was singled out first for wire or radio, and

then for an individual capacity in either

field. The Enlisted Department divided

its wire course into new subcourses for

cable splicers, frame men, inside men,

local and common battery installation

and repair men, line foremen, power men,

manual switchboard installers, local and

common battery wire chiefs, and teletypewriter maintenance men. The objective of

the new radio courses was to qualify a

man to become a repairman, a teletypewriter operator, or the operator of a field

or fixed station.12

Categorizing the broad radio and wire

training into lesser specialties was an attempt not only to train men faster but also

to train more of them at the same time, to

meet the passage of Selective Service in

the fall. The consequent pressure on the

buildings of the school and replacement

pool threatened to burst out the roofs. For

Fort Monmouth had thought of itself as

crowded ever since it had been Camp

Alfred Vail in World War I. It had been

obliged to use nearby private property

and the sides of the public highways for

field exercises, and equipment was still

being accommodated in the temporary

hangars erected in 1917. Housing was

scarce enough so that a portion of the garrison had to live off the post and in quarters which cost as much as 30 percent

more than their rental allowance or commutation. Something had to be done, for

the national registration for the draft was

coming up in October. First conservative

estimates told the school to prepare to

train 299 officers and 3,755 enlisted men,

specified as fillers (224 officers and 2,455

enlisted men) and replacements (75 officers,

1,300 enlisted men).13

In the use of these terms lay a needless

and harmful confusion. It caused many

misunderstandings in Army personnel administration throughout the war. Practi10

 Maj Gen Frank E. Stoner, SigC Speech to American Signal Corps Association, N. Y., 27 Feb 46.

OCSigO Info Br File. 11

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Gen Akin, Washington, D.C., 18 Oct 49. 12

 (1) 2d Lt. George M. Simmons, (Inf) SigC, "The

Enlisted Men's Department Signal Corps School,"

Signal Corps Bulletin, No. 108 (April-June, 1940), pp.

108 ff. (2) History of the Eastern Signal Corps Training Center (Ft. Monmouth, 1945), p. 16. SigC Hist

Sec File. 13

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-4, 8 Dec 41. SigC

601.1 Ft. Monmouth. (2) Signal Corps Information

Letter, No. 1 [new ser.], (December 1, 1941), p. 43.

(3) Ltr, Inspector Gen Second Corps Area to CG Second Corps Area, 26 Feb 40, sub: Annual inspection

Ft. Monmouth. IGO 333.1 Ft. Monmouth, FY 40

(2-26-40). (4) A History of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, 1917-1945, p. 86. SigC Hist Sec File.
212 THE SIGNAL CORPS

cally, the two groups need not have been

separately labeled, for the officers would

get officer training and the enlisted men

would get enlisted training, whatever

their assignment afterward was to be.

While they were in training, they would

be students; after they had been assigned

to units, they would be signal or communications specialists or nonspecialists.

Whether they were fillers or replacements was a matter which hinged upon no

more than whether the unit to which they

were assigned was just being formed or

was already in existence. Fillers went to an

incomplete unit to fill up the spaces

around the cadre. They were sorted out

and told off to their jobs when they

reached the unit; before that stage, they

were men in the mass, a bulk allotment.

Replacements were singled out as individuals. Commanding officers requisitioning replacements were asking for specific

men to take over specific duties left vacant

by their predecessors. Inasmuch as the

Army at the beginning of the emergency

was so small that it possessed few units,

there was little need for replacements. Instead, the need which the Selective Service system was designed to meet was for

fillers, in the hundreds of units to be

created. Mobilization planning referred to

these men as replacements—men new to

the service, who would be assigned to units

new to the service, where nobody had

preceded them in the assignment, and

where, indeed and in many cases, even the

assignment itself was so new that it had

never existed before.

For all the new soldiers, whether they

were to be fillers or replacements, the first

stop was a reception center; the second,

unless they were sent directly to a unit to

learn their job while they worked at it, was

likely to be the replacement training center. So far as reception centers affected its

problem, the Signal Corps was concerned

only in getting its quota of the incoming

men. To set up a replacement training

center, however, in dimensions far exceeding the simple replacement pool which

Fort Monmouth had already established,

constituted a sharp and inescapable obligation now that the Protective Mobilization Plan was gradually being put into

effect.

The Signal Corps' first proposal to meet

the requirement, a proposal made in May

1940, was for a 15 September activation

and a complement of 750. Part of the staff

would come from the resident 51st Signal

Battalion; the total proposed overhead included a lieutenant colonel, 8 captains, 7

1st lieutenants, 5 Reserve 2d lieutenants,

154 enlisted men, 8 civilians, and Quartermaster and Medical detachments. The

May plan had the ill luck to be offered

just as the German triumph over western

Europe made it certain to be rejected as

inadequate. The War Department began

thinking of twenty-one such replacement

training centers, all to be established in

the rest of 1940 and 1941.

The next Signal Corps plan, submitted

in August, proposed a capacity of 5,000.

In the Signal Corps School, there would

inevitably be expansion beyond the startling, and just announced, figure of 831

enlisted students, because some of the men

to be at the new replacement center would

be transferred to the school after their

basic training. Fort Monmouth would

have to swell like the frog in Aesop,

although every effort would be made to

expand it without bursting. By comparison with the sprawling communities attained by 1943, the layout was cautious.

The familiar training center was implicit

in it: the classroom and workshop build-
SELECTIVE SERVICE 213

TRAINING IN TELETYPEWRITER MAINTENANCE. (Photograph taken

in 1942.)

ings, each 20 by 100 feet, surrounding an

instructors' building; the barracks, bath

houses, and latrines; the recreation halls,

kitchens, and mess halls; the headquarters

buildings; the post exchanges; the hospital

area; the fire department, the guard

house, and military police station; the

utilities preserves; and so on, to a full-scale

training post like any of those known to

millions of men within the following years.

The new training facility would represent almost from its opening more persons

than were present at all the rest of Fort

Monmouth. Garrison strength stood at

2,300 when the draft registration took

place. According to plan, it would rise to

3,500 by January 1941 and to 11,000 by

March, when the Replacement Training

Center would be open. Rapidly the calendar was drawn. March 15 was to be the

activation date. By April 1, buildings were

to be completed, on an area near Fort

Monmouth to be leased or bought. On

April 15, the first group of a thousand

"selectees" would arrive for training; on

May 1, a thousand more; on May 15, a

thousand more; on June 1, a thousand

more; and on June 15, the last thousand,

bringing the center up to capacity.

Nobody was scheduled beyond June, be-
214 THE SIGNAL CORPS

cause the Selective Service and Training

Act was due to expire by the time the June

entrants completed their courses. Out of

each thousand, 142 men were to have specialist training. All of the rest would be

nonspecialists: that is, simple technicians

as distinct from expert technicians.14 To

train these men—5,000 instead of 750—

the staff would include 146 officers, 1,340

enlisted men, and 12 civilian clerks. Hence

the garrison increase by January.15

December 1940 plans advanced the

proposed activation date by two months,

drawing it up from March 15 to January

15. This change also slashed the length of

the proposed training period from one

year to one quarter and raised the capacity to 7,000. Replacement Training Center

men would be ninety-day products, too,

and there would be many more than from

the school.

The post commandant, Colonel Olmstead, leased 131 acres adjoining the reservation and began to put into effect an

authorization for a 500-man barrack.

Before any earth had been turned for this

building, blueprints for others had nearly

used up the allowance, and the Signal

Corps negotiated for two more parcels of

land along Oceanport Creek. For a moment the expansion wavered, the War Department needing further sanction from

the Bureau of the Budget; General Marshall had even announced that it would

be necessary to delay the opening of several of the Army's new replacement centers. Then the department decided to cut

a corner everyone had hoped to avoid,

and to open them with the bare minimum

of "essential housing"—a term which did

not include classrooms.16 Late in January,

Fort Monmouth reported that essential

housing for 800 men was ready; so were

the bunks and bedding for thousands

more—stored in the barracks because

there were not yet any warehouses. The

Replacement Center was officially open,

with Col. George L. Van Deusen as com14

 The breakdown was as follows:

15

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-3, 24 May 40,

sub: Requirements for SigC Enlisted RTC, Ft. Monmouth. SigC 381 Gen 16. (2) Congressional Record,

LXXXVI, 536 (4 Aug 40). (3) Ltr, CG Ft. Monmouth

to TAG, 16 Oct 40, sub: Disbursing Office Finance

Dept at Ft. Monmouth. SigC 381 Gen 17. (4) Ltr,

CSigO to Comdt SigC School, 12 Aug 40. Ft. Monmouth File. (5) Capt Frederick Reinstein, Signal

Corps Training in World War II: Background and

First Six Months of War, 1917-1942, 1944, passim.

SigC Hist Sec File. (6) Ltr, OCSigO to Comdt SigC

School, 1 Feb 41, sub: Tentative layout for a SigC tng

ctr theater of opns, with accompanying inds, and Incl

to 3d Ind. SigC 381 Gen 18, Jan-Dec 41. (7) Ltr,

Asst Chief of Fortification Sec Office of Chief of Engrs

to CSigO, 30 Jan 41, sub: Engr construction. Office

Chief of Engrs, Com and Records Br File 600.13 War

Construction, Pt. 1, Serials 1-65. 16

 (1) 4th Ind, TAG to ASW, 13 Dec 40, sub:

Acquisition of land, Ft. Monmouth, without basic

Ltr. AG 680.1 (11-2-40) MD. (2) Memo for File

[Fiscal Officer OCSigO], 11 Dec 40. SigC 601.1 Ft.

Monmouth. (3) Ltr, TAG to ASW, 11 Oct 40, same

sub, with 1st Ind by Budget Officer WD, 11 Oct 40.

AG 680.1 (9-18-40). (4) AG Ltr, 16 Dec 40, sub: Deficiency in funds for emergency construction. AG

600.12 (12-7-40) M-D (Sec 1-E).
SELECTIVE SERVICE 215

manding officer, and on 27 February the

men began to arrive.17

After nineteen years at Fort Monmouth,

the 1st Signal Company left to make way

for them and join the 1st Division. In succeeding months, the 51st Signal Battalion,

the 1st Radio Intelligence Company, the

1st Operations Company (Aircraft Warning) and the cadre of the 1st Aircraft

Warning Company also moved out.

Drafted or newly enlisted, the men who

physically replaced them came from the

reception centers, where their days had

been a succession of queues for filling out

forms, queues for assembling a uniform,

queues for getting a haircut, queues for

inoculation, and queues for more forms,

which they now replaced with formations.

Within three days at the end of February

and the beginning of March, 1,300 new

soldiers appeared.

Gradually, the Replacement Training

Center emerged from mud and confusion.

In the midst of both and in defiance of

them, the training program commenced,

with lectures in sex hygiene, military

courtesy, and the articles of war, with

close-order drill and ritual calisthenics.

Things were too feverish for orderly plans

to be going into effect—the Chief Signal

Officer hastily asked for another replacer

ment training center, which he would locate at Neosho, Missouri—but the ultimate intention was that men would arrive weekly, according to quotas set by

The Adjutant General, that they would

stay for thirteen weeks, and that the training schedule would be staggered according to the entrance schedule: at the time

when one group of men had reached their

thirteenth week of training, a second

would be in their twelfth, a third in the

eleventh, and so on.

After the new soldier had spent the first

three weeks learning how to march and

how to wear his uniform, how to salute

and how to do push-ups, how to pitch a

shelter tent and how to meet inspections,

how to put on his gas mask and how to fire

a pistol, he began from four to eight weeks'

training as a basic signalman.

A lineman, for example, learned the

maintenance of small switchboards, field

telephones, and repeating coils, along with

such essential abilities as how to count the

number of pairs in a cable terminal, how

to lay field wire, and how to set and climb

a pole for an open-wire line. (Climbing

poles was not as easy as it looked; many a

novice "burned" one before he mastered

the technique.) A lineman also discovered

how to attach crossarms, brackets, pins,

and insulators; to string and to tie wire, to

place guy lines and to lay cables; and to

identify various types of wire.

A message center clerk learned to encode and decode messages; to release

pigeons; to read maps marked with common military symbols; and to know the

organization of the unit in which he would

serve. Pigeon men—or pigeoneers, as the

Signal Corps called them—could not be

completely trained within the twelve or

thirteen weeks' period, but they could become competent in feeding and handling

the birds. Field radio operators were supposed to emerge with the ability to send

and receive messages at a rate of at least

twelve words per minute—a word being

commonly measured as a five-letter

group—as well as to know the elementary

installation and maintenance of Signal

Corps radio sets and, if possible, touch

typewriting. The switchboard operator

had to understand traffic diagrams and of

course to be able to operate either a local

17

 Hq Ft Monmouth GO 11, 14 Jan 41.
216 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ENLISTED MEN LEARNING OPEN WIRE CONSTRUCTION. (Photograph

taken in 1942.)

or a common battery switchboard. Expert

typists were selected for training with the

teleprinter and teletypewriter. Motion

picture cameramen studied lighting and

angles of focusing, in addition to the use

and repair of their cameras. Draftsmen

were required to have a general knowledge of layout plans and wire plans employed in the construction, the installation, the repair, and the daily use of wire

communications systems.18

With Selective Service only a one-year

experiment until the act was extended,

General Marshall had warned that the

success of the entire program might depend upon the efficient operation of replacement training centers. Political repercussions would be sure if the students

thought ill of the methods or contents of

the courses. Marshall had further cautioned that time allowed for only the most

essential subjects; no matter how interesting any other material was, the instructors

had to forego it.

Since Fort Monmouth had already

packed the school curriculum tight in the

18

 AG Ltr to CSigO et al., 23 May 41, sub: Revision

of mob tng programs, with inds and following incls:

Training Program, Signal Corps Replacement Training Center, Basic Subjects—Common to All Training

Battalions, and MTP 11-2, Signal Corps Mobilization

Training Program for Signal Corps Enlisted Replacements at Signal Corps Replacement Training Centers,

1941. AG 381 (5-20-41) MT-C, and also in SigC 381

Gen 18.
SELECTIVE SERVICE 217

ENLISTED MEN LEARNING POLE CLIMBING. (Photograph taken in 1948.)

process of reducing most of it to three

months or less, this problem affected the

Signal Corps primarily in the matter of

finding instructors. Army teaching was an

assignment which offered little hope for

promotion and none for genuine recognition—reasons enough why Regulars, with

their careers to think of, shied away from

it if they could. The school pressed some of

its recent graduates into service, along

with Reserve officers. The result was

sometimes not successful, for the new instructors began their work without much

opportunity to become familiar with its

subject matter, let alone to sense the art of

teaching.

School officials also drew up a list of

minimum requirements in technical performance and knowledge, added a week's

work in training methods to the Enlisted

Department course, and revised a few

manuals which dealt with new equipment, such as TM 11-450 on early warning radar. The texts had to be clear because as often as not there was no equipment available for explanations and

demonstrations. Priorities set just before

the draft had put service schools twelfth

on the controlled-materials list and had

made no provision to supply replacement

centers. Even when the War Department

relaxed the ban a little, training facilities

could get equipment only after all of the

needs of tactical units had been met.

Fundamentally, though, every shortage

was merely academic so long as the
218 THE SIGNAL CORPS

teachers were unacademic, every corrective gesture was a stopgap awaiting the

time when the instructors had the skill as

well as the name.19

As for officers in training, the supply to

the Signal Corps would now have begun

to run short had General Staff policy not

imposed the innovation of officer candidate schools. Soon after the beginning of

1941 it became evident that the available

sources would not be adequate in the

almost certain event of a prolongation of

the emergency. The foreseeable need

alone, the need for 2,715, was an enormous number for an agency used in peacetime to one tenth that all together. The

Regular Army, Reserve, and retired lists

carried the names of 2,136, but the sum of

those who were actually eligible for duty

or already serving was not much more

than 940. Hence the deficit was something

like 1,775. The solution could lie only in

something more extensive than a 70-

officer limit at the school and more permanent than an officers' training camp. An

Officer Candidate Department for the

school was necessary.20

In April, therefore, the new enterprise

was set up, and Capt. Charles L. Olin, 1st

Lt. William B. Latta, and several students

in the Officers Department prepared

course outlines for the 500 candidates due

to arrive on the first of July. They put the

development of officerly qualities foremost in the curriculum, and sandwiched

technical training in wherever there was

any time for it. There was no time at all

for sleep. The ninety-day program was

specifically designed to bring out a candidate's qualities of leadership under discomfort, stress, and actual harassment.

As at other officer candidate schools,

those privileged to undergo this torment

achieved it by being personally selected,

not by applying. The officials' principal

objection to admitting applications for

officer candidacy was that a man ought

not to make his way in except by winning

the approbation of his commanding officer; but it was also true that General

Marshall feared that opening the lists to

application might upset the Army's policy

of racial segregation. The Signal Corps

Replacement Training Center, for example, was white. In June 1941 the new

Officer Candidate Department officially

came into being, with Maj. George L.

Richon as director and Olin and Latta as

assistants.21

While the Officer Candidate Department was coming to a head, the school

was setting up still another department,

the fifth, this one being for training in aircraft warning. A board of officers appointed to consider it recommended at the

end of March that it give maintenance

training only, to a maximum of 100 students, at least until such time as two roadblocks could be cleared away. One of

these was that there was no room for any

19

 (1) Memo, ACofS G-3 to CSigO, 29 May 41, sub:

Methods of instruction and tng; (2) Ltr, CSigO to

Comdt SigC School, 6 Jun 41, same sub, with 1st Ind,

Comdt SigC School to CSigO, 13 Jun 41. SigC 352.11

Ft. Monmouth (HQ 353). (3) OCSigO WP&T Div

Diary, 5 Dec 40. SigC 353 Gen MT-38, Feb 39-Dec

41. (4) Ltr, CSigO to TAG, Nov 40, sub: Distribution

of controlled items of equip; (5) Ltr, TAG to Chiefs

of Arms and Svs et al., 22 Jan 41, sub: Distribution of

controlled items of equip to RTC's, with incl. SigC

381 Controlled Items of Equip 2, Jan-Feb 41. 20

 (1) Memo, Chief of WP&T Div OCSigO for

CSigO, 16 Jan 41, sub: Proc of officers for Sig units

and installations. SigC OT 322 Gen; (2) 1st Ind,

Comdt SigC School to CSigO, 31 Dec 40, on Ltr,

CSigO to Comdt SigC School, 16 Dec 40, sub: Tng

of candidates for commissions in SigC Reserve. SigC

353 Gen MT-38, Feb 39-Dec 41. 21

 (1) Memo, Gen Shedd, ACofS G-1, for CofS, 12

Oct 40, sub: Officer candidate schools; (2) Memo,

CofS for Maj Gen William Bryden, 28 Oct 40, same

sub. AG 352 (9-19-40) (1) Sec 1. (3) SigC Tng Ctr hist

cited n. 12(2), p. 22.
SELECTIVE SERVICE 219

more than 50, the number which had

been first tentatively spoken of; the other

was that nobody knew very much about

aircraft warning equipment yet, nor had

any opportunity to find out while it was so

scarce. The school put 5 enlisted men

through a short course in radar maintenance immediately, and then sent them to

the Radio Division of the Enlisted Department to learn what they could about

radar operation. This was enough for a

start. The pressing situation permitted no

more.

On June 2, the Aircraft Warning Department opened, with Maj. James W.

Green, Jr., as director. No one knew quite

how much could be promised, but so far as

anyone could tell, the work would commence 1 July, with a class of 10 officers

and 40 enlisted men, and a possibility of

borrowing an SCR-270 so that these radar

students could see a radar. Ultimately, the

enlisted students would be given both

operational and maintenance training,

the officers maintenance training only,

and the staff might expect to have two

SCR-268's and three SCR-270's as demonstration equipment. No later than the

arrival of the fourth four-month class,

however, the capacity of the Aircraft

Warning Department would have to be

400.22

Needless to say, the commandant had

to look for more land. He had originally

intended to locate Aircraft Warning on

high ground at the west end of the post.

Then the board's advice to allow for 100

students instead of 50 had made that area

too small; in any case, the cost simply of

installing the utilities there would have

been as much as the combined cost of

utilities and thirty acres at the south of the

post, in an even more private spot for the

secret training.

Now not only was the size of the Aircraft Warning Department growing to

400, but in the wind was the prospect of a

total of 900, the extra 500 to be added to

the Enlisted Department. This increase

was to be made at the expense of the Replacement Training Center, which the

commandant was authorized to reduce

from 6,007 to 5,007; and he could shorten

the Replacement Training Center courses

a little, crowd the men a bit more, and

house some of them in winterized tents;

but the situation still and plainly called

for more land and more housing.

The 500-man barrack allotted to the

Replacement Training Center while it was

on paper had never been built. Now,

partly to provide space for it, the commandant asked to buy 10 acres in addition to the 131 already under lease. He got

approval at last, and by December permission to buy the leased land—the whole

parcel for $50,000—but then a wartime

Fort Monmouth was ranging far beyond

this stage.23

As of the late spring of 1941, the post

had changed markedly from its appear22

 (1) SigC School Staff Memo 3, 2 Jun 41. Ft. Monmouth File. (2) Proceedings of Board of Officers Convened at Fort Monmouth Pursuant to Special Orders

No. 75, Headquarters Fort Monmouth, 31 March

1941. SigC 601.1 Ft. Monmouth. 23

 (1) Ltr, CG Ft. Monmouth to CSigO, 31 Mar 41,

sub: Acquisition of additional real estate for reservation at Ft. Monmouth; (2) Ltr, Comdt SigC School to

CSigO, 5 Apr 41, sub: Location of building for Aircraft Warning Dept, with 1st Ind, CSigO to TAG, 8

Apr 41, and 2d Ind, TAG to USW, 21 Apr 41, to rpt

of proceedings cited n. 22(2); (3) OCSigO R&W

Action 1, WP&T Div to Exec Officer, 15 Apr 41, sub:

Status of proposal to purchase 30 acres (Maida) 4

acres (Eckhardt) for site of Aircraft Warning Sec SigC

School; (4) Ltr, CG Ft. Monmouth to CSigO, 1 Apr

41, sub: Transfer of tactical units now stationed at Ft.

Monmouth; (5) Ltr, CG Ft. Monmouth to QMG, 29

Jul 41, sub: Additional land Ft. Monmouth, with 11

inds. (6) Memo, OCSigO to Comdt SigC School, 23

Aug 41. SigC 601.1 Ft. Monmouth.
220 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ance of a year before. The heavily increased school population filled gaps left

only momentarily by departing tactical

organizations which had been there for

years. Fort Monmouth encompassed the

Signal Corps Board; the Training Film

Production Laboratory with the 20th Signal Service Company; the Signal Corps

Band; the Pigeon Breeding and Training

Center; the Signal Corps Laboratories;

the Signal Corps School, consisting of the

faculty, the 15th Signal Service Battalion,

and a group of student officers; and the

headquarters, band, and five battalions of

the Signal Corps Replacement Training

Center. Brig. Gen. Dawson Olmstead was

commandant, Lt. Col. William O. Reeder

was assistant commandant, and Brig. Gen.

George L. Van Deusen was the Replacement Training Center commander. The

total post population was more than 6,000;

5,775 were in training at the end of May.

The ending fiscal year had witnessed the

training of 293 officers, 2,144 enlisted men

in the Signal Corps School, and of 1,806

new Selective Service soldiers in the Replacement Training Center. It was a year

which had distinctly reflected the national

emergency.24

24

 (1) Pers Div OCSigO, Chart 9, Signal Corps

Units, War Department Overhead, Fort Monmouth,

N.J., 5 Apr 41. SigC 063.1 Charts. (2) SigC Tng Ctr

hist cited n. 12(2), p. 23. (3) Reinstein monographs

cited n. 6(6), n. 8(2), n. 8(4), and n. 15(5).
CHAPTER IX

Working for the Ground Forces

Just before the fiscal year ended, the

limited emergency broke all bounds and

was declared unlimited. The difference

was scarcely noted, for emergency was reflected throughout the armed forces. Not

at all a world to itself, at every point the

Signal Corps felt the stirring and pressure.

Soldiers left their training center for destinations as far outside the immediate range

as the defense establishment had spread.

In the Laboratories, research accepted the

governing of every part of the Army. Signal supply channeled a multitude of

ground and air demands, for wire and

radio uses, to interior and foreign areas.

The slow complexity of the great defense

program made all the more remarkable

whatever order emerged from it. The

grand design was not yet clear; the goal

looked fateful, but still general. To keep its

segments distinct, to keep the lines of interrelationship serviceable at all of the

stages beyond the simplest, made a surprising problem, increasing daily with the

strength of the ground and air arms. Communications were as diverse as the number of communicators. Both the ground

and the air denned new uses continually.

The Pigeon Service

Many of the ground demands, whether

in supply or training, were rather more

familiar. Nonelectrical means were rapidly

disappearing in air communications, and

air force requirements involved special

problems in organization with which no

one felt at ease; but ground needs were

somewhat more diverse and still held room

for nonelectric methods.

Thus pigeon communication, an uncomplicated activity, had a secure if minor

place in the company of its intricate counterparts. In exercises and maneuvers, the

ground arms habitually employed pigeons

as a means of communication from small

units theoretically located at inaccessible

spots. The Camp McCoy maneuvers of

1940, for example, had developed "an

immense respect" for them. In Hawaii,

the departmental commander had asked

for them; and in Alaska also, the chief of

the new defense command, Brig. Gen.

Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., had interested

himself in their value in remote regions,

especially in the chilling and rugged wildernesses where pilots might be forced to

land. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the noted

authority on the Arctic, Frederick C. Lincoln, expert of the United States Fish and

Wildlife Service, and others advised the

Signal Corps on a plan for the use of

pigeons there. The effort failed through no

more hazard than ordinary delay: birds

which had been started on their way to

Buckner's new Fort Richardson while
222 THE SIGNAL CORPS

PIGEON LOFTS AT FORT MONMOUTH, the scene of pigeon training experiments.

they were still young enough to be trained

were grandfatherly when they arrived.1

Innovations at the Monmouth Pigeon

Center—where the appropriation was

$2,490 more in 1941 than it had been in

the year before—were similarly undetermined of their final success, and similarly

plagued with an aspect of absurdity. A

joke revived from World War I hinted that

the Signal Corps was crossbreeding pigeons

with parrots so that the birds could say

their messages, with angels so that they

could sing them, and with Western Union

boys so that they could sing and salute,

too. The actual experiments were rather

more likely to succeed. The pigeon experts

were making a serious effort to train the

birds to work at night, and to fly out from

their home lofts as well as back to them.

In effect, one experiment crossbred the

pigeon with a nighthawk and the second

with a boomerang.

In no way inconsequential, the work

was supported by an increasing and general agreement to organize separate pigeon

1

 (1) Rpt of Pigeon Officer Second Army Maneuvers, 31 Aug 40, and associated papers. SigC 354.2 2nd

Army Maneuvers, 11-31 Aug 40. (2) Memo, Maj Gen

William H. Wilson, CG Hawaiian Div, for TAG, 3

Jan 40, sub: Schofield Barracks Pigeon Loft, with 1st

Ind, TAG to CSigO, 17 Jan 40, 2d Ind, OCSigO to

TAG, and OCSigO R&W Action 1, CSigO to Exec

Officer. SigC 311.91 Gen, 1940-41. (3) Ltr, Gen

Buckner to CSigO, 23 Dec 40, sub: Pigeons; (4) Ltrs,

Stefansson to Gen Mauborgne, CSigO, 2 Oct 40, and

Reply, 19 Oct 40; (5) Ltr, Lincoln to Stefansson, 23

Oct 40; (5) Correspondence, 6 Mar 41-12 Jan 42,

passim. SigC 311.91 Alaska, 1940-42.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 223

companies to serve field commanders.

Plans went forward to create the first—although it was temporarily called the 2d

Pigeon Company—of these units at Camp

Claiborne, Louisiana, in June, and to

draw at least two of the officers from that

considerable group of persons who especially admired these birds. Pigeon fanciers

all over the country had sought to lend

fine stock to be bred with the pedigreed

strains in the Signal Corps lofts at Fort

Monmouth, Fort Benning, and Fort Sam

Houston. Many enthusiasts in the breeding and racing of pigeons had seen service

in 1917 and 1918, and some were now

coming back into the Signal Corps for

duty in the emergency, among these being

the officers for the new company and those

performing the experiments at the Pigeon

Breeding and Training Center.2

With the first addition to its cadre, the

new unit, redesignated the 280th Pigeon

Company, made a reconnaissance trip to

Vicksburg, reconnoitered along the Mississippi River, and after a little while took

part in the summer maneuvers. Pigeons

from the Fort Sam loft were winning long

races by flying distances as great as 600

miles within 17 or 18 hours. Both there

and at Fort Benning the signal officers received instructions to breed young stock

for the 280th, first for the maneuvers, then

to replace a 75-percent loss of birds during

them. The 280th for a time had 800 or

1,000 pigeons on hand at the beginning of

a month and only 250 or 275 survivors at

its close. In the Hawaiian Department,

the loft was transferred from Schofield

Barracks to Fort Shafter in an effort to

reduce losses: the birds had been flying

into wires, disappearing into a eucalyptus

grove near the loft, and even colliding with

the aircraft of the adjacent base.

Yet there was no suggestion that the

Signal Corps ought to drop pigeons from

its list of communications means. By midsummer, the Pigeon Breeding and Training Center was able to report progress.

The experiments as yet had no tactical

value since their range had not got beyond

a dozen miles, but the trainers had accustomed an increasing number of birds to fly

at any hour and to cover a two-way course

at six in the afternoon, a good meal providing the spur. At the close of the breeding season all of the pigeons lent by civilian

owners were returned, and thenceforward

the Signal Corps bought birds at two dollars apiece. In nine months during 1941,

the center bred and shipped out 2,150 to

tactical units everywhere.3

The Photographic Service

The force of the times which gave even

the Pigeon Center a modest importance at

2

 (1) History of the Eastern Signal Corps Training

Center, 30 Oct 43. SigC Hist Sec File. (2) Memo,

OCSigO for TAG, 24 Sep 40, sub: Additional Reserve

officers for Pigeon Sv of SigC, with 1st Ind Reply, 10

Oct 40. Sig C 311.91 Gen, 1940-41. (3) 1st Lt C. A.

Poutre, SigC, Pigeon Fanciers and the National Emergency, paper prepared for convention of International

Federation of American Homing Pigeon Fanciers,

Asbury Park, N.J., 1941, pp. 13, 73. (4) Memo, Maj

John K. Shawvan, SigC, for Public Relations Br WD,

4 Feb 41, with incl; (5) Memo, Lt Col Bertram J.

Sherry, Sig Sec, N.Y. Gen Depot, for Lt Col George

P. Bush, Supply Officer Sig Sec N.Y. Gen Depot, 25

Feb 41, and Reply by Lt Col Kirke B. Lawton, WP&T

Div OCSigO, 1 Mar 41. SigC 311.91, 1941. 3

 (1) History of the 280th Signal Pigeon Company,

Ch. I. SigC Hist Sec File. (2) WD Bureau of Public

Relations Press Release, 27 Jun 41, Army Signal

Corps Pigeon Establishes a Flight Record. SigC

311.91, 1941. (3) SigC 311.91 Ft. Benning, 1941-42,

passim. (4) Memo, Lt Col A. W. Smith, Office of Sig

Officer Hawaiian Dept, for Lt Col Carroll A. Powell,

Sig Officer, 16 Aug 41, sub: Informal rpt on inspection of pigeon lofts at Schofield Barracks, T. H., with

1st and 2d Inds, and Reply by Maj Francis H. Lanahan, Jr., OCSigO, 8 Nov 41, sub: Pigeon Sv for Hawaiian Dept; (5) Memo, Maj Shawvan, O/C Pigeon

Breeding and Tng Ctr, for Maj Francis E. Kidwell,

OCSigO, 25 Jul 41. SigC 311.91, 1941.
224 THE SIGNAL CORPS

the great Signal Corps training installation

markedly changed and increased photography. Every part of the service was a

seller's market for photography. Wherever

civilians were being transformed into soldiers, the Army wanted training films in

quantity. To meet the demand required

the Signal Corps to expand both the training program and the production program.

In 1936 the War Department had hesitated to schedule production of twenty

training films a year. Now in 1941 there

was a program of 192 subjects alone, any

of which might require as many as five

training films. The resources of the Signal

Corps were small. Few officers had had

the year's sponsored training with the Research Council of the Academy of Motion

Picture Arts and Sciences. Production

space was small at Fort Monmouth and

minuscule at Wright Field.

Lt. Col. Melvin E. Gillette, the Signal

Corps' top officer in photography, proposed consolidating the Photographic

Laboratory with the Training Film Field

Unit Number 1 and the photographic instruction given at the Signal Corps School,

focusing them all at Fort Monmouth as a

Training Film Production Laboratory.

Pending this change, Gillette arranged

with the Henry R. Luce interests to take

over some of the training. In February

1941 The March of Time began a new sevenmonth course in motion picture filming

and editing; it dealt with the expository

and hortatory sort of film which was the

closest commercial parallel to what the

Army would need. For still photographers,

Life commenced a nine-week course in

June.

Meanwhile, Gillette began to hire civilian instructors, because uniformed ranks

yielded too few who were competent to do

the work.4 He had assumed that motion

picture men would be coming into the

service through the draft, reach the Replacement Training Center, and qualify

for these or similar courses. Some time

elapsed, however, before he learned that

the instructions for diverting such men

toward the Signal Corps had been garbled,

and that clerks at the reception centers

had missed the point altogether. This misunderstanding corrected, another block

appeared in the personnel procedural

maze: classification assignment lists had

recognized only a few of the aspects of

photographic work; cutters, for instance,

had been given a number, but scenario

writers had not. They were being assigned

to information offices rather than to training-film production. The corrective action

for this was highly informal but effective.

The Photographic Division sought out

scenarists and men of other essential but

unnumbered specialties and coached them

to say that they were cutters when they

filled out the occupational questionnaires.

At the Wright Field Training Film Field

Unit Number 2, Lt. Col. Frederick W.

Hoorn and his man of all work had been

joined from the Reserve by Maj. A. E.

Holland; together they patrolled the reception area to make off with any new

arrival who could take photographic training. Since the Wright Field command had

not been able to provide them with a

building, they got an evacuated Civilian

Conservation Corps barracks on a memorandum receipt. By late summer they were

at work on twenty-three projects which

involved fifty-two films.5

4

 Summary Report on Photographic Activities of

the Signal Corps Since August 4, 1941, in the Fields

of Motion Pictures and Visual Aid, 26 Feb 43, pp.

16-95. SigC APS Div File. 5

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj Holland, SigC,

Ret., 15 Mar 48, Washington, D. C.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 225

The Monmouth installation was

weighted down with a far greater load of

work, but had a far larger staff. A force of

20 officers, 178 enlisted men, and 31 civilians was formed into seven crews to make

training films and three teams to do film

bulletins. This Training Film Production

Laboratory was also quartered in an unsuitable building, a frame warehouse

neither fireproof nor sound-repellent

which had no indoor stage. Just at the

same period, Paramount Pictures put on

the market its large studio in Long Island

City, the Astoria studio where hundreds

of films had been made in the era of silent

pictures. Gillette lost no time in urging its

purchase.6 He had approval in hand for

construction of a production center at Fort

Monmouth, but this opportunity offered

something better and half a million dollars cheaper. The Office of the Chief Signal Officer entered negotiations forthwith.

While the crowding at Fort Monmouth

and Wright Field, coupled with obstacles

created by early draft procedures, held

both training and production below their

desired point, the Office of the Chief

began to put plans into effect to relieve the

situation by using the resources of the

great west coast industry. The restrictions

governing the appointment of Reserve

officers had somewhat affected this relationship. In a kaleidoscopic business, persons moved about enough so that it was

not possible for them to meet the requirement that they hold at all times a civilian

position exactly comparable to the one

which their Reserve commission would

indicate. Because change and intervals of

detachment from any studio were so common, the Signal Photographic Laboratory, GHQ, a unit intended to call for

twenty-six officers under the Affiliated

Plan, had never been strong.

The two Reserve officers with whom

the Signal Corps dealt especially were

Nathan Levinson, Warner Brothers'

pioneer sound engineer, and Darryl F.

Zanuck, vice-president of Twentieth Century-Fox. Both men were officers of the

Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Zanuck,

the council chairman, sponsored the

Affiliated unit and also organized himself,

Levinson, and John O. Aalburg, sound director for Radio-Keith-Orpheum, into a

component of the Chief Signal Officer's

Advisory Council, that group of industrialists which was intended to take a leading part in the forming of Signal Corps

policy. Levinson, the Academy Research

Council vice-chairman, took over the selection of officers for the Affiliated unit as

well as the obtaining of the enlisted cadre.

He did so quickly.7

The Signal Corps was not yet ready to

call it into service but did want to link the

training of the unit with Hollywood's

share of the training film production program. Affiliation, however, had agreed to

an expedient advocated by Col. Carroll

O. Bickelhaupt of the Bell System and

Col. William C. Henry of the independent

telephone companies which would keep

men selected for the enlisted cadres unaware of their selection until their unit

was activated. The Signal Corps could

not bring together the men of the Signal

Photographic Laboratory, GHQ, to work

on a film without letting them know of

their mobilization assignments. The Sec6

 Memo, Gillette for O/C Photo Div OCSigO, 2

Oct 41, sub: Consolidation of motion picture production. SigC APS File. 7

 (1) Ruth F. Sadler, History of the Signal Corps

Affiliated Plan, Aug 44, pp. 81-94. SigC Hist Sec

File. (2) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Samuel J. Briskin,

Vice-President Paramount Studios, 3 Aug 49, Los

Angeles, Calif.
226 THE SIGNAL CORPS

TRAINING FILM UNDER PRODUCTION at the Astoria studios of the Signal Corps.

retary of War agreed to an exception, and

the men were notified; but no sooner was

the information out than rumors followed

of a government scheme to take over the

amusement industry and to name Cecil B.

DeMille, then a major in the Signal Corps

Reserve, as some sort of potentate of pictures and rajah of radio. Variety straightened the matter out, but not before the

gale had blown away any illusions that

the public shared the Signal Corps' and

industry's regard for the Affiliated Plan.8

The planning for Hollywood production of training films got under way in the

Research Council late in the fall of 1940.

The large studios notified Secretary Stimson that they would produce the films at

cost. Capt. Charles S. Stodter, one of the

seven Signal Corps officers who had had a

Research Council fellowship, set up a liai8

 (1) T/O 11-94. (2) Ltr, OCSigO to TAG, 6 Jul

40, sub: Affiliated positions in SigC orgns; (3) Ltr, Col

Otis K. Sadtler, OCSigO, to Col Bickelhaupt, 11 Dec

41; (5) Ltr, Gen Mauborgne to Zanuck, 14 May 40,

with inds. SigC 381 Affiliated Units. (6) Ltr, CSigO

to TAG, 26 Oct 40, sub: Use of pers of Affiliated

SigC units in producing tng films; (7) Memo, ACofS

G-1 for TAG, 5 Nov 40, same sub. AG 381 (1-1-40)

Sec 1 PMP, 1940. (8) Incl to Ltr, Col Levinson to

Maj Frank C. Meade, OCSigO, 4 Dec 40. SigC 381

Mob Gen 15. (9) Tab 1 of Tab D to Memo, Col

Henry L. P. King for Deputy CSigO, 23 Oct 42, sub:

Pers requirements. SigC 320.22 Enlisted Strength,

MT-25. (10) Hollywood Daily Variety, November 22,

1940.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 227

son office to advise the council in the further selection of candidates for commissions under the Affiliated Plan, to provide

the studios with military consultants

whom they might need during the course

of the filming, and to negotiate the purchase of the films as they were completed.

The work commenced immediately,

without waiting for the financial arrangements to be made. In fact, to avoid delay,

Zanuck had authorized his own studio to

go ahead with the first two scenarios as

soon as the War Department had them

ready. After a few months, mutual adjustments appeared. Scenarios became the

function of writers rather than of officers;

the branch of the Army for which a film

was being made provided the scenarist

with an outline only. To allay criticism

that the work was not being evenly distributed, the Research Council rotated

the assignments among the participating

studios in a rough alphabetical order

somewhat disrupted by exceptions. The

original plan to contract for the films died

under some of these exceptions, contract

terms not being compatible with a large

commercial production schedule of which

the Army's part was small and subjoined.

Stodter consequently used purchase

orders. Under this system, the Research

Council offered the finished product—

which a contributing studio had fitted into

its schedule when a stage and a production company became available—to the

government at a fixed price. If the Chief

Signal Officer accepted it, his liaison

officer issued the purchase order against

allotted funds, which the finance officer of

the Fourth Army paid out. The Signal

Corps was also free to reject a film outright

or to turn it back for revisions.9

The initial admixture of altruism thus

disappeared from the arrangement, which

solidified instead into more familiar forms.

The studios based their price on four

items: first, studio overhead; second, direct costs such as the expense of script

writing, titling, cartoon animation, shipping, and travel; third, such indirect costs

as appeared in the maintenance of the

Signal Corps Liaison Office and additional staff and rent required for the Research Council in connection with the

work; and fourth, an amount to meet current expenses on training film projects in

progress.

Final accounting later established the

industry's contention that the Research

Council paid out more than it charged the

program under the fourth item; and for

the later investigation conducted by the

Truman Committee of the United States

Senate, the Research Council was able to

argue other actual savings in the salaries

of producers, directors, and actors, in

sound-recording royalties, in the use of

existing sets and so on. On the film Safeguarding Military Information alone, the

government was said to have saved nearly

$20,000.10

In any case, speed was more important

than economy. It was essential that masses

of men coming into the Army, to be

trained in mass, take major parts of their

instruction from mass media like the films.

Four basic pictures, Sex Hygiene, Personal Hygiene, The Articles of War, and

Military Courtesy and Customs of the

Service, were in demand for all reception

centers. It was a fruit of the arrangement

with the Research Council that the Signal

9

 Summary rpt, cited n. 4 pp. 377-81. 10

 Hearings Before Special Committee Pursuant to Senate

Resolution 71, 77th Cong, 1st Sess, Investigation of the

National Defense Program, Pt. 17, Army Commissions

and Military Activities of Motion Picture Personnel,

Jan-Apr 43, pp. 7100-110.
228 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Corps was able to distribute these within

the first six months of the draft, the first

two being ready by March.11

In July Zanuck went to Washington to

apprise General Marshall directly of Hollywood's part in the defense effort. The

Chief of Staff, who was interested in the

training power of films, agreed to send

him upon a tour of training camps and

service schools to report how extensively

and how effectively they were using pictures. The Operations and Training Division of the General Staff, in the person of

its director, Brig. Gen. Harry L. Twaddle,

opposed the survey, and to a degree so did

the Office of the Chief Signal Officer.

Twaddle doubted that the trip could "accomplish any useful purpose" and in any

event asked that he and the Signal Corps

send their own observers along. Marshall

preferred to leave the itinerary to Zanuck,

as well as to let him choose his associates.

The Hollywood producer, with two other

Reserve officers and prominent members

of the motion picture community, went to

installations in California, Washington,

Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas,

and returned a report at the end of the

summer which was summarized and sent,

at the Chief of Staffs order, to all replacement centers.12

Zanuck reported a "complete absence

of coordination between the production,

distribution and use of training films." He

supplied such familiar details as the facts

that equipment was short and that training officers were less than resourceful in

limiting the use of films to rainy days and

then showing one after another in dreary

succession. Had this been all, his report

would scarcely have created any interest.

The whole military scene was a scene of

inadequacy; few commanders needed to

be told that. Zanuck recommended that

all silent and otherwise obsolete films be

withdrawn, that no more than one picture

be shown at a session and that none be

more than half an hour long, that lifelike

details and humor be introduced into the

scripts, that professional actors tide the

picture over the dull parts—likely to be

the explanations—by giving them the

benefit of variety in manner and inflection. Although these were certainly helpful and practical suggestions, they, too,

were not his main point. This was that the

Army should either drop its training film

program altogether or standardize and

run it according to the methods of the motion picture industry. He proposed that

the War Department designate an individual with Army-wide powers to set up

a complete distribution system like the

one used by commercial producers. In this

apparatus the director-in-chief would

have a representative at each post, responsible only to him and charged with

supervising the films and projection equipment, and a staff of traveling supervisors,

one for each branch of the service.

Thus the Zanuck survey once again advanced a question which was basic in Signal Corps, and, indeed, in Army policy.

Should civilian industry administer and

possibly even determine the equipment of

the military service? In this case, should

Hollywood do all of the films the Army

needed? Or should the Signal Corps go on

making a sizable share of them? The sur11

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1932, p. 315. 12

 (1) Msg, Zanuck to CofS, 22 Jul 41, Reply, 26 Jul

41, and Msg, Zanuck to CofS, 27 Jul 41. AG 413.56

(7-23-41) Tour of Inspection of Army Camps in re

Study of Effect and Value of Army Tng Films. (2)

Memo, Gen Twaddle for CofS, 24 Jul 41, sub: Proposed inspection tour of US Army camps by Zanuck.

OCS 19966-38. (3) Ltr, CofS to CG's RTC's, 22 Sep

41, with Incl, Summary survey of Zanuck's rpt to

CofS, 22 Aug 41. OCS 19966-46.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 229

vey urged that the training film distribution program be centralized to the extent

of making one officer on each post solely

responsible, and solely responsible in turn

to the national administrator of the whole.

Since this individual would probably be

an executive of the industry commissioned

into service, the direction of the recommendations was clear.

As on any basic question, there was a

difference of opinion. In the opinion of

some, training film production was not a

proper function for the military; training

films were manufactured items as much

as radios or cameras. It had never been

Army policy to compete with civilian industry, nor should the policy be changed.

Commercial producers, eastern as well as

western, could make any kind of Army

film wanted, according to specification,

just as they made films to train salesmen

or factory workers.

In the Signal Corps this view was taken,

for example, by Lt. Col. Kirke B. Lawton,

who believed that the Army should confine itself to training photographers in

both still-picture and motion-picture field

techniques, and to maintaining laboratories to process their work, meanwhile

leaving the production of films to

industry.13 Colonel Gillette, who had

made the recommendation that the Signal

Corps buy the Astoria plant for a place in

which to expand, felt quite otherwise.

What he proposed was a liberation of the

Signal Corps training film program from

the benevolent despotism of the Motion

Picture Academy's Research Council. He

urged that the Signal Corps break away

by renting its own liaison office in Hollywood rather than accepting one from the

industry; by hiring its own employees

from among persons free from obligation

to the industry; by having scripts prepared, not in the studio, but in the branch

or service school which was going to use

the film. In sum, he questioned the unwritten agreement often years' standing

which gave the Research Council the exclusive supervision of all training film production for the Army which the Army did

not do itself. This arrangement restricted

competition to the extent that the Research Council did not represent all of the

companies capable of bidding for training

film production contracts. In his estimation, the whole arrangement could invite

Congressional investigation.14

The Signal Corps was responsible for

completing 370 reels in the next year, a

production load approximating that of a

large commercial company equipped with

twenty or thirty stages and a staff of three

or four thousand. Even without Astoria,

although with a staff increased to 500, the

Monmouth installation was turning out

two thirds as many films as a large studio

of this sort would, and at very much lower

cost.

Understandably, there was strong support, including that of General Twaddle,

for keeping the activity within the Signal

Corps. On the other hand, the Chief of

Staff and some of the field generals favored

settling all film production upon the motion picture industry. One of their points

of approach which the Gillette argument,

they felt, left unsatisfied was that not the

quantity but the quality of training films

set their value. Quality was not to be

measured in reels any more than a book is

13

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col Kirke B. Lawton,

Chief of Fiscal Div OCSigO, 5, 8-9 Mar 48. 14

 (1) Memo, Col Gillette for Col Sadtler, Chief of

Opns Br OCSigO, 21 Nov 41, sub: SigC Hollywood

Office; (2) Attachment 4 to Memo, Maj Thomas D.

Hodge, Control Div OCSigO, for Deputy Chief of

APS, 20 May 43, sub: Analysis of rpt of Inspector

Gen tng film production. SigC EC 062.2 Tng Films.
230 THE SIGNAL CORPS

measured in the number of pages. To

these supporters of the Zanuck survey

there was a strong appeal in his contention that soldiers' films could be made interesting, that training could proceed

without tears, or worse, yawns. Gillette

contended that the Signal Corps could do

as much if provided with indoor studios

and stages, improved shop and recording

equipment, and a great increase in qualified writers and editors. But this brought

the discussion back to the question of

whether the Army should seek to put itself upon a comparable production level

with civilian facilities. The decisions which

finally emerged included the purchases of

500 projectors, an increase in the number

of film libraries from 90 to 140, and the

commencement of a full photographic

record, including foreign pictures, of contemporary developments and experiments.15

Tactical and Administrative Service

That this program was to cost more

than $430,000 was one sign that starvation rations were a thing of the past. As

had not been true for many years, money

was coming in plentifully. During the

fiscal year 1941 the Signal Corps Laboratories, for example, were able to grow five

times as big as they had been in 1940. In

April the Signal Corps submitted its contribution to the general augmentation of

the Mobilization Plan, in which the basic

assumptions now were that the mythical

M Day would occur somewhere during

the last three months of 1941 and that

everyone in the Army as of that date

would stay in. The Signal Corps School

and Replacement Training Center,

steadily preparing the communications

technicians for the growing forces, estimated that they would be coming out of

the thirteen-week and sixteen-week hoppers at a rate well over 500 every Monday.

Two summer months alone were expected

to turn out nearly 6,000.16

Expansion was of course too recent to

make its effect felt immediately. There

was a lag in the developmental field, and

an even longer one in procurement, which

nothing could reduce. Planners in the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer asked

for a month's warning on the mobilization

of division signal companies, knowing it to

be very likely that ostensible "refresher"

time would have to be devoted to giving

many of the men their first acquaintance

with communications work. And until the

Laboratories could perfect replacements

and the factories produce them, the equipment and the trickle of procurement of

the years just past had to suffice. Such

items as were on hand were parceled out

among all of the branches calling for

them; many became controlled items and

were distributed only under a system of

priorities, although they might go back in

date almost to World War I. All of the new

items were on the way, some so far from

development that their ultimate manufacture was barely discernible, others slipping so easily from one stage to the next

that there was even a chance that they

15

 (1) Memo, ACofS G-3 for CofS, 14 Nov 41, sub:

WD tng film program. OCS 19966-57. (2) Memos,

Maj Gen Barton K. Yount, CG West Coast AC Tng

Ctr, for CofS, 6 and 21 Oct 41, sub: Tng films and

strips. OCS 19966-46 and AG 413.56. (3) Summary

rpt cited n. 4, passim. 16

 (1) Ltr, OCSigO to Actg ACofS G-3, 14 Apr 41,

sub: Mob schedule for SigC units in AMP, 1941, with

Incl, Troop Basis for Computing Supply Requirements, Augmentation Mobilization Plan, 1941. SigC

381 Gen 18. (2) 2d Ind, Hq SCRTC through Comdt

SigC School to CSigO, 12 Apr 41, on Ltr, TAG to

CSigO, 4 Apr 41, sub: Completion of tng of March

load at RTC's. AG 324.71 (4-4-41) M-C.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 231

might be ready by the time that World

War II drew America in. Despite the sudden flush of relative wealth, the Signal

Corps could not at once heap its partnersat-arms with abundance; but their needs

were uppermost, development having advanced or started in a hundred directions,

and procurement in a dozen.

In October and November of the preceding fall, the Cavalry and the Signal

Corps had agreed upon a short-range

radio to be constructed, with its antenna,

around a guidon staff; the trooper would

hold it upright with the lower end of the

staff resting in a saddle boot. This guidon

radio, the SCR-511, was to become one of

the best of the walkie-talkie types—although not much used by men on horseback. Rather, it proved out as a set for

cavalrymen and infantrymen alike and

engineers as well, all of whom used it in

vehicles if they could, as a pack set otherwise.17

 But at the same time that cavalrymen approached the Signal Corps for this

portable guidon set, infantrymen had

asked for an even more portable and compact, equivalently short-range radio for

paratroopers to use. On this, the development was phenomenally rapid. By midFebruary the Galvin Corporation demonstrated equipment which filled the bill.

Weighing only five pounds, and promptly

accepted in substantially its original form,

it became the SCR-536 and probably the

best-known item of all Signal Corps equipment in the war: the handie-talkie. The

initial order to Galvin, later that year, was

for 3,500 of them.18

The Laboratories were also progressing

with the Armored Force "500" sets. The

first models of the SCR-509 and 51019 had

arrived at Fort Knox, and the Armored

Force gave them a thorough drubbing to

make sure that they were sturdy. A motorcyclist with a 510 on his machine ended a

two-hour ride in a severe spill which injured the man, damaged the motorcycle,

and left the radio unaffected. This was

proof not so much of the set as of the

mounting by which it was held to the luggage carrier, for a second SCR-510 attached without the special mounting was

all but shattered. Yet a third, similarly

without shockproofing, survived being

thrown to the ground from a scout car by

a very heavy jolt and, reinstalled in the

car, worked perfectly.20

So two more 500's were on their way.

Others were already part of the Armored

Force organization. As it was planned,

each tank had both a radio and an interphone system. With headsets at their ears

and microphones at their throats, crewmen could intercommunicate and intracommunicate. In a regiment of 108 tanks,

all would have interphone equipment,

just as in a bombardment airplane, and

the company commanders would have

SCR-508's (a transmitter and two receivers), battalion and platoon commanders

SCR-528's (a transmitter and one receiver), and all the rest SCR-538's (receivers

only). A model of the tank under procurement for this purpose, the new medium

17

 (1) Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of Signal

Corps Research and Development in World War II,

1945-46, Vol. VIII, Pt. 2, Proj. 814-B. (2) First Partial Report of Cavalry Board on Test of Radio Set

SCR-511, Ft. Riley, Kansas, 25 Nov 41. SigC 413.44

(SCR-511) No. 1, 1940-41. 18

 (1) Ltr, Chief of Inf to CSigO, 28 Oct 40, sub:

Lightweight pack radio equip for opn from parachutes. SigC 413.44 (SCR-536) No. 1, 1940-41. (2)

SCL, Annual Report, 1941, pp. 72-73. 19

 Alike except for power supply, the 509 operating

from dry batteries so that it could serve as a portable

set, whereas the 510 was wholly vehicular. 20

 Rpt of Armored Force Bd, Proj. No. 104, Service

Test of SCR-510-T1, AF Type IV-A, and SCR-509

( ), AF Type IV, 5 May 41. SigC 413.44 (SCR-509)

No. 1, 1940-42.
232 THE SIGNAL CORPS

PORTABLE RADIOS DEVELOPED BY THE SIGNAL CORPS included the

SCR-536 (left) and the SCR-511 (right).

M3, went on display at the Aberdeen

Proving Ground in April for the scrutiny

and comments of representatives of the

Air Corps, the Signal Corps, and the

Ordnance Department.21

W-130, the light assault wire, posed a

problem if it were to be manufactured in

mass quantities. It required a special latex

insulation for which a single manufacturer

controlled the patent. The answer was to

spread the patent. This the owner agreed

to do; under educational orders, two other

companies joined his in the W-130 manufacture; the Defense Plant Corporation

built the factories for all three; and the result was a ready potential of 6,300 miles of

the wire a month.22

Introduction of the teletypewriter at

field maneuvers had accented a different

side of the wire question. The Army

needed a cable which would combine the

long range of open wire, strung on poles,

with the ease of field wire, which did not

possess the range but was speedily laid.

The need was filled in time to meet the

approaching demands of field teletype for

just such characteristics. In this case, the

solution came from the Germans, unwillingly. British Commandos had just captured some new cable and under the

agreement reached in the course of the

Tizard Mission sent samples of it to the

Signal Corps Laboratories. This became

21

 Notes on Meeting at Aberdeen Proving Ground,

Maryland, April 10, 1941, attached to OCSigO R&D

Div Buckslip, S. E. P[etrillo, Associate Radio Engr

R&D Div] to Col Mitchell and Maj Washburn, 16

Apr 41. SigC 413.44 V. 1 Special 1, 1940-41. 22

 Lt Col James H. B. Bogman, Current Problems in

Signal Corps Procurement, Army Industrial College

Short Course 3, Jul-Sep 41, 29 Jul 41, p. 6.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 233

the renowned spiral four, a superlative

cable consisting of four insulated conductors wound spirally about a central core.23

As for the instruments which the wire

served—the telephones, switchboards, and

teletypewriters which the past year's

maneuvers had thrown into a sharp, clear

light—they were the center of the stream

of supply to the ground forces, becoming

so usual, so abundant, so effortless that

they would be more and more taken for

granted the more they approached their

goal, imitation of the human voice and

eye. By this time the Signal Corps Laboratories had largely completed work on the

sort of switchboards which Colton and

Reeder had pointed out as the most

urgent of tactical communications needs

in 1939 and 1940 maneuvers: 100-line

BD-80's which could handle heavy traffic

and yet operate simply, from the modest

power sources likely to be available in the

field. These now began to reach the Infantry. The new corps and division switchboards, did not; and in the area where Infantry communications were Infantry communications, the Laboratories altogether

forewent the development of new switchboards.

Many things had to yield to the radio

and radar developments, and the small

switchboards were among them. Although

the two decades in which BD-71's and

72's had been in use had not wholly outmoded them by any means, the Infantry

Board was undeniably right in saying that

they could both be materially improved.

The chief disadvantage was their weight—

fifty-six pounds for one, seventy-nine for

the other. There was too much else to do,

however, and supplies of the BD-71 and

72 ran into the thousands, and manufacturers long used to making them could

turn out thousands more upon demand.

Moreover, having reached maturity long

before, wire held its ground against change

to an extent which was out of the question

for radio. Major O'Connell demurred at

"burdening the fighting troops with at

least twice the switchboard weight" necessary, and protested that "repeatedly since

1920 the development of a better switchboard unit has been put off"; but since the

Field Artillery was relatively satisfied and

the several arms which used the boards

were not entirely agreed upon the characteristics of a replacement, the work continued to be put off in favor of more vital

research.24

In any event, by the onset of the

maneuver season, it was evident that field

teletypewriters were on their way to becoming standard tools of military communication; and though they did not take the

place of a good telephone switchboard

system, they were superlatively welcome

in their own right. An observer at the VII

Corps maneuvers declared that "the telegraph printer is beginning to get the distinction it deserves. Seventh Army Corps

kept the six ... machines in constant

operation.'! The old telegraph suddenly

was revitalized. The new equipment made

it possible once again to write over wires

at a speed equal to the demand of military

23

 (1) R&D hist cited n. 17(1), Vol. V, Pt. 1, Proj.

(510) 2-4. (2) C&E Case No. 21, Long Range Tactical Cable for Field Armies. SigC Files. 24

 (1) R&D hist cited n. 17(1), Vol. V, Pt. 3, Proj.

(532) 4-32.1. (2) Historical Report of the Signal Corps

Engineering Laboratories, pp. 156-57. SigC Hist Sec

File. (3) TM 11-487, Electrical Communication Systems Equipment, pp. 60, 64. (4) Ltr, Lt Col Harris M.

Melasky, Chief of Test Sec Inf Bd, to President Inf Bd,

7 Mar 41, sub: Replacement for BD-71 and 72; (5)

3d Ind, Col Colton, Dir SCL, to CSigO, 17 Jul 41, on

Ltr, President Inf Test Bd to Chief of Inf, 13 Mar 41,

same sub; (6) Memo, Capt L. B. McConaghy for O/C

R&D Div OCSigO, 22 Dec 41. SigC 413.42 (BD-71

and 72) No. 2, 1940-41.
234 THE SIGNAL CORPS

operations, and without much more inconvenience or loss of time than would be

true of talking over a telephone.25

As usual, maneuvers were providing a

good school for tactical training and a

good testing ground for tactical supply,

research, and development. The longer

the nation stood aside from actual war,

the better the opportunity for a Signal

Corps to judge itself. The first 1941 exercise occurred off Puerto Rico between January 25 and February 14. The Navy and

Army joined in a problem to test an assault upon an island; Culebra, which lies

just east of Puerto Rico, was chosen. Maj.

Francis H. Lanahan, Jr., the Signal Corps

observer at the exercise, noted that "it was

immediately apparent that the Army contingent had not brought sufficient radio

personnel" or the right kind of equipment,

and laid the blame upon Admiral Ernest

J. King for having imposed his own plan

without consulting or informing the Army

in the least.

This was irksome but not conclusive,

for it was still possible to distinguish the

terms in which the Signal Corps ought to

be thinking. The signal teams, with which

the Army element, the 1st Division Task

Force, was provided, might better be replaced by a regimental headquarters

company, Lanahan felt. These teams had

signal flags, panels, tactical wire, and

radio. The semaphore flags would have

helped to dispel the initial confusion on

the landing beach had the men been practiced in them; their usefulness in the ensuing war developed in just that way.

Panels did not prove out, although the

slow airplanes of the day made them look

feasible at this time, as did the accustomed

use of aviation as a sort of sky cavalry.

Wire equipment, including the new W-130

assault wire, was satisfactory. Radio—

SCR-131's and the preliminary walkietalkies, the SCR-195's—was less so, but

without any basic fault attributable to

radio itself. The 131's were out of date by

many years, and porcelain antenna insulators in the 194's and 195's were easily

broken. Modernization amended one and

phenolic insulators the other.26 The uninterrupted trend toward radio left no

doubt that it was welcome everywhere; in

all of the maneuvers of 1941, it came into

far more use than in 1940.

The war in Europe and the 1940 maneuvers, particularly the one which had

involved the First Army and the IV Corps

in November, prompted Lt. Gen. Walter

Krueger to wish plenty of radio on hand

for the maneuvers of his Third Army in

Texas, where he took command in the

spring. He wanted to blanket every part

of his force with radio communications—

the advanced reconnoitering elements, the

reconnaissance airplanes, the command

posts, and all—so that he might move

freely without losing touch with any unit

of his command. In order to bring this

about, his signal officer, Col. Spencer B.

Akin, went so far as to write out of channels for three SCR-193's, which neither

the Third Army nor the 52d Signal Battalion had been authorized to have. The

SCR-193 was a controlled item, short in

supply; so that the best General Mauborgne could give him was advice to make

25

 Ltr, Lt Col William S. Rumbough to President

SigC Bd, 8 Aug 41, sub: Use of tg printers and associated equip. SigC 413.41 (BD-100) Tg Printers Associated Equip. 26

 (1) Maj F. H. Lanahan, Jr., Report on Joint

Minor Exercise, Culebra, P.R., 25 Jan-14 Feb 41, in

Final Report, 1st Division Task Force, Army & Navy

Joint Exercise No. 7, 1941, Vol. II, Annex B. AG

354.2. (2) Memo, Actg ACofS G-4 for ACofS G-3, 21

Jul 41, sub: Rpt on Army-Navy Minor Joint Exercise

No. 7, 1941. SigC 354.21 (12-7-39) Sec 1 (a).
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 235

sure that the next table-of-basic-allowance

requests included them.27

Working for the ground forces was a

two-way business. The employer had to

make his needs clear. "Without exception," according to two Field Artillery

officers at the Second Army maneuvers

the next month, there was an undeniable

shortage of radio sets. (Without exception,

it would continue, until production caught

up with demand halfway through the war,

and despite strenuous efforts to overcome

the deficiency sooner.) There was also a

want of spare parts, but piecemeal issue

contrarily encumbered some units—although in the case of a regiment which

had thirty-two SCR-194's, all incomplete,

excess was no boon.28

Lt. Col. Fred G. Miller, commander of

the 50th Signal Battalion, brought thirty

years of experience to bear when he declared that the tables of allowance and organization were both meager, both "too

superficial to perform the . . . mission of

the signal battalion with the modern

army." There were not enough enlisted

men or officers for a peacetime organization, let alone for war, Miller thought.

Grades were too few and too low for a

technical service; and not a day passed

that a technician was not taken off to do

kitchen police duty. Miller believed that

the tables provided for too many general

cargo vehicles and too few of specialized

value. To give a battalion only 2 radio and

12 wire vehicles while allowing 55 for

cargo purposes was "all out of proportion

as to numbers and types, and based on no

sound fundamental plan." Furthermore,

to put all of them, plus the drivers and the

mechanics, in the headquarters and headquarters company of the battalion was

comparable to putting all the guns of an

artillery battalion in the headquarters and

none in the gun batteries. The tables

omitted teletype, repeaters, and power

units essential for a higher headquarters

and certainly for the self-contained unit

he thought a signal battalion should be: so

organized and equipped that it could load

everything into its own vehicles and be

prepared to set up army or corps headquarters communications without delay.

The Second Army commander threw

his weight behind Colonel Miller. Office

of the Chief Signal Officer responses to

him were reasonable; they represented

simply a difference in point of view. Miller

spoke as the man in the field charged with

a tactical mission. Lawton, who answered

him, did so from the point of view of the

headquarters man, not having to meet a

tactical situation firsthand as a division

signal officer did, but required to cope

with a general situation broadly, as an

officer in the field was not. He called attention to new tables which authorized a

battalion twenty-four wire and four radio

vehicles. Several other new types were on

the way, all specialized to haul poles, to

accommodate cable reels and poles together, to serve cable repair, and so on.

Everything else Miller had mentioned was

assuredly either under procurement or

under study. If it had not appeared in the

field, the reason was that the Signal Corps'

policy, learned by its own long experience,

was not to put any item into the tables of

organization and allowances until a unit

which requisitioned it could be sure of

27

 Ltr, Col Akin to Gen Mauborgne, 19 May 41,

and Reply by Col Clyde L. Eastman, Exec Officer

OCSigO, 23 May 41, sub: Radio equip Third Army.

SigC 413.44 (SCR-193) No. 3, 1940-43. 28

 Ltr, Lt Col Rex-W. Beasley and David S. Rumbough, FA, through Chief of FA to TAG, 16 Jul 41,

sub: Second Army maneuvers in Tenn. AG 353

(5-15-41) 3-C 2d Army Maneuvers 1941.
236 THE SIGNAL CORPS

getting it. This left the opposition unconvinced but the point had some validity all

the same.29

The Office of the Chief Signal Officer

did agree that far too little equipment had

been issued to battalions for training, but

inasmuch as henceforth all of the men for

such units were to be learning their signaling in the Signal Corps School and Replacement Training Center, that difficulty

was disposed of. Training in the communications units beyond the point where direct Signal Corps responsibility in the

ground arms stopped was another matter.

Certainly the Infantry, the Cavalry, the

Armored Force, and the Field Artillery

would have to see to it that the draftees

being poured in to fill up their ranks

learned on the job, with equipment on

hand, the communications tasks they were

assigned to perform. From the Signal

Corps point of view, observer after observer at the succeeding maneuvers noted

a lag. Training had not caught up with

manpower. Their reports unconsciously

confirmed the impression of critics that the

maneuvers were a dream play in which

lackadaisical recruits, drafted for a year,

performed by rote motions which had

never been suitably justified to them or

even explained; where "dead" men sought

the shade of a pine tree, to chew the

needles while they awaited the umpire;

where crudely lettered fluttering cloths

labeled a truck a tank, or a World War I

Springfield a .30-caliber machine gun.

In that summer, the Germans had just

delivered another heavy blow and the

Japanese were getting set for one of their

own. The signal units at Tennessee maneuvers could get no nails, screws, or plywood for their field message centers, and

chipped in to buy them. Cord was a universal shortage. Headquarters provided

itself with 20 representative messages,

which the communications men had practiced often enough to memorize. Some of

the Morse operators could send as many

as 10 words a minute. But not all. The 33d

Division had held a five and one-half

weeks' course which 178 men had completed, but in which only 36 had attained

a code speed of 15 words. An operator who

could manage to take in only 15 words a

minute at a code classroom table could

not do much better than 10 under field

conditions. Panel crews knew the technique of panel communication, but had

never had any practice with an authentic

airplane. The 33d Signal Company and

the 58th Signal Battalion both failed in

the reading of maps and aerial photographs. Yet by specific statement, "the

morale, enthusiasm, soldierly attitude,

willingness to learn, on the part of the enlisted men [were] highly commendable."30

Training had simply not got started.

One device to stimulate it which occurred to signal officers was for each corps

and division to seek out commercial communications men who might be serving in

other duties. Col. John C. Moore, First

Army signal officer, reiterated the concern

of Miller, the Second; Akin, the Third;

and Col. Joseph J. Grace, the Fourth

Army signal officer. The Washington Post

correspondent at the First Army's Carolina maneuvers charged that "radio fell

29

 Ltr, CO 50th Sig Bn to CSigO, 22 Oct .40, sub:

Inadequate T/O's and T/BA's Sig Bn, with inds

1-14. AG 400.34 (7-21-39) (1) Sec 1 T/BA's—Equip

for Posts, Camps and Stations. 30

 (1) Ltr, Sig Officer VII Corps Tng Ctr, Camp

Forrest, Tenn., to CG VII Army Corps, 25 Jul 41,

sub. Sig com tests of 33d Div and corps troops; (2)

Memo, Col Moran for CofS GHQ, 29 Jul 41, sub:

Mob tng test, Camp Forrest, 22-25 Jul 41, sig com.

SigC 381 Gen 18. (3) Hearings Before the Subcommittee

of the Committee on Appropriations, Senate, 77th Cong,

1st Sess, On HR 4050, 20 Mar 41, p. 24.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 237

down repeatedly, delaying messages

which would have changed the course of

battle." This immediately alerted the

Chief Signal Officer. Was it true? It was,

said Moore. "Our one great fault"—he

was speaking of the First Army—"is lack of

training." He described breaches of radio

discipline and inspection, and remarked,

"I seldom see an officer standing by listening to radio transmission to correct procedure." He extended his remarks to take

in wire: "I am appalled at the great percentage of wire failures due to lack of training in its laying and maintenance. . . .

Some of our officers are seized by panic

when they are confronted with the need of

wire from army to corps and corps to division, thinking that the job is too big for

us." From the state of Washington, and

anent maneuvers there in August, Grace

disclosed that the 202d Signal Depot Company at Fort Lewis had handled nothing

but paper signal supplies, a training assignment which did not train. He suggested transferring the unit to special duty

at the corps area depot in San Francisco,

where the men could work with real

equipment. Lt. Col. Raymond C. Hildreth, in the Supply Division of the Office

of the Chief Signal Officer, disagreed. "To

load up one or two corps areas with a field

army or more ... is not reasonable. . . .

The armies should establish their own

depots and necessary repair shops."31

The Signal Corps had both sides to consider. Making sure of field communications was half of a mission whose other half

was administrative. The corps areas often

carried out the administrative duty, especially at a stage when the nation's military

effort was almost entirely confined to

home soil. Over much of the face of the

country, and possibly in the South more

than anywhere else, the region of the

Fourth and Eighth Corps Areas, the defense program was making quick, deep

changes. In the industrial East and Middle West a general expansion of plants was

beginning, in order to take care of the production demands of war. Civilian though

they were, their purpose was military and

naturally tapped military services at many

points. Huge reception or training areas

like Fort Dix, New Jersey, or Camp Grant,

Illinois, were filling, expanding, filling to

new limits, and expanding again, at a rate

which left them perpetually unfinished.

Raw settlements for thousands were appearing everywhere, panoramas of newly

sawn lumber and bulldozed land; and in

some localities the nearby towns, long

saddened by economic adversity, were at

a loss to cope with them. Depots, arsenals,

harbor gun sites, and military hospitals

made other parts of a scene of unlimited

emergency; and all bulwarked hundreds

of existing posts and stations which, if

small, were growing large, and if large,

enormous. Where the region was undeveloped, the Engineer, Quartermaster, and

Signal Corps were challenged to produce

complete systems of roads, sewage disposal, electricity, and telephones. There

was equivalent work of a different kind in

commercial and manufacturing areas;

meagerness of facilities was not the problem, but defense was expanding so many

offices and factories that even the most

extensive systems were taxed.

Funds for the new emergency construction went as a rule to the Quartermaster

31

 (1) Ltr, Col Sadtler to Sig Officer First Army, 1

Nov 41, with Incl, clipping from Washington Post, 28

Oct 41, and Reply, 7 Nov 41, sub: Pers and radio

equip First Army maneuvers. SigC 354.2 1st Army

Maneuvers, 1941. (2) OCSigO R&W Action 2 (Supply Div to WP&T Div), 26 Sep 41, sub: Rpt concerning sig com pers within Fourth Army. SigC 354.2

Fourth Army, Jan 41.
238 THE SIGNAL CORPS

General or Chief of Engineers, who in turn

made suballotments to the Chief Signal

Officer, to cover the cost of the telephone

part of the construction plan. This the

Wire Section of the Plant and Traffic Division prepared, and ordinarily delegated

its execution to the signal officer of the

corps area concerned. Telephonically, the

term plant refers to the mechanical apparatus, taken as an entity, which the process requires. At times, signal officers rented

the plant for a defense project intact from

the local telephone company; at other

times, Signal Corpsmen entirely installed

and maintained it. The decision which to

do was taken upon the basis of long-standing practice. Just as in Adolphus Greely's

days in the frontier West, the Signal Corps

did not go where commercial systems were

already established and install competing

systems, but rather went where they were

not: a direction which implied commercially unrewarding or pioneer and rugged

circumstances, and a purpose for which

the Plant Engineering Agency was created

later on, in the war.

The expansion going on as of midspring

of 1941 called for $5,594,150 worth of

telephone plant, especially in the Fourth

and Ninth Corps Areas. Seventy-seven of

213 projects all told were for Air Corps installations. The rest were all for the

Ground Forces, in the various guises

which defense expansion took. Mushrooming troop housing called for 59, almost

evenly divided among new posts, old posts,

and replacement training centers. A program of 26 projects was scheduled to supply telephone service to Ordnance and

Chemical Warfare facilities. For the Medical Department there was a list of 10;

these were to serve large hospitals, of a

thousand beds or more, which it was

agreed ought to have plants separate from

the general post switchboard. Storage

depots, reception centers, special facilities

of all kinds needed consideration. The

cable plant for harbor defense, for example, amounted to three or four times

what was normal for the same number of

telephones in a different activity. The conduct of fire, particularly of the great fixed

guns, necessitated constant communication between the gun crews and the observers or spotters. These were not the

conditions which radar would bring

about, but radar was not yet established in

most Coast Artillery stations.32

When there was an occasion to join

Army with non-Army areas, other agencies of the government were involved and

other considerations entered than those of

the Signal Corps, G-4, a corps area, and

the Bell System. When $868,250 for

switchboard and telephone construction

in defense-housing areas, included in the

Signal Corps' 1941 supplemental estimates, was cut to $75,000 by the Budget

Advisory Committee and restricted to

guard and fire-alarm telephones, straightening the matter out called in the Federal

Works Agency and the Public Buildings

Administration. This situation was usual,

not unique; and the increased intertwining of the national interest with the military was to make it universal. In the face

of the demands of defense housing, a

working agreement and mutual understanding were highly important. Many of

32

 (1) Incl, Major Building Construction Projects

Involving Telephone Systems, 23 Apr 41, with Ltr,

OCSigO to Sig Officer First Corps Area, 25 Apr 41,

sub: Tp construction; (2) Ltr, CSigO to The Surgeon

Gen, 3 May 41, sub: Opn of separate switchboards in

larger hospitals, and 1st Ind Reply, 3 Jun 41. SigC

676.1 Gen 11. (3) Maj John C. Grable, O/C Fire Sec

P&T Div OCSigO, Address Before N. Y. Chapter of

American Institute of Electrical Engrs, Newark, N.J.,

6 Feb41. SigC 676.1 Gen 10.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 239

the commissioned and noncommissioned

officers of a rapidly growing post had to

live in a defense-housing development,

whereupon the question arose of connecting them by telephone with the post itself.

A commander could think of many situations when it would be inefficient, and of

some when it would be serious, not to be

able to get in touch with the post complement during off-duty hours. In all instances where the defense housing stood

on a military reservation the Signal Corps

simply gave the Bell System blanket permission to install home telephones and

connect them, over Signal Corps poles if

necessary, with the nearest commercial

exchange—not, of course, with the post

system, although in many cases the use

made of the two was much the same.33

At a camp or post it was also important

to have adequate public telephone service.

Off-duty use of the public telephone was

especially high at reception centers and

training stations. Men wanted to call their

wives and mothers, and, since most of

them were on duty during the day, they

needed to have phones available to them

between evening mess and tattoo. They

preferred booths, too, rather than the

publicity of a telephone on an open wall.

Nevertheless, it was often impossible to

make sure that morale was served as it

ought to be by plenty of booths and

phones. The Bell System estimated from

its reports of usage that three or four per

thousand men would take care of the demand, but long queues were a regular occurrence at the evening peak, and whenever movement orders were out, the rush

to the telephone became an elemental

force. At most posts—at 129, up to that

time—the men also had access to the

public telegraph, Western Union or Postal

or both, so that the strain was partly

shared by the older commercial facility.34

Part of the task in analyzing any request for a telephone project lay in discovering whether existing equipment was

actually being used to the maximum, as

the circumstances unquestionably required. A post signal officer might unwittingly be allowing inefficiences because

he was new to his job and unfamiliar with

Army procedure. From time to time, he

perhaps might send in requisitions in

round numbers, almost a sure indication

that some of the order would be left over.

At some posts, the drive to expansion

created temporary or deceptive demands

which soon evaporated but still withheld

telephones from active use. With the

adoption of new standards, there was

always a tendency to get rid of everything

except the newest equipment, despite the

fact that much which was of substitute or

recently obsolete quality was good enough.

33

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to QMG, 30 Sep 40, sub: Tp construction at new cantonments. SigC 676.1 Gen 9. (2)

Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officer Hawaiian Dept, 5 Feb 41,

sub: Tp construction in connection with Public Building Administration projs. SigC 676.1 Gen 10. (3) Ltr,

Sig Officer Fifth Corps Area to CSigO, 22 May 41,

same sub, with following inds: 1st Ind, OCSigO to

TAG, 27 May 41, 3d Ind, QMG to TAG, 7 Jul 41,

4th Ind, TAG to CSigO and CG Fifth Corps Area,

17 Jul 41; (4) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-4, 19 Jun

41, sub: Tp sv defense-housing proj; (5) Memo, Lt Col

Paul C. Gripper for Tp Sec and File OCSigO, 19 Jun

41; (6) Incl, Defense Housing Fire Alarm Systems,

with Memo, Maj W. W. Carlton, QMC, for Col

Gripper, OCSigO, 20 Jun 41. SigC 676.1 Gen 11. (7)

Ltr, Asst Dir Defense Housing to Maj James P. Hill,

G-4, 24 Jun 41; (8) Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 17 Jul 41,

sub: Installation of tp sv in defense-housing projs on

mil reservations; (9) Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officers All

Corps Areas and Depts, 23 Jul 41, same sub; (10)

Memo, Actg CSigO for Brig Gen Albert E. Brown,

Office of Deputy CofS, 2 Sep 41, same sub. SigC 676.1

Gen 12. 34

 (1) Ltr, Commercial Engr AT&T Co. to All Gen

Commercial Managers, 16 Apr 41, with Incl, Public

Telephone Service in Military Camps. In same file.

(2) Memo, P&T Div for Com Liaison Div OCSigO,

21 May 41. SigC 483.1 Gen.
240 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Signal officers turned in serviceable EE-5's

and BD-9's and 11's even when depots

were unable to provide the models intended to replace them. To all officers in

this duty, the Chief Signal Officer sent out

word that they ought to check to see what

excess equipment there might be, to recondition it, put it on inventory, and send it

to other posts where there was a shortage.35

Most post telephone systems contained

three parts, the main one being the central

administrative switchboard and the other

two being comprised of a target-range system and an emergency system for reporting fires and explosions. The fire department, the motor pool, the commanding

officer, the officer of the day, and the post

physician could all be alerted from the

alarm system, which was essentially a conference circuit that the operator kept open

as long as was necessary. A specific type,

which became necessary with the building

of cantonments housing 50,000 men or

more, reported all fires to the central fire

station and made it possible for remote

guard posts to report in to the main guardhouse. Target-range systems varied from a

modest support for rifle practice to 100-

line separate switchboards with telephones

scattered throughout the target area and

connected by tie lines to the main system

of the post. This central administrative

post telephone system was itself either

small or large according to the size of the

camp. If it went above 500 lines, every

effort was made to install automatic, dial

equipment. Usually the outside plant was

lodged underground, although at any impermanent post the wire was simply

strung on poles shared with the electric

lighting. In the spring of 1941 there were

189 administrative post telephone systems

with 60,000 telephone connections, and

by the time that all of the temporary additions then in view were completed, there

would be 274 systems and 125,000 telephones.36

Supply Service

No one knew by then whether M Day

had slipped past unnoticed in the increasing activity. The Protective Mobilization

Plan was thrown awry, its calendars unsettled. There had been no declaration of

war, and yet the readying of the nation's

manpower and productive economy was

farther advanced than an uncompromised

peace would have produced. Contrariwise,

the record of the nation's potential enemies gave warning that there would be no

correct transition from peace into war, but

rather that one day would arrive with

abrupt notice that a state of war had existed for several years. In that case, the

national war effort was far behind.

The absence of a yardstick made it a

problem to know how much to order, and

for whom. "It has not been possible, in

many cases, to obtain any basis whatever

for the computing of requirements," the

Signal procurement planning officer complained.37

 Realistic estimates had to allow

for the requirements of friendly nations,

but in that black year their needs changed

with their fate almost from hour to hour.

Estimates also had to predict the supply of

new items to new units, a guess with a

large margin for error even when both the

items and the units were well understood.

Current requirements were already surpassing the greatest volume anticipated

35

 (1) Msgs, CSigO to Sig Officers All Corps Areas,

13 May 41. SigC 381 Controlled Items of Equip 4,

May 41. (2) Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officers All Corps

Areas and Depts, 2 May 41, sub: Construction and

maintenance of tp systems. SigC 676.1 Gen 11. 36

 Grable address cited n. 32(3). 37

 Bogman course cited n. 22, p. 4.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 241

when the Protective Mobilization Plan

was new. The sum allotted to the Signal

Corps for radio equipment alone had

reached $148,638,747 by February 1941:

that is to say, with the fiscal year little

more than half gone, the outlay for radio

had already been more than twelve times

the total for the whole fiscal year 1940. As

Akin and many another had learned, the

supply of almost everything was short.

BD-14's, the old SCR-131's, 161's, and

171's, and other familiar equipment stood

in the critical list along with the radars.

Not until January 1941 was the Supply

Division able to report that the fiscal year

1940 procurement of SCR-177's, 193's,

and 245's was complete, and this procurement was for mere fractions of the quantities desired for 1941.38

A closely revised forecast for the Munitions Program at the outset of the fiscal

year in progress had ranged the field to list

more than a dozen standard radios; telegraph, telephone, and telephone central

office sets; all of the switchboards; field

wire; reels; flash-ranging and sound-ranging apparatus; theodolites; cryptographic

machines; and yet other items beyond

these. The spread in cost of individual

items was as remarkable as their variety.

It extended from 45,000 telephone sets at

$40 apiece and 80,000 miles of field wire

at $50 a mile toward SCR-177's and 188's

which cost $4,800 an item, to sound-ranging GR-3's at $11,000 apiece, and out to

the radars SCR-268 at $35,000 and SCR270 at $65,000.39

 All of the estimates of the

period were directed toward the 2,000,-

000-man Army contemplated with Selective Service. As that Army did not materialize at once, neither did the equipment.

The explanation was interwoven with the

contemporary scene. Raw materials had a

great deal to do with it; priorities entered

in; sources of labor were vital; design and

patent, essential; allocation and expansion

of facilities, basic.

Even plant security was a factor. With

its record in formulating aircraft plant

protection in World War I, and as a supply

arm markedly responsible for the procurement of secret and expensive equipment,

the Signal Corps was particularly aware

of the need for a system to guard defense

production against both accidental and

intentional interruptions. Promotion of

security was a national concern and the

Signal Corps' part in it comparably minor,

but comparably necessary, too. The War

Department periodically sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation a list of plants

working on important military contracts,

and with each list forwarded specific requests for surveys from one or another of

the supply services.40

If, for example, a contract officer in the

New York Signal Corps Procurement District wanted to make sure of a plant in New

Jersey which was working on aircraft

radio, his request for a survey joined those

from other supply arms on a list in the

Office of the Assistant Secretary of War.

G-2, the official liaison with the Federal

Bureau of Investigation sent the list to the

Plant Protection Survey Division of that

agency. The reports of the FBI agents were

38

 (1) Ltr, Henry L. Stimson to Senator Henry

Cabot Lodge, Jr., 20 Feb 41. X-ref sheet in SigC

413.44 Gen 15, Jan-Aug 41. (2) OCSigO R&W Action 1, Supply Div to R&D Div, 12 Jun 40, sub: Expenditure program covering critical and essential

items FY 41. SigC RP-111 (ET-111) Program FY 41,

pp. 1-29. (3) Rpt, Lt M. M. Kilgo to Col Mitchell,

O/C R&D Div, 29 Jan 41. SigC 413.44 Gen (Set) 13,

Jan-Jun 41. 39

 Critical Items on Munitions Program of June 30,

1940. SigC MB-111 (ET-111) FY 42 (Expenditures

Program FY 42). 40

 Annual Report of the Attorney General, 1940, pp.

152-53.
242 THE SIGNAL CORPS

detailed, sometimes hundreds of pages

long. When the bureau had described the

hazards in a given plant and made its recommendations for eliminating them, its

duty and authority ended. Beyond that,

except that a plant expansion could always

reopen an FBI survey, security lay in the

hands of the manufacturer and the agency

of government with which he had a

contract.

For some time in the emergency, the

Signal Corps' formal organization for plant

protection consisted only of a liaison officer, Major Bogman, who was primarily

assigned as the officer in charge of procurement planning. Informally, the inspectors in the procurement districts took

over the responsibility; they went in and

out of plants which were working on Signal Corps contracts, and thus could most

readily follow up the FBI surveys. When

orders began to mount past the point

where inspectors could continue to handle

the extra duty, the Signal Corps established a plant protection section in the

New York district, the largest of the three

Signal Corps procurement districts. This

action anticipated by some weeks instructions from the new Office of the Under

Secretary to do just that. The Under Secretary authorized the Signal Corps to

assign seventy-five civilians and fourteen

Reserve officers to plant protection.

On the part of the manufacturers, there

was a certain amount of passive resistance.

Some, like the Du Pont Company, were

accustomed to using the same frame of

thought as the Federal Bureau of Investigation; but in general, even manufacturers

who attempted to carry out the recommendations of a survey interpreted them

rather freely. One plant engaged in work

upon classified equipment bought safes to

hold the drawings and blueprints, then

pasted the combinations on the outside.

Another manufacturer surrounded his

plant by a fence with locked gates, but

provided keys to children accustomed to

taking a short cut to school through the

grounds. A third management, warned of

a fire hazard, placed barrels of water and

buckets at frequent intervals, then, to discourage mosquitoes from breeding in the

water, poured oil upon it. The manager of

still another defense plant, which had hired

a substantial force of guards, agreed that it

was a good idea to require written reports

from them describing the delinquencies

they had observed but pointed out that it

was not practicable because few of them

could read or write English. After a conference of procurement officers with major

industrialists and the director of the Plant

Protection Survey Division of the FBI, the

security in plants of prime contractors

gradually tightened. Eventually a clause

requiring both prime and subcontractors

to conform to specified standards of plant

protection and make their factories accessible to Signal Corps inspectors became a

part of every instrument of procurement.41

Security, of course, was much broader

even than in its effect on defense production. The telephone company employees

41

 (1) Plant Protection Conference, 22-24 May

1941, Washington, D.C. SigC FM 004.02 Plant Protection Conference 43, May 41. (2) Memo, Actg

ACofS G-2 for CSigO, 3 Apr 40, sub: Designation of

liaison officer, and 1st Ind Reply, 5 Apr 40. SigC FM

004.02 Protecting Guarding Gen 32, Jan 40-Dec 41.

(3) Industrial Mob Div Phila. SigC Proc District, History of the Plant Protection Section. SigC 004.003

Hist of Plant Protection Sec. (4) Memo, CSigO for

USW, 28 Feb 42, sub: Plant protection; (5) OCSigO

R&W Action 1, Maj Gen Dawson Olmstead to Brig

Gen Roger B. Colton, Chief of Supply Sv, 27 May 42,

sub: Contract clause for plant protection, and Action

4, Facilities and Materials Div to Proc Div, 28 May

42; (6) Memo, OCSigO for SigC Contracting Officers,

27 May 42, sub: Contractual provisions. SigC FM

004.02 Protecting Guarding 45, 1941-43.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 243

engaged in putting in a phone system at a

defense plant or on an Army reservation

had to be cleared and identified before

they were admitted. And many offices of

government tightened their organization,

warned their employees against talking

about their work, scrutinized them for evidences of subversive behavior, issued new

badges, put new force into secrecy regulations. As was to be expected of a people of

easy, casual, and unsuspicious approach

to one another, the new policy was more

honored in the breach than the observance. Even generals could not always remember that a "secret" telephone was not

secret. But good will and intelligence

accomplished what regulations never did,

with the result that the nation went

through the war with few such instances of

negligence or sabotage.

Lt. Gen. John L. De Witt, in command

of the Ninth Corps Area, had proposed

that the War Department exclude aliens

from Army employment, arguing that inasmuch as the Congress had expressly

barred them from the Panama Canal,

from aircraft plants, and so on, common

caution demanded that they be denied jobs

at any Army post. The Presidio of San

Francisco was his headquarters; many west

coast citizens mistrusted Orientals; and

newspapers at the time were detailing the

activities of the German consul, Fritz

Weidemann, whose office windows overlooked the Golden Gate. What General

De Witt suggested, however, was extralegislative action. Moreover, the Signal

Corps, being asked for an opinion—and

agreeing in general—pointed out that "if

such exclusion were applied indiscriminately to skilled and unskilled labor at

overseas depots and Army posts, serious

delay in the completion of construction

projects and installation of Signal Corps

equipment thereat might result." And so

it might. A project like the new $660,000

warehouse at Schofield Barracks had employed noncitizen laborers, and the Caribbean and Latin American defenses depended upon local hiring. In short, the

challenge to a supply rm was to protect

itself against spying and sabotage without

crippling itself by ruling out the contribution of thousands of trustworthy persons.42

In any event, the Signal Corps was more

concerned with the general possibility of a

labor shortage than with any of the details.

Although this was a matter almost wholly

outside its scope, it was of firsthand interest. When the Office of the Under Secretary established a Labor Section where

policy could be formed for the whole War

Department and integrated with the action

of other parts of the government, the Signal Corps welcomed it, for complex matters quite beyond a small branch of the

Army had been building up and then

halting in the jam of the channels ahead of

them. One of the fiercest pertained to the

Fair Employment Practices bill, which the

Signal Corps opposed with a somewhat

narrow statement of self-interest subsequently submerged by the bill's passage.

Civilian and military agencies alike, the

Departments of Interior and Labor, the

42

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officer Second Corps Area,

15 Apr 41, sub: Identification of Bell System employees at arsenals and posts. SigC 676.1 Gen 11. (2)

Memo, Actg Dir Naval Coms for Col Sadtler, 30 Oct

41. SigC 380.01 SMI CED 1941-43. (3) OCSigO

Memo No. 2, 3 Jun 40. SigC 230 CP. (4) AG Ltr to

Chiefs of Arms and Svs and CG's Corps Areas and

Depts, 31 Jan 41, sub: Credentials and identification

badges. AG 344 (1-28-41) M-B-M. (5) AG Ltr to

same, 24 Jun 41, sub: Procedure in discharge of subversive Civil Service pers. AG 230 (6-18-41) C-B-M.

(6) Ltr, CG Ninth Corps Area to TAG, 18 Jul 40, sub:

Exclusion of aliens from employment on Army posts;

(7) Memo, OASW for Chiefs of Supply Arms and Svs,

1 Aug 40, same sub, and 1st Ind, OCSigO to OASW,

13 Aug 40. SigC CP 014.31 Alien Employment.
244 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration, the Civil

Aeronautics Administration, and procurement planning groups within the armed

forces, had been examining the labor prospect and coming up with the expected

conclusion that there might be a deficiency. Skill was what the Signal Corps

was especially interested in; and as Affiliated Plan discussions with the American

Telephone and Telegraph Company had

noted, the depression had reduced it by 25

percent. So far as the recurring surveys

could make sure, the first reopening of

industry under the demands of emergency

had trained enough skilled workers to restore 15 percent of the loss. The nation

had to make the rest up, and create more,

if the rapidly accelerating requirements of

the current period were to be met, not to

speak of what would be needed in case of

war.43

But for the time being, shortages in raw

materials looked more immediate than

shortages in the labor supply. Gradually,

as 1941 lengthened, one after another developed, in quartz crystal, steatite, tungsten, tantalum, mica, aluminum, carbonyl,

rubber. The materials supply could not

keep pace with the production demands of

wire, cable, insulating machines, insulating materials, resistors, commutators, dynamotors and tubes, of glass envelopes,

carbon anodes, tungsten filaments, magnets, metal stampings, diamond dies, and

disks of copper oxide and selenium.

Beginning of work on the multicrystal

FM and VHF sets produced an instant

sharp increase in the quartz requirement;

the Procurement Planning Section estimated a need for 300,000 pounds for the

forthcoming fiscal year. The section was

deeply worried about getting it, because

the nation's authorized stockpile was only

106,000 pounds and less than half of that

had been collected. Production of the

essential wafers remained at laboratory

level, carried on in twenty-nine small

plants by craftsmen who did most of the

cutting by hand. Yet without quartz-plate

oscillators, there could be no effective control of radio frequencies, no pushbutton

tuning; without quartz-plate resonators,

long distance lines and ocean cables could

not transmit hundreds of messages at once.

The supply of raw quartz had to be dramatically increased, or the processing of

crystals had to be simplified for mass production, or the Army would have to

economize on their use.

At a meeting which the Office of Production Management held with representatives of the Treasury, the Bureau of

Mines, the Bureau of Standards, the

Army-Navy Munitions Board, and the

Signal Corps, the discussion was concerned

primarily with the basic shortage of raw

quartz. The Office of Production Management set broad quotas of 300,000 pounds

for civilian needs, 600,000 for military, the

latter amount to include the Signal Corps'

requirement. Through its Metals Reserve

Company, the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation, which was also charged with

stockpiling rubber, was responsible for

building up the supply of raw quartz.

Those present at the conference of the

Office of Production Management agreed

that the Brazilian supply, which was

43

 (1) Lt Col James I. Heinz, Labor Officer

OCSigO, Report of Labor Office, OCSigO (1945).

SigC Hist Sec File. (2) H. D. Hausmann, Procurement

Planning and Industrial Mobilization, 1920-1940, Pt.

III, pp. 172-82. OCSigO Industrial Mob Br File. (3)

Memo, ASW for Chiefs of Supply Arms and Svs, 25

Feb 41, sub: Labor Section OUSW. SigC FM 004.02

Labor 19, Jun 40-Dec 41. (4) Ltr, OCSigO to TAG,

23 May 41, sub: Bill S-1400, 77th Cong, 1st Sess. SigC

032.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORCES 245

almost all there was, ought to be solidly

underwritten, with no chance for it to get

into other hands, by a credit to the Bank

of Brazil which would cover half of the

anticipated purchases. Japan had taken

far the greatest part of the Brazilian export for a longtime, until Britain suddenly

moved ahead in 1940; but in that year,

Japan's purchase was still five or six times

greater than that of the United States.

The American Gem and Pearl Company,

which had a South American cartel arrangement, had now once again begun to

sell more quartz to the Japanese than

ever, and in June informed the Army—

the company president telling Bogman—

that they had just tripled their order.44

Meanwhile, the Signal Corps and the

Bureau of Standards looked toward two

further goals: the most efficient use of the

quartz already on hand, and the possible

development of artificial quartz. There

was no perceptible expansion in the

United States of manufacturing facilities,

although the limited capacity was coming

under scrutiny. All of the raw quartz in

the world was of little use unless it could

be precisely cut into crystal slivers. The

truth was that neither supply officers nor

manufacturers nor the Reconstruction

Finance Corporation were universally

educated to the magnitude of the conflict

about to encompass them. At the beginning of that year, Signal Corps opinion

believed that the production facilities were

sufficient. Zenith and Emerson, among

manufacturers, said so, as did General

Cable—in this last case despite a general

knowledge that a British demand would

tax the market as never before.45 As late

as July Lt. Col. James H. B. Bogman was

reporting that "the available manufacturing capacity of the communications industry" had not yet been overtaxed and that

"expansion of facilities . . . has been

necessary in only one or two instances."46

Actually, various points of the communications industry were already clogging.

For the Congress had admitted foreign

orders almost without limit to the production plant. This act was the cause of the

greatest of all of the debates over the

degree to which the United States should

commit itself in the war. Not even the

struggle over Selective Service had

aroused and prolonged so much controversy as the proposal to put the country's

industrial capacity at the service of all opponents of the Axis powers. On one side,

narrow interest dilated at the prospect of

commercial profit, and broad interest responded to the opportunity to aid and

comfort allies without making an alliance.

On the other side, narrow interest shrank

from sharing the nation's own vital reservoir with others who might drain it, and

broad interest dreaded the risk of a step

which might pitch the United States

forthwith into war. The controversy culminated in March when the Lend-Lease

Act was passed.

44

 (1) Conference Rpt, 22 May 41. SigC 314.7 Data

on Bi-Weekly Conferences OCSigO Proc Plng Sec,

May 41. (2) M. L. Melia, The Quartz Crystal Program of the Signal Corps, 1941-1945, 1945, passim;

(3) Quartz Crystal Coordination Sec Gen Development Br OCSigO, Handbook for the Manufacture of

Quartz Oscillator-Plates, 20 Aug 42. SigC Hist Sec

File. (4) Proc Plng Sec Supply Div OCSigO, Daily

Historical Record, 11 Jun 41. SigC 314.7 Proc Plng

Sec Daily Hist Record, 1 Jan-13 Jun 41. 45

 (1) Memo, Capt Eugene V. Elder for Lt Col

James T. Watson, Jr., Fiscal Div OCSigO, 7 Jan 41.

SigC CH 11-101 Defense of Proc Activities under

Various 1941 Appropriations. (2) Andre E. Gerard,

The Story of Supply in the Signal Corps in World

War II: Pt. III, Production, 1945, p. 24, and (3)

Activity and Participation of the Signal Corps in Foreign Procurement and Lend-Lease, p. 85. SigC Hist

Sec File. 46

 Bogman course cited n. 22, p. 8.
246 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Beforehand, there had been a long

stage when any foreign orders which entered the ken of the Signal Corps came

from the foreign purchasing missions. In

effect, this meant Great Britain, many

other powers being either submerged or

isolated and Soviet Russia remaining beyond the pale until an uneasily common

cause lowered the bars. During that

period, the Signal Corps did not know

how much foreign purchases cut into its

market. In the first place, there was no

single report of them. Not only did the

Royal Corps of Signals, the Admiralty,

and the Royal Air Force all buy signal

equipment, but they might do so through

the British Supply Board in Canada, the

British Purchasing Commission in the

United States, or one of their own officers

sent out on a special assignment. In the

second place, only if the equipment were

classified against espionage was it necessary for the Army-Navy Munitions Board

and the Signal Corps to designate the

manufacturer.47 Otherwise, the purchasing mission could place the contract anywhere, and, unless it happened to go to a

Signal Corps prime contractor, the Signal

Corps would have no knowledge of the

transaction. Until 1941 nine tenths of Signal Corps equipment was commercial.

Foreign purchasing commissions could of

course buy any of it. Nine tenths of it,

also, comprised processed raw materials

and unassembled components.

Signal Corps procurement dealt almost

exclusively with the large companies, confident that they would always consult the

Chief Signal Officer before accepting a

contract for end items and would in no

way permit foreign orders to interfere with

the delivery of U.S. Army equipment.48

But most of the signal equipment, being

not only commercial but also fractional,

was manufactured by secondary or subcontractors of whom the Signal Corps had

no knowledge at all. When the foreign

orders came in, they were usually for these

items—wire, batteries, tubes, microphones, ceramic insulators, crystal oscillators, tantalum sheets. Because many

were made of critical materials, their uncontrolled manufacture intensified shortages.

Thus the whole foundation of communications equipment could have been

undermined before a threat was suspected.

Practically, nothing of the sort happened.

Before lend-lease, the cash-and-carry

principle drastically limited foreign purchase, and, afterward, procurement vision

was refocused. Nevertheless, the inability

of the Signal Corps to know the extent of

foreign orders of vital components served

to throw procurement planning further

askew. If, along with ordnance, aircraft,

and certain strategic supplies, communications equipment had been included in

the Munitions Control Act of May 1,

1937, the opportunities for sounding out

and "educating" lesser firms by means of

foreign orders would have been much

greater. As it was, the Tizard technical

mission had somewhat stimulated purchase beyond the ordering of quantities of

routine components, but the chief effect,

as a result of the Air Corps' discovery of

British equipment, had been reproduction

of the foreign designs, again with little

educative advantage to Signal Corps procurement.

47

 (1) Ltr, CSigO [to All SigC Field Agencies], 7

Dec 39, sub: Clause in contracts regarding secret, confidential, or restricted projs. SigC 160 Contracts Gen

27. (2) Ltr, ASW to RCA, 24 Jul 40. SigC 072

Patents 9. 48

 Memo, Actg CSigO for ASW, 18 Mar 40. SigC

032 Legislation 7, 1939-40.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORGES 247

With lend-lease, everything commenced to look different—except shortages: the consecutive shortages of labor,

materials, and plant facilities, and the

ultimate shortage of end products. Communications equipment became "defense

articles" along with almost everything

else.49 All of the orders for Army signal

equipment once placed by foreign nations

now went to the Signal Corps to place.

To handle lend-lease in the War Department—so far as policy was concerned,

the actual operation devolving upon the

various technical services—the Office of

the Assistant Secretary of War set up a

Defense Aid Division50 within a month

of the enactment of the legislation. Before

Pearl Harbor, and until the Services of

Supply materialized three months after

Pearl Harbor, this division was one of the

mentors of Signal Corps supply activity.

Another was the Statistics Branch, to

which the supply services reported their

procurement progress or backsliding every

week.

The Signal Corps' portion of the first

$7,000,000,000 appropriation for lendlease was nearly $225,000,000.51

 Even the

cumulative total of the past three fiscal

year appropriations fell short of that. The

first authorized request for signal equipment under the new legislation came in

just the day before the huge sum was approved. It was a British request for 35,000

more miles of telephone wire. The Signal

Corps had covered more than half the distance toward the Mobilization Plan's goal

of 101,853 miles of field wire W-110. This

came in addition. The General Cable

Corporation had a contract to manufacture 57,917 miles, Anaconda Wire and

Cable, 20,729. They were the chief recipients of the British order for wire, as well

as for 200,000 feet each of cable. In the

wireless category, a large order had gone

to the Bendix Radio Corporation for

thousands of aircraft radio compasses,

SCR-269A's, under two contracts which

totaled $2,075,363.52 Lend-lease production, then war production, soon overshadowed these contracts. For the time

being, they provided a chance to build up

and test the capacity of these companies,

even though the chance was of less than

first importance because there was little

doubt that large companies would work

at peak capacity in any event.

Considering all of the influences upon

Signal Corps procurement, what was its

status? Or, better, its progress? General

Mauborgne felt that he was doing well.

He believed that his agency's supply

procedure and supply organization were

"efficient and adequate to meet the present emergency and . . . sufficiently flexible for such future eventualities as can

now be foreseen."

 53

 That was at the halfway point of the fiscal year and a year

before Pearl Harbor sharply cast up

accounts.

One way of looking at the procurement

record was that whereas at the end of the

fiscal year 1940 there had been little radio

equipment on hand and only a million

and a half dollars' worth of wire equip49

 Sec 2a of PL 11, 11 Mar 41, 77th Cong. 50

 At a later date, it became the International Aid

Division of the Services of Supply and still later, the

International Division of the Army Service Forces. 51

 PL 23, 27 Mar 41, 77th Cong. 52

 Incl, Foreign Orders for Communication Equipment, to Ltr, Chief of R&D Div OCSigO to Dir SCL,

4 Apr 41. SigC 334.8 Army-Navy Munitions Bd. See

also R. Elberton Smith, Army Procurement and Economic Mobilization, a volume in preparation for the

series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II. 53

 1st ind, CSigO to ASW, 11 Dec 40, on Memo,

ASW for Chiefs of Supply Arms and Svs, 6 Nov 40,

sub: Review of orgn, procedures, and methods pertaining to proc. SigC 400.13 Gen 20.
248 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ment, by the end of the 1941 year the Signal Corps' manufacturers would have delivered more than $28,000,000 worth.

Another way was that by virtue of the inevitable lag between signing a contract for

equipment and getting delivery of the

finished product, this $28,000,000 actuality would look meager by contrast with

the expectation. During the fiscal year

1941 the Signal Corps would be letting

contracts for equipment up to the amount

of $223,000,000, or, bluntly, $195,000,000

more than it would be getting from its

contractors.54

Between these two views lay a discrepancy; and a persisting misinterpretation,

coupled with the frequent protests of the

Air Corps, established an impression that

the Signal Corps was in default as a supply service. The Signal Corps contributed

to this impression by placing its contracts

within too narrow a range of manufacturers and by a less energetic approach

than the situation warranted. Yet some of

the discrepancy would have been expected as an inevitable part of the procurement lag.

At the time when General Mauborgne

wrote his opinion, the Signal Corps procurement districts had obligated about

three fourths of the 1941 funds. They assumed in most cases that deliveries of

equipment would keep up smoothly with

the Protective Mobilization Plan. The

PMP requirements for the EE-8 field telephone, for example, totaled 63,593. Six

manufacturers were delivering 56,678 of

them, and in addition 39,708 were already

on hand in the depots or in actual use.

Nevertheless, even these simple statistics,

which looked like the innocent flower,

held a serpent under them. Beneath any

such figures of ostensible progress lay the

exasperating complexity of procurement.

The 56,678 new EE-8's had not all been

delivered, but were in the process of being

delivered. The 39,708 on hand were not

all brand-new; they included World War

I EE-4's and 5's.

The situation was much the same for

field wire. The Signal Corps had indeed

provided fifty thousand of the hundred

thousand miles of W-110 which the Protective Mobilization Plan required. Fiscal

year 1941 contracts specified that 70,498

additional miles would be delivered by

the end of June: more than enough to

meet the PMP. But there was yet all of the

lend-lease demand. Again, the PMP required 764 portable field generators, used

for charging storage batteries. The contract called for delivery of 680 of them to

begin in January. Actually, delivery began in mid-April. Another important item

was the standard telephone central office

equipment. The Signal Corps had arranged for 36 of these sets; but at the

moment there were none on hand, and

deliveries were not to commence until

February.55 In short, figures showing estimates or even quantities actually let to

manufacturers on contract could never be

taken as the equivalent of deliveries.

Change kept altering the procurement

outlook as much as delay. Orders for 3,855

of the SCR-131's, 161's, and 171's which

had been "critical" in June simply because nothing else was ready were canceled late in the year in favor of SCR288's. This was the set which the Swedish

Government had ordered; the manufacturer was tooled up for it; and until production could begin on the new American

54

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1942, p. 77. 55

 Statistical Br OASW, Weekly Statistical Report

Summary, No. 22, 30 Nov 40, pp. 23-25: text summary, Procurement of Signal Corps Items—Nov 16,

1940. OASW Files.
WORKING FOR THE GROUND FORGES 249

sets which were due to replace the old

series, it made an acceptable stopgap. Accordingly, the supply program classified

it under "limited procurement" and the

131, 161, and 171 under "limited standard."

 56

 Changing circumstances also

showed in a sequence on the SCR-245. A

requirement for 1,237 had dropped to 589

on the Munitions Program list; by the end

of the fiscal year the set was no longer

"critical"; and by October 1941, 919 were

stricken from the First Supplemental Program for fiscal year 1942. Production of

the SCR-245's was necessarily quite a different thing. Between the middle of August and the first of October, just before

Pearl Harbor, the Signal Corps issued

1,035; and by the end of the year nearly

half57 of all the 245's ever built had been

delivered. Thus the manufacture continued for more than two years after planning had foreshadowed its end. The

equipment itself continued in use throughout the war.

As rapidly as possible, new items were

moved forward to take the place of the

old, sometimes as stopgaps, most often as

full replacements. Equipment unknown

when the fiscal year was beginning, barely

developed and standardized when it was

half gone, filled the planning lists as the

new supplemental programs were prepared. The Fifth Supplemental for 1941

asked for 2,849 handie-talkies, for instance; the $15,000-apiece, 100-miles-inmotion SCR-299's neared production;

and the Field Artillery's "600" series

pressed for manufacture.58

But after a slow start, Selective Service

was increasing the procurement demands

by 75,000 men a month. Delays in delivery were proportionately serious. It became important to know just what and

how much was actually coming off the assembly lines. The lump figure for "radio

sets, ground," gave way to statistics for

specific items, the most closely watched

being the new sets toward which Infantry,

Cavalry, Armor, and Artillery were making their plans and training the incoming

men. The last week in the calendar year,

a month after the Chief Signal Officer had

expressed confidence, sounded warnings.

There was no delivery of the radars SCR268, 270, and 271; none of the short-range

SCR-288, the temporary replacement for

the SCR-131, 161, and 171; none of the

long-range SCR-197, the temporary

stand-by until the SCR-299 could be

made ready. Apart from radio, there was

no delivery of the portable switchboards

BD-71 and 72; of the GR-3 and 4; of the

M-134; of the TC-2.59 In the case of the

SCR-197, a change in the truck which

transported it was causing the delay. A

shortage of tuning units had held up delivery of the Air Corps command set, the

SCR-183. Contractors for the radio direction-finder SCR-206 and for a battery

charger, SCR-169, had not yet furnished

satisfactory samples. The manufacturers

of the SCR-177 and the theodolite ML-47

explained that difficulty in obtaining com56

 Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 13 Nov 40, sub: Radio sets

for FA and Inf. AG 413.44 (11-8-40) M-D, and also

in SigC 413.44 Gen Sets 12, 1940. 57

 4,927 out of a total production of 11,513. 58

 (1) OASW, Weekly Statistical Report Summary,

No. 23, 7 Dec 40, p. 21. OASW Files. (2) OCSigO

R&W Action 1, Scheduling Div to Proc Div, 29 Oct

41 and 24 Dec 41, sub: Third Suppl Program FY 42;

(3) Memo, Col Cuny, Proc Div OCSigO, for OUSW,

7 Jul 41, sub: Addition of item. SigC MB-111 (ET111) FY 42 (Expenditures Program FY 42). (4)

Memo, Maj E. Blair Garland, Exec Mat Br OCSigO,

for Actg CSigO, 4 Oct 41, sub: Rpt of major items of

program during week ending 5 P.M., 3 Oct 41. SigC

319.1 Weekly Progress Rpts (Evaluation Br), 1941. 59

 OASW, Weekly Statistical Report Summary,

No. 28, 11 Jan 41, containing SigC rpt through 28

Dec 40. OASW Files.
250 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ponent parts and materials made it impossible for them to meet their delivery

schedules. And these shortages were indeed showing up: in aluminum; brass;

iron dust; mycalex, an insulating material; and carbonyl E, essential in the making of radio tuning coils.

Things promised better as spring approached. The first factory-built SCR-268

arrived in the week ending February 28.

(Almost four years had elapsed since this

radar's great day of revelation.) In March

delivery of the SCR-206 and SCR-288

commenced, with 5 sets each. Delivery of

the SCR-193 resumed with 15 sets, and

34 of the SCR-245's appeared. Production

of the EE-8 was flowing in the thousands;

field wire W-110 reached 5,980 miles in

one week. Two hundred fifty Air Corps

command sets, both the 12-volt SCR-183

and its 24-volt twin, the SCR-283, came

from the assembly lines the first week in

March, and in the second week the first

five liaison sets arrived. The Supply Division took an optimistic tone and informed

the Assistant Secretary that "the Signal

Corps procurement program is showing

very satisfactory progress."

 60

 Even so, an

aluninum shortage had "made it necessary to revise some delivery schedules,"

several contractors had been "slow getting

into production," and delinquencies were

impressive. They involved nearly 10,000

sets of 25 items.

Thus the supply program hung in balance, looking well, looking ill. In the midst

of an emergency it represented the Signal

Corps' chief service to the fellow arms—

more immediate than research, more insistent than training. It had to be done

well, but it was "exceedingly difficult,"

the Signal Corps pleaded. By the end of

May, shortages in minor parts and accessories were holding up nearly 3,000 of the

commonest ground radios, all standardized and familiar so long that nothing except a shortage could have detained them

in the factories. Similarly, hundreds of the

FM police sets hastily legitimized in the

expectation of quick manufacture, were

being retarded not by reason of their newness but for lack, in one model, solely of

microphones, in the other, solely of whip

antennas. For other new equipment, never

before manufactured, let alone manufactured in quantity, mere shortages were

compounded with technological difficulties. In self-extenuation, the Signal Corps

supply spokesmen went over familiar

ground now become stonier than ever:

"Before contracts can be awarded, it is

necessary to develop and built test models;

after testing and standardization, the contractor must tool for quantity production;

months necessarily elapse between the

time a new item is engineered and its production in quantity is achieved."61

60

 Ibid., No. 41, 12 Apr 41, Sec. 4. 61

 Ibid., No. 49, 7 Jun 41, Sec. 4.
CHAPTER X

Working for the Air Forces

Air communications procurement was

exploring two streams. One headed in

toward the Signal Corps' own developments, like the standard ground-to-air

radio, the SCR-188, like the SCR-270

radar, or even like the SCR-268 radar

which had not been designed for air use

but was now being importantly diverted

to it. The other stream was the transoceanic current from Britain, which the

Air Corps watched for signs of CH, CHL,

ASV, IFF, AI, GCI, PPI, and a swell of

very high frequency command and direction-finding radio.

With the Munitions Program, the Air

Corps had gone up into the hundreds, and

then the thousands, of airplanes; the

associated requirements in communications equipment had risen into the thousands and then the tens of thousands.

The Air Corps wanted more than 8,000

SCR-274's: a thousand more of a single

item than the sum of all of the equivalent

radios which the ground forces desired.

Air requirements listed 1,910 frequency

meters, 2,656 radio compasses, 7,398

interphones, and 15,218 command and

liaison sets. By the time of the departure of

the Tizard Mission some of these were

going under contract; by the turn of the

year 21,354, apart from radio compasses,

were underwritten with 1941 funds. If the

manufacturers met their schedules, all

would be well except for the fact that there

was much more to Air Corps supply than

the requirements of the Protective Mobilization Plan.

For the Air Corps, the dream of British

equipment had arisen overnight into an

unsubstantial palace, iridescent with

Arabian Nights promise. Had the Signal

Corps had a genie to build it, nothing

could have been more welcome. But

stubborn fact ruled the fancy. On top of

the principal obstacle, the inherent intricacy of signal equipment, reality reared

another: the double intricacy of foreign

signal equipment. Even so, at the strong

urging of the Air Corps, which like

Aladdin believed in genies, the Signal

Corps undertook to surmount the second

obstacle. Promptly upon receipt of Major

Edwards' message from London urging

the purchase of samples of the very high

frequency radios and of three principal

Royal Air Force radars, the Signal Corps

entered the procurement channels to

obtain $100,000. This was to procure the

three radars, respectively of the airborneinterception, air-to-surface-vessel, and

identification-friend-or-foe types; one

ultrahigh-frequency direction finder; one

searchlight director; one gun layer; one

pipsqueak; one command radio TR-1133;

and the "micropup" tubes and other components to go with them.1

 In an effort to

put the cavity magnetron to use to de1

 Memos, CSigO for ACofS G-2, 24 Oct, 29 Oct,

and 8 Nov 40, sub: Purchase of British equip. SigC

41-3.44 Purchase of British Equip (RB-2331).
252 THE SIGNAL CORPS

velop a practical 10-centimeter set, the

first of these, airborne interception, was

already under study at the new Radiation

Laboratory, which the National Defense

Research Committee had established at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the same time, the Signal Corps also

gave high priority at the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory to its own airborne-interception project, partly because of a feeling that

it would lead to the bombing-throughovercast equipment upon which the Air

Corps centered its immediate interest.2

Airborne-interception, bombing-throughovercast, and air-to-surface-vessel efforts

had all been present in the hurried experiments which the Signal Corps had made

to put pulse radar into the air after talking

with the Tizard group. In the SCR-268

the U.S. Army had its own searchlight director and a potential gun layer. As for

airborne radio, very high frequency possibilities were well understood.

The Chief of the Air Corps was embarked upon a major campaign, far outstripping these initial moves on the part of

the Signal Corps. Saying to the Deputy

Chief of Staff that "beyond a doubt the

British detectors, both ground and air, are

much farther advanced than those we are

developing in the United States," he

recommended not only that they be reproduced but that production cease on the

American equipment.3 Maj. Gen. George

H. Brett, General Arnold's second, concluded also that despite "many wonderful

pieces of equipment," the United States

was behind in radio and radar. "Every

effort should be made to force the Signal

Corps," he said, "to a practical and logical

development which will give us equipment usable under war conditions."

Aroused, the Signal Corps persuaded

General Arnold to modify his criticism of

the ground detectors.4 General Mauborgne called a special meeting of the Signal Corps Technical Committee to consider "the relative merits of the British aircraft equipment (AI, IFF and ASV) and

the like equipment proposed for use of the

U.S. Army." In the hope of "frank discussion as to the proper course of action," he

invited representatives from Chemical

Warfare, Quartermaster, Engineers, Field

and Coast Artillery, and the Office of the

Assistant Secretary; from the Navy; from

the National Defense Research Committee; and of course from the Air Corps.

Brett directed the air spokesman, Lt. Col.

Alfred W. Marriner, who for years had

found himself assigned to spearhead the

opposition to the Signal Corps, "to lay the

cards on the table" at the conference. And

Arnold, having directed Brett, replied that

"if no action toward remedying our

troubles results from that conference, I

want to know about it so that I can take

some other action."

Under the impression that the latest

form of that dazzlingly new radar, AI, was

already in production in Great Britain,

and under the further impression that the

Radiation Laboratory's 10-centimeter

AI-10 would be available "in quantity"

by the late summer or early fall, Marriner

pressed the Signal Corps for equal speed.

Signal Corps representatives either did

not know or had no opportunity to say

that the British equipment was still in its

2

 Memo, CSigO for Deputy CofS, 2 Dec 40. SigC

350.05 British Tech Mission 1 (RB-1156). 3

 Memo, Gen Arnold, Chief of AC, for Maj Gen

Richard C. Moore, Deputy CofS, 28 Nov 40, sub:

British detectors, with penciled note upon a copy of

this memo. SigC 413.44 British Equip Gen 1 (RB1151). 4

 Papers, vide passim, attached to Office Chief of AC

Routing and Record Sheet Action 1, Gen Arnold to

Gen Brett, 6 Feb 41, sub: Air defense com plan. AAG

676.3A Wireless Radio Systems.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 253

early forms and that the AI-10 could not

possibly be in use in six or eight months'

time. In fact, one reason that it could not

be was that the Air Corps was refusing the

Radiation Laboratory the test airplanes

and pilots.5

Marriner urged that the British ASV

and IFF be obtained without a moment's

delay: the ASV so that the Air Defense

Command could begin training with it,

and the IFF for the vulnerable areas of the

Panama Canal and elsewhere. Maj. Gilbert Hayden of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory interposed a description of American IFF and said that General Electric

and the Radio Corporation of America

were at work upon it, but Marriner held

the opinion that the British model could

be copied and issued long before the

other. As for ASV, the Signal Corps could

not get it past a rigmarole of British

security, did not in fact receive it for three

months after this time, and could not get

an airplane to test it with until another

four months after that.6 The newness of all

of this equipment, the crucial life-anddeath newness, imposed heavy secrecy

upon it. With its component parts, it had

to be handled, shipped, guarded with all

of the time-consuming and frustrating

precautions which a high classification imposes. And beyond all that, Great Britain

was particularly concerned that no single

factory see any more than a few segments

of any set, so that its function would not

become apparent until final assembly at

a government armory or laboratory.

No one, even in Britain, knew just what

equipment was best, just how to operate it

most effectively, or what portions of it

were being rendered obsolete by the rapid

succession of late models. A case in point

was the ground control of interception, the

GCI, a development which had just commenced to shoot like a comet out of the

panoramic oscilloscope; and the panoramic oscilloscope, or the plan position indicator, the PPI, was so new itself that it was

barely understood. Actually the only

radars which Great Britain had in production were the huge search sets CH and

CHL, the gun director GL-1 and the IFF

Mark I. The others were principally

hand-built models or blueprints.

The terms in which the Air Corps

spoke, however, were those of the leading

generals whose responsibility for air defense of the nation led them to wish to

overleap oceans and to telescope time. For

his Air Defense Command Maj. Gen.

James E. Chancy wanted the AI and other

night interception equipment, the very

high frequency control system, antijamming measures, and altitude indication on

the existing U.S. ground radars; and he

used phrases like "immediate action," "at

the earliest possible date," "at once," "expedited by all available means," and

"immediate solution."

 7

Late in December the British assembled

what they could of the equipment which

Edwards had ordered. They included

their airborne interceptor in a Mark IV

version and their command radio, the

TR-1143; but they were at first unable to

provide the ASV, the IFF, any of the three

5

 Msg EXP-T-252, Admin Exec Wright Field,

signed [Brig Gen Oliver P.] Echols, attn: Col William

F. Volandt, 27 Nov 40. AAF Proj MX-68 Installation

of AI Equip in B-18A Airplane, 1940-41, USAF Mat

Comd Central Files. 6

 Interoffice Memo, Col Gardner, Dir ARL, for

Tech Exec Mat Div, 30 Jun 41, sub: Airplanes for test

installation of British ASV equip. AAF 413.44 ASV

British Radio Equip, 1941-43, USAF Mat Comd

Central Files. 7

 Incl Ltr, Gen Chancy to ACofS G-2, 15 Dec 40,

sub: Observations on trip to England, p. 31, with Ltr,

Actg ACofS G-2 to CSigO, 12 Feb 41, sub: Final rpt

of CG ADC. SigC (RD-438) ET 676.3 AWS Defense

Comd Observation on Trip to England, 1941.
254 THE SIGNAL CORPS

other detectors asked for, or the ground

elements which went with the TR-1143.

At that, some of the equipment was being

made specially for the shipment.8 This was

a starter, though, and none of the Signal

Corps and Navy equivalents was ready for

production. Possibly several months could

be gained. The Signal Corps followed up

by putting in a supplemental estimate for

$2,646,000 to procure more of the British

equipment for test. In the Air Corps view,

the equipment was already successful and

required no tests. Brett felt that the

amount ought to be used instead to begin

quantity procurement. Marriner repeated

the need for a much quicker system of

service testing and standardizing than the

Signal Corps had. He proposed that the

two services emulate the British in bringing research and test close together, specifically by setting up a streamlined test

unit at Patterson Field, adjacent to the development going on at Wright Field. "We

can get nowhere," he reiterated, "unless . . . action is taken now." 9

There was a nervous interim. The Air

Corps assigned a bombardment airplane

to the testing of the AI-10, which the Radiation Laboratory and a number of

manufacturers were progressively assembling. Wright Field engineers put a plexiglass nose on the bomber, a B-18, in order

to make it serve, although the AI-10's were

of course headed for use in pursuit and

attack. The first fifteen after the servicetest model were to go either into A-20's or

the experimental Black Widow heavy

pursuit, the P-61.10 The general tension

put the AI-10's designers in Boston and

the P-61's engineers in Dayton somewhat

at odds, and the airmen momentarily became the minority when the Signal Corps

rejected their assertion that the Radiation

Laboratory's work had overborne the Aircraft Radio Laboratory's own AI project.11

Flight test for the AI-10 was set for February 15. It was expected also to determine

much of the bombing-through-overcast

equipment. No BTO contract had been

let, but there were two parallel ones for

ASV, producing models to be tested on

March 15. This was acceptably tight

scheduling.

But what could be done about the British equipment? It had been shipped, but

had got only as far as Canada. The shipment now included an ASV, the Mark II

IFF, the command set with pipsqueak, and

"an old type airplane detector." The latter

was the Mark IV AI, not old at all except

for a mistaken impression that a Mark VI

had replaced it. Eager to get the devices,

Gardner and Hayden from the Aircraft

Radio Laboratory and Lt. Col. Tom C.

Rives from the Research and Development

Division in the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer went to Ottawa, saw them, made

arrangements for their inviolate passage

through the customs, and returned to

Wright Field and Washington to await

them again. Two things looked disturb8

 (1) Rpt 42067, Mil Attache, London, to ACofS

G-2, 3 Jan 41, sub: Shipment of British sig equip; (2)

Memo, CSigO for MID G-2, 25 Nov 40; (3) Paraphrase of Msg 620, Mil Attache, London [to WDGS

G-2], 30 Dec 40. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British

Equip (RB-2331). 9

 AAG File 676.3A Wireless Radio Systems. 10

 Office Chief of AC Routing and Record Sheet

Action 1, Gen Brett to Gen Arnold, 24 Jan 41, sub:

Aircraft-detector equip. AAG 413.4-B Com Equip,

1941. 11

 (1) Memo Rpt by Lt Col Franklin O. Carroll, Experimental Engr Sec, and Capt Marshall S. Roth,

Aircraft Projs, 20 Jan 41, sub: Conference on present

status and development of AI equip; (2) Ltr, Maj

Howard Z. Bogert, Chief of Tech Staff AC Mat Div,

to Tech Exec (attn: Col Marriner), 17 Jan 41, sub:

Recommendation for AI Proj Officer, with 1st Memo

Ind, Col Gardner to Chief of Tech Staff Mat Div

Wright Field, 22 Jan 41, sub: ARL Proj 61 C-4. In

same file.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 255

ingly sure as a result of the firm British

insistence upon dispersed manufacture.

First, there were no complete blueprints

for ARL to study. Second, American reproduction of the sets would be retarded—

possibly for nine months.12 Adding the

three months which had already passed

since Major Edwards, in England, had

first ordered the sets, this would make a

year's delay which air defense plans had

not counted on.

On Long Island, General Chancy, and

in England, Maj. Gordon P. Saville, who

had just visited the experimental GCI site

at Durrington, arrived at a crystallized

pattern of what the Air Defense Command

wanted.13 It took shape as a complex of

the equipment they had seen demonstrated

in both England and America, all of it

interrelated, every item affecting the contribution of other items, and all being

components in a single, regional operation: the British AI and IFF responding to

the American SCR-270 or 271, the American AI-10 integrated with the British very

high frequency command system, the outmoded Chain Home imported along with

the barely born GCI, the Fleet Air Arm's

ASV put into use as well as the U.S. Navy's

altimeter. The outline of the pattern was

firm. Nowhere in the top command, however, had it yet been realized that the

organization of a continental fighter command system called for co-ordinated planning far beyond anything realized thus

far. Brett proposed a committee to study

the problem in which General Arnold,

General Chancy, and Lt. Gen. Delos C.

Emmons of the GHQ Air Force would

overbalance General Mauborgne and an

undesignated man from G-2. Not only

would the concern be broader than that,

but it would cut across all arms and services of the Army, across the gulf between

the Army and Navy, and across the

sovereignties of nations.

For the time being, General Arnold felt

that air defense was getting "nowheres

fast."

 14

 He complained that Antiaircraft

rather than the Air Corps seemed to be

getting the priority for all of the SCR268's. The Signal Corps had developed

them entirely for the Coast Artillery Corps

and a long-range but equally mobile SCR270 for the Air Corps; there had been no

previous intimation that the air arm would

want any of the 268's. But now it appeared

that they could be valuable as a stopgap

until the Air Corps' own model, the 270,

could be equipped with what the 268 had

and the 270 did not: the capacity to indicate the height of a target airplane. Arnold

requested twenty sets, but General Mauborgne, doubtless having in mind that

SCR-268's were still almost as rare as men

who knew how to operate them, objected

that the detector's short range would require too many sets to cover a given area

and thus drain off too many troops. At

this, "he was informed by General Brett

that he was a procurement man and not a

tactician and that Signal Corps should

procure what the tactical people required."

Sir Hugh Dowding, who was present along

with Dr. Vannevar Bush, Dr. Karl Comp12

 (1) Memo, Col Rives, R&D OCSigO, for O/C

(Lt Col Hugh Mitchell), 10 Feb 41, sub: Inspection of

British sig equip in Ottawa. SigC 413.44 Purchase of

British Equip (RB-2331). (2) Memo, Mitchell for

CSigO, 18 Feb 41; (3) Ltr, Mitchell to Dir ARL, 19

Feb 41, sub: Shipment of British equip from Ottawa.

SigC 413.44 British Tech Mission 2 (RB-1157). 13

 (1) Henry E. Guerlac, Hist Div OSRD, Radar,

Ch. A-VI, n. 67 (in consecutively paged copy, p. 293).

Photostat of 1945 MS in SigC Hist Sec File. (2) Incl 1,

Memo, Maj Saville for ACofS G-4, 28 Jan 41, in Tab

A to Immediate Action Sheet, TAG to Chief of AC,

3 Jun 41, sub: Air defense equip (AG 452 (5-24-41)

MC). AAG 413.4-B Com Equip. 14

 Office Chief of AC Routing and Record Sheet

Action 1 cited n. 4.
256 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ton, Dr. Alfred Loomis, and the Signal

Corps-Air Corps principals at the conference where this took place, agreed that the

Air Defense Command needed the 268's

even if they had to be taken from the antiaircraft artillery, and the twenty were

assigned to Chancy.15

The Signal Corps Laboratories undertook to increase the range of the SCR268 16

 and to give height finding to the

SCR-270 without destroying its mobility.

In neither instance were they endeavoring

to make the sets into GCI's. One was a

searchlight director, the other an early

warning set; neither was designed for

ground control of interception. But the Air

Corps observers had seen what they

thought were comparable radars doing

GCI work in Britain, and wanted GCI.

The set must provide all-around coverage

of the sky within a range of 70 miles, must

show the position of targets continuously,

and must spot them at 40 miles with an

accuracy within 3 miles as to direction

and within 1,000 feet as to elevation.17

GCI had just emerged from the Chain

Home Low and was still under development; only the peril to their island had

required the British to put it into operation while by all normal standards it

would still have been in the laboratory.

Mauborgne asked for details on it at

once,18 but there was none of the equipment to spare.

For this reason the engineers at Fort

Monmouth undertook the modification.

They achieved a preliminary GCI span of

70 miles with the short-range SCR-268,

and Mauborgne told Robert Lovett, the

special assistant to the Secretary, soon to

become the Assistant Secretary for Air,

that he believed the 268 would most

quickly provide a substitute, pending the

actual GCI.19 There was no doubt of the

need for a height finder attachment for

the 270, although development had gone

all the way past the specification and laboratory stages without it. Chancy had

spotted its absence during a visit to Fort

Monmouth with General Emmons and

Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews. His recommendation ground through channels for

months—so long that the Laboratories

had only just set up the necessary project.

To modify the 270 further according to

what they could learn of the British GCI,

the project engineers prepared to try two

antennas on different frequencies and

then, applying the method used on the

Chain Home Low detectors, to try them at

different elevations; but whatever the

Laboratories did they could never make

their 268 and 270 into something which

was quite different.20

15

 Memo, Maj Kenneth N. Walker, AC Plans Div,

for Brig Gen Carl Spaatz, 27 Jan 41, sub: ADC. AAG

676.9-A AWS Sites.

Present at the January 25 meeting were Arnold,

Brett, Chancy, Mauberg [Mauborgne], Edwards,

Meade, Smith, Marriner, Saville, Drs. Bush, Loomis,

and Compton, Sir Hugh Dowdey [Dowding], and

Squadron Leader Hignett. 16

 Memo, Col Mitchell for CSigO, cited n. 12(2). 17

 Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 25 Feb 41, sub: Equip for

air defense. SigC (RD-428) ET 676.3 AWS Defense

Comd Observation on Trip to England 1941. 18

 Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-2, 7 Feb 41. SigC

413.44 British GCI (RB-2330). 19

 Memo, CSigO for Special Asst to SW, Lovett, 14

Mar 41, sub: Special radio signaling and detector apparatus. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British Sets (RB2331). 20

 (1) Ltr, Col Colton to CSigO, 4 May 40, sub: Determination of altitude of approaching aircraft (FM

(SCL) 413.4 P. 12-1), with inds, especially No. 6, Gen

Chancy, ADC, to CG First Army, 28 Jun 40, and No.

9, Gen Arnold to CSigO, 18 Jul 40. SigC 413.44 Gen

Research 1 (to Apr 41) RB-1172. (2) SCL, Annual

Report, 1941, Proj. 12-10, p. 23. (3) Harry M. Davis,

History of the Signal Corps Development of U.S.

Army Radar Equipment, Pt. III: Long Range

Radar—SCR-270 and SCR-271, 1945, pp. 67-70; (4)

Hist Sec E&T Divs OCSigO, History of Signal Corps

Research and Development in World War II, 1945-

46, Vol. IV, Pt. 3, Proj 423-B. SigC Hist Sec File.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 257

For GCI was an innovation among

innovations. The British engineers had

not only replaced the several fixed antennas of the Chain Home with a single rotating antenna, used both for sending and

receiving, but at the same time had hit

upon a new type of oscilloscope, the PPI.

This Plan Position Indicator, the very

heart of GCI, was a type of cathode-ray

tube whose time base, or light beam, rotated like a watch hand from the center

of the round tube face in synchronization

with the turning of the antenna. Echoes

appeared as points or smears of light along

the beam as it rotated several times a minute. The coating of the scope provided a

phosphorescent afterglow, so that a target

reflection remained visible until the next

rotation renewed its intensity, and incidentally revealed any change in the position of the target. Thus, this PPI scope

actually painted a round maplike picture

of the sky around the radar. Elevation was

determined by auxiliary equipment including an additional antenna and scope.

Obviously, for controlling fighter planes

sent aloft by day or night to intercept

enemy craft, the GCI with its PPI would

be far better than the very high frequency

system, including the Aircraft Warning

System and long-range detectors, with its

cumbersome and time-consuming direction finding and plotting-board representation of aircraft, all of which occupied so

many persons and so much interlinking

telephone and switchboard equipment.

The GCI operator would need merely to

study the PPI, watch his own airplane

echoes (identified by IFF) and the enemy

plane echoes (not identified) in order to

radiotelephone proper instructions as to

the direction, height, and speed of the

enemy. Night and clouds would be no

hindrance. The operator could coach a

fighter equipped with AI to within a mile

or two of an enemy plane, to close in for

the kill, even in inky darkness.

Anticipation of GCI and PPI dazzled

Air Corps observers in England at the turn

of 1940-1941 hardly less than their first

glimpses of CH, IFF, AI, and VHF had

amazed them a few months earlier. By

February Chancy was listing GCI among

the priorities he wanted for his Air Defense

Command. Saville, who had inspected the

original, was especially insistent. And, as

with other British equipment, the airmen

wanted it copied by the Signal Corps "at

once and as is," although the British had

but a few experimental models all together—in combat, it is true, but still

under development. Again, the Signal

Corps would request plans and a model,

and again it would be months before the

British could send over an actual set.

The Air Corps had got its case on record

and had stated it before the civilian and

military planners immediately concerned

with it. The sum of General Arnold's position was "that the Air Corps was badly in

need of detector equipment for tactical use

and required equipment right now for

training purposes even though it was not

the ultimate type which would be produced."

 21

 It was as blunt as that. The Signal Corps was a supplier to the Air Corps.

This was what the Air Corps urgently

needed. Let the Signal Corps find the

means of getting it, fast. In the stale air of

routine procurement, the Air Corps'

glamorous folklore to the effect that the

difficult could be done at once and the

impossible very soon afterward was like

ozone. Even those who knew it was heady

breathed it eagerly. Summoning G-4 to

21

 Memo, Gen Arnold for Lovett, 25 Jun 41 (recapitulating remarks of 25 and 28 Jan 41). ASWA

413.44 Radio Equip.
258 THE SIGNAL CORPS

set up an amenable board, General Arnold

imposed a rigid schedule upon the Signal

Corps. The twenty SCR-268's were first;

they were to be delivered in little more

than six weeks. Second came the longrange detectors, a matter to Arnold either

of 270's with height finders or of copies of

the CH and CHL. Third was the VHF

fighter complex: the direction finder, the

pipsqueak, and the ground and airborne

communications equipment. Fourth was

IFF. For this and the three other principal

forms of airborne radar, AI, ASV, and

BTO, his estimate, based upon a force of

12,000 airplanes, amounted to $137,000,-

000 worth of equipment: 500 AI-10's, 501

ASV's, 1,501 BTO's, and 9,240 IFF's.22

Chancy, who was planning air defense

maneuvers for May, listed his needs in different order—AI's first of all (and he

meant the British Mark IV version, not

the American 10-centimeter set which the

Radiation Laboratory was readying), then

the pipsqueak contactor, then IFF and

ASV, and last of all the short- and longrange ground detectors. He spoke of this to

General Mauborgne in Secretary Stimson's office, with Lovett present. He

wanted an assortment of 100 contactors,

IFF's, and ASV's, and by May; so that the

net effect, regardless of priority, was the

same. General Mauborgne protested that

the Signal Corps had all of these developments under study, in versions which he

maintained would be improvements upon

the British models. He acknowledged that

the pipsqueak might be easy to copy but

saw no way to procure the other items in

anything less than six months. Lovett

therefore turned a direct plea to the British Air Commission for a 100-set assortment; Secretary Stimson verbally instructed the Chief Signal Officer to buy

5 AI-IV's, 50 ASV's, and 100 IFF's; the

Air Commission promised to cable to England to the Ministry of Aircraft Production to ask whether anything could be

released; and the Navy and Air Corps informally agreed to split whatever ASV's

there might be on a 40-60 basis.23

Out at the Aircraft Radio Laboratory,

the first British samples arrived, the IFF

Mark II, ASV Mark II, and AI Mark IV

reaching Wright Field under guard from

Ottawa on February 22. Chancy enlarged

his wants beyond the May maneuvers, in

order to meet his Air Defense Command's

part in the 12,000-plane program, and

General Mauborgne put through a request

for a diversion of funds to pay the bill. It

came to 240 pipsqueak contactors ($100

apiece), 100 IFF's ($2,500 each), 80

AI-IV's ($10,000 each), 51 DF's (at $3,500

a set), and 50 ASV's ($6,000 each).

Chancy reiterated, "I cannot recommend

too strongly the extreme urgency for the

earliest possible action," and added his

belief that all of the British equipment was

"ready for immediate procurement."

 24

The reply from the British Ministry of

Aircraft Production came in. It appeared

that 5 AI-IV's could be made available,

50 ASV's and 100 IFF's. Almost simultaneously, Lovett heard that the Navy had

22

 Ibid. 23

 (1) Memo, Lovett for SW, 15 Feb 41, sub: Urgent

radio items in aircraft defense program; (2) Ltr,

Lovett to Sir Henry Self, Dir Gen British Air Commission, Washington, B.C., 17 Feb 41; (3) Undated

Buckslip from Office Secy of Navy; (4) Ltr, Air Vice

Marshal G. B. A. Baker, British Air Commission, to

Lovett, 24 Feb 41. ASWA 413.44 Radio Equip. 24

 (1) Memo, CSigO for CofS, 20 Feb 41, sub: Proc

of British types of equip for test and tng purposes.

SigC 413.44 Purchase of British Sets 1 (RB-2331). (2)

Ltr, Gen Chancy to TAG, 24 Feb 41, sub: Air defense

equip, in Tab A to Immediate Action Sheet, TAG to

Chief of AC, cited n. 13(2). (3) Ltr, Col Gardner to

CSigO, 18 Mar 41, sub: Shipment of British com

equip. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British Equip (RB2331). (4) Ltr, TAG to CSigO, cited n. 17.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 259

set aside 16 direction finders for the Signal

Corps and the Federal Communications

Commission. These two items of news

were greeted with rejoicing, and with an

understandable feeling of triumph on the

part of Lovett, who told Chancy: "With

any luck at all, and unless the westbound

shipments are interrupted by sinkings, we

hope to get some of these sets for you in

spite of the statement which you heard that

it could not be done. I am going to keep a

constant follow-up on this, as I think a

little competition may stimulate the Signal

Corps to a more realistic approach to the

Air Corps needs."25

Yet serious limitations existed in each

category. They showed how far these items

were from being ones which the American

defense establishment could count on

within a few weeks, and how much farther

from being items which American industry

could promptly begin to produce in mass.

Regarding the airborne interception

equipment, over and above the fact that

Britain had been able to spare only 5 of

the 100 asked for stood the fact that "detailed drawings are not available," and

the further fact that "component manufacture is required"—that is, that unknown

equipment must be broken up for manufacture, with no scheme to assemble it by

afterward. The British spokesman heavily

emphasized this necessity, and Sir Henry

Self, the Air Commission's chief, also

rehearsed patent agreements and commercial rights.26

 In the instance of the gear

for identification, friend or foe, adjustments

in wavelength had to be made if the sets

were to work with American detectors.

With the air-to-surface-vessel sets, there

was the possible obstacle of having to

arrange manufacture in Canada. From all

of the equipment, the aerials would be

missing, because of course, as was understood at the Aircraft Radio Laboratory,

each aerial would have to be made especially for the American airplane on which

it was to be used. And finally, there had

been "no mention" of spare parts. Lovett

asked General Mauborgne to "make arrangements to obtain from the British a

small quantity for maintenance."

 27

Thus if the haze lifted even a little, it

disclosed that at least some of the obstacles

the Signal Corps was talking about were

real. After a month when both engineering and procurement of the items which

had arrived from England had been baffled by the inflexibility of British security,

Mauborgne sought General Staff aid toward a compromise. What he proposed

was to disperse the manufacture within the

several plants of a giant company. The

Air Corps' Materiel Division itself supported him, reporting a "most discouraging" experience. The British "never give

us specific authority to use their equipment and their indefinite commitments

are always nullified by restrictions as to

method of manufacture to insure secrecy

and protect patent rights." Duplication

was not to be readily accomplished under

any circumstances. As is necessarily characteristic of any effective research organization, British research did not stay fixed.

It developed. In some cases, the British

engineers had not yet devised one of the

25 (1) Ltr, Air Vice Marshal Baker to Lovett, 28 Feb

41, sub: Special radio signaling and detector apparatus; (2) File Memo for Lovett, 20 Feb 41; (3) Ltr,

Lovett to Chancy, 5 Mar 41. ASWA 413.44 Radio

Equip. 26

 (1) Ltr, Self to Gen Arnold, 15 Mar 41, sub: Special radio signaling and detector apparatus (AI Mark

IV); (2) Ltr, R. H. Fowler, British Purchasing Commission, to Col Mitchell, 17 Mar 41. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British Equip (RB-2331). 27

 Memo, Lovett for CSigO, 8 Mar 41, sub: Special

radio signaling and detector apparatus. AAG 413.4-B

Com Equip, 1941.
260 THE SIGNAL CORPS

components; in others, they made continual changes—in frequency ranges, for

example.

When yet another Air Corps observer

in England, this time Maj. Gen. Barton K.

Yount, recommended that "British equipment be adapted and manufactured 'as

is' " Colonel Mitchell came down hard.28

Strictly speaking, any exact reproduction

was impossible, he argued; the basic measuring systems of the two countries were

different, and all the dies and gauges and

components would incontrovertibly have

to be changed from one to the other. Be it

said that this was a far more literal reading of "as is" than any Air Corps officer

probably had in mind; the fact remained

that mere copy work was much more intricate than might at first be imagined.

Differences in technological and industrial measurements were going to require

extremely close co-operation during the

war; and afterward, when the United

States' alliances grew even stronger, the

standardization of measurements was to

become one of the most essential points for

agreement.

General Staff intervention won success.

The Ministry of Aircraft Production relaxed its stipulations sufficiently to grant

permission for the IFF to be adapted to

the frequency of American radars and for

the airborne interception set to be manufactured by components in the separate

factories of such a firm as Bell or Westinghouse. At the same time, the ministry released for American manufacture two of

the elements in the very high frequency

system, these being the ground direction

finder and the airborne command set, as

well as the wonderful Plan Position Indicator, the essential center of GCI. With

considerable caution, the Signal Corps

allowed itself to say that the way looked

clear now, if it could be sure of getting the

samples to alter and to copy. A detailed

letter went to G-4 and another to the Special Assistant; the net effect of so many

new, strange, and marvelous items was impressive. Having consulted Colonel Marriner first, General Arnold told Lovett,

"This looks OK to me."

 29

The dream of easy equipment had now

reached its zenith. Behind was the stage

of great expectations, unheard explanations. Here was the point of attack, and

just ahead lay fulfillment. The Air Corps

thought it understood fairly well what its

communications requirements were. The

Signal Corps was not so sure. "No determination . . . can be made until the

Signal Corps receives notification as to

quantities and types of aircraft."

 30

Air procurement began to occupy a col28

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-2, 17 Mar 41,

sub: Proc of British type sig equip to US. SigC 413.44

Purchase of British Equip (RB-2331). (2) AC R&W

Action 4-E, Mat Div to Com Engr Div, 25 Mar 41,

sub: Standardization of radio equip between Army,

Navy, and British; (3) Memo, Col Rives, SigC, and

Lt Col Wallace G. Smith, AC, for Chm SigC Tech

Committee, 7 Apr 41, sub: Subcommittee SigC Tech

Committee (OCSigO 413.44 ADC). AAG 413.4-B

Com Equip, 1941. (4) Memo by Col Rives for File, 7

Apr 41, sub: Conference. SigC 413.44 British Equip

Gen 1 (RB-1151). (5) Memo, Brig Gen Sherman

Miles, ACofS G-2, for ACofS G-4, 27 Mar 41, sub:

Rpt of Maj Gen B. K. Yount; (6) Memo, Col Mitchell

for CSigO, 3 Apr 41. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British

Sets (RB-2331). 29

 (1) Ltr, Air Vice Marshal Baker to G-2 WDGS

(Lt Col Thomas D. Finley), 29 Mar 41, sub: Special

radio signaling and detector apparatus; (2) Ltr, Baker

to CSigO, 1 Apr 41. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British

Equip (RB-2331). (3) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-4,

17 Mar 41, sub: Air defense equip. AAG 413.4-B

Com Equip, 1941. (4) Memo, CSigO for Special Asst

to SW, Lovett, 17 Mar 41, sub: Special radio signaling

and detector apparatus. SigC 350.05. (5) Penciled

note initialed "HHA" [Maj Gen Henry H. Arnold],

26 Mar 41, on copy of Memo, Lovett to Mauborgne,

18 Mar 41. ASWA 413.44 Radio Equip. 30

 OASW, Weekly Statistical Report Summary,

No. 41, 12 Apr 41. OASW Files.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 261

umn of its own in the Signal Corps reports,

equal in extent and detail of presentation,

though still not in number of items, to the

portion dealing with procurement for the

ground forces. The equipment was to be

brought together from three sources—

Signal Corps, British, and miscellaneous—

and, at this stage in between the Washington planning offices and the production

assembly lines, appeared to divide itself

among the Signal Corps Laboratories, the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, and the Radiation Laboratory. The Signal Corps

items included all of the main communications, navigation, meteorological, and

air photographic equipment, and the

ground elements of radar. The British

specialties were airborne radar and very

high frequency radio. The remainder was

made up miscellaneously, the most

prominent item being the AI-10.

To demonstrate their AI-10 at the stage

it had attained by mid-April, the Radiation Laboratory set up a trial run and

invited the interested parties, among them

the Air Corps officers Marriner, Wallace

Smith, and Hobart Yeager, the Signal

Corps officers Mitchell, Gardner, and

Bayer, and an observer from the British

Central Scientific Office. There was some

difficulty in arranging for a pilot, but once

that was out of the way the trial flights

took place and the laboratory set worked

well.31 Well enough, in fact, for the Air

Corps to schedule it for procurement

forthwith. This action left the civilian

scientists and the Signal Corps officers

gasping. There were a dozen hurdles to

leap before any procurement. Standardization, for one; before that, a service test;

and, had both of those processes been accomplished, there still was the basic circumstance that airborne interception

equipment was meant to serve night

fighters, and the Air Corps had no night

fighters. P-61's were so far from rolling

down the assembly lines that it would be

1944 before any of them saw action. The

airplane which Wright Field had provided

for the demonstration was a B-18, a slow

bomber, not a fast fighter. The Air Corps

had no existing airplane which would not

have to be considerably modified if it were

to use the AI-10. The answer would have

to be for the Air Corps to devise one more

form for its remarkable, protean A-20

light bomber, giving it enough of the

necessary characteristics to serve as a night

fighter.

To the Signal Corps, then, the demonstration was only preliminary to the conventional procedures which would lead,

after some time, to a service test, and after

more time, to standardization for manufacture. Here the Radiation Laboratory

commenced an exercise in rapid fabrication which seemed to reflect upon the Signal Corps' methods. On what engineers

described as a "crash" basis, the Model

Shop of the laboratory began the custom

building of thirty sets.32 Only assemblyline building would serve in the long run,

but for the immediate demand the Model

Shop could turn out enough to go around.

While the Signal Corps, following unspectacularly after the edge had been taken

31

 (1) Draft Memo, initialed "H.M." [Lt Col Hugh

Mitchell], sub: Status of AI-10 development, attached

to OCSigO R&D Div Buckslip, also initialed "H.M.,"

16 Apr 41, bearing notes relative to SigC's policy of

reducing NDRC projs to practice, after Radiation

Lab had completed basic research. SigC 413.44 SCR520 No. 1 AI-10 (RB-1378). (2) Msg E-656, Exec

(EM) to Tech Exec Wright Field, 7 Apr 41. USAF

Mat Comd Central Files, Proj MX-68. (3) Ltr. R. O.

Jones, British Air Commission, to CSigO, 7 Jul 41,

sub: Provisions for secrecy of British equip reproduced in US. SigC 413.44 Purchase of British Sets

(RB-2331). 32

 Memo, Col Rives for Col David M. Crawford, 18

Jun 41. SigC 413.44 SCR-520 No. 1 AI-10 (RB-1378).
262 THE SIGNAL CORPS

off, was placing a $1,016,700 contract

with Western Electric to build thirty

models for service test, Wright Field took

the laboratory demonstration model and

tested it in a B-18. Although testing laboratory sets was an admired British practice, both the Radiation Laboratory and

the Aircraft Radio Laboratory objected

vehemently. Dr. Karl Compton declared

that the Air Corps test board's report revealed "a pretty complete lack of understanding." Mitchell expressed surprise

"that the Air Corps intended to service test

this particular equipment as it was obvious that [it] would not pass. ... " Regarding the test board's criticism that only

a highly skilled man could work the set,

he remarked that "the user better get busy

now and do some training."33

The situation was embarrassing, because the Air Corps had overpowered the

Signal Corps order for 30 sets by an order

for 500, made out in advance of the hasty

test and under the assumption that its success was a foregone conclusion. In Loomis,

Compton, and other members of the National Defense Research Committee the

Air Corps momentarily found doughtier,

and more tellingly placed, adversaries

than the Signal Corps, with the result that

the test board was effectually overruled. A

compromise disavowed the board by approving the AI-10 and supported it by reducing the order to 165—"for installation

in 165 P-61 planes."34 But this was not

enough of a concession to NDRC, and the

order for 500 was continued in addition to

the order for 165.

Further to complicate the matter, the

Signal Corps had also contracted, upon

General Chancy's order, for the manufacture of 80 of the British airborne interception sets, the AI-IV, and then, before these

went into production at Western Electric,

for 500 more, at a further request from the

Air Corps. The sets, designated SCR-540,

proved inferior to the British prototype

and, when the Air Corps accepted them

only with reservations, no more were

made. The AI-10, standardized after considerable conversion as the SCR-520, replaced them. In expectation of the wide

use of this 10-centimeter equipment, both

Americans and British suspended further

work upon long-wave airborne radar; and

the SCR-540, the only long-wave airborne

interceptor to be produced in any quantity, was relegated principally to training

planes.35

The course of the AI-10 in manufacture

effectively demonstrated that quantity

production of such a mechanism can be as

complicated and prolonged as the labora33

 (1) Service Test Report of Board of Officers Appointed Per Paragraph 9 Personnel Orders No. 152

WD Office Chief of AC, 2 Jul 41, signed by Lt Col

Reuben C. Moffatt and Majs Hobart R. Yeager,

William L. Bayer, and Gordon P. Saville. AAG

413.4-C Com Equip. (2) Memo, Col Mitchell for

H. H. Bundy, Special Asst to SW, 23 Jun 41, sub:

Radio set SCR-520-AI-10; (3) Ltr, Col Gardner to

CSigO, 25 Jun 41, sub: Sv test of AI-10 equip. SigC

413.44 SCR-520 No. 1 AI-10 (RB-1378). 34

 (1) Memo, Chief of AC for Chief of AAF, 9 Jul

41, sub: Sv test of AI-10; (2) Incl Memo, Bundy for

SW, 11 Jul 41, with Office Chief of AC Routing and

Record Action 1, Chief of AC to Chief of Mat Div,

25 Jul 41, sub: In re AI-10—airborne detector; (3)

Memo, Bundy to Lovett, 21 Jul 41, with attached

correspondence; (4) E. M. McMillan, B-18-A Report—February 13 to July 22, 1941, 5 Aug 41. AAG

413.4-C Com Equip. (5) Memo, Col Rives for Chief

of Mat Br AC, Wright Field, 24 Nov 41, sub: Differences between NDRC AI-10 and radio set SCR520. SigC 413.44 SCR-520 No. 1 AI-10 (RB-1378). 35

 R&D hist cited n. 20(4), Vol. II, Pt. 3, Proj (205),

71-1.

"Long" radar waves are not to be confused with

long radio waves. The latter are several thousand

meters long, whereas radar waves begin at about 10

meters (a point at which radio waves are very short)

and become progressively shorter until they are at the

border of heat. The right-hand margin of the radiation

spectrum indicates the difference.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 263

tory research upon it. The British establishment, which had been making progress with a microwave AI set of its own,

ordered the American version instead, to

mount in its Beaufighters, whereupon its

engineers ran into the familiar difficulties

of adapting foreign equipment. The Radiation Laboratory undertook to alter a

few sets especially for British use, because

some time would intervene before Western

Electric could finish the American order

and start the British order. The two nations had agreed from the beginning of

the Tizard Mission that British calls upon

American production would yield priority

to American needs.36

The Radiation Laboratory also turned

to adapting the AI-10 to ASV uses: that

is, to make the night airborne interception

equipment into equipment for air search

of the sea. This work, especially supported

by the Navy, succeeded so well that the

Air Corps pressed for copies of it and the

Signal Corps responsively standardized

and ordered it as another in the immediate series, the SCR-517. Subsequently

this air-to-surface-vessel radar led to

bombing-through-overcast radar, in just

the progression the Signal Corps experts

had hoped might result.

Quite distinct from the long-wave ASV

and BTO efforts at the Aircraft Radio

Laboratory, the SCR-517 was of course

microwave equipment adapted from a 10-

centimeter set. Almost all of the microwave development fell to the Radiation

Laboratory according to the understanding reached at the time of Tizard's visit

and of NDRC's formation of the Microwave Committee. At the same time, the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory was converting the British ASV-II, a long-wave set, to

an American version, SCR-521. When the

set was tested in B-17's and B-25's without any great success, it was obvious that

here again was an instance of the vicissitudes of attempting to apply equipment to

circumstances for which it was not

designed.

Colonel Gardner, the director of the

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, forecast that

the microwave SCR-517 might come off

production lines about as quickly as the

SCR-521, and urged everyone to consider

carefully whether it would be worth while

to go ahead with the adaptation of the

British set. The antenna layout, the disposition of components, the circuit wiring,

the power supply all had to be modified

for American use, and the switches, plugs,

sockets, tubes, and other parts peculiar to

British manufacture would be almost certain to cause production bottlenecks. Although these were characteristic Signal

Corps objections, any careful research and

supply agency would have been remiss

not to make them. On the other hand, the

Air Corps, charged with the almost impossible task of becoming a major striking

force in no time at all, could not risk being

left without an essential tool. Accordingly,

the Air Corps backed both ASV sets, and

the SCR-521 was manufactured along

with the SCR-517. By the end of the year,

the Signal Corps had placed orders for

thousands of the SCR-521's, with Philco

and the Canadian facility, War Supplies,

Limited. They came into considerable use

in the antisubmarine warfare of 1942, and

36

 (1) Ltr, Col Hugh Mitchell to Dr. Alfred

Loomis, Radiation Lab, 18 Aug 41; (2) Ltr, Air

Marshal Roderic M. Hill, British Air Commission, to

Dr. Carroll Wilson, Liaison Officer NDRC, 3 Sep 41;

(3) Extract from Maj Bayer's Rpt, 11 Sep 41; (4) Ltr,

Air Marshal Hill to OCSigO, 13 Dec 41, sub: AI in

British Beaufighter aircraft; (5) Memo, Col Rives for

Chief of Mat Br AC, Wright Field, 14 Dec 41, sub:

Expediting critical contracts. SigC 413.44 SCR-520

No. 1 AI-10 (RB-1378).
264 THE SIGNAL CORPS

some of the American aircraft in the

Southwest Pacific theater had them as late

as 1944.37

Identification, friend or foe—IFF—

raised a new kind of controversy. After

choosing the Navy-General Electric form

of radio recognition in preference to its

own, the Aircraft Radio Laboratory had

turned it into three more units in the

"500" series of radars. The SCR-515 was

to be the airborne component, and the

SCR-532 and 533, respectively, for short

and long ranges, were to be the ground

elements. This IFF gear was not, like that

of the British, dependent upon certain

radars, but could be used by itself as a sort

of beacon system in any situation: between ships, between ships and aircraft,

between ships and the shore, between

ground and aircraft, and between aircraft

themselves. The circuit was all but instantaneous, so that the question "Who are

you?" was asked and answered with the

speed of light and, visibly on the ground

oscilloscope, with the form of light. The

Aircraft Radio Laboratory tried out service-test models of the 515 (two thousand

dollars), the 532 (twenty thousand dollars), and the 533 (fifty thousand dollars)

and found them satisfactory enough to

contract for 150 of the first, 10 of the second, and 11 of the third. If the equipment

were good at all, these amounts were

wholly inadequate, and in two months'

time they had indeed risen: respectively,

to a hundred times as many of the first

and third and to two hundred and fifty

times as many of the second.

Meanwhile, the Signal Corps' laboratory engineers modified the British IFF for

use specifically with the SCR-268 and

270, as in Britain it was used specifically

with the CH, CHL, or GL radars. It was

the Mark II version, an airborne transponder only. In its American form, it received the designation of SCR-535.

Because of the fact that it had to take the

time to sweep a range of frequencies instead of having a precise allocation all to

itself, it was not instantaneous. Nor, in

either version, could it be used apart from

the detectors to which it was attuned.

Thus the American IFF, which came to be

known as Mark IV, had the double advantage of independence and instant response. It was also probably superior to

the succeeding British model, Mark III,

which improved upon and supplanted

Mark II.38

Nevertheless, the Mark IV sat the war

out. When the likelihood began to appear

in 1941 that American airplanes might

soon enter battle areas, the British wanted

them to carry Mark III, which they intended to introduce when it was ready. A

struggle thereupon developed between the

two allies, opening with a conference in

the British Central Scientific Office in

Washington on July 1. The British representatives pointed out the possibility of

disastrous confusion in the event of combined allied campaigns by sea or air. Even

though they recognized the advantages of

37

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col G. E. Metcalf,

ARL, Wright Field, Ohio, 2 Oct 44. (2) R&D hist

cited n. 20(4), Vol. II, Pt. 3, Proj 205-B, pp. 5-6, and

Vol. II, Pt. 5, Proj 209-B, pp. 13, 16-17. (3) ARL,

Annual Report, 1941, Proj 61C-1.4, p. 5. (4) Ltr, Col

Gardner to CSigO, 25 Jul 41, sub: SCR-517 and

SCR-521; (5) Memo, Col Rives for Chief of Mat Br

AC, Wright Field, 13 Dec 41, sub: Expediting critical

contracts. SigC 413.44 SCR-521 No. 1 (RB-1379). 38

 (1) R&D hist cited n. 20(4), Vol. II, Pt. 2, Projs

203-A and 203-C, Vol. IV, Pt. 5, Proj 462-A. (2) C&E

Case No. 4, Identification and Recognition Equipment. (3) ARL, Annual Report, 1941, Proj 63C,

Airplane Identification, pp. 7-8. (4) Memo, Col

Mitchell for CSigO, 21 Aug 41, sub: Development and

proc of radio recognition equip (Navy type ABA

equip). SigC 413.44 Identification 2, Jun 41-Jun 42

(RB-1165).
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 265

CAMOUFLAGED IFF EQUIPMENT of an American antiaircraft artillery group

installed near Folkestone, England.

the American system in principle, the

British spokesmen felt it had not yet been

proved in combat. The American point of

view was that the equipment the British

were speaking of had not been, either.

Mark II had been in combat, but not

Mark III. So long as the British had not

yet made the change-over, why not skip

Mark III and settle upon Mark IV if it

were a better set? The thousands of Mark

IV's on order represented an investment

of millions of dollars.39 Favoring their

Mark III, which they said they could supply to America almost immediately, the

British amassed technical arguments to

which the name of Watson-Watt lent

weight.40 On the American side, a Joint

Radio Committee studied the problem,

the Navy at first stating "quite positively

. . . that the British system was objectionable," then relaxing its stand. The Army

39

 Incl, Notes on Conference on Coordination of

American and British I.F.F. Held at B.C.S.O., July 1,

1941, at 4 p.m., with Ltr, C. G. Darwin, Dir British

Central Scientific Office, to CSigO, 3 Jul 41. SigC

413.44 SCR-515 No. 1 (RB-1374). 40

 (1) Robert Watson-Watt, Scientific Adviser on

Telecommunications British Air Ministry, Memo,

Identification and Recognition in RDF, 9 Sep 41,

with Ministry of Aircraft Production Buckslip, I.

Horsfold to Maj Hayden, 24 Sep 41; (2) Unsigned

Memo on American IFF Proposal, 19 Aug 41, with

same Buckslip. SigC 413.44 Identification 2, Jun 41-

Jun 42 (RB-1165).
266 THE SIGNAL CORPS

followed the Navy's lead at both stages,

since the Navy's stake in the outcome was

greater.41

The argument was drawing to an unsatisfactory compromise on the very eve of

Pearl Harbor. It appeared that in the Atlantic American ships and airplanes alike

would have to carry both the Mark III

and the Mark IV, an unwieldy arrangement at best and impossible for pursuit

planes. In the Pacific, the Navy was planning to use only the Mark IV, on the assumption that tests to begin aboard the

Hornet on December 8 would prove successful.42

 The compromise went into the

ash can on December 7. The Pearl Harbor

disaster found the United States virtually

without IFF. If American airplanes and

American search radars had been provided with it, the two Signal Corpsmen at

the Opana SCR-270 would have been

able to alert the Oahu garrisons. As it

turned out, Col. Hugh Mitchell, in the

Research and Development Division of

the Office of the Chief Signal Officer,

noted frantically that no IFF's—even the

SCR-515, which by the time of Pearl Harbor had been on order for half the year—

would be available for months. The Signal

Corps quickly modified the Mark IPs

which were on hand and rushed them to

the Philco Corporation, where a select

group of the company's engineers and

production men, working in a locked

garage under guard, hand-built twentysix sets in three weeks. In fact, Mark II

and its American counterpart became the

universal Allied IFF until Mark III replaced it in 1943. Mark IV was held in reserve in case Mark III should be compromised. That occasion never came, and the

American sets were never used.43

War engulfed this multimillion-dollar

waste. There were other losses, still in the

emergency period well before the war.

The Air Corps canceled an aircraft liaison

radio, the SCR-259, after the Signal Corps

had already begun to procure it. In that

instance, the loss was a modest $4,000,000

or less. General Electric was again the

company concerned, as with the IFF. The

Air Corps, which was spared the rebuke

that had been prepared for it, had sought

the cancellation on the ground that the

radio was not a part of the intercommunications complex which the Air Corps

desired to make common with the British.44

 The VHF complex, on the other

hand, went through the conventional

process, even to a separation and assignment of the components according to the

established division of Signal Corps laboratories. The air parts remained at ARL,

the ground went to the Monmouth laboratories. Fortunately, they proved relatively easy to convert to American use.

The airborne component, the TR-1143,

became the SCR-522; the ground components, including the transmitters, re41

 Unsigned Document, C&E Div OCSigO, 21

Nov 41, sub: Proc of identification and recognition

equip SCR-515, 532, and 533. SigC C&E Case 4 Proc

of Identification and Recognition Equip SCR-515,

532, and 533. 42

 Memo Rpt of Radar Subcommittee of the InterService Coms Bd, 6 Dec 41. In same file. See also

documents in SigC RB-20, 106 IFF Equip. 43

 Memo, Mitchell for CSigO, 10 Dec 41. SigC C&E

Case 19 Emergency Interceptor Equip for AC. (2)

"Radar: The Industry," Fortune, XXXII, No. 4 (October 1945), 146. See also Baxter, Scientists Against Time,

p. 150. (3) R&D hist cited n. 20(4), Vol. II, Pt. 2,

Proj 203-A, pp. 11 ff. The United States Navy further insisted upon the production of Mark IV because

it would become indispensable in case the enemy

overwhelmed the British Navy. MS Comment by Gen

Colton, 14 Sep 53. SigC Hist Sec File. 44

 (1) ARL, Annual Report, 1941, Proj 49, p. 16.

(2) AAG File 413.4-C Coms Equip, passim. (3) Memo,

Brig Gen Eugene Reybold, Actg ACofS G-4, for CofS,

19 Jul 41, sub: Standardization of aircraft radio equip.

G-4 No. 27963-184.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 267

ceivers, and direction finders, became part

of the Air Defense Command's sector control system: the SCS-2 or 3 being an

assemblage of the direction finders and

the information centers associated with

them, on the one part, and of the transmitters and receivers and the communications centrals they served, on the other

part. The SCS-2 was semifixed, the SCS-3

entirely mobile.45

Long before this, everyone who had

anything at all to do with airborne radar

equipment must have made up his mind

that it was an intricate business which became more intricate with every month.

And yet each new model was but an extension of the original strikingly simple

conception. All of these items had their

beginning and their continuation in the

basic ground detectors. It was for this reason that General Arnold had put the

ground detectors at the top of his list of

urgent electronics requirements. This

meant the American mobile short-range

SCR-268, the mobile long-range SCR270, and the fixed long-range SCR-271;

or it meant the British fixed long-range

system, Chain Home, the fixed shortrange system, Chain Home Low, and their

most recent descendants, ground-controlled interception and gun-laying sets.

In pursuit of its policy of distributing its

eggs in order to be sure that at least one

basket got to market, the Air Corps was

asking for all of these. One of the moves

the Chief Signal Officer made was to seek

out a Canadian detector called the Night

Watchman. Apparently interpreting his

inquiry as a letter of intent, Canadian production started upon the order, whereupon the Signal Corps confirmed it with a

formal contract. A Canadian combination

of the British CHL and GCI also entered

the Signal Corps radar lists as the SCR588.46

 These were side excursions. With

much more direct aim, the Signal Corps

still hoped also to get the GCI itself—the

Air Corps had put in an order for 210 of

them—and if possible the even less known

and certainly less satisfactory GL. The

foremost effort of all centered upon the attempts to convert the SCR-268 into an Air

Corps set and to provide the SCR-270,

which was already an Air Corps set, with

height finding.

The conversion of the SCR-268 led to

the SCR-516. The work took place in the

Fort Monmouth-Fort Hancock area

rather than at Wright Field, for this equipment was of course born and bred at the

Signal Corps Laboratories. First the engineers lowered the pulse rate and increased

the power, with the result that they attained the desired seventy-mile range.

Then, to improve the set's ability to measure altitude as low as to within five degrees of the horizon, they mounted longer

antennas upon a low wooden tower. They

were pleased with the results, and felt sufficiently confident of the merits of the

equipment so that an ambiguous performance at the Carolina maneuvers did not

shake their view. Much later, they were

able to add a plan position indicator also

45

 (1) Memo, Col Rives and Lt Col W. G. Smith,

AC, for Chm SigC Tech Committee, 7 Apr 41, sub:

Subcommittee SigC Tech Committee. SigC 413.44

ADC. (2) Ltr, OCSigO to Dir ARL, 29 May 41, sub:

Air defense equip. SigC 413.44 British Equip Gen 1

(RB-1151). 46

 (1) Ltr, CSigO to Dir Gen British Air Commission, Washington, D.C., 5 May 41, sub: Purchase or

loan of British secret equip. SigC 413.44 British GCI

(RB-2330). (2) Ltr, Col Clyde L. Eastman, Actg

CSigO, to Canadian National Research Council, 15

May 41, sub: Purchase of RDF equip from Canadian

Government. SigC 413.44 British Equip Gen 1 (RB1151). (3) SCL Files 12-11, Intermediate Range LowAngle Detector (British Type GCI), 12-11.1, American Equivalent of GCI Equip SCR-527-T1, 1941-42,

and S-32.3, Proc of Radio Set SCR 527-A, 1941-42.
268 THE SIGNAL CORPS

and thus bring the SCR-268 as close as it

ever got to being a GCI.47

Pending the arrival of a bona fide British GCI, specifications were prepared as

well as could be done in the absence of

drawings, and General Electric started in

upon them. The company had completed

a test model when definite word came

through that the British equipment was

on its way. A conference agreed that it

must be adopted and produced at once,

deviating "only to the extent necessary to

utilize American materials to expedite

production" and to be accommodated to

American power sources. Otherwise, it

was to be an exact copy. Notwithstanding,

Signal Corps officers preferred the SCR268 or its stepchild, the SCR-516. Inspecting the GCI in England, Major Hayden

acknowledged its "convenient and usable"

way of supplying target data, but declared

that the SCR-268 was more accurate.

Tests at Lakehurst and Sandy Hook bore

him out in his opinion, Colton and Lt.

Col. Frank C. Meade, who were there,

recommending against the GCI. Brig.

Gen. Clinton W. Russell, chief of staff of

the Air Force Combat Command, who

warned against indiscriminate adoption of

British equipment, and officers of the Air

Defense Section, GHQ Air Force, concurred in the recommendation. A ponderable body of opposing opinion prevailed,

however, and asked the Signal Corps to

procure it at once without any further loss

of time in service testing. Thus an SCR527 was launched, the American copy of

the GCI, and ultimately 200 were produced.48

SCR listings were becoming astronomically hard to keep up with. The array was

becoming a constellation and the constellation a galaxy. At the center, though, at

least for the Signal Corps, were still the

SCR-268 and the SCR-270/271. The Air

Corps' strong doubts of them got forcible

utterance at the Louisiana maneuvers in

the person of Lovett. The Assistant Secretary for Air turned in an adverse report of

the SCR-270 because none of the four sets

he inspected could detect airplanes approaching at levels below 3,000 feet. Colton and Maj. Rex V. D. Corput, Jr., were

given an opportunity to defend the radar

they had shepherded almost from infancy.

They maintained that the sets instead had

shown good normal performance, detect47

 (1) Davis hist cited n. 20(3), Pt. II, pp. 106-09.

(2) SCL, Annual Report, 1941, Proj 12-10, p. 23. (3)

R&D hist cited n. 20(4), Vol. IV, Pt. 3, Projs (424)

12-10.1 and 12-10.2. (4) SigC File RB-24, SCR-516.

(5) Personal Papers of John J. Slattery, SCL. Evans

Sig Lab File. 48

 (1) Ltr, Col Colton to CSigO, 19 May 41, sub:

Proc of special radio set SCR-527-( ); (2) Ltr, Air

Marshal Hill, British Air Commission, to Col Mitchell,

8 Sep 41, sub: GCI equip; (3) Maj P. E. Watson,

O/C Field Lab 3, Record of Demonstration and

Minutes of Meeting—British GCI Equipment, 12 Nov

41; (4) Ltr, Maj Joseph A. Bulger, Actg Exec 1st Interceptor Comd, to CG AFCC, 28 Nov 41, sub: Rpt

on comparison of British GCI and SCR-516-A, with

1st Ind, Gen Russell to CSigO, 13 Dec 41; (5) Rpt of

Meeting with GE Representatives at SCL in Connection with GCI Equipment, signed by 1st Lt Earl J.

Atkinson. SigC 413.44 SCR-527-627-12K (RB-1381)

No. 1. (6) Memo, Col Colton for CSigO, 12 Aug 41,

sub: Conferences on urgent program (OCSigO 400.-

112). SigC (ET) 676.3 AWS, 1942. (7) Memo for

File, signed by Cols Crawford, Mitchell, and Rives,

and Maj Corput, SigC, and by Lt Col W. G. Smith

and Maj Saville, AC, 14 Aug 41, sub: Rpt of Conference—GCI equip. SigC 413.44 British GCI (RB2330). The Signal Corps Technical Committee approved the military characteristics on 15 August,

Meeting No. 198-A. (8) Ltr, Maj Hayden to OCSigO,

13 Sep 41, sub: Summary of equip and equip plans.

SigC 413.44 Gen Memo—London—Maj G. Hayden

(RB-2164). (9) Col Meade, Memo for Record, 18

Nov 41, sub: Result of visit to Ft. Monmouth and

Lakehurst 13-15 Nov. SigC RB-19 (105) GCI Equip.

(10) OCSigO R&W Action 1, Air Coms Div to Opns

Br and Mat Br C&E Div, 1 Dec 41, sub: Proc of

SCR-527 or similar set, and (11) Action 4, R&D Br

to Opns Br through Mat Br, 13 Dec 41. SigC RB-23

(110) Radio Set SCR-527. (12) R&D hist cited n.

20(4), Vol. IV, Pt. 3, Proj (424) 12-11.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORGES 269

ing airplanes at distances up to 100 miles.

Actually, such a record surpassed the performance of the British detectors and did

so without having to be immobilized atop

huge towers.49

These words fell upon deaf ears. General Arnold learned from Air Marshal Sir

Arthur T. Harris that a model of the

Chain Home radar could be spared for the

United States to copy, and made haste to

accept. As Chief of the new Army Air

Forces, created in June 1941, and as a

Deputy Chief of Staff as well, he was now

established so far above the Chief Signal

Officer that he moved directly to get the

set without waiting for the Signal Corps.

The British Air Commission did wait,

however, and then after a month of delay

said what the Chief Signal Officer doubtless would have liked to say: Chain Home

was so enormous and bulky that it would

take months just to erect the antenna

towers. The Air Commission members

suggested that since a mobile model was

being installed on the eastern coast of

Canada the Signal Corps might better

make comparative tests with it. Thus

brought together under equal conditions,

the British and American sets proved

wholly comparable. The Chief of the

Army Air Forces therefore concluded that

"the installation of the CH equipment is

extremely complicated and does not appear necessary due to the information now

available." But this was a curbstone opinion. It was not intended to be final. The

interceptor commands into which the Air

Defense Command had been transformed

continued to ask that the SCR-270 be

replaced.50

The Signal Corps, at the very vortex of

all the criticisms and demands pertaining

to Army electronics, felt none too sure

sometimes of its own basic sets, but did not

lose at all its conviction that there were

objections to some of the proposals which

the Air Corps advanced. It was the Signal

Corps' business to know technical matters,

to make technical recommendations, and

to seek technical improvements; and to

this extent there was nothing surprising in

the objections. Yet the Air Corps, at a vortex of its own, had reason to insist upon

some sort of equipment, however technically defective, rather than none at all.

The struggle between the two services

really came down to this one question,

therefore: was it possible to get equipment

faster than the Signal Corps was getting

it? The record of delay, misapplication,

and duplication as the huge Air Corps

program got under way between January

and June suggested that it would have

been better to confine all efforts to speeding up the routine of development, service

testing, and procurement which the Signal Corps followed, rather than to interrupt, divert, and attempt to remake it. In

the roar and din of war preparations this

opinion could not be heard, especially

when the Signal Corps' voice became

weaker with every access of power to the

Air Corps, and hoarser with every suggestion that its opinion was scarcely a disinterested one.

Late in June, with the fiscal year ending, Assistant Secretary Lovett made himself the vessel of a concentrate of Air Corps

exasperation and called attention to the

49

 (1) Memo, Lt Col Eugene V. Elder for Col Colton

(containing Maj Corput's remarks), 19 Sep 41; (2)

Memo, Colton for Gen Olmstead, 19 Sep 41. SigC

SPSTP 10 CSigO. 50

 (1) Memo, Chief of AAF for TAG, 25 Sep 41,

sub: Proc of British CH unit. OCS 20648-35. (2) Ltr,

TAG to CSigO, 29 Sep 41, same sub. AG 413.68

(9-25-41) NC-G. (3) Ltr, Air Marshal Hill to ACofS

G-2, 11 Nov 41, with 4th Ind, Chief of AAF to TAG

[22 Dec 21]. SigC 413.44 British Equip Gen 1

(RB-1151).
270 THE SIGNAL CORPS

fact that the Air Corps' February training

requirements for British equipment had

not been met. The British had had them

"in current production" and had agreed

to supply them. As the law and Army

regulations necessitated, their procurement had been "turned over to the Signal

Corps." Yet "to date these items have not

been received." There the indictment

paused. The Air Corps spokesmen either

did not know or did not believe that there

were many more reasons why the items

had not been received than intolerable

procrastination on the part of the Signal

Corps. It was an error to have thought

that the items were "in current production

in England"; some were not in production

at all, others were being crash-built, none

were to be had just by feeding an extra

order to the assembly line. It was an error

to suppose that, in the absence of samples

and drawings and without technical conversion and adjustment, the items could

be immediately applied to American use,

especially since many of the airplanes to

employ them were still on paper. The

February requirements, here left unspecified, had included 50 ASV's, 80 AI-IVs,

100 IFF's, and 240 contactors. The "rough

estimates" which the Assistant Secretary

of War for Air passed on listed 400 ASV's,

500 AI-IV's, 500 IFF's, and 2,000 contactors. Lovett strengthened his remarks

with the implication that the matter must

be taken out of Signal Corps hands.51

Secretary Stimson's special assistant,

Harvey H. Bundy, queried the Signal

Corps, asking for a resume of all the air

and ground radar which the Signal Corps

was either developing or procuring. Colonel Mitchell replied with no waste of time,

capsuling the work on the SCR-268, the

SCR-270 and 271, the SCR-516, the

AI-10, and BTO, and enumerating the

orders for GCI, GL, AI-IV, and ASV.

The unintended gist of his report was just

what the Air Corps protested: that everything was on order and nothing on hand.

Yet the Air Corps asked for its communications and detection equipment for "all

airplanes on hand or on order."

 52

This was impracticable from a Signal

Corps point of view. The Signal Corps

could not contract for sets until it knew

what commitments had been made for the

airplanes in which the sets were to be installed or for which they were to be used

on the ground. General Mauborgne

agreed with his critics regarding the need

for efficiency in the radar program, and

broadened his own remarks—nearly his

final official ones in the dispute—by calling attention to the mutual interest of

Army air, Navy air, and the Royal Air

Force. "Many of the airborne equipments

will be standard for all three services," he

pointed out, and urged "adequate administration and coordination of this whole

series of projects." The time had passed for

this sort of co-ordination. (Historically, it

had not arrived.) General Mauborgne felt

sure of his ground, because Under Secretary Patterson had just congratulated him

on his "success ... in effecting the placement under contract with industry of the

largest peace-time program of National

Defense procurement in the history of this

country."

 53

51 Memo, "R.A.L." [Robert A. Lovett] for Harvey

H. Bundy, Special Asst to SW, 24 Jun 41, sub: Special microwave devices. ASWA 413.44 Radio Equip. 52

 (1) Memo, Col Mitchell for Bundy, 26 Jun 41.

SigC 413.44 British Equip Gen 2, Jun-Jul 41 (RB1152). (2) Ltr, Chief of AC to CSigO, 26 Jun 41, sub:

Proc of detector and air defense equip. SigC RP400.12 Proc Program Gen. 53

 (1) Ltr, Gen Mauborgne to Bundy, 10 Jul 41,

sub: Needs for expediting proc of special detection

equip. SigC 676.3 AWS ET 1, 1942. (2) Ltr, Patterson to Mauborgne, 2 Jul 41. SigC Hist Sec File.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 271

But the Air Corps, despairing of Signal

Corps capabilities, was turning more and

more toward finding its own solution.

Things came to an outburst in August,

erupted, and left wreckage all about. With

the concurrence of Brig. Gen. George C.

Kenney, assistant chief of the Air Corps

Materiel Division, and of Brig. Gen.

Henry J. F. Miller, chief of the Maintenance Command, and with the explanation that it was "in line with the directive

from . . . General [Oliver P.] Echols,"

chief of the Materiel Division, Colonel

Marriner prepared an arraignment for

General Brett.

He began by striking out at the "lost

motion," the "red tape," the "rigmarole"

of the "whole development program" carried on by the Signal Corps for the Air

Corps. Citing in particular the SCR-268

and SCR-270, he charged that the Signal

Corps had given "comparatively little

thought" to the Air Corps' use of them,

leaving the former with a short range and

the latter without any means for indicating elevation "even though we asked for

this indication . . . early in 1937." (The

SCR-268 was not an Air Corps radar; its

short range was intentional, to give it the

accuracy required of a searchlight director

or gun layer. The SCR-270 specifications

had omitted height finding until 1940,

when Chancy alerted a request for it.)

Colonel Marriner came directly to grips

by reviving the old quarrel over the control of air navigational equipment, repeating the contention that because it was

equipment developed just for the Air

Corps, the Air Corps should develop it.

On Signal Corps supply, his comments

were very severe: "It is antiquated, slow

and cumbersome, extremely inefficient

and entirely inadequate for these times of

speed." He described the slow crawl of a

requisition for standard command and

liaison radio, a description which could

have been illustrated as pertinently by

what was happening just then to a number of Navy scout bombers, which the Air

Corps was taking into its own list as

A-24's. Intended for the Philippines, they

were delayed so long for installation of

radio that they never got there.54

"For some years we have endeavored to

correct . . . deficiencies" in signal supply, Marriner went on, always being frustrated by arguments of the Chief Signal

Officer which "we never could understand. . . . After considerable long discussion, General Brett finally succeeded in

getting a Signal Corps liaison officer [assigned to Wright Field] on supply distribution, but the Chief Signal Officer never

gave him enough authority to act in any

way which might be of assistance to us. ...

The main point ... is that in no case have

they taken the initiative. In all our joint

discussions we seem to get the Signal

Corps out of their lethargy, but just when

we think something will be done they go

back to sleep." From development and

supply he went on to procurement, and

found the same "lethargy" and "lack of

boldness and imagination" there. "Something must be done now" to bring order to

this "most chaotic mess of all the

messes. ... " The solution he had in

mind was to give the Air Corps responsibility for every aspect of Air Corps communications: its development, standardization, procurement, inspection, storage,

issue, operation, maintenance, repair and

replacement; for communication, meteorology, navigation, photography, detect54

 AAF ATSC Hist Office, Radio and Radar Supply, Maintenance and Training by the Air Service

Command (Dayton, 1944), pp. 8-12. USAF Archives

201-41 (2802-3A).
272 THE SIGNAL CORPS

MAJ. GEN. JOSEPH O. MAUBORGNE. (Photograph taken in 1937.)

ing, bombing, search, identification, and

instrument landing; for radio, radar, and

wire; for ground and air.55

The heat grew intense. Speculation and

rumor flew about. General Mauborgne

was due to retire at the end of September

after four years as Chief Signal Officer.

Suddenly the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj.

Gen. Richard C. Moore, got in touch with

General Olmstead at Fort Monmouth.

Olmstead came to Washington, General

Marshall examined him searchingly, and

General Mauborgne was relieved of his

statutory responsibility six weeks early.56

He was directed to spend his remaining

time as Chief Signal Officer making visits

to Signal Corps activities throughout the

United States, and left Washington almost

immediately. General Olmstead took up

his duties as Acting Chief Signal Officer.

He immediately initiated extraordinary

efforts to satisfy the demands of Secretary

Stimson, Assistant Secretary Lovett, General Marshall, and General Arnold. On 15

August, only a week after the Air Corps

had presented its bill of particulars, a

single meeting of the Signal Corps Technical Committee standardized fifteen of

the new radio and radar devices.57 The

sweeping action confirmed the British airto-surface-vessel, airborne interception,

ground-controlled interception, identification—friend or foe, and very high frequency command equipment. It also approved the American airborne interception, identification—friend or foe, and

ultrahigh-frequency command equipment. There were three more for the Coast

Artillery, but all of these others—twelve

sets out of the fifteen—were for the Air

Corps.

Having the advantage, the Air Corps

55

 Memo, Asst Tech Exec AAF Mat Div for Tech

Exec, 6 Aug 41, sub: SigC deficiencies. AAG 322.081

SigC Activities 1932-45, USAF Mat Comd Central

Files. 56

 Four years later, General Marshall had forgotten

any pressing reason for the action. In the hearings

before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the Pearl Harbor attack, Senator Ferguson of

Michigan, questioning him on a meeting of the "little

war cabinet" held with the President on November

24, 1941, asked whether the appointment of General

Olmstead had any particular significance. Quoting

from Secretary of War Stimson's diary, Senator

Ferguson read: "On November 24, 1941 I had a talk

with General Olmstead, whom I recently promoted

to be chief signal officer." Said Ferguson, "Were you

having trouble with the signal officer that you were

going to get a new one?" General Marshall replied

that he did not think the appointment of a new Chief

Signal Officer had anything to do with the White

House meeting. General Mauborgne's term was

about to expire—"I think it expired, and we were

bringing in General Olmstead as his successor." Pearl

Harbor Attack: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on

the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Pt. 3, p.

1279. 57

 SigC Tech Committee Meeting No. 198-A. SigC

Hist Sec File, A46-160.
WORKING FOR THE AIR FORCES 273

MAJ. GEN. DAWSON OLMSTEAD.

(Photograph taken in 1943.)

did not pursue it unfairly. Many Air

Corps officers recognized Signal Corps

difficulties. The more perceptive of them

thoroughly understood that radio fabrication was as lengthy a process, demanding

as much forenotice, as airplane fabrication.58

 They were also aware that the Signal Corps had cause to object when, without notification to it, Wright Field bought

communications equipment outright from

the Bendix Corporation for some Hudson

bombers, thus directly cutting in upon one

of the major facilities for supply. "Now the

Signal Corps officer is all mad about it,"

Wright Field reported. "Yes," responded

the executive in the office of the Chief of

the Air Corps, "but I agree with Wally

Smith that in the future he should be advised so that he can still be on speaking

terms with Mike Mitchell."

 59

Most significantly of all, Colonel Marriner intervened for moderation. Hearing

from Dr. Karl Compton of the Radiation

Laboratory's new experimental 10-centimeter ASV, General Arnold considered

procuring it independently of the Signal

Corps, then extended that consideration

to beginning positive action upon the

matter of taking over procurement altogether. He went so far as to have a letter

for Assistant Secretary Lovett drafted, requesting that the Air Corps be given

authority to procure the AI, ASV, and

other disputed items of the year's battle.

Marriner, however, suggested that the

time was "not opportune for starting

another fight with the Signal Corps." He

advised rather that the Air Corps ask the

Signal Corps to procure the ASV-10 and

"see what they can do before we ask

General Arnold to take the matter up

with Lovett. Otherwise, it may kick back

and put the General in an embarrassing

spot."60 Marriner's caution was sensibly

conditioned by the fact that the Air Corps

could not use the ASV-10 until a major

58

 E.g., (1) Msg E-522, Exec to Tech Exec AC Mat

Div, 19 Aug 41; (2) Ltr, Maj Alfred H.Johnson, Chief

of GFE Br Production Engr Sec, to Chief Production

Engr Sec, attn: All Airplane Brs, 20 Dec 41, sub:

Radio equip requisitioned for plane contracts. AAG

413.44 Radio Equip, 1940-41, USAF Mat Comd

Central Files. 59

 (1) Msg E-495, Exec to Tech Exec AC Mat Div,

18 Aug 41; (2) Record of phone conversation between

Lt Col Bennett E. Meyers, Mat Div Office Chief of

AC, and Col Kenneth B. Wolfe, Mat Div Wright

Field, 18 Aug 41; (3) Msg E-516, Exec to Col Wolfe,

18 Aug 41. In same file. 60

 (1) Ltr, Compton to Gen Arnold, 29 Aug 41; (2)

Memo, Col Marriner for Gen Spaatz, CofS Office

Chief of AC, 4 Sep 41, sub: Proc of ASV-10 (10-

centimeter sea search equip), with Incl Draft Ltr,

Arnold to ASWA, same sub; (3) Ltr, "Si" [Marriner]

to Lt Col Wallace G. Smith, Radio Liaison Sec, Office

Chief of AC, 18 Sep 41, sub: Radio equip—comments

on trip to Boston. AAG 413.4-D Coms Equip. (4)

Martin P. Claussen, The Development of Radio and

Radar Equipment for Air Operations, 1939-1944, pp.

14-16. Photostat in SigC Hist Sec File.
274 THE SIGNAL CORPS

structural change in its bombers could be

worked out.

The new Acting Chief Signal Officer

meanwhile itemized the status of the new

equipment. The radar and related radio

program which his predecessor had approved at the end of June for the fiscal

year now just begun amounted to nearly a

quarter of a billion dollars on the estimate

sheets. The amount covered the entire

complex for air defense, whether for Coast

Artillery Corps sites, the Air Defense

Command, the Aircraft Warning Service,

or the Air Corps centrally. The two

months intervening had made little difference except the same one: that the more

requirements were met, the more there

were to be met. The need for 5,400 pipsqueak contactors had become a need for

12,000; for 15,000 airborne IFF's, 30,000.61

Everywhere through the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer there was the effect of

a burst of activity. This, or something else,

averted the coup which Air Corps policy

had contemplated and left the Signal

Corps in charge for another three years.

61

 (1) Memo, Maj Elder for CSigO, 28 Jun 41; (2)

Incl to Memo, Gen Olmstead for Bundy, 5 Sep 41.

SigC 676.3 ET 1, 1942.
CHAPTER XI

Signaling the Hemisphere

To the Northwest and the Northeast

In the presence of an undefined, imminent attack, the Army, like the population

which maintained it, and the Signal Corps,

like any other part of the Army, were

sprawlingly but certainly collecting their

forces to resist. The scene for this resistance, except for the Philippine Islands,

had now become a hemisphere extending

from Iceland to the central Pacific. Its

bastions, from the point of view of the continental forty-eight states at the center,

were the flanking land masses and the

islands, large and small, to the northwest,

the northeast, and the southeast.

In the continental northwest, Alaskan

defense was growing from the lone detachment at Chilkoot Barracks which for many

years had been the entire garrison of the

Territory. When the infant Alaska Defense

Force became the Alaska Defense Command in February 1941, Fort Richardson,

the Anchorage headquarters of Brig. Gen.

Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., was made up

of one permanent building, a log hut, and

a tent camp.1 But each of them was a positive mark toward realization of a hemispheric plan. The adjacent Elmendorf

Field was emerging. Ladd Field was in

process of construction at Fairbanks, and

several Ninth Corps Area signalmen were

installing telephone lines.

As a result of an authorization to multiply strength to a total of 175 skilled operators throughout Alaska,2

 there were 45

Alaska Communication System men at

Anchorage by April, which was almost as

many as at the Seattle headquarters.

Juneau had 29, Ketchikan 22, and Fairbanks 14. The geographical growth of the

system over the mighty subcontinent was

even more significant. There were stations

at Sitka, Kodiak, Nome, Seward, Kanakanak, Cordova, Bethel, and Wrangell,

with from three to six men each; there

were one-man and two-man outposts at

Skagway, Haines, Petersburg, Annette,

Yakutat, Valdez, Kotzebue, Point Barrow,

Nulato, Craig, and Flat; and on the list to

complete the expansion were Big Delta,

Boundary, Cold Bay, Dutch Harbor, Gulkana, McGrath, Naknek, Otter Point,

Port Heiden, and Ruby.3

This was far more than a tally of place

names, although it looked like far less to

the men who were assigned to them. The

overseas or territorial aircraft warning

services were being held up for lack of

1

 Ltr, Col Harry L. Vitzthum, Dir Control Div

OCSigO, to Sig Officer Alaska Defense Comd, 10 Nov

43, sub: Hist of Sig Sec Hq Alaska Defense Comd. Hq

Alaska Defense Comd Files. 2

 Congress had increased the total enlisted strength

of the Alaska Communication System to 280. Hearings

Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,

HR, 77th Cong, 1st Sess, On War Department Civil

Functions Bill for 1942, 19 Mar 41, pp. 22-23. 3

 (1) O/C Alaska Com System Rpt, Radio Facilities

of Alaska Communication System, 25 Apr 41; (2)

[OCSigO Com Liaison Div] Revised Frequency

Allocations [25 Jul 42]. SigC AC 63.
276 THE SIGNAL CORPS

REMOTE RECEIVER STATION, Alaska Communication System, at Juneau. (Photograph taken in 1947.)

housing at the detector sites, and the same

thing was true of the transmitter and receiver stations for a communications network flung over empty miles of wilderness.4

Quarters had to be built. Photographs

went to the War Department to picture

the tumbled-down shacks which were all

that existed at some stations. Even at Anchorage, the radio station was neither at

Fort Richardson nor at Elmendorf Field,

but eleven miles away by a dangerous

road. Many of the stations were so lonely

or so rawly new that there was no kind of

shelter to rent, at any price, even when the

rental allowance was increased to a dollar

and a half a day. Furthermore, the Signal

Corps had a general policy of sending

married men to such duty, in the humane

persuasion that a wife could make a bleak

and forsaken spot tolerable. Thus neither

barracks some distance away, shacks close

by, or more per diem money would do. In

order to give the weather reports and communications service required of them, the

station operators had to live where they

worked. In due time, the War Department

approached the Division of Defense Housing Coordination in the Office for Emergency Management for the funds for this

humble aspect of grand strategy.5

4

 Memo, Col Stewart W. Stanley, Exec Officer

OCSigO, for Asst Chief of Air Staff Office Chief of

AAF, 2 Oct 41, sub: Plan for proc and tng of pers

authorized for duty with AAF. SigC 402 Pers—Gen

Air, Jul 41-Aug 42. OT 320.2. 5

 SigC File 600.1 Alaska, passim.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 277

The department did so in acceding to a

full-scale expansion of the Alaska Communication System which ultimately

turned the quasi-commercial peacetime

organization into a complete army communications service. Believing that the

Pacific coast line could not be defended

without a considerably more extensive

communications system than existed,

General Buckner demanded long-line

radio to connect, in one large administrative network, all of the outpost garrisons

which he planned, the new airfields, the

ships on patrol, the coastal stations of artillery and aircraft warning, and his headquarters at Anchorage. It was late in the

summer when it became apparent that

the most efficient way to provide the network would be to enlarge the Alaska Communication System. The Signal Corps obtained an initial $116,655 to buy more

equipment, and permission to plan stations at a dozen remote fastnesses not

hitherto reached.

Simultaneously, a survey was made of

the whole field of Alaskan and western

Canadian communications. Associated

with the agreement between Canada and

the United States to co-ordinate their air

defenses, the survey revealed a considerable diversity and extent of possible communications.6

 Short of the time when the

Alaska Defense Command administrative

network, the Alaska Defense Command

tactical network, and the Army Airways

Communications System network for

flight control would come into existence,

there would be the possibility, if properly

integrated, of a radio, telephone, telegraph, and teletype system made up from

many private, local, commercial, and governmental facilities. These included the

Civil Aeronautics Administration stations,

naval air traffic and naval administrative

stations, the networks of Northwest Airlines and of Pan American Airways, various other commercial stations operated

principally by canneries, the facilities of

the Alaska Indian Service, of the Alaska

Fisheries Service, of the Alaska Game

Commission, and of the Alaska Railroad,

the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railroad wire facilities, aerological

stations, local district defense stations,

amateur facilities, Coast Guard radioequipped shore units, and the unexpanded

Alaska Communication System.7 The degree to which Buckner might be dependent upon all of these facilities was demonstrated by the fact that until Pearl Harbor

the Alaska Defense Command's total

complement of signalmen was 143. These

were the members of a signal aviation construction company, a signal service company, and the long radarless aircraft

warning company.

A unique and fortunate decision taken

in connection with Northwest defense

needs was to recondition and restore to

use the Alaska cable. The cable ship

Restorer sailed from Victoria on October 7,

repaired breaks at Resurrection Bay,

Trocadero Bay, and the Seward cable

landing, sailed into a gale at Ketchikan,

the terminal point both for the Seward

cable to the northwest and the Seattle

cable to the southeast, yet managed to

complete the work by the first week of November. Just before Pearl Harbor the

6

 (1) Rpt by Wing Comdr C. R. Slemon, Western

Air Comd, Victoria, B.C., Aircraft Inspection Corps,

RCAF, With Reference to the Coordination of the

Defense of the Puget Sound Area, 22 Oct 40. SigC

107 Jt U.S.-Canadian-U.K. Committee on RDF. (2)

Memo, CSigO for ACofS WPD, 27 Mar 41. AAG

413.4-B Coms Equip, 1941. 7

 (1) SigC AC-77 Alaska, passim. (2) [Hist Sec

Alaskan Dept] Official History of the Alaskan Department, Ch. XIV, Communications, pp. 315-37.

OCMH.
278 THE SIGNAL CORPS

THE CABLE SHIP RESTORER. Note the cable grapple hanging from the bow of the ship.

cable took its place as the central link between General Buckner's headquarters

and General De Witt's Fourth Army

headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco. A telephone land line was used between Anchorage and Seward, then the

cable to Seattle, and then a teletype circuit to San Francisco.8

 The cable restoration was fortunate not only because it provided a secure transmission means when

the surprise at Pearl Harbor shook security, but also because it provided almost

the only one. For despite promises, the administrative radio network was not ready

until mid-1942.

Matters also moved with slowness on

the creation of aircraft warning facilities.

Buckner had agreed that the Alaska Communication System should handle the

communications for the aircraft warning

service as well as provide the administrative Alaska Defense Command network,

so that when one was delayed, the other

was, too. Furthermore, the detector stations at Fairbanks, Kodiak, and Sitka and

an information center at Anchorage had

8

 (1) Ltrs, O/C Alaska Com System to CSigO, 6

Nov 41, sub: Monthly progress rpt on expansion of

Alaska Com System, and 15 Nov 41, sub: Weekly

progress rpt on same. SigC AC-25. (2) Msg, Alaska

Com System Seattle to CG Fourth Army Presidio, 3

Dec 41. SigC 413.4 No. 1.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 279

been approved for more than a year before they were finished, and a half-strength

aircraft warning company had been waiting for six months. The entire Territory of

Alaska was to be one Aircraft Warning

Service region, according to plan, and to

be subdivided into twelve sectors each

with a filter center at its principal airfield

or Army establishment. War overtook this

proposal, and only five radars altogether

were assigned to Alaska until the Dutch

Harbor scare.9

Radars were being assigned under what

seemed a greater urgency to other parts of

the defense perimeter. In July the United

States moved outward to take Iceland into

its military defense zone. On 6 August the

Signal Aircraft Warning Company of Task

Force 4 arrived to establish itself on the

island, especially at the British radio direction-finding stations at Vik, Olfus, and

Grotta. Disembarked at Reykjavik with

several SCR-268's and SCR-270-B's, the

men looked over the situation. A system of

coast watching, maintained by the British

Navy, was in operation, but long delays in

getting information from the observers to

the control headquarters had made the

system ineffective. The industrial development of Iceland was too limited to provide

much power. The island's telephone system could be invoked only in emergencies; to use it would be to lose secrecy, and

in any case it was inadequate. The rugged

landscape offered numberless commanding sites where warning stations could be

set up, but inaccessibility or the extent to

which the mountains echoed the pulses

ruled out all but a few sites, principally

along the coast. As for the weather, although the cold that year proved not to

be severe, in midwinter the gales rose

high; and the northern lights caused electrostatic disturbances close to the ground.

A temporary fighter-control room began twenty-four-hour operation at the

airdrome by the end of August. On duty

were an Aircraft Warning Service officer,

an Air Corps officer who supervised the

traffic control for the interceptor planes,

and two enlisted men who plotted on map

overlays the information coming in from

the spotter craft and stations. On 1 September an SCR-270-B began searching

the skies at Grindavik, on a beach fortyseven feet above sea level. As soon as an

Engineer platoon had constructed an

access road up a mountain two miles to

the north, the radar was moved to its permanent site. The men had to take it up

the mountainside part by part and reassemble it at the summit in Quonset huts,

the generators being 500 yards from the

top and the radar actually at the top.

From this point of vantage the scope

tracked surface vessels at ranges from 80

to 90 miles (although dependably only up

to 70 miles), noted echoes as far away as

100 miles, and all in all obtained a clear

sweep from approximately 90° true

azimuth to 360°.

It had not originally been contemplated

that civilians would be sent to overseas defense areas, but the Icelandic radar could

never have got into operation so early if

they had not been called upon. Signal

Corps Laboratories engineers who had

studied Signal Corps radar almost from

the beginning answered an appeal made a

day before sailing time and, reaching Iceland, did at Grindavik what they had

been learning to do in New Jersey at

Sandy Hook and Twin Lights. For the

time being, the Americans were too shorthanded to take over the British CH and

9

 AG File 660.2 AA Sec 5 AWS Fourth Army,

passim.
280 THE SIGNAL CORPS

CHL at Grotta, Olfus, and Vik. But other

radar stations came into being soon afterward. An SCR-268 began to be used at

Camp Catherine, near Reykjavik, during

the middle of October.

By that time, also, signalmen had begun

to install a fixed radio station near Reykjavik to provide direct communications

with WAR. They completed it in forty

days, and opened it slightly less than a

month before the United States entered

the war. The radio plan had further called

for an administrative net of three stations,

but on the assumption that the existing

communications in the island would be

adequate it had been suspended before

the material for them had cleared New

York. It was revived late in the year, but a

tower of other claims had priority over it

then. The material was ultimately shipped

in February 1942. Because they were dissatisfied with the wire communications

which their British predecessors had

patched together and made to serve, the

Americans also worked out a carrier wire

system at a cost of $4,500,000, and, after

the war had begun, contracted with the

American Telephone and Telegraph Company to build it.10

The Danish permission to use Iceland

and Greenland, along with the exchange

of destroyers for bases in British colonies,

led to a general North Atlantic extension

of the Army Command and Administrative Network. An American survey party,

drawn from the State, Treasury, War, and

Navy Departments, set out for Greenland

in March, and Army Command and Administrative Networks stations followed

the survey at the spots which came to be

known as BLUIE WEST 1 (Narsarssuak),

BLUIE WEST 3 (Simintak), and, after more

than a year, at BLUIE WEST 8 (Sondrestromfjord). These were respectively onekilowatt, 350-watt, and 300-watt stations.11

Fifteen signalmen established the communications at the Narsarssuak airstrip.

Reaching Greenland on 8 July after a succession of changes had delayed their sailing, they had the station installed and in

some working order by 17 September. The

site was temporary, and a tidal river 800

feet wide repeatedly threatened the control lines. Of the gravest significance were

the meteorological interruptions, which,

cutting off all contact with the outside

world for as long as thirty-six hours,

pointed up the inadequacy of these communications for any such project as the

Eighth Air Force BOLERO movement put

upon them in a few more months.

Nevertheless, its importance to hemispheric defense demanded that Greenland

become a major air base. Other units arrived. The I Interceptor Command provided for an officer and twenty-six enlisted

men of the 1st Aircraft Warning Company

to go to BLUIE WEST, among them being

men who, at the Signal Corps School, had

been the first American soldiers to be

trained in radar. Still more men detached

from the 50th Signal Battalion at Fort

Sheridan, Illinois, were sent to the New

York Port of Embarkation and then held

10

 (1) Capt Walter E. Lotz, Jr., Report on the

Progress and Future Plans of the AW System, Iceland,

for the Period August 6, 1941, to April 23, 1942. SigC

AC-76 Atlantic. (2) History of the 556th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion. AF Archives SIG-556-HI, 10

Jul 41, 5489-2. (3) Harold A. Zahl, "Signal Corps Research and Its Relationships to Educational Institutions," Signals, IV, No. 6 (July-August 1950), 23. (4)

1st Lt Charles R. Novick, A Story of Signal Communications in Iceland, 1944, pp. 7 ff. and 28 ff. SigC Hist

Sec File. 11

 A site at Angmagsalik for an east coast BLUIE was

not found until May 1942, and then found by air.

North Atlantic Div CE, Greenland (New York, 1946),

Vol. I, p. III-3. OCMH.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 281

there from September to January, because

there was no way to take care of them

once they got to Greenland.12

At St John's, the capital of Newfoundland, signalmen began by using ship's

radio in the harbor and, also aboard ship,

a 40-line magneto switchboard for telephone service to the local exchange. The

first immediate requirement was to extend

a wire line north to the site of the new airport, Gander Lake, a name which was to

become famous with the establishment of

transatlantic air ferrying and passenger

service. The next thing was to install a

1-kilowatt transmitter at St. John's, or,

rather, at nearby Quidi Vidi Lake, for the

use of Fort Pepperell. It was given the

call letters WVDN, and 300-watt satellites appeared at Gander, Fort McAndrew, and Harmon Field, the other

airfield on the west side of the island.

Three SCR-270 sites were to be selected,

as well as locations for radio intelligence

monitoring. At first, the base command

signal officer had so few men that he

wrote, "When I get them distributed to

their various activities of Supply, Telephony, Radio, Cryptography and Photography I have no men left to operate the

switchboard, to operate the message center or to construct any telephone lines."

By October, he was much better off, with

five officers beside himself and with 143

enlisted men.13

To the Southeast

Thus the arc of the great circle route to

Europe was arming itself on land and in

the air as it already had done at sea. The

events which brought this about were

tripling the area to be equipped and

manned in defense of the United States

from attack from the southeast. Beyond

the Panama Canal, now seriously endangered for the first time, lay the islandlocked Caribbean Sea. The United States

had been fortunate in the arrangement

which placed this region at American disposal for development of hemispheric defense; but the newly acquired sites on the

irregular string of British islands looked

out across the hostile Atlantic as well as in

upon the familiar Caribbean. Beyond

them, in turn, hemispheric interest now

reached into the equatorial Atlantic, two

thousand miles beyond Trinidad, the

southernmost of the chain, out to the

bulge of Brazil.

The build-up of the watery area for

which the West Indies make a spine put a

fierce pressure upon Trinidad because the

three axes of the defense converged there:

from Bermuda southward, from the Panama Canal Zone eastward, and from

Brazil and the Guianas northwestward.

By July the traffic became congested at

Trinidad. The 1-kilowatt radio and cryptographic station begun in March by ten

12

 (1) SigC File OT 676 Greenland Reports on

Communication 41-42, Summary of Events Relative

to Establishment of Garrisons on Bluie West. (2)

1st Lt David R. Guy, Post Sig Officer, Initial Report

on Signal Activities, Greenland Base Command, 13

Feb 42. In same file. (3) OCSigO Com Liaison Div

Chart, Army Administrative Radio System N. Atlantic, 19 May 42. SigC 676.3 (CG CEB) Canadian Ferry

Route. (4) Memo, Brig Gen Leonard T. Gerow for

TAG, 28 Jun 41, sub: Site for installation of longrange detector SCR-271. OCS 21001-21110. (5)

Memo, Chief of Opns Br OCSigO for CsigO, 23 Oct

41, sub: Rpt on deficiencies in equip, pers, and tng

of com units of U.S. Army. SigC OT 322 Gen. 13

 (1) Rpt by Capt Airel B. Cooper, Sig Officer

Newfoundland Base Comd, Progress of Signal Communications in Newfoundland Base Command, 17

Feb 41; (2) Reconnaissance of Newfoundland Airport, 10 May 41, extract from Plan for Permanent

Signal System—Newfoundland; (3) Newfoundland

Base Comd, Quarterly Report on Signal Activities,

10 Oct 41. SigC OT 676 T/E T/BA Gen, Channels,

Call Signs, etc., Conferences, Rpts, etc., Newfoundland, 1941-42.
282 THE SIGNAL CORPS

signalmen was endeavoring to handle all

of the Engineer Corps traffic created by

the far-flung construction activity. Circuits to St. Lucia and British Guiana began to supplement the circuits to Puerto

Rico and the Canal Zone, but neither

equipment nor manpower was sufficient.

Upon strong petition, the War Department authorized a greatly expanded radio

project. Trinidad was supposed to be built

up to a strength of 17,000, a garrison requiring a considerable maze of wire and

radio. Maj. Raymond C. Maude of the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer suggested after a personal survey that the

Trinidad Telephone Company, Ltd.,

could provide much of the wire service on

a leased-line basis, much as the Bell System would do in the United States, but

the fact developed later that the local

company's greatest asset was co-operative

spirit; its facilities were meager. The effort

to provide wire communication among the

scattered elements of the garrison was one

of the chief communications problems of

the whole Caribbean area. And Trinidad's

aircraft warning service was nonexistent;

as late as the end of August there were no

men assigned to it and the sites were still

in dispute.14

On Jamaica, the 12th Signal Service

Company's detachment of 14 men, who

had been assembled from so many sources,

billeted themselves at Fort Simonds and

opened a station for the area administrative net at Spanish Town. The Chief

Signal Officer expressed the opinion that

the commercial radiotelegraph at Kingston would sufficiently supplement the

military station, with no need for anything

more at the time. As it turned out in the

forthcoming years, this was entirely adequate. The current long-range planning

called for the defense of the island to be

built up over a period of five years. This

intention produced the first accession of

strength to the 14-man detachment when

the signal complement of Task Force

TUNA arrived with 14 more men. Still

another detachment of 14 went to Antigua, once Lord Nelson's base in the Leeward Islands, another to St. Lucia, and a

third to Atkinson Field, British Guiana.

The original aircraft warning complement

for Jamaica was to have been an aircraft

warning company, frontier—5 officers,

122 enlisted men—to operate an information center and two detector stations.

Three officers and 96 men got there during the summer. Permanent and temporary housing for 875 persons was on the

books for the immediate future, along

with four SCR-271's instead of two.15

The swift spread of areas of responsibility, with the need for radar, radiotelegraph, radioteletype, and wire in abundance, focused attention upon existing

14

 (1) AG Ltr, 4 Aug 41, sub: Radio requirements

Caribbean Defense Comd. SigC 676.3 Trinidad 2,

and also in AG 676.3 MC-E. (2) Ltr, Lt Col John C.

Grable to Maj Gen Harry C. Ingles, CofS Caribbean

Defense Comd, 14 Feb 42. SigC SIGLO 676.1 Gen

(2-14-42) Plant Engr Agency. (3) Ltr, Lt Gen Daniel

Van Voorhis, CG Caribbean Defense Comd, to TAG,

15 Jul 41, sub: Sig com Caribbean Defense Comd.

SigC OT 381 Puerto Rico Dept (Defense of), 1941.

(4) Ltr, CG Caribbean AF to CG Caribbean Defense

Comd, 25 Aug 41, sub: Augmentation of SigC troops

and Caribbean AF. AAG 320 6th AF. 15

 (1) Incl. Résumé of Installations To Be Made in

Jamaica, with Ltr, CSigO to Capt Charles M. Baer,

SigC, U.S. Engr Offices, Kingston, 8 Apr 41, same

sub; (2) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-3, 23 Sep 41,

sub: Increase of sig sv detachment Jamaica to 28 enlisted men; (3) Memo, ACofS G-1 for TAG, 29 Sep

41, sub: Sig sv detachment for Jamaica Base Comd

and Antigua; (4) Incl 1, Jamaica Defense Project,

with Ltr, TAG to CG Caribbean Defense Comd, 15

Nov 41, same sub. SigC OT 381 Jamaica Gen. (5)

Ltr, CSigO to Sig Officer Caribbean Defense Comd

[? Jul 41], sub: Radio station of Tropical Radio Telegraph Co. at Kingston, Jamaica. SigC OT 320.3

AWS.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 283

communications facilities everywhere, just

as was the case in the Canada-Alaska

region at the opposite corner of hemispheric signaling. Puerto Rico, for example, had four connections with the Panama

Canal Zone: a direct Navy radio link; the

Army connection, which signaled Washington and thence was relayed; Tropical

Radio, a commercial company, which

made the link by way of New Orleans;

and the All America cable, which ran directly to the Canal Zone. Tropical Radio

also joined Puerto Rico and Jamaica; and

RCA linked the island possession with two

of the destroyers-for-bases sites: Antigua

in the Leeward Islands, St. Lucia in the

Windwards. The British Cable and Wireless Company had a cable from Puerto

Rico to Trinidad and thence to British

Guiana. And finally, there were the usual

particularized systems of other commercial and governmental enterprises, together with a special American Legion

network. Thus a fairly sophisticated level

of communications existed on Puerto

Rico, associating the island with most of

the Gulf-Caribbean region.

Nevertheless, a major military undertaking like the just-established Caribbean

Defense Command seemed to require separate systems for its administrative, tactical, and air messages. General Buckner

thought Alaska needed them, and Lt.

Gen. Daniel Van Voorhis felt the same regarding his command. For the northwest,

Anchorage was a somewhat arbitrarily

chosen center point; but for the southeast,

the vital Canal Zone was the unchallenged center. Actually at the farthest rim

of the whole region, it was nonetheless the

focus of the entire intercontinental defense. The communications plan accordingly envisaged a huge radio network

providing the Quarry Heights headquarters of the command with generally direct

(in a few cases, auxiliary) connections

with Central America, the Greater and

Lesser Antilles, and the entire northern

coast of South America: that is to say,

with Camaguey, Kingston, Port-auPrince, Ciudad Trujillo, San Juan, Antigua, Martinique, St. Lucia, Trinidad,

British, Dutch, and French Guiana, northern and northeastern Brazil, cities of

Venezuela and Colombia, of Panama,

Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico, all

Army transports, and Washington and

San Francisco. An interlocking of 400-

watt and 1-kilowatt transmitters forged

the system. WVL, the Army Command

and Administrative Network's station in

the Canal Zone, was at the heart of it all.16

Since any number of SCR-188's and

SCR-197's would have been inadequate

to the task of such long-range communications, commercial equipment was called

for. The signal companies of the air and

composite wings, however, asked for and

got the standard ground radios and used

them, as intended, in tactical performance. The 12th Pursuit Wing, for example, preferred the SCR-188's for intercommunicating among its score of locations in

the republic of Panama. The wing commanding officer asked for 138 of these

radios.

Internally for Panama, as on the various islands, wire communication, with all

its flexibility and naturalness, was of

course ordinarily to be preferred to radio.

Brig. Gen. Harry C. Ingles was the Carib16

 (1) Maj John M. Baker, Hist Sec Caribbean

Comd, Communications and Radar in the Area of

the Caribbean Defense Command, 1940-1948, 1948,

pp. 31-35. OCMH. (2) Informal Rpt by Joint Committee, A Communications System Between the

United States Diplomatic, Military and Naval Agencies in the American Republics, 7 Dec 40. SigC OT

320.3 AWS.
284 THE SIGNAL CORPS

bean Defense Command signal officer,

and later the command chief of staff. He

argued convincingly that wire was a much

better and quicker circuit for the antiaircraft batteries, the end cause of the whole

elaborate defense structure. The Canal

antiaircraft commander had thought of

creating seventy-nine 75-watt stations—

still another network in the multinetted

area. Ingles showed him that the complications, the delay, and the confusion in

communicating during an attack would

be enormous, and killed the project.17

On a local scale wire telephone and

wire teletypewriter links became as significant as the great cross-water radio system. One of these lines, an "open" wire

line, strung on wooden poles, ultimately

connected Quarry Heights with two small

Panamanian towns, Aguadulce and Rio

Hato, at a cost of a quarter of a million.

Because there were no white construction

troops whom he thought capable of cutting through rough and hot country to

put up this pole line, Van Voorhis asked

for Negro soldiers. Organized at Fort

Leonard Wood, Missouri, and designated

the 275th Signal Construction Company,

they arrived on 8 December. On 7 December General Olmstead was inspecting

the route of the line with no pleasure at

all in what he saw. Other points were

equally lacking in wire facilities: Trinidad,

Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, British

Guiana, and Puerto Rico, where there

had to be wire systems to take care of the

projected naval base in Vieques Sound

and the aircraft warning and antiaircraft

installations steadily expanding from Borinquen Field on the west and Fajardo on

the east.

The strategic importance and relative

vulnerability of Panama had given it unquestioned priority also for aircraft warning. The first SCR-271 radar stations to

be installed outside the continental United

States were the two which had gone into

operation in mid-1940.18 One set was located at Fort Sherman on the Atlantic

side, and the second, the Signal Corps

Laboratories production model, on the

highest point on Taboga Island in the

Gulf of Panama on the Pacific side. The

natural desire to camouflage them was

thwarted when the installing crew found

that clearing away the heavy jungle

growth left the thirty-six-foot towers

nakedly visible. Lt. Col. James A. Code,

Jr., proposed installing the detectors in

underground bombproofs, and ultimately

this was done; but at the time, the Signal

Corps had barely got started on the production run of the SCR-271, and did not

welcome any change which would interrupt it. Elevating the towers to 100 feet in

order to escape the tropical verdure altogether would also have meant changes in

design; so until pressure at the Laboratories relaxed enough to permit a new

project, the crew was instructed to install

the 271's as originally approved.19

Other installation teams, made up of a

few officers and enlisted men, along with

civilian experts, were put ashore thereafter on the jungle-rimmed beaches, with

tents and a limited amount of radio equipment, in order to start choosing good

SCR-268 radar sites for gun batteries.

During the year, such units started work

at four locations on the Pacific side, from

17

 Baker hist cited n. 16(1), pp. 43-45. 18

 (1) Ibid., pp. 11-12. (2) Harry M. Davis, The

Signal Corps Development of U.S. Army Radar

Equipment, Pt. III, 1945, pp. 54, 93. SigC Hist Sec

File.

19

 (1) Ltr, CG Panama Canal Dept to TAG, 4 Mar

41, sub: Underground bombproof AWS SCR-271

stations, with inds. (2) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj

Gen James A. Code, Jr., Ret., 13 Sep 49, Chicago, Ill.
SCR-271 RADAR STATION IN PANAMA
286 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Costa Rica to Colombia (Burica Point,

Coiba Island, Mala Point, and Jaque); at

two on the Caribbean side (Almirante and

Pito); and at an interior spot, Pinagana.

Operation of the Aircraft Warning

Service in the Caribbean was a function of

the Air Corps, which controlled the Signal

Company, Aircraft Warning, Panama,

and the Signal Company, Aircraft Warning, Puerto Rico. The radar stations and

the ground observation stations fed information into a temporary filter center in

the basement of the headquarters building at Quarry Heights, which relayed it to

a control center on the third floor of the

base headquarters building at Albrook

Field. The assignment of operational responsibility paralleled the assignment of

responsibility for theater signals in general, where actual operations were carried

out by the signal officers of the Panama

Canal and Antilles Departments and the

Trinidad Sector and Base Command.20

Installation, maintenance, and supply

were distinctly Signal Corps duties.

"Everyone was more than willing to have

a share in selecting locations" for the detectors, filter stations, and information centers, but "content that the responsibilities

[for supply and maintenance] should lie

elsewhere."21 Ingles defined the relationship. The Sixth Air Force had the obligation to operate the Aircraft Warning Service and all its equipment, including the

radio and wire hookup of its various parts.

Everything else was the charge of the Signal Corps, through the local signal officers. This included even arranging with

the Engineers for access roads. The responsibility was principally composed of

the supply, installation, and heavy maintenance of all the equipment, and the furnishing of all the operators. It was this last

point which created so much disgruntlement, for it brought Signal Corps ratings

tinder Air Corps disposal; but as it was a

matter of established War Department

policy, Ingles was not free to do anything

about it.22 Until 15 July 1941, the General

Staff controlled aircraft warning, and

after that date the Signal Corps co-ordinated the program within the bounds

already set.23

From New Jersey

The requirement that the Signal Corps

produce the radar operators put a share of

the responsibility directly upon the Signal

Corps School and the Replacement Center at Fort Monmouth. In mid-June, for

instance, the Albrook Field commander

made a direct request for seventy-three

Monmouth-trained radarmen, and followed it up by outlining an aircraft warning service for the isthmus which would

demand many more than that.24 According to War Department plan, Panama was

to have two aircraft warning services, the

other overseas possessions one each. Panama, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the

Philippines were each to have an interceptor command25

 like the four interceptor commands being created for the

20

 Caribbean Defense Comd, Operations Plan,

Caribbean Theater, Annex 14: Signal Communication, 1 Dec 41. Caribbean Defense Comd File Hq and

Staff. 21

 Baker hist cited n. 16(1), p. 60. 22

 E.g., OCSigO R&W Action 1, Air Coms Div to

R&D Div, 18 Nov 41, sub: Responsibility for GCI

opn. SigC 413.44 British GCI (RB-2330). 23

 Ltr, TAG to Chief of Arms and Svs and Bureaus

and Divs of the WDGS, 15 Jul 41, sub: Controlled

activities FY 42. AG 112.05 (7-11-41) MD-D-M. 24

 Ltrs, CO 12th Pursuit Wing to CG Caribbean

AF, 17 Jun 41, sub: Requisition for qualified men sig

co AWS, and 20 Jun 41, sub: T/O's for AWS Orgns.

AF Archives Documents 6th AF. 25

 Memo for File, 23 Jul 41, sub: AWS equip. SigC

676.3 AWS ET 1, 1942.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 287

continental United States. Interceptor airplanes and antiaircraft guns completed

the aircraft warning mission which radars

excited. An aircraft warning service was a

regional collaboration of instruments of

observation, instruments of communication, and instruments of destruction, in

that order: from the "spotter," the sound

locator, or the electronic detector to the

filter room and information center plotting

boards to the gunfire closing with the

enemy. Through its equipment, the Signal Corps was a part of this fabric at

almost every thread. In its operating assignments, it served two stages of the process. And its training mission was foremost

in the first.

Since signalmen sent to the offshore

bases were primarily aircraft warning

troops, Monmouth communicated very

directly with hemispheric defense.26 In

May, the Air Defense Board, which was

composed of the Chief Signal Officer, the

Chief of Coast Artillery, and the commanding general of the GHQ Air Force,

determined that the Air Corps should be

strengthened by 1,238 officers and 7,796

enlisted men, to implement its share of the

air defense system, while the Signal Corps

should be granted an immediate increase

of 2,200 officers and 40,200 enlisted men.

For the Signal Corps alone, this added up

to three times the total number of men actually on aircraft warning duty at the

time. Most of the aircraft warning companies in existence were mobile companies. Other units had to be developed

for the fixed coastal sector stations. The

Fourth Army on the Pacific Coast was to

have four aircraft warning companies,

frontier; the First and Third were to have

three each for the eastern and southern

coastlines. The board recommended that

the continental aircraft warning personnel receive at the minimum military training equivalent to that given by the Signal

Corps Replacement Training Center and

be activated and organized at stations

chosen by the commanding general of the

Air Forces one month before the delivery

date of their radar equipment. Aircraft

warning men destined for overseas stations, the board declared, should receive

four months' training before leaving the

United States.27

Necessity slowed down the rate of this

recommended extension, but even the first

fraction of it, with the rest to follow, made

a sufficiently large impression. The Chief

of Coast Artillery proposed a joint school

in which his service, the Signal Corps, and

the Air Corps would all share, and to

which the reception centers would send

carefully chosen men to be trained exclusively in aircraft warning. The Air Corps

dissented, but the other two went ahead

with the plan.28 Pending anything so

ambitious, the Aircraft Warning Department at the Signal Corps School expanded

from 100 to 900 students, who would

spend four months learning to be radio

electricians and three more to be maintenance men or operators. Maj. Gen. Dawson Olmstead asked for and got $1,200,000

more to create the buildings and equipment for this first part of the anticipated

26

 Memo, CSigO for Maj Henry I. Hodes, G-3

WDGS, 23 Sep 40, sub: SigC troops required for immediate occupation for bases to be acquired from

Great Britain. SigC OT 381 Jamaica Gen. 27

 Air Defense Bd Rpt, WP&T Div OCSigO, 4 Sep

41, pp. 6, 14-18. SigC 334.7 ET (RD). 28

 (1) Ltr, Chief of CAC to TAG, 30 Jul 41, sub:

Proc and tng of radio detector pers, and 1st Ind, Actg

CSigO to TAG, 14 Aug 41. SigC MT-31 352 Southern SigC School. (2) Ltr, Actg CSigO to CG AF Combat Comd, 30 Aug 41, same sub, and 1st Ind Reply,

20 Sep 41; (3) Memo for File by Maj William P.

Pence, 28 Nov 41, sub: Conference on establishment

of joint school for tng of radio detection pers. SigC

MT-38 353 Gen.
288 THE SIGNAL CORPS

total, and set the Operations Branch of his

office to preparing plans for the rest. As

these plans developed, providing for

courses in a dozen radars beside the original three, they rapidly exceeded the capacity of the Aircraft Warning Department and then the capacity of the School

and the Replacement Training Center

both. Briefly, while the contemplated total

stood at 11,777 aircraft warning men to be

trained, a center in Texas was planned;

then it was put in Florida instead; and

eventually it led to two installations: the

Signal Corps' Camp Murphy at Hobe

Sound and the Air Corps' Drew Field at

Tampa.29

As if to flout the planning, reality

showed the Aircraft Warning Department amply able to take care of any and

all students being sent to it. Through class

after class, the Air Corps failed to fill its

quotas, and the Coast Artillery Corps also

lagged from time to time, although both

had as much interest as the Signal Corps

in accomplishing the training. Sometimes

men failed the basic radio course in the

Enlisted Department and had to repeat it,

with their intended places in the aircraft

warning classes going empty for four more

months. And quite often, answering the

appeals from the hemispheric outposts, the

Office of The Adjutant General pulled

men out before they had finished, and

formed them into cadres for new AWS

units.30 The shortage or absence of equipment for radar training was equally real.

Possibly it was a higher hurdle to training,

for there was no substitute for radar. Even

with A-1-A or AA priorities, a manufacturer required six or eight months to produce a detector set; and when he had, the

Air Corps, determining the use to be made

of it, naturally enough assigned it to active

duty rather than to the classroom. Yet a

tactical assignment at this stage deprived

many a radar of its widest use, for only the

relatively few men of the operating crew

could become familiar with it, whereas

large numbers of men would have had

access to it at a training center.31

Nine tenths of the planning for training

radarmen was for training enlisted men.

For officers, the planners first assumed

that study would be provided at civilian

technological schools—an expansion of

the peacetime practice, as it were, of sending officers to Sheffield at Yale or to the

Massachuetts Institute of Technology. The

Canadian aircraft warning school at

Clinton, Ontario, also agreed to take

officer students. Then arose one of the

most interesting of all the training experiments. The National Defense Research

Committee stepped to the fore again and

suggested an Electronics Training Group.

Upon his return from a trip to England

in April, Dr. James B. Conant, president

of Harvard University and member of the

National Defense Research Committee,

saw President Roosevelt and proposed it.32

29

 (1) Ltr, OCSigO to TAG, 7 Oct 41, sub: Expansion of aircraft warning course at SigC School, and 1st

Ind, AGO to CSigO, 25 Oct 41. SigC School Hq 352

Aircraft Warning Dept 3/31/41-1/12/42, Item 43.

(2) Ltr, Col Otis K. Sadtler to Comdt SigC School, 25

Nov 41, sub: Expansion of SigC School. SigC School

Hq 352 Aircraft Warning Dept 3/31/41-1/12/42,

Item 70. (3) Hearings Before Subcommittee of Committee

on Appropriations, HR, 77th Cong, 3d Sess, On the 3d

Supplemental National Defense Appropriations Bill

for 1942, Pt. 2, p. 46. (4) Signal Corps Information

Letter, No. 1 (new ser., December, 1941), p. 43. (5)

OCSigO R&W Action 1, Air Coms Div to Mil Pers

Div, 21 Nov 41. SigC MP 320.22 Requirements Enlisted Men. 30

 Ltr, Brig Gen George L. Van Deusen, Actg

Comdt SigC School, to CSigO, 25 Oct 41, sub: Students for Aircraft Warning Dept course. SigC Sch Hq

352 Aircraft Warning Dept 3/31/41-1/12/42. 31

 (1) 1st Ind, TAG to CSigO, 25 Oct 41, on Ltr,

CSigO to TAG, 7 Oct 41, sub: Expansion of aircraft

warning course at SigC School. In same file. (2) Ltr,

Col Sadtler to Comdt SigC School, 4 Dec 41. SigC

MT-34 353 AWS Ft. Monmouth. 32

 Baxter, Scientists Against Time, p. 123.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 289

In effect, the Electronics Training Group

was an application of the principle of

lend-lease and of the destroyers-for-bases

agreement also. That is to say, it contemplated putting the resources of the United

States at the service of those engaged in

withstanding the common enemy, just as

the nation undertook in the mutual interest to protect Great Britain's colonies in

the Western Hemisphere. Conant's proposal and Roosevelt's approval of it were

fundamentally more daring; for the

resources involved were not property or

matériel but men. As worked out and

agreed upon by the National Defense Research Committee, the General Staff, representatives of the British, and the Signal

and Air Corps, the program undertook to

select, as a beginning, from 250 to 500

men with experience in electric communications, commission them as 2d lieutenants in the Reserve, give them three weeks

of preliminary training at the Signal

Corps School, and send them to England

to be student-observers at the radar stations and filter centers there.33

 Three

months of a training period of eight

months would be spent at one of nearly a

dozen British air warning schools, and five

months in actual service at defense stations in the British Isles. Great Britain

urged a full year rather than eight months,

but in America Reserve officers could not

yet be kept in service longer than a year,

so that it was impracticable to assign the

officers of the Electronics Training Group

to England for the entire span.

With classes of 50 beginning at frequent

intervals, the British, according to forecast,

would train 700 men (the ultimate number was greater), between 250 and 300 of

whom would remain in England. The rest

would return to Aircraft Warning Service

operation and training posts in the United

States. The details to be considered were

dauntingly numerous. There were such

matters as National Registration identity

cards, ration books, and curfew exemptions for the group, the question whether

they should wear uniforms or civilian

clothes when on leave, and the difference

in the pay scale of British and American

officers. Officers assigned to air duty were

to be given flight pay. Air Vice-Marshal

Sir Philip Joubert was of the opinion that

the American officers' advantage in pay

would not antagonize the British officers

with whom they would serve; and he

anticipated no dissension arising from

American officers' either having to take

orders from British superiors or giving

them to British soldiers. Among all, one

point which was inadequately discussed

was the method to be used for keeping

track of American officers scattered

through British units after their first three

months.34 Upon this reef in the Electronics

Training Group many a fresh career

foundered, men who had been the first

choice at the time they were commissioned

being lost sight of, left unpromoted and,

what was far more serious, marooned in

outmoded assignments when a thousand

needs for their capacities and talents had

become pressing.35

33

 Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 8 May 41, sub: Appointment of 250-500 2d Its Sig Reserve. SigC 210.2 Gen. 34

 (1) Maj Marion Van Voorst, SigC, Notes on Conference Held in [Brig] General [Raymond E.] Lee's

Office, 6 P.M., 27 May 41. SigC 352.11 ETG. (2) Ltr,

TAG to CSigO, 10 Jun 41, sub: Appointment of 2d

lts Sig Sv for AWS. AG 210.1 SigC. (3) Memo, CSigO

for ACofS G-2, 30 Jun 41, which is paraphrase of

Msg, Mil Attache, London, to WD, 18 Jul 41. SigC

352.11 ETG. (4) Signal Corps Information Letter, No.

1 (new ser., December, 1941), p. 13. 35

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Maj Gen Alfred

W. Marriner, USAF Ret., Tech Dir IT&T, N.Y., 13

Feb 50. (2) Incl, Report on Radar Maintenance for

Antiaircraft and Coastal Defense in North African

Theater, with Ltr, CG AGF to CG's All Major AGF

Comds, 18 Aug 43, sub: Observations in North Africa

11 May to 23 Jul 43. SCIA File Misc Observer Rpts,

No. 46, Folder 1.
290 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Monmouth established the Electronics

Training Group as a branch of the Officers

Department at the Signal Corps School,

and a campaign began to recruit the

candidates. Dr. Vannevar Bush, the National Defense Research Committee chairman, designated George Bailey, the president of the American Radio Relay

League, to head the recruiting. To qualify

for an appointment as a 2d lieutenant, a

candidate had to be single, free of dependents, within the draft age of 21 to 36, a

university graduate in electrical engineering or physics, and reasonably well acquainted with radio or electronics. The

ROTC was considered the most likely

source. Newspapers, magazines, and radio

broadcasting stations carried the recruiting announcements, but the response was

not overwhelming. The Signal Corps was

offering the lowest officer rank to men who

could expect more; the prospects in industry were much better even for men of

less qualification. First one and then

another officer of the Military Personnel

Division of the Office of the Chief Signal

Officer toured both cities and Army

camps, and ultimately turned up 2,000

applications. Four hundred appeared to

warrant consideration, and the recruiting

continued.36

In July, the first class, thirty-five new 2d

lieutenants, reported to Fort Monmouth

for their three weeks' basic training: military courtesy, organization of the Army,

mission signal communication, administration, property accounting, Signal Corps

depot organization, defense against chemical attack, physical training, and drill. At

the same time, others began to study at

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, NDRC having prevailed

upon both to institute courses under a program financed by the United States Office

of Education. The successive classes organized at the Signal Corps School and

sent to Great Britain comprised the Electronics Training Group proper. Those who

went to Boston and Cambridge to do their

work were enrolled in the Electronics

Training Program. Both projects were administered, with more or less attention,

from the New Jersey center. Generally

speaking, those new Reserve 2d lieutenants who went to England were either the

first and therefore the most urgently

needed, whatever their qualifications, or

they were the most experienced, because

training in the United Kingdom was

pressed into little more than half the time

allowed for it at Harvard and M. I. T.

For those whose training in radar was

to begin at a relatively elementary stage,

the Harvard course at the Cruft Laboratory offered the fundamentals of electronics, stressing the operation of the

cathode-ray tube and other components.

M. I. T.'s, more advanced, organized the

components into specific radar systems

and included the study of antennas and

ultrahigh-frequency circuits. Only a part

of the officers taking these courses were

Electronics Training Program men. Army,

Navy, and Marine officers attended them

as well in order to be given the same special and rare knowledge. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology began its first

course on June 23 without an SCR-268

until just before the end of the three

months' session. Harvard commenced on

July 17. Those who did not qualify at

Harvard for the M. I. T. course were as36

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-1, 29 May 41,

sub: Pers to attend aircraft warning course at M.I.T.

SigC 676.3 AWS Gen 1. (2) Memo, Gen Olmstead for

Bundy, Special Asst to SW, 15 Aug 41. SigC 352.11

ETG. (3) Ltr, Maj Harrod G. Miller, Hq II Interceptor Comd, to Maj Harold O. Bixby, OCSigO, 21 Aug

41. SigC Hist Sec File.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 291

signed to service schools or to troops.37

Delays kept the first Electronics Training Group class at Fort Monmouth until

September. On the 12th, the men left for

Montreal, and sailed for England three

days later aboard the transformed Empress

of Asia. It had been agreed with the

British that they would be listed as military observers. In the recruiting, the press

had referred to them variously as electrical experts, electric sentries, and the

electronics battalion. Since the United

States was in an equivocal position, not

being at war with the Axis nations, security officers were therefore understandably

wry when the secret aspect of the mission

was immediately lost. The King and

Queen reviewed the first men soon after

their arrival, and New York and hometown newspapers printed the pictures.

The commander of the Group, Lt. Col.

Willis R. Lansford, had preceded the first

detachment. He soon found himself and

his three enlisted assistants swamped with

administrative details that had been overlooked despite the care in the planning.

The worst of them was that by the time

300 American 2d lieutenants had crossed

the Atlantic and scattered to a hundred

points in the British Isles, keeping in touch

with them was an almost impossible task.

Lt. Col. Jerry V. Matejka, signal officer

with the Special Army Observers Group

in London, sent word back to Washington

by Brig. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney of the

difficulties cropping up in the administrative job, for which he thought additional

officers should be provided.38

Not all of the men turned out to be satisfactory students; some were poorly qualified in mathematics, and others lacked

ability to absorb the intensive courses. For

their part, many of the men thought the

courses were not well taught, and lacked

emphasis on important details.39 It became apparent, moreover, that an essential part of their training called for

flight over the patrol area, and despite a

caution from the Signal Corps that any

request for flight pay for the men would

complicate relationships with the Air

Corps, the hazard seemed to warrant it.

Both General Chancy and Brig. Gen.

Raymond E. Lee, the military attache to

London, recommended that a tenth of

them be commissioned in the Air Corps in

order to qualify for the extra pay. After

first one ETG officer, then a second, lost

his life in the course of the air training over

England, the recommendation, in somewhat modified form, took effect. But hard

fortune followed many of these volunteers.

The Air Corps never recognized them; the

Signal Corps lost eight of them; and the

confusion following Pearl Harbor rolled

up such a mountain of other problems

that their discontent, however justly

prompted, met with little sympathy.40

From the Office of the Chief Signal Officer

The first operational assignment of

37

 (1) History of the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology Radar School, 23 June 1941 to 30 June

1945; (2) Ruth F. Sadler, History of the Electronics

Training Group in the United Kingdom, 1944, pp.

1-10; (3) Capt Frederick Reinstein, Signal Corps

Officer Schooling, 1944, p. 18. SigC Hist Sec File. 38

 (1) Ltr, Col Lansford to CSigO, 24 Oct 41, sub:

Comments on arrival and processing of ETG officers;

(2) Ltr, CSigO to TAG, 16 Sep 41, sub: Property

ETG; (3) Memo, by Col Matejka, 5 Dec 41. SigC

352.11 ETG. 39

 Sadler hist cited n. 37(2), Exhibit K, Comments

and Observations on the Training at Petersham Command School. 40

 (1) Memo, CSigO for ACofS G-2, 30. Jun 41; (2)

Memo, Actg CSigO for TAG, 18 Aug 41, with 1st Ind,

TAG to CSigO, 26 Sep 41, sub: Appointment of 2d

lts SigC Reserve; (3) Memo, Lt Col Henry L. P. King,

P&T Div OCSigO, for Asst Chief of Air Staff, A-3

Office Chief of AC, 25 Nov 41; (4) Ltr, King to Col

Matejka, 29 Dec 41, sub: ETG, and 1st Ind, Hq

USAFBI to CSigO, 13 Mar 42. SigC 352.11 ETG. (5)

Ltr, Exec Officer OCSigO to Comdt SigC School, 18

Aug 41, sub: Transfer of ETG Officers to AC Reserve.

SigC 326.21 Transfer 2, 1940-41.
292 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Electronics Training Group men was to

TRIGGER, an Air Corps project for a fighter

command school at Orlando, Florida.

Others were scheduled for SHADOW 82,

part of the United States garrisoning of

Northern Ireland. The two assignments

epitomized the way in which hemispheric

action irresistibly translated itself into a

larger action. Time grew shorter. The

smell of war grew stronger. Ominous incidents occurred on the open seas, and

merged hemispheric waters with the Irish

Sea and the Bay of Biscay. Even at the

heart of the continent, even in the Ozarks,

war probed. Everything that was done

signaled a steadily widening area. Increase, expansion, intensification in every

aspect of military preparedness dropped

like a stone into a pool and sent ripples to

the outermost banks.

On 1 August the Signal Corps establishment comprised 2,064 officers, 36,762

enlisted men, 6,902 civilians. During the

month more officers joined the Corps at

the rate of four a day and still more enlisted men at the rate of 112 a day. At the

Signal Corps School, the Officer Department was overburdened and an Officer

Candidate Department had begun, with

500 men on hand ready to go through the

course. With a 30-percent attrition of unfortunates, the first class graduated at the

end of September.41

In the House of Representatives, a twovote margin extended the draft act. In

Texas, draftees called before the expiration

of the first Selective Service act were outfitted in 1918 uniforms and set to learning

message center routine in their barracks.

("We would pretend a group around one

[foot] locker was one unit and a group

around a second locker another unit, and

we would practice that way, sending each

other messages.")42

Congressman Dewey Short of Missouri

sponsored a site for an additional Signal

Corps Replacement Training Center in

the foothills of the Ozarks near Neosho.

The Army acquired it for the use of the

Infantry, intending for the Signal Corps

center to be established elsewhere, probably at Eastrop, Texas. General Olmstead

proposed that expanding Signal Corps

training be conducted at three more locations, in the West, South, and Middle

West. For the latter, the site at Neosho became available. The first step in organizing it as a Signal Corps installation was

taken in October with the appointment of

Lt. Col. William S. Rumbough as commanding officer, activation then being

scheduled for the first of the year. Rumbough was promoted to be a colonel, and

four days afterward became a brigadier

general. Camp Crowder, the open field

near Neosho, was assigned a capacity of

12,000, then 14,000, then 15,500.43

For the first time in its history, the Signal

Corps had more than three quarters of a

billion dollars to spend. Fortunately skeptical of protestations the Signal Corps had

41

 (1) SigC 352.11 Ft. Monmouth 7, May-Dec 41,

passim. (2) A History of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey,

1917-1946, pp. 84-85; (3) Capt Frederick Reinstein,

Training Study of the Signal Corps Officer Candidate

School at Fort Monmouth, N.J., 1944, pp. 5-11. SigC

Hist Sec File. 42

 Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Sgts John E. Duffy and

Lester Mansfield (formerly assigned 52d Sig Bn,

Washington, D.C.), 16 Nov 44. 43

 (1) Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Col Henry L. P.

King, Ret., Washington, D.C., 11 Oct 49. (2) Memo

for File by Maj Pence, 18 Nov 41, sub: Conference

with G-4 relative to additional buildings required at

Camp Crowder for SigC tng. SigC MT-38 353 Gen.

(3) Memo, SW for President, 27 Nov 41, sub: Temporary promotions. OCS 17336-102. (4) Ltr, Col

Rumbough to Gen Olmstead, 22 Nov 41, sub: Reduction in allotment in housing capacity to SigC RTC at

Camp Crowder; (5) AG Ltr, 6 Jan 42, same sub. AG

320.2 (12-29-41) MO-C. (6) Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 8

Dec 41, sub: Utilization of RTC Camp Crowder for

SigC pers only. AG 320.2 (12-3-41) MR-C.

Camp Crowder was named for Maj. Gen. Enoch

H. Crowder, the first world war counterpart of Maj.

Gen. Lewis B. Hershey in the second.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 293

made only a few months back that the

combat organizations which had demanded $211,492,343 worth of signal

equipment in fiscal year 1941 would need

only $17,340,522 worth in fiscal year 1942,

the Congress had agreed to three big additions to the budget estimate before passing

the military appropriations bill.44 Almost

immediately it became clear that none of

these was enough.

For the entire defense program, the

figure in common use was $100,000,000,-

000, and Donald Nelson, then Director of

Purchasing for the Office of Production

management, awed even the War Department by announcing that defense spending

"must reach $35,000,000,000 a year to

turn back the threat of Hitlerism."45 President Roosevelt asked his Secretaries of

War and the Navy specifically: how much

production would be necessary to defeat

the Axis, and could American industry do

it? The Secretaries did not have the answer

in their files, and turned to their supply

services for the information. The Office of

the Under Secretary of War began issuing

directives asking for complete breakdowns

of estimated requirements for 100 raw

materials and reports on 350 others. The

directives of August 4 and September 5

asked for so much information in such a

short time that the Chief Signal Officer

brought six engineers into his office from

the New York Procurement District for

thirty days to help his staff get the estimates out in time. The engineers worked

by manual compilation and tabulation

methods, using calculating machines for

final computations, but there were not

enough engineers. To help out, they set up

an intensive training program, teaching

girls from the clerical staff within the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer to read

blueprints and to make material estimates.46

 The final reports submitted to the

President raised the military sights stupefyingly, but still not enough.

Mobilization plans had taken account

of the fact that in time of war the Signal

Section of the New York General Depot

and the New York Signal Corps Procurement District would be crowded out of

their quarters at the Brooklyn Army Base.

Plans for occupying the Harborside Terminal Building at Jersey City, New Jersey,

were abandoned when city authorities,

concerned over the prospective loss of

taxes, opposed the condemnation of the

building for Army use. Then negotiations

began for the use of the big Atwater Kent

factory in Philadelphia. A price of $2,000,-

000 was agreed upon and the property

acquired through condemnation proceedings. Sears, Roebuck & Co., which occupied the plant, was in no hurry to release

the space. An appeal to the court granted

a brief delay, but by mid-October the

Depot and Procurement District moved

from Brooklyn to Philadelphia.47

44

 Hearings Before Subcommittee of Committee on Appropriations, HR, 77th Cong, 1st Sess, On the Military

Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1942, pp.

457-60.

On June 30, the President signed the regular fiscal

year 1942 military appropriations bill, which gave the

Signal Corps $320,641,970. On 25 August, he signed

the First Supplemental National Appropriation Bill,

which provided an additional $347,150,825, all of it

for equipment and $339,778,725 of it for combat

organizations. Andre E. Gerard, The Story of Supply

in the Signal Corps in World War II, Pt. I, 1945, pp.

28-29. SigC Hist Sec File. 45

 Proc Plng Bulletin, Vol. III, No. 8, 1 Aug 41,

pp. 3-4. 46

 W. P. Worrell, Production Div Phila. SigC Proc

District, Industrial Summary of Signal Corps Materials and Resources, 31 Jan 46, pp. 7-8. SigC Hist Sec

File.

47

 (1) "Hart Protests War Department Plan to Buy

Harborside Warehouse," Washington Bureau, Jersey

Journal, June, 1941. (2) Civil Action 1689 in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District

of Pennsylvania. (3) Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 3 Nov 41,

sub: Discontinuance of Sig Sec N.Y. Gen Depot

and N.Y. SigC Proc District. AG 681 (10-31-41)

MR-M-D.
294 THE SIGNAL CORPS

The new site comprised over a million

and a half square feet of space: 37 acres of

land in the form of a triangle, bordered on

the east by Wissahickon Avenue and on

the west by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Four sidings provided space for twenty

railroad cars. Buildings containing over

800,000 square feet of floor space covered

12 acres of the tract, leaving 25 acres for

outdoor storage and future construction

should it be needed. A power plant was

available for emergency use, although

ordinarily power would be supplied by the

Philadelphia Electric Company. The land

sloped sharply from east to west, which

gave each floor of the buildings access to

street levels, the top floor extending over

the total size of the building and the floors

below shrinking to conform to the natural

topography of the land. Because they were

supported on separate pillars, the floors

were independent of the walls, wherefore

expansion and contraction caused by heat

and cold would have little effect. On the

whole, the plant provided excellent depot

facilities, although that part occupied as

office space was cold and drafty; the roof

leaked when it rained; sun glared through

the glass-inclosed spaces by day, and the

two night shifts shivered beneath the irritating glare of 500-watt unfrosted lamps

fixed to the girders overhead. There was

only a makeshift food service in the building and practically no restaurants nearby.

The transplanted Brooklyn personnel

viewed the site with disfavor, and quit in

large numbers.48

On October 14 the Signal Corps activated a Procurement District at Wright

Field in a pair of two-story barrack buildings. Lt. Col. William J. Daw, assigned to

command it, began hiring the 157 civilians

he was authorized to employ. Their mission was to handle all new contracts for

aircraft communication equipment and

gradually to transfer old contracts, requisitions, back orders, and all radio aircraft

material from the Philadelphia District.

Within ten weeks the Wright Field Signal

Corps Procurement District crowded itself

out of its allotted space and far outran its

original requirements for personnel.49 In

the Chicago Quartermaster Depot, the

Eighth Corps Area Depot at Fort Sam

Houston, Texas, and the New Cumberland General Depot at New Cumberland,

Pennsylvania, signal sections also were becoming congested. At Avon, Kentucky,

buildings were rising for the Lexington

Signal Depot, designed especially to store

and ship ground radars, and the vehicular

equipment necessary to transport them.50

At Ogden, Utah, Maj. Harry Lynch

opened the new Utah General Depot with

one civilian clerk-typist as an assistant.

The plan was to move part of the Signal

Section of the San Francisco General

Depot there.51

In making him Chief Signal Officer,

General Marshall had specifically ordered

General Olmstead to do two things: to

co-ordinate Army communications and to

decrease the number of types of radio sets

in use.52 The second order fitted into the

48

 History of the Philadelphia Signal Depot, I, 107.

SigC Hist Sec File. 49

 SigC File 314.7 Hist of Proc District—Wright

Field Depot, passim. 50

 Elizabeth Simpson, Narrative History of Lexington Signal Depot, 1941, Ch. I. SigC Hist Sec File. 51

 History of the [Ogden, Utah] Signal Supply Section, 30 September 1941-1 November 1945. Ogden

Gen Depot Sig Supply Sec File. 52

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1942, pp. 25ff. Marshall's

directive to Olmstead was oral, as Olmstead himself

said. See also: (1) Services of Supply, Annual Report,

1942, p. 70. (2) Memo, CSigO for CofS, 22 Oct 41,

sub: Simplification of sig com equip. OCS 16748-19.

(3) Office Dir Production WD, Meeting to Review

Signal Corps Program, 22 Jan 42. SigC EO 337 Conference, 1942-44. (4) 1st Ind, Gen Olmstead to TAG,

28 Feb 42, on Ltr, TAG to CSigO, 18 Feb 42, sub:

Reduction of radio equip. AG 413.44 (2-17-42)

MO-D, and also in SigC 413.44 Gen 1, Jan-Feb 42.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 295

first, and the first was trapped in the

status quo. Long experience had convinced

Signal Corps administrators that this was

the fact. Under the existing Army regulations, the Chief Signal Officer was responsible for developing, procuring, issuing

and maintaining the Army's signal equipment, but the using arm which operated

the equipment constituted judge and jury

as to what was needed, and when. The

Chief Signal Officer could advise, but he

could not dictate. Events, world geography, and the advance of electrical science

were diversifying signal equipment despite

anyone's efforts to keep it simple.

The Laboratories were running hot. Not

only was the Aircraft Radio Laboratory

busy with the pre-eminent airborne radar

projects, but, in addition, it pressed the

development of interphone systems, of

radio compasses and radio ranges, of electronic landing aids, long-range liaison

radios, and adaptations of British command sets in the very high frequency

bands. Yet ARL's mission was solely to

meet Air Corps demands, and only Air

Corps airborne demands, at that. It looked

single minded by contrast with the New

Jersey laboratories. All of the ground

equipment for every part of the Army had

to be developed at the Fort Monmouth

congeries. The Armored Force required

FM tank radios. The Field Artillery

wanted them, too, as well as such specialists as sound-ranging and flash-ranging

sets. Coast Artillerymen asked for radar,

and ahead of them the Air Forces needed

it for air defense from the ground. Coast

and Field Artillery and Air Forces all

sought meteorological equipment. The

Infantry wanted more and better and

lighter of everything, especially in wire

equipment: switchboards, field cable, central office telephone and teletypewriter

sets, and, to cap it all, heavy-duty carrier

systems which would give even a primitive

theater of war something of the easy, swift

communications of the homeland.

This multiplication only reflected the

evident course of the war abroad, a war

which was to be, it plainly appeared, as

much a matching of wits as of force. The

contribution of science to such a war, the

fact that a technological conflict was

already in progress which was as real as a

campaign, was, however, not yet fully

understood. Marshall's order, then, to

reduce the variety of communication

equipment, to simplify, standardize, and

mass-produce, Olmstead was understandably determined to carry out. The difficulty was that although the mission of the

Signal Corps specified in the basic law was

"all military signal duties,"

 53

 the regulations had already set unequivocal operating limits, which the General Staff

reaffirmed.

The Signal Corps felt that the only way

to control the number of radio sets in

existence would be to center in a single

communications agency all authority to

determine what should be provided. Olmstead consequently followed the continuous tradition of his predecessors and contemplated an effort to persuade the

General Staff to adopt a plan which would

have co-ordinated communications and

simplified equipment much more thoroughly than anyone else had in mind.

Colonel Rives set forth anew the reasons

for a single communications agency for

the Army, but warned that in the prevailing climate strong opposition could be

expected from the Air Corps and the Coast

Artillery Corps. "The strength of the Air

Corps case, if they choose to start a counteroffensive to take over their own development, procurement, issue and maintenance," he said, "should not be underesti- 53

 10 U.S. Code 212.
296 THE SIGNAL CORPS

mated. . . . Should we attempt to encroach on their domain they will set up

such a strong defense that we have small

chance of gaining our objective. The best

'defense' is an 'attack' and we can ill afford

one at this time."54

There is no evidence that the memorandum was ever used, although Olmstead

did broach the subject informally and

found the Chief of Staff cold to it. General

Marshall agreed that communications

might be technically perfected if placed

under single control, but he considered

them to be broadly and inescapably an

attribute of command not to be detached

from tactics. Therefore Olmstead was less

the chief of military communications than

technical communications adviser to the

War Department. That his wings were

clipped, however, was not to say that he

was not expected to fly. Within the boundaries set upon his power he was charged

somehow with persuading much more independent and potent arms to yield some

of their independence in the selection of

equipment. They would have to reach a

common ground in the Signal Corps.

Expressing regret that the "present

policy of the War Department does not

contemplate a centralization of such

power" as would give a single agency full

control over signal communications equipment, Olmstead proposed instead an expansion of the Equipment Section of his

Office into a Coordination and Equipment

Division to which each of the interested

arms and services would assign qualified

officers.55 This was approved, and soon the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer added

liaison officers detailed from the Air and

Armored Forces, the Field and Coast Artillery, the Infantry, the Cavalry, and the

Navy and Marine Corps. Colonel Mitchell, an old hand in research and development, became the head of the division. If

the problems of co-ordinating the equipment needs of the competing branches of

the service were not sufficiently underlined

by the day-to-day routine, there were

signs hung to remind the officers: "Reduce

the number of types of radio sets by command of General Marshall." Even so, it

was apparent that despite the most honest

endeavor, there would have to be more,

not fewer, types of radio to meet the everchanging needs of global warfare. Said

General Olmstead, "I can't just take an

axe and break [radio sets] up."56

If Olmstead could not simplify the

number of radio sets in signal communications, he thought he could at least simplify

the Signal Corps structure, and this he set

about to do. The organization that he had

inherited had not changed fundamentally

since General Gibbs's day. Olmstead

sought to find out by inquiry and by personal observation what ought to be done,

and how best to organize to do it.57 He

believed in organization; no problem

could fail of solution, he thought, if only

the proper sort of organization were set up

to deal with it. He believed in giving his

subordinates wide latitude, and never

doubted that they would carry out orders

effectively. "I know you have to do it by

organization" was to be his approach to

every administrative problem.58

54

 Memo, Col Rives, Opns Br OCSigO, for Chief of

Opns Br, 17 Oct 41, sub: Brief on reasons for a single

coms agency for Army. SigC ET 322.08 Briefs on Reasons for Single Coms Agency for Army. 55

 Memo, Actg CSigO for CofS, 22 Oct 41, sub:

Simplification of sig com equip. OCS 16748-19. 56

 Meeting to Review SigC Program cited n. 52(3). 57

 One of his first acts was to write signal officers

throughout the Army, inquiring what their supply

problems were, and asking them for suggestions for

improvement. Msgs, Actg CSigO to Sig Officers All

Army and Corps Hq, 7 Aug 41. SigC 400 Gen 5. 58

 Hearings Before Committee on Appropriations, HR,

77th Cong, 2d Sess, On the 5th Supplemental National Defense Appropriations Bill for 1942, Title I—

War Department, p. 65.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 297

His first move was to collect some of the

Office divisions (a division was then outranked by a branch) into an Administrative Branch, some into an Operations

Branch and some into a Materiel Branch.59

He thus foreshadowed in his office the

revolutionary March 1942 reorganization

of the Army into a Big Three by bringing

a triumvirate of his own into being to replace an eleven-man staff. To do so required just such a breaking and scrambling of eggs as subsequently produced

Lt. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell's Services of

Supply. Olmstead assigned the Materiel

Branch to Col. Roger B. Colton, Operations to Col. Otis K. Sadtler, and the

Administrative Branch to Col. Stewart W.

Stanley. He moved the Executive Control

Section which Mauborgne had added in

July down into the new Administrative

Branch, but in September detached the

unit, raised it to the status of a division,

and placed it under his direct supervision,

with Lt. Col. James A. Code, Jr., in

charge.60

The next change emphasized the increasing complexity of training men for

service with the Air Corps. It came in

October, when Olmstead, making a distinction between air and ground training,

withdrew the Aircraft Warning Section

from the War Plans and Training Division,

raised it to equal status as the Air Communications Division with Lt. Col. Frank

C. Meade in charge, and gave it responsibility for training men for signal duty with

the Air Corps and for aircraft warning

duty.61 In November he deprived the position of executive officer of much of its

prestige and imposed a supervisory level

over that officer and over the chiefs of the

three branches. By this time Colonel Code

was doubling as executive officer until he

should be relieved in the control unit by

Lt. Col. Charles E. Saltzman. The new

position of assistant to the Chief Signal

Officer (renamed assistant chief signal officer, then deputy chief signal officer, then

again assistant chief signal officer) to be

occupied by Code usurped much of the

responsibility formerly lodged in the Executive Office, which became in effect merely

a secretariat. Personnel and training functions were divided into three: Military

Personnel, Civilian Personnel, and War

Plans and Training. General Olmstead

selected Lt. Col. Henry L. P. King to head

the Military Personnel Division. In the

Civilian Personnel Division, Maj. H. C.

Taylor became chief when the health of

the civilian assistant to the Chief Signal

Officer, Edward Barnett, forced him to

relinquish his duties just before the onset

of war. Lt. Col. Francis H. Lanahan, Jr.,

was in charge of the War Plans and Training Division. His division soon split down

the middle with training removed from it.

Lt. Col. Jay D. B. Lattin succeeded him as

head of the Training Division.

Undoubtedly Olmstead's motive in his

successive reorganizations was to have as

few men as possible reporting directly to

him. He intended to bring about a decentralization, or at least a redistribution, of

control. Actually, the change created the

sharpest kind of pyramid. Under Mauborgne, the Office had been a flat pyramid, an administrative structure like that

of the executive branch of the government.

Division chiefs had direct access to him, as

did the chiefs of several field activities.

This was like the similar organization of

the Army itself, where the several "G's"

59

 CSigO, Annual Report, 1942, p. 25, and orgn

chart, 14 Aug 41, opposite p. 29.

The Materiel Branch then embraced only three

divisions: for Research and Development, for Supply,

and for Plant. 60

 Signal Corps Administrative Log, 1939-1945,

OCSigO Orgn Charts No. 2, 14 Aug 41, and No. 2a,

3 Sep 41. SigC Hist Sec File. 61

 Ibid., OCSigO Orgn Chart No. 6, 30 Oct 41.
298 THE SIGNAL CORPS

and the field commanders reported to the

Chief of Staff, or like the staff relationship

of the Cabinet to the President.

Olmstead's reducing the Office from

eleven units to three was an illusory sort of

simplification, because the number of parts

remained; they were merely one level

lower down. As rapid events forced him to

set up new divisions and he saw the number of his deputies increasing, he once

again combined fundamentally dissimilar

functions and managed again to reduce

the secondary level of command, the level

just below him, to three. This process

occurred several times, always with a proliferation of branches on the main stalk, so

that what it did was to put upon each of

the three principal assistants to the Chief

an amount of responsibility which Olmstead himself did not accept. The triumvirate, at first Stanley, Sadtler, and Colton,

settled down in a few months to Code,

Milliken, and Colton.

General Olmstead climaxed the reorganization on the eve of Pearl Harbor by

inviting Secretary Stimson, Under Secretary Patterson, and General Marshall to a

conference at which he asked key figures

in the communications industry to plan

and work with him and his staff in the

process of putting the Signal Corps on a

war footing. These businessmen constituted the Civilian Advisory Board, which

he had established, or were members of

the Advisory Council of Reserve officers,

which he had revived.

Among them were Dr. Frank B. Jewett,

chairman of the board of Bell Laboratories, who had served as an officer in the

Signal Corps in World War I and who in

1941 was president of the National Academy of Sciences; Dr. W. R. G. Baker, vicepresident of the General Electric Company; Dr. William P. Hilliard, a vicepresident of the Bendix Radio Corporation; Walter Evans, manager of the radio

division of Westinghouse; J. B. Coleman,

chief engineer of the Special Apparatus

Engineering Division of RCA Manufacturing Company; Dr. L. M. Hull, president of the Aircraft Radio Corporation;

Brig. Gen. William I. Westervelt, Ret.,

experienced in mail order procedures, who

was then a member of the government's

Supply Priorities and Allocations Board;

C. F. Horle, manager of the Radio Manufacturing Association's matériel bureau

and on the board of directors of the Institute of Radio Engineers; Col. David Sarnoff, president of the Radio Corporation

of America; Col. Carroll O. Bickelhaupt,

assistant vice-president of the American

Telephone and Telegraph Company; and

Lt. Col. Darryl F. Zanuck, chairman of

the Research Council of the Academy of

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.62

The interests of these men, brought

together for a day in the Office of the

Chief Signal Officer, duplicated the interests of a million other men who were as

scattered as these were concentrated.

Every word had an instant echo. The

minutest cause took effect on a wide scale.

Office doors had a way of opening right

out onto the planet. Papers gained import

in the mere course of the journey across

the desk from In basket to Out. The call for

signal equipment and signalmen rang

every telephone. Olmstead felt that if he

were to know which calls deserved the first

answer he must trace them to the source.

He decided to start at the most nervously

alerted of the field exchanges, the Canal

Zone. He invited Colonel Bickelhaupt to

go with him while he spent two weeks inspecting Caribbean communications, and

62

 Signal Corps Information Letter, No. 2 (January

1, 1942), pp. 9 ff.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 299

scheduled his departure for October 28,

his return for November 11. In Panama,

General Ingles was resolving upon the

same direct action. Almost every mail had

brought urgent appeals from him, and he

wanted decisive responses with less quibbling over details. Not that he had any

complaint to make of the new Chief Signal

Officer: he credited the "confusion and

side-stepping indorsements" to General

Mauborgne's regime. But there was much

to settle quickly, and he came up to Washington to settle it at first hand. Olmstead

put off his trip for another month.63

Ingles wanted a clear-cut division of

responsibility for construction of aircraft

warning projects; in Jamaica, the Corps of

Engineers was in charge, in Panama,

mostly the Signal Corps, and in Trinidad

the question was unsettled. He sought

more skilled personnel, both civilian and

military: in particular, two telephone engineers and two radio engineers, one of the

latter to be an SCR-271 expert. He inquired about the signal construction company for the Rio Hato pole line, about the

32 officers who were not on a formal table

of organization but who had been authorized him, and about bringing the 12th and

21st Signal Service Companies up to

strength. He wanted to know why he

could not get grades and ratings for the

men in these organizations. How and

when was the Signal Corps going to augment the Aircraft Warning Company,

Puerto Rico? It lacked 5 officers and 100

men of being up to the required 500.

Puerto Rico had three SCR-271's on

hand, but the stations were not up, the

material not being expected to be shipped

from the United States until late in November. One SCR-270 was in operation,

and there was a system of ground observers

reporting regularly throughout the twentyfour hours. A temporary control board was

in operation in San Juan, but the material

for the permanent one had not arrived,

either. On Trinidad, sites for the radar stations were still in dispute, and nothing

else had been done. "The Trinidad situation is going to prove decidedly embarrassing," he warned. The local signal officer had neither the equipment nor the

draftsmen to get the proper design and

layout work done.

And what of the rest of the equipment?

Ten more radars had been granted him.

Where were they? The tactical mission of

the area also demanded more SCR-188's;

above all else, signal and communications

officers wanted complete radio sets, provided with enough spare parts to make repairs, and certainly not lacking cords,

plugs, and power equipment. Tactical

communications were still imperfect. During field exercises, the breakdown of the

power supply had interrupted artillery

communications for eight hours on two

occasions and for forty hours on a third.

That was galling; but more painful was

the fact that administrative communications, the cerebral system of the whole

Panamanian defense, fell silent whenever

an air alert cut the master switches at the

Canal powerhouses.64

To the West

Ingles was not being unreasonable. He

63

 (1) Ltr, Gen Olmstead to Col Bickelhaupt, 13

Oct 41. SigC 095 AT&T Co. (2) Bickelhaupt, excerpts from office diary, 6 Oct-26 Nov 41. SigC Hist

Sec File. (3) Ltr, Gen Ingles to Gen Olmstead, 4 Mar

42. SigC 320 Augmentation AWS, Feb-Dec 42. 64

 (1) Minutes of Conference in OCSigO Between

Sig Officer Caribbean Defense Comd and Officers of

OCSigO, 31 Oct 41. SigC OT 320.3 AWS. (2) Gen

Ingles, Digest of Conference Notes, 31 Oct 41. SigC

EC 337 Conference With Ingles and Associated

Papers, 1941-42.
300 THE SIGNAL CORPS

was sizing up an emergency. War was on

the way, and a national nerve center was

at the mercy of a master switch. He and

hundreds of others at home and abroad

shared a feeling of waiting and tension.

That the Canal might be attacked was

quite possible. It seemed particularly vulnerable on the Pacific side, where no

chain of island bases screened it. That side

opened onto a waste of water too vast for

patrol, which swept one third of the span

around the world, all the way to the

Philippines. The nearest bastion in this

ocean was Pearl Harbor, 5,400 statute

miles from Panama and 2,400 from San

Francisco. A bastion at such distances

from the mainland had to be self-sufficient.

Both hemispheric defense and the defense

of U.S. territorial and economic interests

in the Pacific Ocean required it to be.

The defense of the Hawaiian group,

especially of Oahu, appeared fairly well

set. The islands had a garrison of 43,000.

In the eleven months between 1 January

and 30 November 1941 Signal strength in

the Hawaiian Department jumped from

987 to 1,334. Among these were men

drawn from Fort Monmouth and elsewhere to make up the first cadres of an

aircraft warning company. More than

half the total were assigned to the department signal officer, Lt. Col. Carroll A.

Powell. In addition to his own office and

an intercept detachment, he controlled

the 9th Signal Service Company, consisting of one officer and 327 enlisted men

stationed at Fort Shafter, and the Signal

Company, Aircraft Warning, Hawaii, of

13 officers and 348 men, whose home base

was Schofield Barracks. Not under Powell

were various other units, notably the signal companies of the 24th and 25th Divisions and four signal aviation companies

at Hickam and Wheeler Fields. Several of

these units had begun to be dispersed beyond Oahu. Platoons of the aircraft warning company were established in the

waning months of the year, although

without radar, on Kauai, Maui, and

Hawaii; and details of the 407th Signal

Company, Aviation, had gone to Midway

and Wake to set up radio stations extending the Army Airways Communications

System toward Australia.65

With this sort of strength, either its own

or associated to it, the Signal Corps had

been able to discharge its responsibilities

for wire, radio, and radar in the Hawaiian

Islands rather better than at some other

points. A perimeter cable ringed Oahu,

and from it branched a complex interlacing of communications to serve the island

defense. The land cable supported the

coastal command and fire control systems;

other substantial, fixed wire provided the

administrative telephones and teletypewriters to half a dozen old and new posts

and airfields; and field wire brought ready

communications to others, including the

newest locations of all, the sites intended

for radars.

The universal expansion going on

under the unlimited emergency had approved a number of projects besides.

Some, like a new 300-line switchboard for

Forts Shafter and Armstrong, had started;

others had not. A major construction project, for a long-lines trunk system, was in

the hands of an officer and six enlisted

65

 (1) Figures from Machine Records Br AGO, 21

Sep 44. (2) History of the Aircraft Warning System in

Hawaii: Signal Company, Aircraft Warning, Hawaii.

AF Archives SIG-(Hawaii)-HI, 7896-54. (3) Hist SubSec G-2 HUSAFMIDPAC, United States Army

Forces, Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands,

III, 340, and App. Sig Sec, Vol. I. OCMH. (4) History

of the 407th Signal Company, Aviation, Seventh Air

Force. AF Archives SIG-407-HI, 5074-9. (5) MS File,

Pearl Harbor. DRB AGO.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 301

men, who straw-bossed a crew of as many

as 450 laborers.66

Any longer communications were naturally a matter for radio, where the limitation which held the Army to 10 kilowatts of radiated power was becoming a

serious handicap. The Navy could go up

to 40 kilowatts, along with the commercial companies. Under certain conditions

of the ionosphere, and especially at night,

the Signal Corps' 10-kilowatt transmitter

at Fort Shafter was strong enough to make

direct contact with WAR in Washington;

but by day, messages had to be relayed

through such intermediate stations as

WVY in San Francisco. These were matters that would work themselves out. Telephones, teletypewriters, and radios were

familiar, their problems generally predictable.

Radar was the unknown quantity. The

establishment of an aircraft warning system in the Hawaiian Islands had proceeded through a number of backings and

fillings on the choice of radar sites and the

location of an information center.67 A

board of which Colonel Van Deusen was

president had recommended, in April

1940, one fixed and seven mobile radar

stations. The War Department did its part

to help the project by including a $1,400,-

975 request for it in the forthcoming fiscal

year appropriations and by advancing

$580,000 of that sum without waiting for

the appropriation to go through. Up to

mid-1940, therefore, things had appeared

66

 (1) Ltr, Sig Officer Hawaiian Dept to CSigO, 11

Aug 41, sub: Construction and maintenance of tp systems. SigC 676.1 Gen 12. (2) Donald O. Wagner,

Army Command and Administrative Network, Part

I: The Pacific, 1945, pp. 13-14. SigC Hist Sec File. 67

 Because of the eight investigations of the Pearl

Harbor disaster, material on the Aircraft Warning

System, Hawaii, is abundant. By far the most comprehensive and convenient source is the MS file (in the

AGO Departmental Records Branch) of the Army

Pearl Harbor Board exhibit No. 58, Report on the

Establishment of an AWS in Hawaii, with 181 inclosures. The account in this section is built upon this

bulky file. The printed report of the Joint Committee

on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack

(which is printed elsewhere as well and is also included in the MS file) consists of 40 volumes generally

known by the short title, Pearl Harbor Attack. Of these,

the first—unnumbered—volume is devoted to the reports of the Joint [Congressional] Committee on the

Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, which

brought the whole series to official publication. The

other volumes, Parts 1 through 39, comprise the hearings, exhibits, and reports of the eight several investigations to which the Japanese war action gave rise.

The complete description of the series is as follows:

Joint Committee, 79th Cong, 1st and 2d Sess, Investigation of the. Pearl Harbor Attack (Reports of the Joint

Committee), Sen Doc 244 (Washington, 1946), 580 pp.

————, Pearl Harbor Attack, Pts. 1-11 (Hearings of

the Joint Committee, 15 Nov 45-31 May 46), 5,560 pp.

————Ibid., Pts. 12-21 (Exhibits of the Joint Committee Hearings), 4,780 pp.

————, Ibid., Pts. 22-25, Proceedings of Roberts Commission [Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court, Chairman] to Investigate the Japanese

Attack of December 7, 1941, on Hawaii, 2,173 pp.

————, Ibid., Pt. 26, Proceedings of [Admiral

Thomas C.] Hart [USN, Ret.] Inquiry, 565 pp.

————, Ibid., Pts. 27-31, Proceedings of Army Pearl

Harbor Board, 3,357 pp.

————, Ibid., Pts. 32-33, Proceedings of Navy Court of

Inquiry, 1,397 pp.

———, Ibid., Pt. 34, Proceedings of [Colonel Carter

W.] Clarke [USA] Investigation . . . Pursuant to Oral

Instructions of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, Testimony

and Findings Concerning Handling of Certain Top Secret

Documents, 225 pp.

————, Ibid., Pt. 35, Report of Investigation by Lt

Colonel Henry C. Clausen, JAGD [AUS], for the Secretary of War, Supplementary to Proceedings of the Army

Pearl Harbor Board, 695 pp.

————, Ibid., Pts. 36-38, Proceedings of Inquiry . . .

Conducted by Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt, U.S. Navy, in

Accordance with a Precept Dated 2 May 1945, from the

Secretary of the Navy, 1,341 pp.

————, Ibid., Pt. 39, Reports, Findings, and Conclusions of Roberts Commission, Army Pearl Harbor Board,

Navy Court of Inquiry, and Hewitt Inquiry, with Indorsements, 527 pp.

Up to within ten years of the events of December

7-8, 1941, no historian had undertaken the major

analysis of the Pearl Harbor Attack which that enthrallingly inconsistent record invited. However, almost

universal interest had produced a multitude of studies

on a more restricted scale.
302 THE SIGNAL CORPS

to be well in hand, even allowing for the

fact that the plan had altered to envision

a chain of three fixed and five mobile stations. The three fixed radars were to be

placed on Kauai, Oahu, and Maui, as

high as possible. That was the day when

every country which had radar endeavored to put it as high as possible: the surface of a curved earth dropped out of

scanning range much too close for comfort, as it was. So the site chosen at Kokee

on Kauai was a wooded hill 4,220 feet

high; on Mount Kaala, Oahu, the location was 4,050 feet up; and for Maui

nothing would do but the National Park

itself, where Haleakala, the largest extinct

crater in the world, rises to 10,032 feet.

Kokee looked easy. An improved motor

road led to a point within a mile of the

site. The tract, moreover, lay within the

confines of a forest reserve, to which the

local authorities readily gave access. Yet

many months passed before the Corps of

Engineers brought it to the stage for signal

troops to install the communication cable.

These men arrived on 22 November 1941.

On Oahu, the Mount Kaala station,

considered the most important link in the

chain, proved also to be the most difficult

to construct. The location appeared inaccessible for the last mile and a half unless an overhead cableway was built to

transport equipment and supplies. According to engineering estimates, the

cableway could be completed within five

months. Unfortunately, the route selected

started near the firebreak trail on the

Schofield side, at the very spot which

Schofield Barracks used as an artillery

range. After taking more aerial photographs and making more surveys, the Engineers agreed to a different approach and

began work in February 1941, at about

the time when the cableway would have

been finished, had it gone along on schedule. In April they let a contract for cable.

In June its priority was slashed to A-1-G.

By this time Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short had

become the new commander of the Hawaiian Department. He protested the low

priority of the cable, and had already expressed to General Marshall his concern

over the delays in setting up the aircraft

warning system. These were chargeable

primarily to the Corps of Engineers.

Simultaneously, the Signal Corps, which

escaped relatively unscathed in the subsequent recriminations, although individual

Signal Corps officers were halted in their

careers, was meeting its obligations by

shipping the three SCR-271's to be installed as soon as the sites were ready.

These were numbers three, four, and five

off the production line, Panama having

got the first two, and they reached the

islands on June 3. The cableway was not

completed until 1942, and Kaala, converted by compromise to VHF fighter

control operations, was eventually abandoned for radar use.

The Maui site, because it was in Hawaii

National Park, required Department of

the Interior authorization. Interior officials felt that it was their duty to preserve

the natural features of the park as directed

by Congress. They were willing to do what

was necessary for national defense, but

they did feel that there must be other

lands equally well suited to whatever purpose the Army had in mind. The spot

selected, Red Hill, was on a crater at the

very summit of the mountain, where park

officials intended to construct a gravity

water system, in order to obviate expensive pumping. Would not Kolekole, only

five or six feet lower and outside the park,

do as well? Radar was so secret that the

War Department was hard put to it to
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 303

explain the uses for which the tract was

intended, or to insist that it and it alone

would suffice. Van Deusen suggested that

the station be made mobile rather than

fixed: in that case, the Department of the

Interior would have no reason to fear permanent changes, and possible disfigurement, in the location. No one picked up

his suggestion; negotiations continued;

and the Department of the Interior insisted upon making sure that the use of

the area would not ruin the preserve. The

National Park Service did issue the permit, however, on 29 April 1941. During

the next months, work went forward as far

as the point at which the Signal Corps

could be invited in to start installing the

radar and the Hawaiian Department signal officer could detail the crew to do the

job. The Engineers gave him the word on

6 December and he ordered a crew to report on 8 December.68

Thus none of the fixed radars—Kokee,

Kaala, or Haleakala—was filling the role

prescribed for it in the defense of the

islands. Nor were three others, which had

been added to the first three in a later

plan. For them, not only had the sites not

been constructed, but the equipment had

not been shipped out of San Francisco.

The sites had been designated. One was

Pahoa on the large island of Hawaii. The

other two were both Oahu locations:

Manauahua near the small Marine Corps

airfield at Ewa, and Opana, at Kahuku

Point, the northern tip of the island. Much

more was to be heard of Opana, but from

a mobile radar which took the place of the

proposed fixed radar—in geography and

in history.

Denied the use of the six SCR-271's,

Hawaiian defense did have the six mobile

SCR-270's which one of the latest plans

had paired with them. Some of those first

intended for the Hawaiian Department

had been diverted to Panama, but others

had come from the factory in time to be

distributed on Oahu between August and

November. If all of the fixed stations had

been ready, only three of the mobile

would have been assigned to Oahu—two

in reserve at Fort Shafter and one at Koko

Head; the other three would have been

dispersed to Kilauea Point, Kauai; Haleakala Road, Maui; and Kahuku Ranch,

Hawaii. But when the SCR-270's came,

in August, the aircraft warning company

began immediately to install them around

the rim of Oahu. The department's new

Aircraft Warning Service board sensibly

confirmed this action after the fact by observing that Oahu was certainly the heart

of Hawaiian defense, since most of the

vital installations were located there. Five

270's were in place by September, at

Kaaawa, Koko Head, Fort Shafter,

Waianae, and Kawailoa. The sixth, replacing the fixed radar planned for the

northern tip of the island, was not ready

to go into operation until late in November. This was the Opana radar.

The crewmen at each mobile set could

report their findings by telephone to the

information center. The center, in turn,

was supposed to plot the information and

if necessary to alert the interceptors and

antiaircraft guns against danger. In November the information center was a

makeshift, a compromise like the substitution of mobile for fixed detectors, but a

perfectly functional compromise if it were

manned. It occupied the top floor of a

small signal warehouse in the cable yard

68

 This Haleakala station did not work out satisfactorily, either. Rain and snow formed ice on the antennas; and the lofty height so laboriously achieved

only created a large dead space at a point beginning

thirty miles out.
304 THE SIGNAL CORPS

just outside Fort Shafter. The original,

more grandiose, project had called for a

bombproof within the operations building

at Hickam Field. After many shifts, including one to a basement at Wheeler

Field, new plans were developed for a

bombproof structure to serve the Aircraft

Warning Service, the Antiaircraft Group,

and the Hawaiian Air Force, while the

existing cable warehouse was given a temporary tag in the minds of the persons

concerned.

In October a training program of sorts

got under way. The Air Corps furnished a

few officers to learn the duties of the information center, although their attention to

the roster for the assignment was desultory. The Navy sent none, except for a

Reserve officer who was detailed in November to be a technical adviser. Neither

General Short nor Colonel Powell, who

was traveling on the mainland, pressed

the matter. On the other hand, it was arranged for fifteen signalmen to go to sea

briefly in order to observe the action of

Navy radar, and the Navy sent carrierbased aircraft over Oahu in simulated attacks for a predawn exercise of the Army

radar. This exercise proved out exactly.

With three of the SCR-270's ready to pick

them up, the carrier aircraft took off. As

they circled over the initial point, waiting

until they were all assembled to attack,

the airplanes revealed their distance from

the radars to be approximately eighty

miles. Meanwhile, interceptor aircraft,

tuned up and ready to go, waited for the

notification that the carrier airplanes had

been detected, whereupon they took off

and made contact with the Navy planes

thirty miles out. There had been a sixminute delay for the word to get to them

and thus a six-minute head start for the

bombers. At an average air speed of about

190 statute miles an hour, the U.S. airplanes flew toward each other, the incoming doing 50 miles in 16 minutes, the outgoing waiting for 6 minutes and then flying 30 miles in the next 10 minutes. This

exercise looked so neat and trig that

Powell exclaimed when he heard of it:

"When the fixed stations are installed in

the higher mountains surrounding Hawaii, we expect to have as good an air

warning system available for use as is now

operating for the British on their tight

little island, as their situation is approximately the same as ours is on Hawaii."

 69

Neat as it was, the interception exercise

pulled apart at the seams upon closer inspection. The cloth was cut too close to the

pattern. The exercise postulated fully

trained personnel operating fully supplied

equipment at full alert. These conditions

had been artificially created for the test,

but did not obtain as a matter of routine.

Informal practice with the pursuits

based at Wheeler Field added to the training of the radar crews. They acquired

most of their training, or, more exactly,

picked up experience on the job, within

the hours when their stations were open

and operating. Supposedly this meant

four hours in the morning and four in the

afternoon Monday through Friday, Saturday being a half day and Sunday free.

In practice, the scarcity of tubes and the

risk of burning out the sets, with no tubes

to light them up again, led to closing half

the stations for ostensible maintenance

during the afternoon while the other sets

operated, or to closing them out for the

afternoon altogether. In Washington,

Powell asked for the money for the expensive vacuum tubes in order to keep longer

69

 Memo, Col Powell for Col Colton, 14 Nov 41,

initialed as read by "GCM" [Gen George C. Marshall]. SigC EC 337 Conference with Ingles.
SIGNALING THE HEMISPHERE 305

operating hours, but received the impression that the Budget Advisory Committee

felt that there was too much insistence

upon aircraft warning. And indeed, its

estimate for the third supplemental appropriation to the fiscal year 1942 funds,

planned on October 10 and submitted on

November 13, asked for money sufficient

only to operate the radars two hours a

day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year,

for training.

Thus far only the first five of the SCR270's were operating at any time, but late

in November the Opana detector was

ready. It joined the others in a new schedule introduced on Thanksgiving Day,

November 27. General Short responded

that day to secret warnings from Washington by putting his command on alert

against sabotage.70 Inasmuch as the hours

just before and just after daybreak were

the most dangerous, Lt. Col. William H.

Murphy, Powell's assistant and the acting

department signal officer in his absence,

gave orders to Capt. Wilfred H. Tetley,

the commanding officer of the Signal

Company, Aircraft Warning, Hawaii, to

operate the radars for search every morning, seven days a week, between four and

seven, the ensuing hours to be devoted to

maintenance and to such training as could

be undertaken. After a week end, November 29 and 30, during which nothing occurred to underscore the need to keep the

stations open on Saturday afternoon and

Sunday, provided the three-hour search

were kept up in the dawn hours, a Signal

Corps officer in the aircraft warning company sought for and received permission

from the Air Corps control officer of the

information center to close them on the

following Sunday as soon as the 4-to-7

A.M. stint was finished.

The command relationship between

these two officers illustrated the odd circumstance of the Aircraft Warning Service, which in Hawaii, as from its very beginnings ten years earlier, was nobody's

baby. The Corps of Engineers' responsibility was to prepare and construct the information center and detector sites, the

Signal Corps' was to provide and install

the equipment and train the men, the Air

Corps' was to operate the information

center and to take over the detector operation when the men and equipment were

ready. At the information center, moreover, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the

Antiaircraft Artillery, and both the

Bomber and Interceptor Commands of

the Hawaiian Air Force were to fill

assigned places in the balcony surrounding the plotting board, while the staff were

to be Signal men and the Signal Corps

was to provide all the communications

bringing information in and sending

warnings out. Unified action could come

out of all this only under unified

command.

All of the air and antiair defenses of

Oahu, including those of the Navy, were

to be made responsive to the information

center. That was in prospect. The Navy

promised action on assigning a liaison

officer for its location at the plotting

board. Antiaircraft had already done so;

and although the Bomber Command had

not, and the Interceptor Command's

chief, Brig. Gen. Howard C. Davidson,

was absent with Powell, lesser officers of

the Air Corps were working many hours a

day. The fixed radars had passed the protracted, ugly stage of delay and might be

ready before very long. In any case, the six

70

 For an account of the confusion caused by G-2's

extra sabotage message, see Mark Skinner Watson,

Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1950), pp. 505-09 and 518-19.
306 THE SIGNAL CORPS

270's made a highly satisfactory stopgap,

as the war exercise had indicated they

should. Aside from the fact that they were

not permanently located or housed, the

only mechanical difficulty still existing

was minor trouble with the stand-by generators which were to be used in case

commercial power failed.

Short, Powell, and Murphy all wanted

to see the training carried a bit further

before the detectors were turned over to

the Air Corps, for numbers of the men assigned to the aircraft warning duty had no

experience with the work at all. But it was

felt that, given enough opportunity, they

would learn quickly and that their training as a whole would be sufficiently advanced for the transfer to be made soon.

A joint Signal Corps-Air Corps opinion

believed that another two weeks ought to

do it. If nothing unexpected intervened,

aircraft warning could probably be functioning as an integrated service by about

the seventh of December.
Appendix

Signal Corps Equipment,

World War II

The purpose of this appendix is to present a representative assembly of

Signal Corps equipment, not only emphasizing the gear which was known in

every wartime theater, but also including some items which, although under

development or satisfactorily tested before the end of the war, never reached

the field or even the production line. The grouping used is employed for

convenience, in an effort to simplify the maze. It points out the principal but

not necessarily the sole purpose of the equipment.

Military Communications

I. Wire communication

A. Wire and cable

1. Assault wire: very lightweight twisted pair (two conductors, each containing seven strands) which could be quickly laid over the ground

a. W-130: weight 30 pounds a mile, talking range about 5 miles.

b. WD-1/TT: weight 48 pounds a mile, talking range about 14 miles.

2. Field wire: heavier and stronger, for use in long lines on the ground or

on poles

a. W-110-B: twisted pair, weight about 130 pounds a mile, talking range

12-20 miles.

b. W-143: parallel pair, talking range up to 27 miles.

3. Cable

a. WC-534 and 535: heavily insulated cable, containing respectively 5

and 10 conductor pairs.

b. WC-548: spiral-four cable containing two conductor pairs spirally

wound about a core. This most popular cable was used wherever possible in carrier systems. It was supplied in various lengths, or cable stubs,

chief of which was CC-358, a quarter-mile length complete with snap

couplings and built-in loading coils.
308 THE SIGNAL CORPS

c. Coaxial cable: hollow cable, or wave guide, for conducting VHF

radio frequencies to and from the short VHF antennas (monopole

whips, dipoles, etc.) and the associated transmitters and receivers.

B. Line-laying equipment

1. Reels for laying or recovering wire or cable

a. DR-4 and 5: small drums or reels for wire.

b. DR-7 and 15: larger reels for cable.

c. CE-11: a reel unit carried by the operator, suspended from his neck,

for laying 1⁄4-mile lengths of W-130.

d. RL-16: a two-wheeled handcart carrying two DR-4 drums; replaced

during the war by the somewhat larger handcart, RL-35.

e. RL-31: a reel cradle for DR-4 and 5, carried by hand or in a vehicle.

f. RL-26: a heavy reel unit with gasoline engine drive, carried in a vehicle designed in 1932 for slow speed operation. Speedier versions were

undertaken in 1945 as RL-108 and 118( )/G.

g. RL-27: an axle or shaft carried between two men and bearing a wire

reel, DR-4.

h. RL-37: a wire thrower incorporating a small engine to throw wire to

a distance from the roadside, carried in a vehicle.

i. MX-301 and 302: cases holding coils of W-130 and W-110 (wound by

special machines) for rapid laying of wire at speeds up to 60 miles per

hour.

j. CY-196/ATC: container holding several MX-301 dispensers fitted

beneath a liaison-type aircraft for laying W-130 from the air.

2. Plow for burying lines (especially spiral-four cable)

LC-61: towed by a truck; this device could plough wire or cable into the

ground at 5 miles per hour to depths up to 18 inches.

C. Telephone equipment

1. Telephone sets (the telephones themselves are called handsets, see below

under Accessories, handsets]

a. EE-8: standard field telephone set, hand-carried in a small case

which included ringing equipment and batteries.

b. TP-9: a portable set including the generator and ringing components

of EE-8 plus a vacuum-tube amplifier which extended the talking range

of the wire line.

c. TP-3: a sound-powered field set, very lightweight, unencumbered by

batteries, utilizing instead the energy of the speaker's voice to produce

sufficient current in the wire for ranges of a few miles.

2. Telephone amplifiers to extend the talking range of wire lines

a. Loading coils: inserted at intervals in wire lines, they strengthen weak

currents by induction

(1) C-114: used to extend the range of W-110.

(2) C-426: an improved coil for W-110 and W-143. Spaced at onemile intervals in W-110, these coils extended its talking range to 20
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 309

miles. At

 5/8-mile intervals in W-143, they could extend its range to

over 80 miles.

b. Repeater sets: containing a power source and vacuum-tube amplifiers, repeater sets could boost wire ranges to scores and hundreds of

miles

(1) For noncarrier lines, both two and four wires operating on voice

frequencies only

(a) EE-89: a lightweight repeater for two-wire operation, weighing

but 13 pounds including a dry battery.

(b) TP-14: also for a two-wire line but much heavier, 75 pounds,

powered either by standard a-c or by 12-volt storage battery.

(c) TC-29: a portable repeater for four-wire operation. Its major

component was repeater EE-99.

(2) For carrier systems (C-type), four (sometimes two) wires operating

both on voice and on higher, or carrier, frequencies

(a) TC-23: a repeater set whose major component was CF-3, generally spaced at 25-mile intervals in spiral-four cable line.

(b) TC-37: a two-wire carrier repeater, whose major component

was CF-5. CF-5, used in conjunction with converter CF-4 (part of

TC-33) which converted four-wire carrier operation to two-wire,

could extend the two-wire range to 150 miles.

(c) AN/TCC-5 and 6: small, lightweight carrier equipment developed for AAF. 5 was a miniature version of the four-wire repeater

CF-3; 6 a miniature version of both the four-to-two-wire converter

CF-4 and the two-wire repeater CF-5.

3. Telephone terminal sets: for four-wire carrier systems (C-type)

a. TC-21: this carrier terminal, whose major component was CF-1,

could handle four telephone circuits on four bands between 200 and

12,000 cycles.

b. AN/TCC-3: a lightweight carrier terminal for AAF, a miniature version of CF-1 for use with either wire or radio relay systems.

4. Telephone switchboards

a. BD-9, 11, and 14: early boards of 4-, 12-, and 40-line capacity respectively.

b. BD-71 and 72: portable switchboards of 6- and 12-line capacity

respectively, yet quite heavy, about 45 and 75 pounds.

c. SB-5 and 22( )/PT: lightweight (about 12 pounds) 4- and 8-line

field boards to replace BD's-71 and 72.

d. SB-18/GT: vestpocket five-pound 6-line emergency board composed

of plastic adaptor plugs U-4/GT.

5. Telephone central office sets (telephone exchanges)

a. TC-1, 10, and 20: Army headquarters sets, TC-1 with a capacity of

100 to 300 lines was based on switchboard BD-80; TC-10 was similar

but more rugged and more easily transported. TC-10 was built around
310 THE SIGNAL CORPS

switchboard BD-110 of 90-line capacity, but three to six of these boards

could be used in series. TC-20 was built around switchboard BD-120.

b. TC-2 and 4: sets for corps and division headquarters respectively employing switchboards BD-89 and 96.

c. TC-12: a small lightweight telephone central office set for AAF, using

BD-91 of 20-line capacity.

6. Interphone equipment, used in tanks, armored cars, and aircraft

a. For tanks

(1) RC-53, 61, 99, and 146: for tanks and armored cars.

(2) AN/VIA-1: an external phone at rear of a tank enabling an

infantryman outside to talk with crewmen inside.

b. For aircraft

(1) RC-36, 45, and 51: for use in multiplace aircraft.

(2) AN/AIC-1, 2, and 3: developed for use in rarefied air at great

altitudes.

D. Telegraph and teletype equipment, including radioteletype

1. Telegraph

a. TG-5: a portable six-pound field set or buzzer for manual keying and

receiving.

b. Boehme equipment: high-speed keying and recording office equipment for automatically transmitting and receiving Morse code signals

over radio circuits.

2. Teletypewriters and teletypewriter sets

a. TG-7: a page printer; a tape printer had been developed in the

1930's as TG-6. Late in the war a lightweight page printer suitable for a

backpack was under development as AN/PGC-1 to replace TG-7,

which weighed over 200 pounds. Several teletypewriter sets were also

developed under nomenclature EE-97, 98, and 102. They included teletypewriters TG-7 and 37 and were capable of operation in the field on

such portable power sources as PE-77.

b. TG-15: a heavy office set, 250 pounds, a page receiver and keyboard

sender.

c. TC-16: reperforator teletypewriter set including a reperforator transmitter, TG-26. This set could produce from wire-line signals a perforated

tape bearing both the message letter text and corresponding perforations

in the five-unit teletype code. If the set were in a relay station, the message could be relayed automatically by running the tape through the

reperforator transmitter. TC-17 (with TG-27) was identical with TC-16

and TG-26 except for its special keyboard designed for use in weather

communications.

3. Teletype (and telegraph) repeaters and repeater sets

a. TG-9: designed to replace TG-4 to extend the wire range of two-way

manual or printer telegraph.

b. TG-28 and 29: portable field repeaters to extend the normal telegraph range (60-90 miles) of W-110.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 311

c. TC-18 and 19: repeater sets, terminal and intermediate respectively,

for installation at the terminal or at an intermediate point along the wire

line for boosting teletype signals. The chief components were repeaters

TG-30 (terminal) and TG-31 (intermediate).

4. Teletype (telegraph) terminals

a. TC-22: a carrier terminal (of which the major component was CF-2)

providing four teletypewriter circuits over a single telephone circuit, or

twelve such circuits over spiral four since only the three upper voice frequency bands could be used for teletypewriter operation. Often telephone and teletype operation were combined, as one telephone and

twelve teletype circuits. Such operation called for both TC-21 (telephone) and TC-22 (telegraph) equipment at the same terminal.

b. CF-6 (originally TC-28): a teletype terminal, used in conjunction

with TC-22, to provide additional teletype circuits on two- and fourwire systems.

c. TH-1( )/TCC-1(originally AN/TCC-1): speech-plus-duplex

(S + DX) terminal equipment which provided telegraph transmission

over an existing telephone line—allowing a carrier telegraph circuit

while retaining the voice circuit.

d. AN/TCC-4: a lightweight carrier terminal developed for AAF, a

miniature version of CF-2 providing four telegraph or teletype circuits

over a two-wire system or over radio relay equipment.

5. Teletype (and telegraph) switchboards

a. BD-100: providing facilities for 10 telegraph printer lines; a heavy

board, weighing about 200 pounds.

b. SB-6( )/GG: a lightweight portable switchboard for four-line telegraph or teletype operation, replacing older telegraph boards, BD-50,

51, 52, and 53.

6. Teletype (and telegraph) central office sets

a. TC-3: a small central office set consisting of teletypewriter TG-7,

switchboar b. AN/MRC-2 d BD-100 : a mobil , rectifier e teletypewrite , and portablr statio e powenr unitprovidin . g two-way

(duplex) operation over radio SCR-399, a vehicular long-range set.

7. Radioteletype equipment

Much of the foregoing wire teletype equipment could be, and was, used

in radioteletype systems, wherein radio waves substituted for wire lines.

Additional equipment designed specifically for radioteletype operation

included the following:

a. O-5/FR: a signal shifter which, when attached to a transmitter radiating continuous-wave radioteletype mark and space signals, caused the

transmitter to send out two different frequencies or tones—one for mark,

the other for space.

b. AN/FRR-3: a frequency-diversity radio receiver (2.5-26 mc) designed to receive both mark and space radioteletype signals on two frequencies or tones.
312 THE SIGNAL CORPS

c. AN/FGC-1: a radioteletype terminal set designed to convert the twotone (or two-frequency) signals received by AN/FRR-3 into suitable

impulses to operate a standard teletypewriter.

d. AN/TGC-1: a semiautomatic tape relay set—a reperforator at the

receiver punched a tape, on which it overprinted the letter text for the

convenience of personnel unable to read the perforation code. The tape

needed only to be manually inserted in the proper transmitter, according to the designation of the message it bore, to be hurried on its way

over an outgoing circuit.

II. Ground radio communication

A. Short-range: up to 25 miles (usually five miles or less for radiotelephone

sets)

1. Portable sets

a. SCR-131 and 161: two-man pack sets providing continuous-wave

Morse code signals up to five miles on 4-5 mc.

b. SCR-194 and 195: one-man pack sets providing voice signals only on

27-65 mc; Army's first walkie-talkies.

c. SCR-284: both portable and vehicular, providing both continuous

wave and voice; rather heavy, weighing complete about 250 pounds.

d. SCR-288: a stopgap set for SCR-284.

e. SCR-300: the renowned walkie-talkie, an FM set, manually tuned

over 40-48 mc. Signal Corps developed a version of this set for Field

Artillery (FA) as SCR-619 (to substitute for SCR's 609 and 610) and a

version of the 619 in turn for Armored Force as AN/GRC-12.

f. SCR-509: AF-II, an 80-crystal (any two frequencies preset) pushbutton FM radio; version SCR-709 had fewer crystals.

g. SCR-511: portable Cavalry guidon set, widely used by Infantry.

h. SCR-609 and 809: FA equivalents of SCR-509 and 709.

i. SCR-536: the handie-talkie, smallest of Signal Corps radio transmitter and receiver sets; a very popular AM set, followed by tropicalized

and disguised versions, AN/PRC-4 and 6 respectively.

j. SCR-694: both portable and vehicular, successor to SCR-284 to

whose crystal control it added two preset frequencies. Its receiver used

alone was SCR-714. A late and improved version with continuous-wave

range up to 75 miles was AN/GRC-9.

k. AN/PRC-3: a portable microwave transceiver developed for FA to

replace signal lamps.

2. Vehicular sets

a. SCR-171 and 178: sets carried in a vehicle but operated on the

ground; providing a 15-mile range on continuous wave only, 2-3 mc.

b. SCR-179 and 203: cavalry saddle sets. SCR-179 was a saddle version

of SCR-178.

c. SCR-209 and 210: continuous-wave, tone, and voice sets for Armored

Force.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 313

d. SCR-293 and 294: first FM sets for the Armored Force; crystal-controlled, providing voice communications only on 20-27 mc. A related

FM set was SCR-298.

e. SCR-508: AF III, an 80-crystal (any ten frequencies preset) pushbutton radio (transmitter and two receivers) with variations SCR-528

(transmitter and one receiver) and 538 (one receiver). SCR-708, 728,

and 738 were crystal-saving versions. All provided voice only on 20-28

mc, FM.

f. SCR-510: similar to the portable SCR-509 but designed for vehicles

only. SCR-710 had fewer crystals.

g. SCR-608, 628, and 610: similar to AF sets 508, 528, and 510 but designed for FA with 120 crystals on 27-39 mc. SCR-808, 828, and 810

were crystal-saving versions.

h. AN/VRC-3: an FM set designed for tanks on the same frequency

band as SCR-300 to enable crew men to communicate with ground

troops using the walkie-talkie.

B. Medium-range: 25 to 100 miles

1. Portable sets

a. SCR-177: carried in a vehicle but operated on the ground, providing

continuous wave, tone, and voice.

b. SCR-543 and 593: vehicular and ground sets for CAC; SCR-593 was

portable, being the receiver portion only.

c. AN/TRC-2: a version of SCR-694 designed for eight- to ten-man

pack for jungle or mountain use providing a continuous-wave range up

to 100 miles.

2. Vehicular sets

a. SCR-193: set which could be operated to provide continuous wave,

tone, and voice, while vehicle was in motion.

b. SCR-245: popular mobile set providing four crystal-controlled frequencies, selected by switches.

c. SCR-506: AF II; standard medium-range vehicular set providing

continuous wave and voice on four preset crystal frequencies,

d. SCR-583: a saddle or vehicular set designed to replace the shortrange saddle set SCR-203.

3. Transportable radio relay equipment, both terminal and relay sets, employing directional beams in VHF, UHF, and SHF; FM or pulse-time

modulated

a. AN/TRC-1, 3, and 4: VHF, on 70-100 mc; 1 was a single transmitter-receiver set for simplex operation; 3 and 4 were terminal and

relay assemblages respectively for duplex or for four circuits, carrier C

operation.

b. AN/TRC-5:UHF, on 1500 mc, designed to provide seven radio circuits, employing pulse-time modulation.
314 THE SIGNAL CORPS

c. AN/TRC-8, 11, and 12: VHF, on 230-250 mc, designed to provide

four circuits, FM.

d. AN/TRC-16, 17, and 18: SHF, on 7000-8500 mc, designed as a very

lightweight single circuit set for AAF.

e. AN/TRC-6: SHF, on 4300-4900 mc, a heavy duty eight-circuit set,

employing pulse-time modulation.

C. Long-range: 100 miles and over

1. Portable sets

a. AN/PRC-1 and 5: suitcase continuous-wave sets designed for Military Intelligence Service (MIS).

b. AN/TRC-10: a larger, yet portable set, also for MIS.

2. Mobile sets: operated in trucks in motion or at rest and powered by

large generators carried in trailers

a. SCR-197: powerful set but of poor mobility; on 1-18 mc with five

preset crystal frequencies.

b. SCR-505 (AF I) and SCR-597: development of the former was supplanted by designs for the latter to provide 100 miles on voice, 350 on

continuous wave (up to 5,000 miles from ground to aircraft) having three

crystal pushbutton channels in range 2-20 mc.

c. SCR-299: excellent long-range set mounted in a panel truck and

powered by the reliable PE-95 carried in a two-wheel trailer. The 299

replaced SCR-597 and became standard for all the Army. Version SCR399 was housed in the standard shelter HO-17, mountable in any 21⁄2-ton

truck. An air transportable version, SCR-499, became standard for the

AAF. These sets radiated about 350 watts of power, yielding dependable

100-mile range on voice while in motion, and many hundreds of miles

on continuous wave, in Morse code.

3. Transportable sets

SCR-698: largest of SCR radio sets, a one-kilowatt broadcast transmitter, used (together with receiver and monitor set SCR-696) by MIS

(Psychological Warfare Units) for broadcasting to enemy and conquered

countries.

D. Radio remote-control devices

1. RM-7 and 14: used respectively with long-range SCR-197 and with

short-range 194 and 195, permitting telegraph operation from a distance,

or remote-voice operation over telephone set EE-8.

2. RC-47: used with the ground-air liaison set SCR-188 permitting transmission or reception, voice, tone, or continuous wave, over six to ten miles

of wire.

3. RM-29 and RC-261, 289, and 290: remote-control units for a number

of portable and vehicular short-range sets (SCR-300, 284, 608, etc.) permitting control at distances up to five miles.

4. AN/TRA-2: used with radio-relay sets AN/TRC-1, 3, and 4 permitting

control at distances up to two miles.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 315

III. Air radio communication

A. Medium- and long-range command sets

1. Airborne component

a. SCR-183 and 283: HF sets (2-7 mc) operating on 12- and 24-volt

airplane batteries respectively and providing continuous wave, tone,

and voice for 10-45 miles between planes; 10-20 miles plane to ground.

b. SCR-240 and 261: first airborne crystal-controlled preset radios for

12- and 24-volt batteries respectively. Designed in 1938-39 on 3-8 mc

and intended to replace SCR-183 and 283.

c. SCR-264: first airborne VHF pushbutton set on 100-130 mc initiated

by Signal Corps Laboratories in 1939, but use of the set was precluded

by adoption of British VHF, SCR-522.

d. SCR-274: HF, up to 9 mc (VHF later added), 75 miles on voice, 150

miles on continuous wave.

e. SCR-522: a VHF set (100-156 mc) operating on 24-volt batteries

with four preset crystal-controlled pushbutton channels. A version

designed to operate on 12-volt batteries was SCR-542.

f. AN/ARC-3: an improved VHF set providing eight pushbutton

channels.

g. AN/ARC-6: on still higher frequencies (225-285 mc) and especially

designed to overcome jamming by the enemy.

h. AN/ARC-10: a relay set carried by an intermediate plane to extend

VHF line-of-sight range from a ground station to combat planes flying

beyond the sight of the ground station over the horizon.

2. Ground component

a. SCR-562, 563, 567, and 633: VHF transmitters and receivers used

with fighter-control system SCS-2, semifixed.

b. SCR-573, 574, and 643: ditto, used with fighter-control system SCS-3,

mobile.

c. SCR-643 and 644: fixed VHF transmitter and receiver stations.

d. SCR-624: an adaptation of SCR-522 for ground use, good for 130

miles line of sight ground to plane. A similar adaptation for parachute

drop was AN/CRC-1.

e. AN/VRC-1: a jeep-mounted set combining the HF SCR-193 with

the VHF airborne command set SCR-542 to provide both ground and

air communication—continuous wave, tone, and voice—up to 60 miles.

B. Long-range liaison sets

1. Airborne component

a. SCR-187 and 287: for 12- and 24-volt operation respectively; manually tuned, continuous wave, tone, and voice on 1-12 mc range up to

2,000 miles.

b. AN/ARC-8: derived from SCR-287 but incorporating pushbutton

tuning; composed of transmitter AN/ART-13 and receiver BC-348 or

AN/ARR-11.
316 THE SIGNAL CORPS

2. Ground component

a. SCR-188: provided continuous wave, tone, and voice on 1-12 mc,

the continuous-wave range matching that of the airborne SCR-187 and

287.

b. SCR-237: developed with 10 preset crystal channels with intent to

replace SCR-188.

c. SCR-499: a version of the long-range SCR-399, packaged for parachute drop in 200-pound bundles. The set became standard for AAF

ground liaison. A lighter weight parachute version was developed as

AN/CRC-5.

C. Short-range paratroop and glider sets

1. SCR-585: a modified handie-talkie for use in gliders, talking range up

to one mile.

2. AN/ASC-1: having a range of but 500 feet, for talk between glider and

tow plane.

3. AN/PRC-2: a VHF set for paratroop liaison.

4. AN/TRC-7: a heavier VHF paratroop liaison set weighing 100 pounds,

parachuted in four packages including a hand generator and a 30-foot

sectional mast.

IV. Visual communication

A. Flags

1. MC-44: semaphore, 18" square, divided diagonally into red and white

portions.

2. MC-113: semaphore flag kit containing two MC-44's.

3. M-238: set of colored flags for signaling between tanks.

B. Panels and panel sets: cotton cloth strips variously colored to identify

ground areas and units for friendly planes

1. AL-119, 120, etc.: square or rectangular, for aerial liaison.

2. AP-30-A and C: in dark colors, for use on snow or light backgrounds.

3. AP-30-B and D: in light colors, for use on normal backgrounds.

4. AP-33 and 34: for signals to high flying planes.

5. AP-50: large panels (2 x 12 ft) in white, yellow, and red (the last two

colors being brilliantly fluorescent).

C. Lamps, to transmit blinker code by night or day

1. Signal

a. EE-80-A: heavy (194 pounds) 12-inch lamp and tripod signaling by

white, red, or green flashes using commercial 115-volt alternating current or direct current, range up to 12-14 miles.

b. EE-84: portable searchlight-type set (42 pounds) operating on dry

cell batteries with range up to 5,000 yards in sunlight, far greater at

night; white or red flashes.

c. SE-11: highly portable (7-8 pounds), flashlight-type, aimed like a

gun with trigger key, daylight range 1,000-2,000 yards using red filter.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 317

2. Identification: enabling planes to identify friendly ground vehicles and

installations

a. AN/WX-1: delivering intermittent flashes visible in bright sunlight

three miles aloft or a mile or more along the ground.

b. AN/PVX-1: similar to above but portable, operating on self-contained battery to mark front lines, installations, etc. It could also serve as

blinker signal lamp.

D. Optiphone (or photophone: i.e., talk by light, by a steady modulated

beam, not blinker light)

AN/TVC-1: formerly SE-10, involving a modulated light-beam transmitter and receiver, portable, with minimum range of 5,000 yards in sunlight

and able to link telephone lines so as to span obstacles such as a river.

V. Pigeon communication

A. Lofts, transportable, for housing large numbers of birds

1. PG-46: prefabricated sectional housing for fixed use.

2. PG-68/TB: a combat loft, collapsible and easily transported by a truck

or trailer.

B. Pigeon equipment including containers for carrying a few birds

1. PG-60, 102/CB, 103/GB, and 105/CB: portable, carrying two to four

birds, for combat troops.

2. PG-100/CB and 101/CB: four- and eight-bird containers respectively,

with parachutes for dropping to paratroops or isolated ground forces.

C. Message holders to fasten to the legs of the birds

1. PG-14: aluminum holders.

2. PG-52, 53, 54, and 67: plastic substitutes for the PG-14.

D. Pigeon vest, PG-106/CB, retaining a single bird, to be worn by paratrooper

VI. Reproduced communication

A. Public address sets

1. PA-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6: sets varying from heavy systems powered by

gasoline engine generators to simple portable microphones and amplifiers

powered by batteries.

2. AN/TIQ-1, 4, and 5: powerful outdoor sets with speaking ranges up to

7,000 yards.

3. AN/PIQ-2, TIQ-2, and UIQ-1: portable battery sets.

B. Recorders and reproducers of sound

1. RG-17 and 169: recorders of speech or signals whether telephone, telegraph, or radio. RC-179 and 199 were used in radio intercept work to

record any type of signal.

2. MC-364: record player and amplifier.

3. AN/ANQ-1 and 2 and GNQ-1 and 2: airborne voice recorders and

ground playback equipment developed for air reconnaissance work.

C. Facsimile
318 THE SIGNAL CORPS

1. RC-58: tape facsimile developed for use in AF vehicles to reproduce

hand printed message texts received over vehicular radio sets.

2. RG-120: a page transceiver, to send or receive a seven-inch square

page—text, map, picture—transmission or reception requiring seven

minutes to complete. A larger version for fixed station use was AN/TXC-1,

which could handle a page 12 by 18 inches over voice communication

channels.

3. AN/GXR-1 and PXT-1: a portable receiver and transmitter developed

for the Office of Strategic Services for continuous-wave transmission of

4-by-5-inch copy in 15 minutes.

4. AN/GXC-2 and 3: transceivers for 41⁄2 by 51⁄4 and for 8 by 101⁄2 copy

respectively.

Military Operations

I. Radar

A. Searchlight control

1. SCR-268: standard SLC set employing long waves, 11⁄2 meters, on

205 mc.

2. SCR-668 and 768: experimental SLC sets, the latter patterned after the

British "Wigwam" radars enveloped in tents.

3. AN/TPL-1: lightweight microwave set for use with 60-inch searchlights, developed from SCR-668.

B. Early warning: for long-range detection of aircraft. EW radars merged

into medium-range EW and GCI sets.

1. SCR-270 and 271: respectively mobile and fixed long wave (3 meters,

109 mc) search sets, giving azimuth and range of aircraft up to 150 miles

away. Versions designed to give elevation also were SCR-289, 530, and

531. SCR-539 was a PPI indicator developed for use with the 270 and 271.

2. SCR-548 and 648: experimental outer harbor aircraft detectors, shipborne.

3. SCR-602: copy of the British LW, lightweight warning radar, using long

wavelengths at 200 mc.

4. AN/TPS-3: an efficient lightweight radar developed from SCR-548,

using medium wavelengths on 600 mc. Other transportable EW radars for

use in mobile situations, such as invasions, were AN/TPS-1 and 2, the

latter totaling less than 600 pounds.

5. AN/TPS-10: a height finder and lightweight EW with narrow "beavertail" beam, for Air Forces use in hilly country; dubbed "Little Abner."

6. AN/CPS-1: the powerful MEW, or microwave early warning radar, a

huge set on 3,000 mc, radiating a 10-cm wave with range up to 200 miles.

7. AN/CPS-2: a medium-range EW developed to employ variable frequencies between 510 and 725 mc in order to evade jamming.

8. AN/CPS-4: a height finder only, to supplement MEW and SCR-270

and 271.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 319

9. AN/TRS-1: electronic fence, employing continuous-wave radiations;

a beat-reflection-type radar developed to detect aircraft flying over hilly

terrain where ground reflections handicap pulsed-type radar search sets.

C. Ground-controlled interception

1. SCR-516 and 527: the 516 was developed from the SCR-268; the 527

was copied from the British GCI.

2. SCR-588: American copy, built in Canada, of the huge British

CHL/GCI using long wavelengths.

3. SCR-615: a large transportable 10-cm microwave radar with range up

to 90 miles.

4. AN/CPS-5 and 6: improved microwave sets for GCI applications.

D. Coastal defense and harbor surveillance: for long-range detection of

surface craft.

1. SCR-296: a large fixed radar operating on medium waves, 700 mc.

2. SCR-582: a valuable microwave set, on 10-cm at 3,000 mc. Version

SCR-682 was transportable.

E. Gun laying

1. For coast defense, against surface vessels

a. SCR-598: similar to SCR-296 but of shorter range and greater

accuracy for fire control purposes, directing gunfire against such small

craft as motor torpedo boats.

b. AN/FPG-1 and 2: fixed sets using very short wavelengths, 3-cm, at

10,000 mc which permit great accuracy.

c. AN/MPG-1 and TPG-1: respectively mobile and transportable 3-cm

coastal gun layers, long range and very accurate.

2. For air defense and AA batteries, against airborne targets

a. SCR-547: a "radio height finder," replacing optical height finders

supplying target range and elevation data. Known as "Mickey Mouse."

b. SCR-545: a gun layer using relatively a long wavelength for search

and a microwavelength for tracking or following the target. It was a

semiautomatic gun layer, requiring hand tracking.

c. SCR-584: an excellent 10-cm gun layer, completely automatic for

fire on unseen targets, very accurate.

3. For aircraft, against airborne and surface targets

a. Aircraft range only, aiding fire on visual targets

(1) AN/APG-5: automatic range finder for turret gunners in B-17's

and 24's, developed from experimental SCR-523 and 726.

(2) AN/APG-11: designed for toss bombing, from plane to plane.

(3) AN/APG-14: for B-29 gunners.

b. Aircraft gun sight radars, requiring hand tracking

(1) AN/APG-13: effectively used with the 75-mm nose cannon of

B-25's, named "Falcon."

(2) AN/APG-15: an efficient radar gun sight for tail gunners of heavy

bombers.
320 THE SIGNAL CORPS

c. Aircraft gun laying, automatic, for blind firing

(1) AN/APG-1: (SCR-702) used in the Black Widow night fighter,

P-61. Weighed 700 pounds.

(2) AN/APG-2: (SCR-580) a 10-cm AI and AGL for bomber gun

turrets. A 3-cm version for B-32's was AN/APG-16.

(3) AN/APG-3: a smaller 3-cm AI and AGL for B-29's.

F. Tail warning

1. AN/APS-13: a small 20-pound radar for fighter planes; it flashed a red

light and rang a bell in the cockpit to warn that another plane was

approaching from the rear.

2. AN/APS-16 and 17: similar tail-warning indicators for bombers.

G. Air interception

1. SCR-540: patterned after the British AI Mark IV, which operated on a

long wavelength, 11⁄2 meters, at 200 mc.

2. SCR-520 and 720: AI-10, superior 10-cm, 3,000 mc, microwave sets,

but heavy, 600 and 500 pounds respectively.

3. AN/APS-4 and 6: smaller improved AI's, operating on 3-cm wavelengths at 10,000 mc, developed in part from SCR-537.

H. Airborne search and bombing: early search types were called air-tosurface-vessel radars, ASV, which developed into low-altitude bombing

types, LAB, and bombing-through-overcast, BTO, types.

1. SCR-521: a long wave (11⁄2 meters) ASV, patterned after the British

ASV Mark II.

2. SCR-517: ASV-10, a microwave 10-cm radar operating in the S-band

at 3,000 mc. Weight 500 pounds. A smaller version for LAB, blind bombing at low altitudes, was SCR-717. Other SCR's in these categories were

SCR-519, a 10-cm search and tracking set, and SCR-667, a 3-cm, X-band,

set.

3. AN/APQ-5: an auxiliary bombsight much used in combination with

the SCR-517 as a LAB set.

4. AN/APQ-11 and 12: (SCR-626) radar bombsights, designed especially

for launching airborne torpedoes.

5. AN/APQ-13 and APS-15: superior BTO's, 3-cm sets (X-band), known

to the Americans as "Mickey," to the British as H2X. They performed

well at high altitudes and showed ground features in considerable detail.

6. AN/APQ-7 and 10: 3-cm BTO's of even greater clarity than "Mickey."

APQ-7, dubbed "Eagle," weighed nearly 1,000 pounds.

I. Identification, friend or foe

1. Mark IV, American sets, involving equipment independent of any asso-

- ciated radars, giving instant response

a. Ground interrogator-responsor

SCR-532 and 533: for short and long ranges respectively.

b. Airborne transponder

SCR-515: 150-mile range.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 321

2. Mark II, adopted from the British

SCR-535: airborne transponder, which swept the frequency bands of

the early EW radars, and caused its plane's echo in their scopes to

appear large. No ground interrogator-responsor was needed.

3. Mark III, British IFF, standard for all the Allies; it depended upon

associated radars for power and design; response was delayed

a. Ground interrogator-responsors, differing for each radar type.

RC-148, 150, 151, 127, 184, etc.: associated with SCR-268, 270, 271,

527, 584, etc.

b. Airborne transponders

SCR-595 and 695: on I-band, 157-187 mc. The 695 including also

G-band, 200 mc, for benefit of long-wave GCI radars.

c. Airborne interrogator-responsor

SCR-729: enabling a plane to challenge the identification of other

planes, which could answer if they carried SCR-595 or 695. SCR-729

was also much used in radar beaconry (see under Navigation, Radar).

4. Mark V/UNB: a universal identification and beacon system developed

by U.S., British, and Canadian services, involving pulse sets in UHF.

J. Bomb proximity fuzing: fuzes operating on radar principles, emitting

radio waves whose reflection from a nearby target served to explode the

missile carrying such a fuze

1. MC-382: designed for aerial rocket bombs.

2. AN/CPQ-1, 2, 3, 5, and 6: designed to detonate bombs just above

ground targets.

K. Glide-bomb control

1. RG-171: radar homing bomb equipment, an S-band radar fitting into

a winged bomb designed to seek, or home on, a target illuminated by a

radar transmitter in the bombing aircraft.

2. AN/APG-7: send-receive radar bomb, similar to RHB above, but containing its own radar transmitter.

L. Mortar location, enabled by radar tracking of the trajectory of the mortar

shells

1. AN/TPQ-2 and 4: microwave radars.

2. AN/TPQ-3: a lighter weight medium-wave version, operating on 600

mc, modified from AN/TPS-3.

M. Personnel detection: radars of the continuous-wave, beat-reflection type

1. AN/PPQ-1: a very short-range, hand-carried set, developed to serve as

an aid to night patrols, or as a sensory aid for the blind.

2. AN/PPS-1: a lightweight pack set to detect moving objects (tanks,

trucks, men).

II. Radio

A. Mine detection: mine detectors bore Signal Corps designations, were produced and distributed by Signal Corps, but their development was a responsibility of the Engineer Corps
322 THE SIGNAL CORPS

1. Portable: carried and operated by one man

a. SCR-625: standard detector for metallic mines.

b. AN/PRS-2, 3, and 4: portable detectors for nonmetallic mines.

2. Vehicular

a. AN/VRS-2: detector designed to be mounted on a boom projecting

ahead of a jeep and to stop the vehicle automatically upon detecting a

mine ahead.

b. AN/VRS-3: a similar set designed for use by tanks.

B. Remote mine detonation: remote-control system for detonating mines

AN/TRT-1 and TRR-2: transmitter and receiver respectively, the latter

designed to operate under water adjacent to a mine, which it could detonate upon receiving properly coded signals from the transmitter miles

distant—up to 40 miles when the transmitter was carried by a plane.

C. Bomb control

1. For glide bombs Azon and Razon

a. RC-186 and AN/ARW-16: transmitters to control the bombs.

b. RC-185 and AN/CRW-2 through 5, and 7 through 9: a group of

receivers designed to fit within the bombs to receive the controlling

impulses and transfer them to flight-control mechanisms.

2. For power-driven bombs, such as rocket bombs and War Weary Willies,

which were jalopy bombing planes loaded with explosives and directed by

remote control against the enemy

a. AN/ARW-18: transmitter, carried by the mother craft.

b. AN/ARW-1: receiver carried by the missile.

3. Automatic bomb release: whereby the bombardier in lead plane could

release the bombs of all planes in his squadron simultaneously

a. AN/ARW-9: controlling transmitter (also used with Azon and

Razon).

b. AN/ARW-10: receiver, which actuated bomb release.

4. Tracking of robot bombs: developed for projected use of American version of the V-1 buzz bomb (JB-2)

a. AN/ART-19: transmitter carried by JB-2.

b. AN/CRD-5: a direction finder to track signals from the above transmitter.

D. Direction finders (DF's) for fighter-control: VHF DF components of

fighter-control (or SCS) systems. The DF's took continuous bearings on aircraft radio emissions, especially airborne pipsqueak (RC-96), which radiated

a signal once a minute. The bearings, laid out on plotting boards at control

centers, served to track the planes in flight and enabled ground-control

officers to guide the planes by radio telephone.

1. SCR-564, 565, and 566: fixed and mobile DF's, components of SCS-2

(see under Air radio communication, Ground component).

2. SCR-575 and 634: mobile and air transportable respectively, components of SCS-3.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 323

3. SCR-645: fixed VHF direction finder.

4. AN/CRA-1: a kit embodying an electric goniometer by which VHF

sets (SCR-575 and 634) whose H-Adcock antennas had to be rotated by

hand, could be converted so as to provide instantaneous indication of

direction in a cathode-ray scope.

5. SCR-552: a VHF DF with unique antenna, a conicle or funnel-shaped

dipole, which rotated constantly at 75 rpm.

III. Wire

A. The operators at SGS control centers and at information, filter, and operation centers for aircraft warning required rapid communication facilities.

These were supplied by extensive wire nets, sometimes supplemented by

radio also.

1. SCR-561 and 572: not radio sets but assemblies of telephones, switchboards, DF plotting equipment, filter and intercept tables, boards, etc.

employed in co-ordinating fighter-control systems SCS-2 and 3.

2. SCS-5: an information center assembly, transported by six 21⁄2-ton

trucks.

3. SCS-6 and TC-15: mobile information center and filter center respectively, being successively smaller editions of SCS-5.

4. AN/TTQ-1 and 2: filter and operation centers transportable in two

and one trucks respectively for plotting flights of aircraft. Still smaller versions for use with gun and searchlight battalions were AN/TSA-1 and 2.

B. Direction-finding and intercept centrals: transportable sets housed originally in K-35 trailers, later in HO-17 and in HO-27 shelters, and manned by

radio intelligence units for locating enemy transmitters and for intercepting

and recording their traffic

1. TC-8: a DF central set housed in two shelters and linked to associated

DF radio sets by wire (or radio) nets.

2. TC-9: a RI (intercept) central housed in three shelters.

IV. Sound, thermal, light

A. Ranging equipment: for determining the range or distance to enemy

artillery

1. Sound ranging: utilizing the different arrival times of a muzzle blast

received by several spaced microphones to determine the direction and

distance to an enemy gun

a. GR-3-C: utilizing a maximum of eight microphone listening posts.

b. GR-8: a lighter weight set using a maximum of six very sensitive

microphones; a modified version became AN/TNS-2.

c. GR-6: an extremely accurate set using three microphones; a modification became AN/TND-1.

d. AN/TNS-1: designed to locate enemy mortars by sound ranging up

to 5,000 yards.

2. Flash ranging: utilizing the data received by photoelectric cells from

muzzle flashes
324 THE SIGNAL CORPS

a. GR-4: standard set in World War II; but it was too heavy and too

delicate.

b. AN/GTC-1: a lighter weight, yet more rugged, set.

3. Sound and flash ranging

AN/TSS-1: combined both sound and flash reception at a single observation station. Flash reception was at first accomplished by a photoelectric cell, later by an infrared detector.

4. Hydrocoustic ranging: equipment utilizing underwater sound, developed for Coast Artillery Corps until it was transferred from the Signal

Corps to the Navy in June, 1942

GR-5: hydrocoustic tracking set, able to track vessels by their underwater sound to distances of 100,000 yards; a smaller version was GR-7.

B. Bomb-control (television, for remote control of flying bombs)

1. AN/AXR-1: television receiver (formerly SCR-550) for installation in

the controlling plane.

2. AN/AXT-2 and 3: transmitters (formerly SCR-549) for installation in

the controlled craft or flying bomb.

C. Photoelectric bomb fuze

MC-380: a proximity fuze developed to fit into the nose of a bomb such as

the airborne M8 rocket for use against aircraft. The fuze contained a

photoelectric cell which, on detecting a reduction in light intensity as the

missile came within 60 feet of its target, detonated the bomb.

D. Photoelectric and supersonic detectors, or sensory aids: carried in one

hand, these devices (including the radar sensory aid AN/PPQ-1: under

Operational radar, Personnel Detection), could aid blind men, or night

patrolmen, to detect the direction and distance of nearby objects

1. AN/PVQ-2: utilizing a pulsed beam of light which, when reflected

from an object, impinged upon a photoelectric cell. This cell in turn modulated an audio signal, which the user detected in an earphone. The aid

was unaffected by nonpulsed light, such as sunlight and ordinary electric

light.

2. AN/PNQ-1: utilizing a pulsed-supersonic tone (stealing the secret of

the flight control of a bat). The tone, when reflected, was picked up by a

microphone, supersonic like a bat's ear, and reduced to an audible tone in

a hearing aid worn by the user.

E. Thermal detection

Thermal equipment, utilizing infrared or heat radiations, largely occupied

Signal Corps laboratories in the early 1930's at the beginning of radar

development, which soon displaced infrared research. Yet infrared equipment had proved useful in detection both of ships and aircraft, in searchlight directing and in early forms of the radar SCR-268. It had been tried

in 1941, as the Thermopticon, aboard a B-18 bomber and had detected a

second B-18 up to 1,200 feet away. Late in the war an infrared detector

was incorporated in the sound- and flash-ranging set AN/TSS-1 to detect

muzzle flashes, replacing a photoelectric cell which had first been used in
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 325

this set. Also late in the war the Navy desired an infrared ship detector to

be used during radar silence, and called upon Signal Corps for

AN/SSS-1: a shipborne heat-radiation detecting equipment to search

for and detect ships up to ranges of 15,000 yards.

V. Magnetic

Magnetic airborne detector, or magnetometer

RC-132: an airborne device which, dangled beneath a low-flying plane,

could detect a submerged submarine by its magnetic field, which extends

from below the water up into the air. RC-132 became AN/ASQ-1, variations of which were designated ASQ-2 and 3.

Navigation

I. Radio

A. Compasses: airborne loop-antenna direction-finding receivers (DF's)

1. SCR-242: a LF-MF 12-volt set. A 24-volt version was SCR-282.

2. SCR-246: LF, 12 volts. A 24-volt version was SCR-276. Another version developed to home on much higher frequencies in VHF was SCR-256.

3. SCR-263, 273, and 280: dual remote-control compasses, operating in

LF and MF.

4. SCR-269 and 279: standard automatic radio compasses for 24 and 12

volts respectively, LF and MF. Later versions of the standard SCR-269

were AN/ARN-6 and 7 (or SCR-599 and 639 respectively).

B. Beacons operating on radio-directional principles

1. Ground Forces homing equipment

a. Beacon attachments for radio transmitters

(1) RG-163: HF directional attachment, 25-mile range, for vehicular

radios SCR-508, 510, 608, 610, etc.

(2) RC-302: attachment converting SCR-284 and 694 into beacons

for guiding troops; similar to SCR-277.

(3) AN/TRA-3: all-directional, rotating antenna set, similar to

RG-163 but lighter in weight.

b. DF attachments for radio receivers

(1) RC-300 and 303: for SCR-300 (walkie-talkie) and 511 respectively.

(2) BC-309: similar attachment for SCR-508, 608, and 619.

(3) MC-619: similar attachment for the handie-talkie SCR-536.

2. Ground radio range beacons for aircraft guidance

a. SCR-277: a military version of the commercial A-N quadrant type;

fixed LF, 200-400 kc.

b. SCR-629: an E-T range, omnidirectional with rotating antenna

operating in VHF on 100-156 mc.

c. AN/MRN-2 (formerly SCR-601) and AN/CRN-5: mobile and air

transportable respectively, similar to SCR-277 but operating in VHF on

100-156 mc.
326 THE SIGNAL CORPS

3. Air-sea-rescue beacon and receiver

a. SCR-578: an emergency transmitter, hand powered, for use by aviators downed at sea, nicknamed "Gibson Girl"; a modification became

AN/CRT-3.

b. AN/ARR-6: an airborne receiver, preset to the frequency of the

"Gibson Girl" and automatically giving an alarm upon receipt of the

emergency beacon signal.

4. Buoy beacons, locator and sonic, parachuted into the sea

a. AN/CRN-1: a marker beacon, radiating a signal over a 50-mile

range, received by aircraft radio compasses, SCR-263 or 269.

b. AN/CRT-1: sonic buoy, picking up submerged submarine sounds

and transmitting them over a 10-mile range, received by a special airborne receiver AN/ARR-3.

5. Paratroop beacon

AN/CRN-4: a portable marker radio beacon supplementing RebeccaEureka radar types, sending a continuous-wave coded signal every 30

seconds for two hours over a 30-mile range.

C. Navigational direction finders

1. SCR-225 and 551: HF sets with H-Adcock antennas; used by RI units

as well as by AAF to assist plane navigation.

2. SCR-291: a very large set developed for AAF from the RI set SCR-502

(see under Intelligence DF's) having fixed U-Adcock monopole antennas.

3. SCR-292: a smaller set employing rotating vertical-loop antennas.

4. AN/CRD-2: a transportable set, superior to, and much smaller than,

SGR-551 and 291.

D. Instrument approach and landing systems: these comprised various

ground and airborne components of SCS-51, formerly SCR-241 and 251 (all

the ground components included SCR-610 for two-way communication with

the airfield control tower)

1. Marker beacons and receivers (75 mc)

a. BC-302 and 902: small beacons employed with SCR-241.

b. AN/MRN-3: a jeep-mounted beacon.

c. RC-20, 39, 43, and 193: airborne receivers to detect the vertical

beams from marker beacons up to 16,000 feet; visual indication only

(flashing light on instrument panel as the plane passed over fan marker,

CAA beacon, etc.).

d. AN/ARN-12: an improved lightweight receiver, yielding both visual

and aural indication.

2. Localizer and glide-path sets

a. Localizer VHF transmitter and receiver (110 mc)

(1) AN/MRN-1: mobile ground transmitter (formerly SCR-591) to

guide plane to runway. Air-transportable versions were AN/CRN-7

and 10.

(2) RG-103: airborne receiver actuating a dial which showed the

alignment of approaching airplane in relation to the runway.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 327

b. Glide-path UHF transmitter and receiver (330 mc)

(1) AN/CRN-2: mobile ground transmitter located along airstrip

(formerly SCR-592).

(2) AN/ARN-5: airborne receiver (formerly SCR-570).

(NOTE: The foregoing development culminated in SCS-51, an automatic

instrument-approach radio system, which involved an airborne localizer,

ground glide-path receivers, and a robot pilot.)

II. Radar

A. Altimeters (airborne absolute altimeters or terrain clearance indicators)

1. RC-24: a lightweight continuous-wave beat-reflection radar type (FM),

effective only up to 400 feet; renamed AN/ARN-1. An improved version

known as AN/APN-1 gave readings up to 4,000 feet.

2. SGR-518 and 718: pulse-type radar altimeters effective up to about

40,000 feet.

B. Beacons

1. Ground

a. Locators developed for determining ground range and azimuth, used

to locate a forward observer for fire control purposes.

SCR-599: a portable 35-pound short-range set (interrogator and

responsor components were later designated AN/PPN-10 and 11

respectively).

b. Ground "navigation" system, employing fixed base stations which

emitted pulsed radiations as in the loran system, providing accurate

location for moving tactical units or for mapping purposes: SCR-560.

2. Ground-to-air

a. Portable beacons, having a 50-mile line-of-sight range, triggered or

interrogated by airborne radars such as AI, ASV, BTO, or IFF types

(1) AN/UPN-1 and 2: portable S-band sets, operating on 3,000 mc,

weighing respectively 115 and 80 pounds.

(2) AN/UPN-3, 4, and 11: X-band sets, 10,000 mc.

b. Transportable beacons having a 100-mile line-of-sight range

(1) SCR-621 and 640: heavy 350-pound sets responding to long wave

radars SCR-521 ASV and 540 AI on 170-196 mc.

(2) SCR-620: responding to microwave AI radar SCR-520 and to

other 10-cm S-band sets on 3,000 mc; became AN/CPN-3, a bulky

half-ton ground set. A similar set was AN/CPN-1.

(3) AN/CPN-8: a much smaller S-band beacon.

(4) AN/CPN-6: an X-band beacon on 10,000 mc responding to

airborne X-band radars.

3. Air-sea-rescue beacon

AN/CPT-2: designed to transmit a continuous-pulse signal for 12 to

20 hours automatically. Called "Walter," it was of lighter weight than

the "Gibson Girl" radio (SCR-578) and could be carried in fighter

planes.
328 THE SIGNAL CORPS

4. Paratroop beacons ("Rebecca-Eureka"): portable, 25-100-mile-range

sets

a. AN/APN-2 (developed from SGR-729), 10, and 12: airborne

interrogators.

b. AN/PPN-1 and AN/TPN-1, 2, and 3: ground responders.

C. Loran and shoran

1. Loran: long-range navigation (LRN)

a. AN/APN-4 and 9: airborne receivers, originally SCR-622. A

variant, SCR-722, derived from a NDRC development.

b. AN/CPN-11 and 12: (formerly SCR-623) air-transportable slave

and master beacon sets.

2. Shoran: short-range precision navigation, aid in blind bombing

(formerly SCR-297)

a. AN/APN-3: airborne interrogator.

b. AN/CPN-2: ground transponder station.

D. Blind approach systems

1. AN/CPN-7: blind approach beacon system.

2. AN/MPN-1: ground-controlled approach system, involving two mobile

short-range microwave radars, in whose scopes the operators watched an

approaching aircraft as they coached it to the landing strip, talking over

radio telephones SCR-522 or 274. A small air transportable version of

GCA was undertaken as AN/CPN-4.

Intelligence, Security, and Countermeasures

I. Radio intelligence (RI) equipment

A. Radio monitoring sets

1. SCR-243 and 244: low-, middle-, and high-frequency intercept

receivers—100 kc to 20 mc.

2. SCR-607, 612, 613, 614, and 616: receivers for frequencies ranging

from 15 kc to 600 mc and for continuous-wave, AM and FM types of

signals.

B. Direction-finders, DF's: for locating radio transmitters

1. Short- and medium-range

a. SCR-206 and 503: small loop-antenna sets for MF and HF (up to 18

mc).

b. SCR-504: hand-carried, disguised as a suitcase.

c. SCR-555 and 556: heavy sets with rotatable H-Adcock antennas and

extending from HF into VHF (18-145 mc).

d. SCR-700: set extending into UHF range on 140 to 600 mc; intended

for use with RI intercept receiver SCR-616.

e. AN/TRD-2: an improved version of SCR-503 (incorporating an

oscilloscope indicator for instantaneous indication of signal direction).

2. Long-range, semifixed, and transportable

a. SCR-255 and 551: HF sets having large rotatable H-Adcock
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 329

antennas (dipoles 12 feet long) for taking bearings on sky waves. Also

used by AAF for navigational purposes.

b. SCR-501 and 502: very large HF sets having fixed monopole,

U-Adcock antennas, and instantaneous oscilloscope indicators. An airtransportable version of 502 was AN/CRD-2.

c. AN/CRD-3: a very large DF, like SCR-502, but designed for LF and

MF reception and extremely sensitive to sky waves originating at very

great distances.

C. Combined intercept and DF assemblies

1. SCR-558: consisting of DF's SCR-206 and SCR-504, intercept receiver

SCR-612, and communication radio SCR-284, the whole assembled in

one vehicle.

2. AN/VRD-1: a larger assembly, embracing DF SCR-503, intercept

receivers SCR-612 and 613, and radio beacon RC-163, the whole

mounted in two vehicles, each carrying an SCR-510 for communication

with the other.

3. AN/GRA-2: a loop-antenna DF attachment for any HF or VHF

intercept receiver in the range of 18 to 65 mc. A similar attachment was

AS-4( )/GR to provide DF for any receiver in the range of 1.5 to 18 mc.

II. Security equipment, for rendering communications unintelligible, scrambling

them at the place of transmission and unscrambling them at the place of reception

1. Cryptographic machines, enciphering and deciphering message texts

mechanically

a. M-209: the Haglin converter, small, portable, hand-operated, converting letter by letter into or from a cipher equivalent, and slow.

b. M-134: automatic cipher machine.

2. RC-62: portable speech scrambler for voice communications by radio

or wire.

III. Countermeasures equipment

A. Radio

1. Search receivers, airborne equivalents of ground RI sets

a. AN/ARR-5 and 7: receivers covering from .55 to 143 mc. They

could be used with radar scope indicators or with panoramic and

photographic adapters.

b. AN/ARQ-4 and 5: panoramic receivers for wide and narrow ranges

respectively, used in jamming to counter the enemy's efforts to shift his

signal from one frequency to another.

2. Jammers, both ground and airborne, often used with search receivers

a. AN/MRQ-1 and 2: powerful mobile ground jammers for LF, MF,

and HF bands, modified respectively from SCR-698 and 399.

b. AN/MRT-1: a very powerful 15-kw jammer developed for use

against German ground-air communications in the 37-42 mc band,

called "Cigar."
330 THE SIGNAL CORPS

c. AN/CRT-2 and PRT-1: small expendable jammers to be placed

near enemy radios. CRT-2 was an airborne parachute set. PRT-1 was

a portable hand-planted jammer, called "Chick."

d. AN/ARQ-1 ("Sandy"), 7 ("Spotkie"), 8, and 9 (formerly SCR-596)

were airborne HF and VHF spot jammers.

e. AN/ARQ-11: a receiver to detect the frequencies of guided missiles

and a transmitter to jam them.

f. AN/ART-3, 5 through 11, and 14: a series of high-power barrage

jammers called "Jackal," each set able to jam its entire frequency range

continuously and unattended; used against enemy VHF and tank

communications.

3. Associated equipment

a. AM-33( )/ART: a wide-band amplifier.

b. AN/ARA-3: a device which converted liaison set SCR-287 into a

spot jammer.

c. AN/TRQ-1: a transportable radio-control intercept station developed for monitoring and controlling radio-jamming sets.

B. Radar

1. Search receivers

a. SCR-587: earliest radar search receiver, 38-3,300 mc.

b. AN/APR-2: autosearch receiver, which could automatically detect

and record radar signals.

c. AN/APR-4, 5, 5A, 6, and 7: improved search receivers covering

frequencies up to 6,000 mc.

2. Jammers

a. AN/TPT-1 and 2: ground radar jammers for frequencies from 70

mc to 1,450.

b. AN/APT-1 and 2: low-power radar jammers ("Dina" and "Carpet"

respectively) for use in aircraft, able to jam frequencies between 70 mc

and 710 mc.

c. AN/APT-3 ("Mandrel") and 5: respectively a spot jammer, 85-135

mc, and a semibarrage jammer, 350-1,400 mc.

d. AN/APT-4, 6, and 8: powerful magnetron jammers, 15-1,100 mc.

e. AN/APQ-2 ("Rug") and 9 ("Carpet III"): powerful barrage

jammers.

3. Deception devices

a. AN/APQ-8 and 15: "Spoofer" sets which could throw back a strong

echo, making one aircraft appear to be many.

b. "Chaff" or "Window" aluminum foil strips which, when dropped

in quantity, threw back multiple reflections, blinding ground radar

scopes. Chaff was also developed for large 60 and 81-mm. mortar shells

as reflector RR-7/U, 10/U, 26 and 27 U.

4. Associated radar Countermeasures equipment

a. Panoramic or oscilloscopic devices used with search receivers to
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 331

enable operators to study and photograph the characteristics of enemy

radar signals

(1) AN/APA-6 and 11: panoramic adapters or scopes.

(2) AN/APA-7: movie-camera photo set which provided a permanent record of oscilloscope presentation.

b. Radar DF's (AN/APA-17 and 24) for attachment to radar search

receivers, giving instant cathode-ray indication of the direction of radarbeam source.

c. Automatic tape recorder AN/APA-23 developed to make a record of

the frequency and reception time of signals picked up by radar search

receivers AN/APR-4, 5, and 7.

d. Automatic tuning adapter (AN/APA-27) designed to detect enemy

radar beams and to spot jam them without human assistance.

e. Alarm equipment AN/APR-3: warning to ferret-plane crewmen

whenever their craft came dangerously within enemy GCI, AI, and GL

radar waves. Dubbed "Boozer."

f. Monitor set AN/TPQ-1: assembly of broad-band receivers, 40-4,000

mc, both to analyze enemy radar waves and to direct friendly jammers.

Training, Testing, and Maintenance and Repair

I. Training equipment

A. Target control: radio transmitters and receivers for remote control of gun

targets

1. Water-target control

SCR-586: receiver and transmitter, the receiver being carried in the

target boat to control it on signals from the distant transmitter.

2. Land-target control

a. AN/VRW-1: vehicular receiver controlling motion of target car.

b. AN/TRW-1: transmitter by which a distant operator controlled the

receiver and the vehicle in which it was mounted.

3. Air-target control

a. RC-57, 64, and AN/ARW-26: airborne receivers.

b. RC-56 and 65: ground transmitters.

c. AN/ARW-8: airborne transmitter.

B. Firing error indicators

1. For antiaircraft artillery training

a. PH-32: shellburst spotter set including theodolites for observation of

shellbursts and a camera to provide a motion-picture record.

b. AN/TVQ-1: shellburst spotter set similar to PH-32.

c. AN/ART-4 and GRR-1: airborne transmitter and ground receiver,

the transmitter being carried in a target sleeve aloft, in order to note the

projectile's shock waves and radio the extent of error to the receiver on

the ground.
332 THE SIGNAL CORPS

2. For aerial gunnery training

AN/ART-16 and ARR-10: airborne transmitter and airborne receiver.

C. Classroom training sets

1. Trainers in the operation of ground and airborne radars

a. BC-968 and BC-1070: trainers for SCR-268, 270, and 271. BC-1070

modified for PPI became AN/UPS-T2.

b. RC-110, 225, and 253: AI trainers for SCR-540, 520, and 720.

c. RC-111, 227, and AN/APS-T1, 1A, and 2: ASV trainers for SCR517, 717, and 521.

d. AN/APQ-T1: aircraft gun-laying trainer.

2. Trainers in navigational aids

a. RC-242 and 252: for instruction in loran usage.

b. AN/APN-3 T1: for instruction in shoran usage.

3. Countermeasure trainers

a. AN/TPQ-T1 and 2: radar-jamming trainers to teach oscilloscope

men to use their radars successfully despite jamming effects.

b. AN/URA-T1: radio-jamming trainer to teach radiomen to copy

messages amid jamming effects.

4. Code training sets

a. EE-81, 94, 95, and 96: classroom practice code and tape sets.

b. AN/GGQ-1 and GSC-T1: visual and audible code practice sets.

II. Testing equipment

(NOTE: for practically every new radio and radar set and for every new wire

system it distributed, the Signal Corps had to provide suitable equipment for

testing and maintenance. The items enumerated in categories II and III are

selected from huge numbers of test, maintenance, and tool repair sets.)

A. Radio and radar

1. Testing sets for general and specific uses

a. I-56: a universal radio test set.

b. AN/GPM-1 and MPM-1: basic radar test sets.

c. IE-9 and 26: large sets for use by Signal Corps repair and service

units.

d. IE-17 and 75: for testing handie-talkie SCR-536.

e. IE-30 and 57: for testing ASV and AI radars, such as SCR-517 and

520.

f. RC-68: for testing the radar SCR-268.

g. TS-20/APN-4: for testing airborne loran receiver.

h. AN/APM-28 and 29: for testing radars in L-band, 50 cm.

i. AN/APM-10, 33, 34, and 37: for testing S-band radars, 10 cm.

j. AN/APM-21, 22, 41, and 42: for testing K-band radars, 1 cm.

2. Frequency meters: for measuring and correcting the frequencies of

radio and radar transmitters

a. SCR-211 and BC-221: for LF, MF, and HF to 20 mc.

b. TS-174/U: for VHF extending to 280 mc.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 333

c. TS-175/U: for VHF and UHF, from 85 to 1,000 mc.

d. TS-213/U: for UHF and SHF, from 300 to 5,000 mc.

3. Phantom antennas, used in testing (or in practice sending) to suppress

actual radiation and so keep the set "off the air "

a. A-55, 56, 57, and 58: for SCR-177, 183, 188, and 193.

b. A-31, 32, 33, 34, and 62: for vehicular radios in the "500" series.

B. Wire

1. General test sets

a. IE-10, 29, 53: for testing telegraph and telephone equipment, carrier

terminals, repeaters, etc.

b. TS-2/TG: teletypewriter test set.

2. Specific test equipment

a. Telephone and telegraph test boards, to locate and clear wire circuit

troubles

(1) BD-101:120-circuit board for testing in a central office.

(2) BD-103: 20-circuit board for roadside testing in the field.

b. Fault locator, detecting short-circuits along wire lines TS-26 and

27/TSM: volt-ohm meters.

III. Maintenance and repair equipment

A. Radio and radar

1. Maintenance and tool sets

a. ME-9, 13, 34, and 35: for general radio maintenance.

b. ME-104, 105, 108, etc.: maintenance and tool sets for specific radars,

SCR-584, 545, 268, etc.

c. ME-53 and 67: for maintenance of walkie-talkie SCR-300.

d. TE-41, 46, 113, 114: tool sets for radio repair.

2. Suppression of radio noise (vehicular interference) and static

a. AN/URM-3: radio-interference meter.

b. AN/ASA-1 and 3: discharge assemblies to drain static electricity

from a plane in flight.

3. Tropicalization: protecting electrical equipment against moisture and

fungus

a. MK-2 and 1/GSM: kits containing infrared lamps, water-repellent

and fungus-proofing varnishes, spray guns, etc.

b. 68-Q-4 and 5: kits developed to tropicalize radar SCR-268.

4. Mobile repair stations: mounted in trucks and trailers, for third echelon

maintenance

a. AN/MRM-1: for radio maintenance only.

b. AN/MSN-1: for both radio and wire.

B. Wire

1. Construction and maintenance sets

a. ME-4, 11, and 30: for telephone centrals TC-1, 4, 10, and 12, of

which these sets were usually component parts.
334 THE SIGNAL CORPS

b. ME-22: for maintenance of field telephone set EE-8.

c. ME-10: for general maintenance and repair of telephone and telegraph equipment.

d. ME-7, 18, and 37: for teletypewriter maintenance.

e. TE-16: cable-splicing set.

f. ME-44, 47, 49, 75, 111, 112: tool sets for repair of wire equipment

both telephone and telegraph.

g. TE-50: tool set for repair of teletypewriter equipment.

h. TE-27 and 58: for pole line construction.

2. Mobile repair stations

a. AN/MTM-1: mounted in a truck and trailer to provide fourth

echelon maintenance.

b. AN/MTM-2 and 3: similar mobile sets designed for third echelon

maintenance.

Photography

I. Cameras

A. Still pictures

1. General use

a. PH-120, 150, 195, and 205: portrait and view cameras taking large

pictures, 8 by 10 inches.

b. PH-47 and 324: taking average pictures, four by five inches, and

small 33-mm. pictures respectively.

2. Special use

a. PH-518 ( )/PF: camera especially developed for use in combat areas,

stoutly constructed and tropicalized, taking 70-mm. film (pictures 21⁄2 by

23⁄4 inches).

b. AN/TFQ-6: a photoflash camera developed for recording surgical

operations.

B. Moving pictures

1. PH-270 and 274: heavy newsreel-type 35-mm. cameras.

2. PH-330: standard movie camera in World War II, 35-mm.

3. PH-430 and 431: small, 16-mm. movie cameras.

IL Projectors

A. PH-131 and 398: 16-mm. sound projectors.

B. PH-331 and 405: 35-mm. sound projectors.

C. PH-526/UF: projector for large audiences (up to 2,000).

D. AN/TFQ-4: projector for small audiences (up to 600); rugged, for use

under any conditions from arctic to tropical.

E. PH-420-A: small portable projector screen for use in daylight.

F. PH-222: small projector of film strip and slides.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 335

III. Other photographic equipment

A. Identification sets

1. PH-385: for field use, including a 35-mm. camera, fingerprint set,

lamps, etc.

2. PH-261 and AN/TFQ-1: field sets including printing and enlarging

equipment.

B. V-mail equipment

1. PH-512: rapid developer, machine-driven, for developing and drying

100-foot rolls of 16-mm. film or 50-foot rolls of 35-mm. film.

2. PH-542: enlarger for 16 or 35-mm. film.

C. Miscellaneous equipment

1. PH-524/PF: low tripod, permitting the camera man to "shoot" while

lying prone.

2. PH-515/MF: photographic equipment pack for jeep transport, including a tripod for operating a movie camera on the jeep.

3. PH-253, 298, 406, 413: sets for. processing and developing films of

various sizes and types.

4. PH-13, 67, 129, 395: printers.

5. PH-275, 285, 511: enlargers.

6. PH-261, 383, 390, and 392: darkroom sets, housed in small tents.

7. S-11/GF and AN/TFQ-7: darkrooms housed in HO-27, the former a

mobile shelter, the latter a transportable laboratory completely equipped

for developing still and movie negatives in the field.

Meteorology

I. Instruments of measurement

A. Barometers and barographs

1. ML-2 and 330/FM: mercury barometers.

2. ML-9, 102, 331, 332, and 333/TM: aneroid barometers.

3. ML-3: barograph with clock mechanism and ink-recording equipment.

B. Thermometers and thermographs

1. ML-4, 5, and 7: mercury and alcohol thermometers.

2. ML-352/UM: thallium amalgam for use at temperatures below the

minimum of mercury thermometers.

3. ML-77 and 277: thermographs with ink recorder and clock-regulated

mechanism.

C. Psychrometers: for measuring humidity

1. ML-24 and 224: relative humidity gauges, rotated by hand.

2. ML-313/AM: automatic, for upper-air readings.

3. ML-341/GM: for use in sub-zero temperatures.

D. Anemometers
336 THE SIGNAL CORPS

1. ML-62 and 80: the former a small hand-carried set; the latter a standard wind speedometer with three cup-shaped wind scoops on a vertical

axle.

2. ML-107: portable set, including a wire transmitter, which noted wind

direction and velocity as far away as 1,000 feet.

3. AN/GMQ-1: similar to ML-107 but designed to operate with fixed

ground or mobile weather stations.

E. Helionephoscope and hygrometer

1. ML-385( )/UM: helionephoscope, an illumination meter to measure

intensity of sunlight.

2. ML-342( )/GM: hygrometer to determine dew point at low temperatures.

F. Cloud height indicators

1. ML-121 and 318/TMQ-2: ceiling-light projectors, used only at night

with clinometer ML-119.

2. AN/GMQ-2: projector, detector, and recorder; capable of continuous

operation unattended.

3. AN/AMQ-4: optical device for use from a moving airplane.

G. Theodolites and plotting equipment: telescopes, plotting boards, etc., for

visually tracking ascending pilot balloons to determine wind direction and

velocity

1. ML-47 and 247: telescopes mounted on tripods.

2. ML-120 and 122: lightweight wood and plastic plotting boards.

IL Data-gathering instruments

A. Radiosonde equipment

1. Airborne radiosondes, transmitters which were carried aloft by balloons

or planes

a. ML-141: standard audio-modulated transmitter and associated

weather instruments; became AN/AMQ-1.

b. AN/AMT-1, 2, 3, and 4: balloon and parachute sets.

2. Ground receivers and DF's, the function of the latter being to track the

emissions of the drifting radiosonde so as to determine wind direction and

velocity at all levels through which the transmitter may pass

a. SCR-658: both a DF and a receiver of the radiosonde transmissions;

developed from SCR-258, originally designed as a radiosonde DF only.

b. AN/CRD-1: lightweight DF and receiver on UHF developed for

postwar radiosondes.

3. Ground receivers and recorders

a. AN/TMR-1 (AN/TMQ-5) and 2: transportable receivers and

recorders used in conjunction with SCR-658.

b. AN/FMQ-1: device automatically recording radiosonde data on a

printed graph.

B. Wire sonde equipment
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 337

AN/UMQ-4: instruments held aloft by a captive balloon and transmitting

data to ground over wires running along the balloon cable.

C. Aerographs: automatic weather recorders

1. ML-175 and 195: attached to exterior of airplane and transmitting data

to recording equipment inside.

2. AN/AMQ-2 and 3: comparable instruments, but attached to interior

of plane and automatically recording pressure, temperature, and relative

humidity for four hours to elevations of 23,000 feet.

D. Spherics equipment

AN/GRD-1: semifixed direction finder designed to take bearings on static,

or lightning flashes, at distances up to 1,500 miles.

E. Ionospheric equipment

AN/CPQ-7: set developed to measure, by means of radar reflections, the

height of the ionosphere and obtain data valuable to HF (sky-wave) radio

transmission.

F. Radar trackers: radar sets to track special radar reflectors which were

carried either by balloons or by parachutes released from rockets

1. SGR-525: massive radar with large triple antenna array, the whole

weighing 15,000 pounds.

2. SCR-825: much lighter set, air transportable.

III. Weather station sets

A. Mobile, attended stations

1. SCM-1: mounted on a truck and trailer; designed for the AAF.

2. SCM-9 and 10: respectively, radiosonde and ballistic wind stations, developed for Field Artillery. The sets were subsequently combined and

became AN/TMQ-4.

3. SCM-13: radiosonde and wind station developed for Coast Artillery.

4. AN/TMQ-1: air-transportable station with complete meteorological

station equipment; for the AAF. AN/TMQ-4 was a meteorological station

for the Field Artillery.

B. Automatic unattended stations, including telemetering devices

1. SCM-17: a station developed to transmit, by radio pressure, temperature and relative humidity data up to 300 miles over a month; controlled

by clock mechanism and powered by batteries.

2. SCM-18: parachute set designed to begin operation upon reaching

ground and to transmit its data up to 100 miles for a week.

3. SCM-19: large semipermanent set powered by a gasoline engine and

able to collect pressure, temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall, and

sunlight data and to transmit it over distances up to 500 miles for a threemonth period.

IV. Other meteorological equipment

A. Balloons

1. Pilot balloons: small, for revealing winds aloft
338 THE SIGNAL CORPS

a. ML-50, 51, 64, 155, 156, 157, 158: of various colors and composition;

all for observing low-level wind conditions.

b. ML-159, 160, and 161: larger, 100-gram rapid ascent balloons for

observation (by theodolites) of high-level winds.

2. Sounding balloons: large, for carrying radiosondes to the stratosphere

a. ML-131: 350-gram balloon (14 feet in diameter when fully inflated).

b. ML-162: a still larger balloon, 700 grams.

B. Hydrogen generators

1. ML-165 and 185: heavy generators for field use.

2. ML-303, 304A, and 305A/TM: one- or two-pound can of calcium

hydride, each capable of inflating a small balloon.

3. AN/TMQ-3: portable generator for inflating 350-gram balloons.

Accessories

I. Power equipment

A. Electric generators, powered by

1. Gasoline

a. SCR-169: a 200-pound unit providing direct current (d-c) to

recharge storage batteries.

b. PE-49 and 210: lightweight one-cylinder engined d-c generators for

powering SCR-177 and 188 and for charging batteries.

c. PE-77: a portable 70-pound one-cylinder unit for field teletypewriter

set EE-97.

d. PE-201: a 300-pound one-cylinder unit which powered telephone

and telegraph carrier equipment.

e. PE-75 and 95: respectively a 300-pound one-cylinder unit and a

1,500-pound four-cylinder unit both widely used with many Signal

Corps sets to supply standard 120-volt 60-cycle alternating current.

f. PE-74, 84, and 85: heavy (21⁄2-tons) four-cyclinder-engined generators

used with radars such as SCR-268, 270, and 271.

g. PU-6/TPS-1: a compact 130-pound unit used with LW radars such

as AN/TPS-1 and 3.

(NOTE: by 1945 the Signal Corps had many other gasoline engine generators in the PU category under development to replace the PE types

which served throughout the war.)

2. Wind

AN/CSQ-1: an air-transportable generator with a wind-driven propeller mounted atop a 60-foot tower designed to charge storage batteries,

which in turn powered automatic weather stations developed for the

AAF.

3. Hand: the electric generator, laboriously hand-cranked during the

operation of the radio, yielded sufficient current for small portable sets

a. GN-35: used with SCR-131, 161, and 171.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 339

b. GN-45 and 58: used respectively with SCR-284 and 694.

4. Heat: thermoelectric power units PP-19, 107, 131-133, were experimental generators of low power (20 watts or less) which converted heat

(derived from burning gasoline) to electric current. These generators were

not adopted in the field because of the weight of fuel which they required

and because of the smoke they produced.

B. Electric power converters

1. Dynamotors and vibrators: devices which draw direct current from

storage batteries of low voltages (usually vehicular) and convert it to the

various high voltages required by the multiple needs of radio transmitter

and receiver components

a. Dynamotors

(1) DM-34 and 35: used to power vehicular radios SCR-508 and 608

from 12-volt storage batteries. DM-36 and 37 were similar but operated from 24-volt vehicular batteries.

(2) PE-55: drawing current from a 12-volt vehicular battery to operate the SCR-245.

(3) PE-194: used to convert energy from an airplane battery to operate the command VHF radio SCR-522.

b. Vibrators

(1) PE-157, which provided power for the SCR-511 when used in

vehicles, drawing energy from the storage battery.

(2) PE-212: power pack developed for use with the walkie-talkie

SCR-300. It included a small storage battery and a vibrator to convert the battery energy to the voltage requirements of the radio set.

2. Rectifiers: devices which convert standard commercial alternating current to direct current as required

a. RA-43 and 120: used to power the teletypewriter central TC-3 and

portable radios SCR-510 and 610, drawing on standard power lines,

when available.

b. RA-36 and 87: used to recharge storage batteries.

C. Batteries

1. Dry (primary) batteries

a. Single and multiple units or cells containing an activating paste,

usually sal-ammoniac, and weighing from a few ounces to several

pounds

(1) BA-23, 30, 65: 11⁄2-volt single cells.

(2) BA-1, 205/U, 209/U: 3-volt cells.

(3) BA-9, 216/U: 41⁄2-volt cells.

(4) BA-203/U and 207/U: 6 and 9-volt cells respectively.

(5) BA-2,8, 219/U: 221⁄2-volt cells.

(6) BA-56, 59: 45-volt cells.

(7) BA-27, 39, 40: multiple-unit batteries consisting of a number of

cells and having an increased power output.
340 THE SIGNAL CORPS

(8) BA-102, 127, 130, 140: similar to BA-2, 27, 30, 39, and 40 but

especially designed to operate efficiently in cold climates.

b. Special batteries activated by mercury compounds or by sea water

(1) BA-38, 49, 70, and 80: mercury dry-cell batteries used late in the

war in SCR-300, 511, 536, and 694.

(2) BA-229( )/CRN: battery intended to be immersed in sea water,

which activated its silver-chloride and magnesium electrodes; developed for use with radio buoy beacon AN/CRN-1.

2. Wet (storage or secondary) batteries

a. BB-54, 205/U: 2-volt batteries.

b. BB-29 and 213/U: 4-volt batteries.

c. BB-49, 51, 55: 6-volt batteries, similar to automobile 6-volt storage

batteries except for the BB-51 which weighed only a few ounces.

d. BB-46, 50, 201/U: heavy 12- and 14-volt batteries (BB-46 weighed

120 pounds).

e. BB-52: a 36-volt battery, tiny like the 6-volt BB-51 and the 2-volt

BB-54, each of which weighed only about one third of a pound, used to

power radiosondes when borne aloft by meteorological balloons.

IL Radio antennas and antenna masts

(NOTE: in general, antennas were furnished as integral parts of radio sets,

such as radio relay antenna AS-19/TRC-1, the 3-element horizontal dipole

and 40-foot tube steel mast used with AN/TRC-1, 3, and 4.)

A. AN-29: fishpole antenna used with the short-range radios SCR-609 and

610.

B. AN-130 and 131: short and long whip antennas, for walkie-talkie SCR300.

C. RC-63: a lightweight 32-foot mast (of fir wood in four sections) and wire

providing a vertical half-rhombic (inverted V) antenna for the short-range

radios SCR-194, 195, and 609.

D. RC-291 and 296: special antennas designed to extend the range of the

walkie-talkie SCR-300 by elevating its radiations above jungle tree tops.

RC-291 consisted of a vertical whip from whose base radiated four horizontal whips, the whole elevated upon a pole or tree top. RC-296 was a single

vertical whip mounted upon a lightweight sectional mast 30 feet high.

E. RC-292: somewhat similar to RC-291 but accompanied by 30-foot mast

and designed to extend the short ranges of SCR-608 and 628.

F. AN/GRA-4: equipment which permitted the construction of several types

of antennas for use with short and medium range sets such as SCR-177, 193,

245, and 284.

G. MS-49 through 56: lightweight tubular steel sections comprising a 25-foot

mast for SCR-178, 179, 203, and 284. Some of these sections were also commonly used to form a 15-foot vehicular whip antenna (fishpole), set into mast

bases MP-37 or 57. Similar sections MS-116, 117, and 118 were used with

mast bases MP-48, and AB-15/GR to provide six- and nine-foot whips.
APPENDIX: SIGNAL CORPS EQUIPMENT, WORLD WAR II 341

H. MS-65 through 73: aluminum sections providing a 45-foot mast for the

long-range mobile radio SCR-197.

I. MA-6 and 7: heavy sectional masts supporting the antennas of the Air

Forces VHF ground radios SCR-573, 574, and 624. MA-6 was a 90-foot mast

assembled from 11 three-inch steel tube sections. MA-7 was a 50-foot plywood

mast.

III. Headphones, microphones, handsets, and chest sets

A. Headphones (or double receiver headsets)

1. P-11, 16, 18, 20: radio headphones.

2. HS-18, 23, 33, 38: headphones used with airplane radio and interphone

sets, adapted for use within helmets and at high altitudes.

3. HS-30: very lightweight headset widely used by ground forces, having

ear inserts patterned after the phones of hearing aids.

B. Microphones

1. T-17: standard radio microphone, held in the hand, switched on for

talking.

2. T-30: throat microphone leaving the user's hands free.

3. T-45: lip microphone, attaching to the upper lip of the speaker and used

when the surrounding noise was high, because it does not reproduce

"ambient" sound as hand-held microphones usually did.

4. T-49: designed for use amid high ambient noise despite being handheld.

5. T-34 and ANB-M-C-1: microphones designed for use in an aviator's

oxygen mask in rarefied atmosphere.

C. Handsets: both radio and telephone, being the hand-held receivertransmitter unit only

1. TS-9: standard telephone handset (carbon type), part of the batterypowered telephone set EE-8.

2. TS-10: special telephone handset (magnetic type) used with the soundpowered telephone set TP-3.

3. TS-13: standard radio handset incorporating a switch button which

the operator pushed when he wished to transfer from reception to transmission.

4. TS-15: handset which combined parts of TS-9 and 13, and which was

used with the walkie-talkie SCR-300.

D. Chest sets: transmitter attached to the speaker's chest, with press-to-talk

switch mounted on the chest plate (receivers were of headphone type).

1. TD-1 and 2: radio chest sets replacing HS-19.

2. TD-3: chest set designed for use with a gas mask, employing a lip or

throat microphone.

3. TD-4 and 5: improved chest sets for use by vehicular or aircraft radio

operators.

IV. Trucks, trailers, and shelters

A. Trucks and trailers
342 THE SIGNAL CORPS

1. For wire line construction work

a. K-43: telephone maintenance and construction truck with a tripod

derrick for raising and setting poles.

b. K-44: truck mounting (1) an earth borer to drill holes and (2) a

single derrick mast to set poles.

c. K-36, 37, and 38: trailers, the first and second for hauling poles,

cable reels, etc., the third for transporting cable splicing set TE-56.

2. For transporting and housing large radio and radar sets, communication centrals, meteorological station sets, etc.

a. K-18 and 19: truck and trailer for transporting and housing the longrange SCR-197. Trailer K-19 was developed into a 4-wheel house trailer,

K-35, for mobile telephone, telegraph, RI, DF, and message centrals.

b. K-51: a panel truck used with the long-range radio SCR-299.

c. K-53: a special van body mounted on a standard 21⁄2-ton 6x6 truck.

d. K-55: a semitrailer, lighter weight than K-35, used similarly to house

central office sets. It was also used for meteorological (SCM) and fightercontrol (SCS) components. It was usually hauled by trucks K-53 or

K-60.

e. K-56 and 60: trucks with van bodies to house and transport large

radar sets.

f. K-22, 28, 34, 52, 63, 67, and 72: trailers for radar sets and power

units.

g. K-75 and 78: large van trailers, the former for SCR-545; the latter for

SCR-584.

B. Shelters

1. HO-17: a plywood shelter similar to a van truck body but an independent unit. It could be carried by any standard 21⁄2-ton truck and could be

removed and placed on the ground. Its plywood walls included built-in

wire screening to provide electrical shielding. Its dimensions were approximately 11 by 6 by 5 feet. It was widely used for housing large sets, for wire

and message centrals, intercept units, and so on.

2. HO-27: a transportable shelter similar to HO-17 but lacking the wire

screen shielding.
Bibliographical Note

The sources for this and the other

volumes of the Signal Corps history are

as abundant, complex, and massive in

most areas as they are critically sparse

and incomplete in a few. Let the latter

point be explained first. In the age of the

telephone, consequential words often die

when the receiver is hung up, and leave

no trace. In the age of the airplane, faceto-face conferring has become possible for

hundreds of matters which formerly would

have required an exchange of letters. And

in the age of the secret, many of the parts

of the whole never find their way into the

main stream of record files. For these reasons, the conscientious scholar may feel

that he has insufficiently documented a

spot here and there through his narrative.

If so, later scholars, coming at a point

when the material has either emerged from

present enclosures or been demonstrated

not to exist, will correct the deficiency. As

other authors in this series have made

clear, the quantity of records has been so

vast that a historian wonders at his temerity and good sense in inquiring for more.

The Signal Corps record for the years

ending with 1941, covered in this book, is

to be found principally in the huge classified and unclassified Signal Corps files in

the Departmental Records Branch of the

Adjutant General's Office. The major

auxiliary sources are the large collections

of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer;

the National Archives; the Signal Corps

Engineering Laboratories; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; the Alaska Communication System; the Signal Corps Photographic Center and Army Pictorial

Service; the Signal Corps School; the

Philadelphia Procurement District and

related agencies; the Signal Corps Historical Section and the Signal Corps Intelligence Agency; the Office of the Chief of

Military History; Air Corps and Army Air

Forces files in the Departmental Records

Branch of the Adjutant General's Office;

the Chief of Staff; the Assistant Chiefs of

Staff; and the Services of Supply (Army

Service Forces) and its predecessors. The

lesser auxiliary sources of the book (although certainly not lesser in themselves)

have included the Army Library; the

libraries of the National War College and

the Industrial College of the Armed

Forces; the Library of Congress; the captured German and Japanese document

collections; papers, diaries, and recollections of persons concerned; sources in the

communications industry, especially the

American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Radio Corporation of America,

Link Radio, and the late Dr. Edwin H.

Armstrong; the Federal Communications

Commission; the Civil Aeronautics Administration; the U.S. Navy; the National

Security Agency; and documents of the

Senate and the House of Representatives.

These and still others have been put

together with interviews and direct correspondence, the contemporary historian's

boons. Later historians will wish to know

which of the sources, particularly which of

the file record groups, will best repay research. Probably in a relatively short

course of time these records will shake
344 THE SIGNAL CORPS

down and consolidate from thousands of

file drawers to hundreds, and for the most

part will be permanently retired to the

care of the National Archives. The most

rewarding group of files if the subsequent

historian first conquers the difficulty of

reading them, will be the detailed records

of Signal Corps research and development.

Air Corps files are similarly full, and the

top administrative files much fuller than

those of the Signal Corps. Training and

supply files will be improved by the winnowing process, for each of these functions

produces blizzards of purely occasional

papers whose use melts like the snowflake.

As one might expect, files of the Signal

Corps' photographic activities are at their

best when they are photographic, and the

National Archives' collections of still and

motion pictures are already increased by

them. The most secret files of the Signal

Corps, those having to do with cryptography and signal intelligence, will remain

inaccessible and, so far as they are concerned with matters at the vital center of

security, ought not to be otherwise. Signal

intelligence and signal operations reports

and records which will have been freed

from secrecy will, however, prove extremely interesting. The Alaska Communication System, a remarkable imperium in

imperio, has a characteristically plain, independent, and useful file record of itself.

Among non-Signal Corps collections, and

in addition to those of the Army Air

Corps, one may single out the files of the

Office of the Under Secretary of War.

The principal source for the nineteenth

century background of the Signal Corps,

upon which the first chapter touches, is

Records Group 111 of the National Archives. A small collection chiefly concerned with Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer is

lodged with the Signal Corps Traditions

Committee at Fort Monmouth, N. J. The

next best source is the Signal Corps Bulletin

(which appeared first as the Information

Bulletin) from 1920 to 1940. It is also a

fundamental source to the two decades in

which it was published. Complete files of

the Bulletin are to be found in the Library

of Congress, the Army Library, and the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer. The

most convenient quick reference is to the

Historical Sketch of the Signal Corps (1860-

1941), Eastern Signal Corps Schools Pamphlet 32 (Fort Monmouth, N.J., 1942).

An earlier version, printed in 1935, was

largely prepared by Maj. Donald B.

Sanger, S.C. Several manuscript revisions

and amplifications of it have also been prepared, among them the following: (1)

H. R. Fraser, Early History of the Signal

Corps, 1860-1863 (1944); (2) C. R. Hall,

Chapter I: Origin and Early Development

(1945); (3) several chapters of 1945 and

1947 manuscripts. These are included in

the Signal Corps Historical Section File.

The standard published work for the Civil

War period, a rich secondary source, is J.

Willard Brown's history, The Signal Corps,

U. S. A., in the War of the Rebellion (Boston:

U.S. Veteran Signal Corps Association,

1896). See also: (1) William R. Plum, The

Military Telegraph during the Civil War in the

United States (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg

& Co., 1882); and (2) F. Stansbury Haydon, Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate

Armies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

Press, 1941). For the Signal Corps in

World War I, there is no better record

than the fine book-length Annual Report of

the Chief Signal Officer, 1919; the primary

materials already noted as being in the

Archives will fully support it. Another good

book of the period is A. Lincoln Lavine's

Circuits of Victory (New York: Doubleday,

Page & Company, 1921). The Archives
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 345

also has title lists to the extraordinary

motion pictures and still pictures of that

conflict. A disorganized but interesting

typescript called the History of the Signal

Corps, American Expeditionary Forces,

reposes with the Signal Corps Historical

Section File. Useful references on the historical origins and development of the

arms and services generally are: (1) F. B.

Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary

of the United States Army (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), and (2)

W. A. Ganoe, History of the United States

Army (rev. ed.; New York and London: D.

Appleton-Century Company, 1942).

Some description is in order for the

often cited file of the Signal Corps Historical Section. The process of developing

the historical print of the Signal Corps led

from the outset to the collection of reports,

memoranda, charts, statistical studies,

summaries, photographs, reviews, technical and field manuals, information

releases, industrial surveys, special lists,

directories, technical glossaries, and everything else of the sort which came to the

hands of the Historical Section staff.

Through many changes in the staff itself,

this file remained relatively intact, then

was repeatedly added to. For The Emergency and its companion volumes, the most

valuable additions to the Signal Corps

Historical Section File have been the

monographs of the section's wartime staff.

Inasmuch as none of these has ever been

published, they will interest the future researcher often as much as the raw materials themselves. Among the best is a series

on the Signal Corps development of radar,

written by the late Harry M. Davis.

Others are the training studies of Frederick Reinstein, those on the Army Command and Administrative Network by

Pauline M. Oakes, and individual narratives by Donald O. Wagner, Mary-louise

Melia, Charles R. Novick, and M. E. Boswell on overseas communications, crystals,

and the 17th Signal Service Company. A

particularly useful place in the Signal

Corps Historical Section File is occupied

by a major preliminary work ordered by

the Army Service Forces within each of its

subordinate technical services. This is the

History of Signal Corps Research and Development in World War II, which runs

to thousands of pages of typescript and

illustration, and which was written in the

Engineering and Technical Division of the

Office of the Chief Signal Officer, although Dixie R. Harris, Harry M. Davis,

and others of the historical staff contributed widely to it. Many other manuscripts

enhance the Signal Corps Historical Section File, but the researcher may be

especially glad to have the following

pointed out: George P. Bush and Martha

E. Manning, History of Procurement

Planning, 1920-1940; H. D. Hausman,

Signal Corps Activity in Procurement

Planning and Industrial Mobilization,

1920-1940; Arthur R Watts, History of

the Air Defense Command; Martin P.

Claussen, The Development of Radio and

Radar Equipment for Air Operations,

1939-1944; Ruth F. Sadler, History of the

Electronics Training Group in the United

Kingdom; and the Alaska Communication System and Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories histories.

The last-mentioned item naturally

deals in part with radar, but the full story

of radar, like the full story of any of the

other Signal Corps interests, is to be found

only in the primary sources, the thousands

of file drawers which this note specifies as

underlying almost every page of this work.

An indication of more amenable sources

should nevertheless have some conven-
346 THE SIGNAL CORPS

ience. The radar bibliography grows with

every month; anything remarked upon

here necessarily dates from the time when

research on these three volumes was in

progress. Among unpublished accounts,

the monographs of Harry M. Davis, History of the Signal Corps Development of

U.S. Army Radar Equipment, join the

U.S. Navy History of Fire-Control Radar

by Lt. Comdr. Marie Frauens and the History of Radar which Dr. Henry E. Guerlac prepared, originally planned as part of

the Office of Scientific Research and Development published series "Science in

World War II." Published accounts showing civilian, Army, Navy, U.S., British,

and enemy participation in radar research

began to appear in considerable numbers

after security regulations permitted the information to be generally known. They

include: (1) John M. Hightower, The Story

of Radar, U. S. Senate Doc. 89, 78th Cong.,

1st Sess. (Washington, 1943); (2) TM 11-

466, Radar Electronic Fundamentals

(1944); (3) Joint Board on Scientific Information Policy, Radar: A Report on Science

at War (Washington, 1945 [French translation by Henri Pujade, Paris, 1947]); (4)

British Information Series, Radar: An Official History of the New Science (New York,

1945); (5) John C. Rogers, The Story of

Radar (New York, 1945); (6) RCA Department of Information, Radar, Wartime

Miracle of Radio (New York, 1945); (7)

John F. Rider and G. C. Baxter Rowe,

Radar: What It Is (New York: J. F. Rider

Publisher, Inc., 1946); (8) Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Radar: What Radar Is and How It

Works (New York: Harper & Brothers,

1946); (9) A. P. Rowe, One Story of Radar

(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1948). The published sources

are so extensive, however, that even shortly

after the war several hundred items were

listed in Northwestern University Library's Selected Bibliography on Radar

(Evanston, Ill., 1946). The Northwestern

bibliography is the initial checklist for the

reader who wishes to investigate the field

of radar.

In sum, however eclectic and farreaching the research for the Signal Corps

history has been, the main source has been

and always will be the primary materials

in the major and minor record groups designated toward the beginning of this note.

If the history of that humanly technical

organization in a sometimes inhumanly

technical age, the Signal Corps, is ever

done again, it must be done again from all

the files of correspondence, memoranda,

and all other kinds of papers in these

record groups. In the meantime, let this

history indicate that they exist.
List of Abbreviations

AA Antiaircraft

AAF Army Air Forces

AAG Air Adjutant General

AARS Army Amateur Radio System

AC Air Corps

a-c Alternating current

ACAN Army Command and Administrative Network

ACofS Assistant Chief of Staff

ACS Army Communications Service

Actg Acting

ADC Air Defense Command

Admin Administration

AEF American Expeditionary Forces (World War I)

AF Air Forces or air force

AFCC Air Force Combat Command

AG Adjutant General

AGF Army Ground Forces

AGO Adjutant General's Office

AI Airborne interception (radar)

AM Amplitude modulation (radio)

AMP Augmentation Mobilization Plan

APS Army Pictorial Service

AR Army regulations

ARL Aircraft Radio Laboratory

ARRL American Radio Relay League

ASF Army Service Forces

ASV Air-to-surface-vessel (radar)

ASW Assistant Secretary of War

AT&T American Telephone and Telegraph (Company)

AWS Aircraft Warning Service

Bd Board

Bn Battalion

Br Branch

BTO Bombing-through-overcast (radar)

C&E Communications (Coordination) and Equipment

CAC Coast Artillery Corps

CCC Civilian Conservation Corps
348 THE SIGNAL CORPS

CE Corps of Engineers

CG Commanding general

CH Chain Home

CHL Chain Home Low

Cir(s) Circular(s)

CMTC Citizens' Military Training Corps

CofS Chief of Staff

CO Commanding officer

Co(s) Company(s)

Com(s) Communication(s)

Comd Command

Comdt Commandant

CSigO Chief Signal Officer

Ctr Center

CW Continuous wave

DA Department of the Army

d-c Direct current

Dir Director or directive

Div(s) Division(s)

DF Direction finding (radio) or direction finder

DRB Departmental Records Branch (AGO)

E&T Engineering and Technical

EFM Expeditionary Force Message (World War I)

EHF Extremely high frequency

Engr Engineer or engineering

Equip Equipment

ETG Electronics Training Group

Exec Executive

FA Field Artillery (Corps)

FCC Federal Communications Commission

FM Field manual or frequency modulation (radio)

FRC Federal Radio Commission. See FCC

FY Fiscal year

G-1 Personnel section of the War Department General Staff, or of

any other headquarters on the division level or higher

G-2 Military Intelligence Section

G-3 Operations and Training Section

G-4 Supply Section

GAO General Accounting Office

GCA Ground-controlled approach (radar)

GCI Ground-controlled interception (radar)

GHQ General Headquarters

GL Gun laying (radar)

HF High frequency
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 349

Hist History or historical

HR House of Representatives

I&E Information and Education

ICC Interstate Commerce Commission

IFF Identification, friend or foe (radar)

IMP Industrial Mobilization Plan

Incl(s) Inclosure(s)

Ind(s) Indorsement(s)

Inf Infantry

Kc Kilocycle (1,000 cycles per second)

LF Low frequency

M Day Mobilization Day

Mat Material or matériel

Mc Megacycles (1,000,000 cycles per second)

MEW Microwave early warning (radar)

MF Medium frequency

MID Military Intelligence Division

Mil Military

M.I.T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MS(S) Manuscript(s)

Msg(s) Message(s)

MTP Mobilization Training Program

NBC National Broadcasting Company

NDRC National Defense Research Committee

NRL Naval Research Laboratory

OASW Office of the Assistant Secretary of War

O/C Officer in charge

OCMH Office of the Chief of Military History

OCS Office of the Chief of Staff

OCSigO Office of the Chief Signal Officer

OPD Operations Division (WDGS)

OPM Office of Production Management

Opn(s) Operation(s)

Orgn Organization

OSRD Office of Scientific Research and Development

OSW Office of the Secretary of War

OUSW Office of the Under Secretary of War

P&D Procurement and Distribution

P&T Plant and Traffic

Pers Personnel

Photo Photographic

PL Public Law

Plng Planning

PMP Protective Mobilization Plan
350 THE SIGNAL CORPS

PPI Plan position indicator

Proc Procurement

Prog Progress

Proj Project

PWA Public Works Administration

PWP Public Works Program

QMG Quartermaster General

R&D Research and Development

R&W Routing and Work (sheet, in SigC office usage)

RCA Radio Corporation of America

RDF Radio direction finding or radio direction finder

Regtl Regimental

Reorgn Reorganization

RI Radio Intelligence

RL Radiation Laboratory

ROTC Reserve Officers' Training Corps

RPF Radio position finding or radio position finder

Rpt Report

RR Radio recognition

RTC Replacement Training Center

SCEL Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories

SCIA Signal Corps Intelligence Agency

SCL Signal Corps Laboratories

SCR Set complete radio or Signal Corps radio

SCRTC Signal Corps Replacement Training Center

Sec Section

SHF Superhigh frequency

Sig Signal

SigC Signal Corps

SIS Signal Intelligence Service

Supp Supplement

Suppl Supplemental

Sv Service

SW Secretary of War

T/BA Table of basic allowances

T/E Table of equipment

T/O Table of organization

T/O&E Table of organization and equipment

TAG The Adjutant General

Tech Technical

Tg Telegraph

TM Technical manual

Tng Training

Tp Telephone
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 351

TRS. Telegraphic par le sol (earth telegraphy)

TWX Teletypewriter exchange

UHF Ultrahigh frequency

USW Under Secretary of War

V-1 German buzz bomb

V-2 German long-range rocket

VHF Very high frequency

VLF Very low frequency

WAMCATS Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System

WAR Call letters of the Washington control station of the War Department Radio Net (ACAN), formerly WVA.

WD War Department

WDGS War Department General Staff

WP&T War Plans and Training

WPD War Plans Division, WDGS

WTJ Call letters of ACAN radio station, Fort Shafter, Hawaii

WVA See WAR

WVL Call letters of ACAN radio station, Quarry Heights, Canal Zone

WVY Call letters of ACAN station, San Francisco
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

The following volumes have been published:

The War Department

Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations

Washington Command Post: The Operations Division

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941-1942

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1943-1944

Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943

Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945

The Army and Economic Mobilization

The Army and Industrial Manpower

The Army Ground Forces

The Organization of Ground Combat Troops

The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops

The Army Service Forces

The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces

The Western Hemisphere

The Framework of Hemisphere Defense

Guarding the United States and Its Outposts

The War in the Pacific

The Fall of the Philippines

Guadalcanal: The First Offensive

Victory in Papua

CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of Rabaul

Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls

Campaign in the Marianas

The Approach to the Philippines

Leyte: The Return to the Philippines

Triumph in the Philippines

Okinawa: The Last Battle

Strategy and Command: The First Two Years

The Mediterranean Theater of Operations

Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West

Sicily and the Surrender of Italy

Salerno to Cassino

Cassino to the Alps

The European Theater of Operations

Cross-Channel Attack

Breakout and Pursuit

The Lorraine Campaign

The Siegfried Line Campaign

The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge

The Last Offensive

Riviera to the Rhine

The Supreme Command

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume I

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II
The Middle East Theater

The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia

The China-Burma-India Theater

Stilwell's Mission to China

Stilwell's Command Problems

Time Runs Out in CBI

The Technical Services

The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War

The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field

The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat

The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany

The Corps of Engineers: Military Construction in the United States

The Medical Department: Hospitalization and Evacuation, Zone of Interior

The Medical Department: Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor Theaters

The Medical Department: Medical Service in the European Theater of Operations

The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War

The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply

The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume I

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume II

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Germany

The Signal Corps: The Emergency

The Signal Corps: The Test

The Signal Corps: The Outcome

The Transportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations

The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas

Special Studies

Chronology: 1941-1945

Military Relations Between the United States and Canada: 1939—1945

Rearming the French

Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt

The Women's Army Corps

Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors

Buying Aircraft: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces

The Employment of Negro Troops

Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb

Pictorial Record

The War Against Germany and Italy: Mediterranean and Adjacent Areas

The War Against Germany: Europe and Adjacent Areas

The War Against Japan

Index

Aalburg, John O.: 225

Abd-el-Krim: 35n

Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.: 38, 232

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Research Council: 225, 229

and training films: 226-29

training sponsored by: 80-81, 224

and Truman Committee: 227

and Zanuck. See Zanuck, Lt. Col. Darryl F.

Adjutant General, Office of The, effort to take over

the War Department Message Center: 22

Adjutant General, The: 93, 96, 288

Administrative Branch, OCSigO: 297

Aeronautical Division, OCSigO: 13

Affiliated Plan, Signal Corps: 20, 21, 108

and labor supply, discussions on: 244

new: 107-08

and personnel, commissioned: 206, 226-27

public opinion toward: 226

and Signal Corps commissioned Reserve: 74

and Signal Photographic Laboratory, GHQ: 225

Agriculture, Department of: 10, 50

Aguadulce, Panama, wire connection with Quarry

Heights, C. Z.: 284

Air activities, expansion of, and effect on organization of units: 207

Air Alert Net: 49

Air base platoons, signal detachments as: 163

Air Communications Division, OCSigO: 297

Air Corps. See Army Air Corps.

Air defense

British: 191

United States: 135, 255ff.

Air Defense Board: 287

Air Defense Command: 149

ASV detection for: 253

GCI for: 255, 257

and needs for communications equipment: 253,

255, 258

radar and radio program for, 1942: 274

training of signal troops for: 150

Air Defense Section, GHQ Air Force, attitude toward adoption of British GCI: 268

Air defenses, Canadian-American agreement to coordinate: 277

Air Force, GHQ

and aircraft warning proposal of Southern California Edison Company: 97

signal battalion for: 108

Air Force Combat Command, Chief of, and adoption of British communications equipment: 268

Air Ministry, British: 201-02

Air Service: 18, 22, 28, 28n, 30, 61

Aircraft: 167, 172, 185, 197-98, 254, 261-63, 271

British Beaufighter, adoption of American AI-10

radar: 263

carrier-based, testing of mobile radar on Oahu,

T. H., by: 304

fighter, radar direction of: 257

high-altitude, high-speed, problem of recognizing: 190

night fighter, and AI-10 radar: 261

pathfinder, and BTO project: 189-90

radio communications with: 150, 239

recognition of, need for: 190

in Southwest Pacific theater, and use of ASV

radar (SCR-521): 263-64

training, and use of AI radar (SCR-540) : 262

Aircraft approach, ground-controlled: 5

Aircraft identification: 190-91. See also Identification, friend-or-foe; Radio, pipsqueak.

Aircraft plant, protection of, World War I: 241-42

Aircraft program

12,000-plane, British communications equipment

for: 258

50,000-plane: 167, 172, 185

Aircraft Radio Corporation: 298

beat radio reflection device, testing of: 190

and SCR-274-N: 120

Aircraft Radio Laboratory: 27n, 28, 91, 119, 120,

143, 253, 259, 261, 263

Air Corps charges against: 89-90

ASV at: 194, 263

and BTO problem: 188ff., 263

and developmental work: 30, 90

FM work at: 144

and IFF equipment: 264

and instrument landing equipment: 120-21

and microwave radar: 196

mission and functions of: 90, 295

and navigational equipment: 89ff., 186

origin of: 28

and radar, AI: 251-54

and radar, airborne: 187, 197-98

and Radiation Laboratory: 196

and radio altimeters: 186-89

radio compass at, controversy over: 89ff., 120,

185
356 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Aircraft Radio Laboratory—Continued

radio recognition, Navy-General Electric: 264

Tizard Mission personnel at: 195

VHF complex, development of air component

of: 266

Aircraft warning: 149ff. See also Air Defense

Command; Aircraft Warning Department,

Signal Corps School; Aircraft Warning Section, OCSigO; Aircraft Warning Service,

in Alaska: 151, 209, 278-79

a command function: 135

equipment: 39, 86, 135-36

in Hawaii: 301ff.

National Guard units for: 161

in Panama: 284-86

program for: 136

Signal Corps concern with: 135, 152, 286

training of personnel in: 150, 287ff.

War Department General Staff control of: 286

Aircraft Warning Department, Signal Corps

School: 219, 287, 288

Aircraft Warning Section, OCSigO: 297

Aircraft Warning Service: 83, 86-87, 135-36, 147,

149, 257

definition of: 287

ETG personnel in, use of: 289

frontier posts and centers, plans for: 86

in Hawaii: 301ff.

housing at oversea detector sites of: 276

in Jamaica, B. W. I.: 282

organization for, 1937: 86-87

partially trained personnel, assignment to new

units of: 288

personnel demands on Signal Corps of: 160-61

responsibility for: 97, 135, 286-87, 305

Aircraft Warning System. See Aircraft Warning

Service.

Airplane, Army's first: 12, 13

Akin, Maj. Gen. Spencer B.: 26, 72, 211, 234, 236,

241

Alaska: 12, 49, 111, 151, 209, 275

administrative radio network of, completion of:

278

plan for pigeon communications in: 221-22

radar stations for: 151, 278-79

Signal Corps troop strength in, 1927: 73

Alaska cable: 28, 58, 277-78

Alaska Communication System: 12n, 275ff. See

also Communications, Alaskan; WashingtonAlaska Military Cable and Telegraph System,

aircraft warning service, communications for:

278

installations of: 58, 275

origin of: 58

policy on sending dependents to installations of:

276

relations with FCC: 77

Signal Corps troops assigned to: 73, 275, 277

Alaska Defense Command: 275, 277-78

Albany, N. Y.: 27, 142, 143, 144

Albrook Field, C. Z.: 286

Aleutian Islands: 147, 177

Alexander, Lt. E. P., C. S. A.: 10n

Alexandria, Va.: 53

All America cable, link, Puerto Rico-Panama,

C. Z.: 283

Allen, Lt. Col. Edward A.: 180, 181, 184

Allen, Brig. Gen. James, and Aeronautical Division: 11n, 13

Allison, Maj. Gen. James B.: 11n, 60, 78, 122, 152

and personnel policies: 55-56, 74

and radio detection, funds for: 44-45

and radio development, problem of its centralization: 44, 88, 93-94

responsibilities of: 44, 70, 78

retirement of: 95n, 122

and SCR-268, witness to demonstration of: 47

and television channels, participation in 1937

hearings on allocation of: 77

Almirante, Panama, SCR-268 site: 286

Alpine, N. J., FM transmitter at: 142, 144

Altimeters: 30, 186ff.

pulse, of Naval Research Laboratory: 198

radar, development of: 193

of U. S. Navy: 255

Aluminum, shortage of: 244, 250

American Expeditionary Forces: 16, 19, 21, 23, 28,

31

American Gem and Pearl Company: 181, 245

American Medical Association: 76

American Radio Relay League: 54-55, 175, 290

American Telephone and Telegraph Company: 20,

62, 76, 98, 244

Aircraft Warning Service use of facilities: 86

carrier wire system in Iceland, contract for: 280

and conference for development of new mobilization plan: 107

Radio Corporation of America, formation of: 49

radiotelephone facilities in Alaska, connection

with: 58

recruitment of specialists from, recommendation

on: 76

Amplitude modulation. See Radio, AM.

Anaconda Wire and Cable Company: 103, 247

Anchorage, Alaska: 275, 277, 278, 283

aircraft warning in: 209, 278

telegraph circuit to Seattle and Boehme equipment: 58

Anderson, Dr. S. H., and early infrared detection

work: 39

Andrews, Lt. Gen. Frank M.: 163, 256

Andrews, Capt. Fred P.: 28

Angmagsalik, Greenland: 280n

Ankenbrandt, 1st Lt. Francis L., familiarity with

Air Corps problems: 91

Annapolis, Md., radio facilities at: 52
INDEX 357

Annette, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Antenna power, limitation of Army: 52

Antenna rods, resonant, plan for using in aircraft

identification: 191

Antenna system, radar, efforts to use a single array:

125

Antennas: 52, 122, 257, 290

Adcock: 120

airborne, for radar: 197

aircraft installation problems: 91

loop: 117, 138

rhombic: 57, 96

for SCR-270: 256

whip, lack for FM police sets of: 250

Antiaircraft

barrage fire, radar laying of: 128

batteries, and use of wire circuits: 284

detection apparatus, pre-World War II work on:

122ff.

exercises: 39, 151

guns, radar detector for directing: 47

troops: 137

Antiaircraft Artillery

and Aircraft Warning System, Hawaii: 305

Intelligence Service: 135

SCR-268 for: 255

and searchlight control radar: 88, 127

Antigua, B. W. I.: 282, 283, 284

Antilles Department, responsibility of signal officers in: 286

Antisubmarine warfare, use of SCR-521 in: 263

Antrac sets. See Radio relay.

Antwerp, Belgium: 19

Anzio beachhead, and SCR-584: 197

Appleton, E. V., and early ionospheric reflection

work: 42

Appropriations: 166-67, 292-93. See also Budget,

Signal Corps; Bureau of the Budget; Funds,

Signal Corps.

allotment to services: 105

for civilian personnel: 106

House of Representatives subcommittee on: 72,

151

manpower allotment, dependence upon: 148

for 1940, 1941, and 1942: 167, 293n

and procurement: 146

for research and development: 35

Aquitania: 39

Arctic expeditions: 10-11

Arlington, Va., radio facilities in: 49, 52, 96

Armor, and radio equipment: 118

Armored division

signal company for: 207

tactical wireless equipment, user of: 117

Armored Force: 6n, 162, 236, 296. See also

Mechanized Cavalry.

Armored Force—Continued

communication needs of: 110, 163, 164n, 174,

178

creation of: 163-65

FM radio for: 158-59, 165, 180, 183, 295

and quartz crystals, shortage of: 180-82

and radio frequencies, availability of: 141

SCR-500 series for: 165, 184, 231

tank radio sets for: 155, 180-81, 295

Armored Force units

1st Armored Division: 141, 159

2d Armored Division: 159

1st Tank Company: 139

Armstrong, Dr. Edwin H.: 14, 19, 181

and Armored Force radio: 181, 184

contributions: 19-20

and FM radio: 142, 144-46, 157, 158, 159, 178,

183n

patent difficulties of: 29

and police radio: 158, 184

Army

1920 and 1921 reorganizations of, communications and Signal Corps responsibilities under:

23ff., 48, 49

radio frequencies for, allocation of: 77

training: 71-72, 161, 210

Army Air Corps. See also Air Service; Army Airways Communications System; Aviation Section, OCSigO.

air mail flying by: 55, 93

and balloon ascension into stratosphere, 1935:

32

cadet centers and Morse code training: 107

Chief of: 47, 91, 94, 252. See also Arnold, Maj.

Gen Henry H.

and communications: 24, 56, 185, 271-72, 296

and communications equipment: 93, 99, 110,

118, 121, 163, 185, 191, 200, 246, 251ff., 272

and radar: 47, 122ff., 187ff., 258, 262, 263,

288

radio equipment: 72, 92-93, 155, 159-60, 178,

184-85, 189, 250

Signal Corps development and procurement for:

90, 92, 103, 176, 185, 255, 257-58, 261, 271

Army Air Corps Technical Committee: 92, 119, 186

Army Air Corps units

I Interceptor Command, in Greenland: 280

12th Pursuit Wing, in Panama: 283

Sixth Air Force: 286

Army Airways Communications System: 99, 167,

185, 277, 300

Army Amateur Radio System: 50, 56n, 59

Army radio system, relationship to: 50. See

also Army radio system.

establishment and growth of: 53-55

number of radio operators in: 148

as source of Signal Corps personnel: 148, 206
358 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Army Command and Administrative Network: 107,

108, 280ff. See also Army radio system; War

Department Radio Net.

extended to Iceland and Greenland, 1941: 280

extended to Panama and the Caribbean, 1941:

283

origin of: 50

Army Ground Forces: 6, 8, 238

Army Industrial College: 60n, 62, 71

Army message service, cessation of free (1935): 56

Army and Navy Munitions Board. See Joint

Army-Navy Munitions Board.

Army Pay Act, 1922, and grades of radio operators: 26

Army Pigeon Service: 83-84, 221ff.

Army radio system: 50ff,, 96. See also Army Amateur Radio System; Army Command and Administrative Network; War Department Radio

Net.

administrative net, development of: 53

Air Alert Net and Army transport net as parts

of: 50

antenna power, limitation of: 52, 57

appropriations for: 52

power equipment, need for emergency: 57

stations, 1929: 52

Army Regulations, Chief Signal Officers' responsibilities under: 22, 93, 101, 295

Army Service Forces: 6, 8. See also Services of

Supply.

Army transport net: 50

Army War College: 49, 60n, 152. See also Washington Barracks,

industrial inventory by: 63

Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory at: 79

War Department Radio Net facilities at: 49

Arnold, Maj. Gen. Henry H.: 14n, 163, 193, 252,

260, 269

and communications equipment: 189, 252, 255,

256n, 273

Olmstead's efforts to satisfy: 272

and radar: 252, 257-58, 267, 269

SCR-268 and -270, at demonstration of: 128

Articles of War, The (film): 227

Assistant Chief Signal Officer, and procurement

planning: 61

Assistant Secretary for Air: 268-70

Assistant Secretary of War: 62, 63, 103, 167, 170, 250, 273

Assistant Secretary of War, Office of: 65, 69, 247

and business curbs: 173

and communications equipment: 73, 252

and plant security: 241

and procurement planning: 62, 64-67, 171

reorganization of: 67

Associated Press, criticism of communications equipment by: 86

Association of Motion Picture Producers of America,

contribution of funds for training photographic

officers: 81

Astoria Studio, Long Island City, N. Y., purchase

by Signal Corps urged: 225, 229

Atkinson Field, British Guiana: 282

Atlanta, Ga.: 57

Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: 122, 128

Atwater-Kent factory, Philadelphia, Pa., use as

Signal Corps facility: 293-94

Austin, Tex., use of pigeons in training flights to:

83-84

Australia: 300

Automatic Electric Company, contract for soundpowered telephones with: 34

Automobile, radio-controlled, development of: 28

Aviation, military, to end of World War I: 6, 13-14,

16

Aviation Section, OCSigO: 14, 16, 20, 21, 58. See

also Air Service. Aviators, and airborne radio equipment: 119

Avon, Ky., Lexington Signal Depot at: 294

Back, Maj. George I.: 161

member of Signal Corps Board: 160

on weakness of Signal Corps tables of organization: 164

Bailey, George: 290

Baker, Newton D.: 16, 62, 93

Baker, Dr. W. R. G., at conference of leaders in

communications industry: 298

Bailer, Melvin D., and early radar transmitter: 123

Balloons, military: 6, 10, 11, 13, 32

Barbour, Sen. W. Warren, opposition to transfer of

laboratory construction to Wright Field, Ohio:

99

Barksdale Field, La., use of radiometeorograph at:

33

Barnett, Edward: 297

Barrett, M. A. F., and early ionospheric reflections:

42

Bataan, capture of National Guard unit with FM

radio: 184

Batt, William L.: 169

Battalions, construction: 204

Batteries

dry: 64, 104

foreign orders for: 246

installers, training for: 211

storage: 64, 66, 248

Battery charger: 249

Battery Cove, Va.: 53, 56n, 57, 57n

Bawdsey Research Station: 193n

Bay of Lübeck, German radar experimentation in:

42

Bayer, Col. William L.: 91, 189, 198, 199, 261

Beacons: 30, 89, 121, 189. See also Navigation,

loran and shoran: 5

radio range: 30, 123-24
INDEX 359

Beat detection: 39-40, 43, 45, 186-88, 194

Bell, Alexander Graham: 113

Bell System: 12, 138, 225, 282

and Affiliated Plan, employees coming under: 108

and personnel, Signal Corps: 76

and public telephone service at camp and post:

239

and Reserve officers: 205

telephone equipment of rear areas compared to

city terminals of: 114

and telephone service between Army and nonArmy areas: 238-39

telephones operated by, percentage of nation's:

107

and teletype and teletypewriters: 107, 154

Bell Telephone Laboratories: 43, 46

and FM radio: 144

and magnetron, resonant-cavity: 196

RCA competition with: 187

and SCL: 76

telephone, sound-powered, development of: 34

Bender, Col. Louis B.: 44, 157-58, 183n

Bendix Radio Corporation: 188, 273

aircraft radio compasses from, order for: 247

and contracts, Signal Corps: 169

and plant expansion, plan for: 173

Bermuda: 281

Bethel, Alaska, ACS station at: 275

Bickelhaupt, Col. Carroll O.

Caribbean area, inspection trip to: 298

mobilization study by: 107

and personnel recruitment: 76, 225

Big Delta, Alaska, ACS installation for: 275

"Big Five": 169n

Black, Maj. Garland C.: 85

Blair, Maj. William R.: 43, 46, 72, 89-90, 92

Air Corps reliance upon commercial development, opinion on: 90

and ARL: 90

and beat detection: 40

detection by radio (radar) and by heat wave,

interest in: 38, 43-44, 122

illness and retirement of: 122

locators, sound, opinion on: 38

meteorological work of: 30, 32

radar, pulse, observation on principle of: 41

Blimp, infrared tracking of, 1932: 39

Blind-landing program: 91

Blinker: 5

BLUIE: 280

Boards and committees. Signal Corps representation on: 77-78

Boehme equipment. See Telegraph, equipment.

Bogman, Col. James H. B.: 170, 172, 242, 245

BOLERO: 280

Boiling Field, Washington, D. C.: 30, 52

Bombing. See also Bombing-through-overcast;

Bombsights; Radar, BTO.

high-altitude: 186

pinpoint, radar required for: 196

Bombing-through-overcast: 5, 188ff., 195

Air Corps interest in: 252

proposals for: 189

radio goniometry for, proposed use of: 189

Bombsights: 186, 188-89

Bordeaux, France: 18

Borinquen Field, P. R.: 167, 284

Boston, Mass.: 254, 290

Boundary, Alaska, ACS installation planned for:

275

Bowen, Dr. E. J.: 193n

Brady, Mathew B.: 21n, 79

Brass, shortage of: 250

Brazil: 147, 155, 244-45, 281, 283

Breit, Dr. Gregory, and principle of ionospheric

reflection: 42

Brett, Maj. Gen. George H.: 100, 252, 254, 255,

256

laboratory facilities at Fort Monmouth, attitude

toward: 99

and radio and radar, evaluation of U. S. progress in: 252

and Signal Corps liaison officer at Wright Field:

271

Britain, Battle of: 197, 199

British Admiralty: 246

British Air Commission

and CH, opinion on proposed copying of: 269

Chief of, and patent agreements and commercial

rights: 259

and communications equipment for the United

States: 258

British Cable and Wireless Company: 283

British Government. See Great Britain.

British Guiana: 282-84

British Isles, need for aircraft identification in

combat over: 197

British Ministry of Aircraft Production: 192

British possessions, U. S. bases in: 166

British Purchasing Commission and Supply Board:

246

Broadcasting, AM and FM: 146

Brooklyn, N. Y.: 100. See also New York General

Depot, Signal Section.

Brooklyn Army Base, moving of Signal Corps facilities from: 293-94

Buckner, Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar, Jr.: 221, 275,

277, 278, 283

Budget, Signal Corps. See also Appropriations;

Bureau of the Budget; Funds, Signal Corps.

Air Corps' needs reflected in: 99

under Coolidge and Hoover: 70

development and adoption of: 72-73, 167
360 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Budget Advisory Committee: 238, 305

Bull Run, and Confederate signaling at First Battle

of: 10

Bundy, Harvey H.: 270

Bureau of the Budget: 55, 72, 214

Bureau of the Census: 65

Bureau of Internal Revenue: 50

Bureau of Mines, and discussion of quartz shortage:

244

Bureau of Standards: 27, 28, 30, 31, 244, 245

Burica Point, SCR-268 site on: 286

Burke-Wadsworth bill: 203

Burns, Capt. Robert E.: 170

Bush, Col. George P.: 59, 60n, 63, 66

Bush, Dr. Vannevar: 290

and communications equipment, conference on:

255-56

and National Defense Research Committee: 201

Business

and communications system, fixed: 48-49

and the Signal Corps: 168-69

Buzzers: 16

Byrnes, James F.: 169

Cable: 6, 12, 277

in Alaska: 28, 57-58, 278

in the Caribbean: 283

coaxial: 3

facilities: 53, 238

field: 115-16, 232, 295

foreign orders for: 170, 247

German: 115-16, 232-33

on Oahu, T. H.: 300

spiral-four: 115-16, 154n, 233

splicers: 214n

transatlantic, World War I: 18

Cadre system. See Training.

Camaguey, Cuba: 283

Cambridge, Mass.: 290

Camden, N. J.: 45, 187

Camp Alfred Vail: 21, 22, 28-29, 211. See also

Fort Monmouth, N. J.

Camp Claiborne, La., organization of 2d Pigeon

Company at: 223

Camp Crowder, Mo.: 60n, 107, 292

Camp Evans Signal Laboratory: 123n

Camp Grant, Ill.: 237

Camp McCoy, Wis.: 177, 221

Camp Meade, Md., Signal Corps training center

in World War I: 21

Camp Murphy, Hobe Sound, Fla., training center

for aircraft warning personnel at: 288

Camp Vail. See Camp Alfred Vail.

Canada: 208, 246, 254, 259, 277, 288

Canadian National and Pacific Railroads, wire facilities of: 277

Canal Zone. See Panama Canal.

Carbon anodes, and materials, supply of: 244

Carbonyl, shortage of: 244, 250

Cardwell Manufacturing Company, remission of

damages against: 172-73

Cargo vehicles, criticism of number allowed signal

battalion: 235

Caribbean Defense Command: 283-84

Caribbean Theater, Signal Corps responsibilities

in: 286

Carnegie Institute of Technology, Signal Corps

ROTC unit at: 74

Carnegie Institution: 42

Carolina maneuvers (1941). See Maneuvers,

1941; First Army.

Carr, Maj. Gen. Irving J.: 11n

Air Corps-Signal Corps controversy during tenure

of: 88

and budget making: 72

radio research and development, attitude toward

consolidation of: 90

responsibilities of: 70, 78

Carrier systems: 13n, 154, 280, 295

Carty, J. J., and supply mobilization: 62

Cash-and-carry policy: 168, 170, 246

Cassevant, 1st Lt. Albert F., radar work of: 123

Cavalry: 6n, 9, 23, 48, 73, 110, 117

Chief Signal Officer and: 135

communications in, views on responsibility for:

24

at Fort Myer: 95-96

guidon-staff radio (SCR-511) for: 73, 231

motorization of, and effect on organization of

units: 207

SCR-131 intended for: 117

SCR-245 for, desire for crystal and masteroscillator circuits in: 139

7th Brigade (Mechanized), training of troops in

radio installation by: 139, 145n

Signal Corps liaison with: 210, 296

signal mobilization plans for: 108

signal responsibilities of: 133

and training of personnel for signal tasks: 236

and walkie-talkie, use of: 231

Cavity magnetron. See Vacuum tubes.

Cellophane, investigation of use in producing wire:

33

Central Scientific Office, British

and AI-10, trial run of: 261

IFF, Mark III model, conference on adoption

of: 264

Ceramic insulators: 246

CH stations. See Radar, CH (and CHL).

"Chaff": 6

Chaffee, Brig. Gen. Adna R.

and Armored Force, signal requirements of:

163-64

and communications equipment, 100-miles-inmotion: 164

and crystal control, question of: 181

and SCR-197, acceptance by: 164

and signal communication, criticism of: 160
INDEX 361

Chain Home system. See Radar, CH (and CHL).

Chancy, Brig. Gen. James E.: 259, 262

and Air Defense Command, responsibility for:

149

and airborne signal equipment: 253, 255, 256n,

258-59

and ETG: 291

GCI, desire for: 257

and radar, British, observations on: 200

and SCR-268 and -270, height finder for: 256,

271

Chaumont, France: 18, 19

Chemical Corps: 6n, 78, 238, 252

Chicago, Ill.: 57, 100

Chicago General Depot, Signal Section: 68, 100

Chicago Signal Corps Procurement District: 63, 68

Chicago Quartermaster Depot, Signal Section of:

294

Chief of Chaplains, Office of: 8n

Chief Signal Officer: 70ff., 96, 146, 179, 272, 282,

293, 297. See also Office of the Chief Signal

Officer.

Acting: 272, 274

Air Corps, relations with: 88, 94, 269, 271

and aircraft warning: 135, 149, 287

and boards and committees: 77, 287

and budget making: 72

Civilian Advisory Council of: 225, 298

communications adviser to War Department: 296

and communications industry: 76-77

and equipment matters, miscellaneous: 73, 123,

168, 170, 240, 246, 267

FCC, relationship with: 77

and funds: 72-73, 172

preparedness measures of: 175

and procurement: 62-63, 247-48, 249

responsibilities of: 56, 70ff., 82, 295

and training: 206, 215, 227, 237

Chief Signal Officers. See also individual officers

by name.

list of: 11n

problems of: 73, 82

War Department Message Center, attitude toward: 51

Chief of Staff: 8, 111

and centralized Army communications: 296

on training and training films: 152, 228-29

Chilkoot Barracks, Alaska: 275

China: 69, 95

Churchill, Prime Minister Winston S.: 5, 201

Cipher devices: 154, 249. See also Cryptographic machines.

Citizens' Military Training Corps: 74

Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic: 283

Civil Aeronautics Administration: 244, 277

Civil Service: 56, 167

Civil War: 10, 21n, 48

Civilian Advisory Board: 298

Civilian Conservation Corps: 55, 57, 244

Civilian Personnel Division, OCSigO: 297

Civilians. See also Personnel, civilians.

World War II contributions of: 201-02

Classification Act: 106

Clearance. See Security.

Clewell, Brig. Gen. Edgar L.: 160

Clinton, Ontario, aircraft warning school at: 288

Close Order Drill, early training film, 1916: 21n

Coast Artillery Board: 127

Coast Artillery Corps: 6n, 34, 40, 47-48, 110, 193,

296

Air Defense Board, member of: 287

aircraft warning and training: 135, 149, 287-88

and detection equipment: 39-40, 44, 45, 46, 47,

125

and equipment matters, miscellaneous: 35, 107,

110, 135, 252, 295

and fire-control: 22, 49-50, 238

and FM, interest in: 158

Fort Hancock, N. J., reservation of: 122

and radar: 122-23, 135, 184, 199, 274, 295

radio facilities of: 49, 52n

SCR-177 for: 117

and SCR-268: 47, 123, 199, 255

62d Regiment: 123

sound-ranging projects of: 36

Coast Guard: 52, 86, 277

Cockcroft, Prof. J. D.: 193n

Code, Maj. Gen. James A., Jr.: 284, 297, 298

Codes and ciphers: 6, 154

Cohen, Dr. Louis, work on static elimination: 27

Coiba Island, Panama, SCR-268 site on: 286

Cold Bay, Alaska, ACS installation planned for:

275

Coleman, Mr. J. B.: 298

Coles, Maj. Roy H.: 62

Collision-prevention project: 92, 186-87

Colombia: 286

Colonial Radio Corporation, and SCR-274-N: 120

Color prints, transparencies for: 79

Colton, Maj. Gen. Roger B.: 33, 43-44, 141, 297,

298

and crystals: 155, 181-83

director of the Signal Corps Laboratories: 124

and equipment display at Fort Knox, 1939: 142

maneuvers, prewar, belief concerning chief signal

deficiency during: 138

and pulse equipment: 45, 194

and radio, FM: 144-45, 158, 179, 183, 183n

Signal Corps Board, member of: 160

and switchboards, tactical, need for: 233

teletype, on field use of: 138, 154

and wire and radio, on relative importance of:

154

Columbia University, thermal detection at, experimental work in: 36
362 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Command and General Staff School: 71

Commandos, British, capture of German cable

samples by: 232

Commerce, Department of: 30, 54

Commodity committees: 65-66

Communication. See also Communications.

fire-control: 238

as instrument of command: 134

pigeon, place of: 221

Communication Appliances Committee: 78

Communications

Administrative: 48ff., 95, 107, 237, 299. See

also Army Command and Administrative Net.

air: 24, 185, 251ff.

Alaskan: 58, 277. See also Alaska Communication System; Washington-Alaska Military

Cable and Telegraph System.

Army, control over: 133, 294-96

Canadian: 277

in Caribbean area: 299

combat: 176-77

commercial: 53, 77, 86, 87, 96-98, 107

evolution of: 4

fixed: 48, 57, 86

Hawaiian: 300

Infantry: 134

pictorial: 78ff.

pigeon: 83-84

singleness of: 23, 133, 176, 295-96

tactical: 95, 135ff., 152, 156, 299

traffic: 49

Communications equipment

and Air Corps needs: 185, 251ff., 272-73

British: 251ff.

civilian, rented for maneuvers: 136, 177

commercial models of, use of: 174-75

control by single agency over, proposal of: 296

and Munitions Control Act, 1937: 246

obsolescence of: 66

and Signal Corps: 149, 176, 261, 269

standards for: 66

Communications industry. See also Industry; individual commercial companies by name.

Olmstead and conference with key persons in: 298

radio, FM, attitude toward: 146

and Signal Corps relationship with: 20, 76ff., 146

teletype replacement of telegraph by: 107

Communications Liaison Division, OCSigO: 78

106, 179

Companies, Signal Corps. See Signal Corps units.

Competitive bids: 168

Components: 66, 259-60

Compton, Dr. Karl: 255-56, 262, 273

Comptroller General, laboratory building, opinion

concerning funds for: 99

Conant, Dr. James B.: 288, 289

Conferences

industrial: 64, 298

international: 78

Congress, U. S.

appropriations by: 98, 166, 293

and budget making: 72

communications, ownership of, attitude toward:

48-49

equipment orders, foreign, admission of: 245

labor legislation: 168

and mobilization planning, industrial: 64

national parks, preservation of: 302

NRL, support of: 43

Panama Canal, barring of aliens from: 243

personnel ceilings, raising of: 203

procurement planning, hearings on: 62

and World War II, defense measures on eve of:

137

Connecticut State police, radios of: 145, 158, 183-

84

Conscription: 62, 174-75, 178, 203, 205. See also

Burke-Wadsworth bill; Selective Service.

Construction plan, factory: 65

Consultative agencies, communications: 77

Contactor: 258, 274. See also Radio, pipsqueak.

Continuous wave, sending Morse code by: 117

Contracting and contractors: 61, 246

Contracts: 22, 59, 168ff., 246, 248

Army and Navy, priority of: 173

cost-plus-a-fixed-fee: 169, 173

escalator clause: 168, 169

military, profit ceiling on: 168-69

negotiated and negotiation of: 170, 173-74

Control Instrument Company, sound-powered telephone produced by: 34

Cooper, Capt. Airel B.: 281

Coordination and Equipment Division, OCSigO:

296

Copenhagen, Denmark: 78

Copper-oxide disks: 244

Cord. See Telephone (or telephones).

Cord and fabric, use in telephone case: 113

Cordova, Alaska, ACS station at: 275

Cornell University, Signal Corps ROTC unit at:

74

Corps area commands, Signal Corps officer requirements for: 147

Corps areas: 8, 49, 54

cameramen in, military: 79

communications equipment for, supply of: 60

communications in, commercial, emergency use

of: 98

Eighth: 237, 294

Fourth: 154, 237, 238

and mobilization: 68

Ninth: 238, 275

radio nets for: 50

Second: 179
INDEX 363

Corps areas—Continued

and telephone service: 238

Corput, Col. Rex V. D., Jr.: 45, 122, 268

Cost accounting: 175

Costa Rica: 286

Council of National Defense, Advisory Commission

of: 169

Cowan, Col. Arthur S.: 89-90

Cows, liking for W-110 wire insulation: 154

Craig, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Craig, Gen. Malin: 72n, 122, 134

Crawford, Maj. David M.: 72, 78, 142

Crowder, Maj. Gen. Enoch: 292n

Cruft Laboratory, training of personnel in Electronics Training Program at: 290

Cryptographic machines: 241. See also Speech

scrambling.

Cryptography and cryptanalysis: 4, 6, 78-79, 154,

204

Crystals. See Quartz crystals.

Cuba, radio station in, 1908: 12

Culebra, P.R., joint exercises near: 234

Cuny, Col. Clifford D.: 59, 60n, 169

Customs of the Service (film): 227

Cutters, photographic: 224

Dake, Dr. H. C.: 155

David, Pierre: 43

Davidson, Brig. Gen. Howard C.: 305

Davis, Dwight F., Assistant Secretary of War: 62,

63

Davis, Jefferson: 10n Davis, 1st Lt. John J., on advantage of FM radio:

179

Daw, Col. William J.: 294

Dayton, Ohio: 254

"Death rays": 195

Defense

British organization for: 201

hemisphere: 147, 203, 275, 287, 292

home, communications for: 86

Defense Aid Division: 247

Defense housing: 238-39, 276

Defense Plant Corporation: 232

De Forest, Lee: 13, 19

Delano, Maj. Francis G.: 63

DeMille, Cecil B.: 226

Denmark: 167, 280

Dependents, Signal Corps policy concerning: 276-

77

Depots: 60, 100. See also individual depots by

name.

Depots, storage, telephone service for: 238

Deputy Chief of Staff: 252, 269, 272

Destroyers-for-bases agreement and sites: 166, 192,

283, 289

Detection: 35ff. See also Detection, ASV; Detectors; Radar,

aircraft, British military organization for: 200

Detection—Continued

air-to-air: 193-94. See also Radar, AI.

beat. See Beat detection.

British use of: 200-201. See also Detection,

ASV, British.

Canadian. See Detectors, Night Watchman.

equipment: 121-22, 149

ground: 267

heat. See Heat location; Infrared rays; Thermal

detection.

research in: 35-38

Detection, ASV. See also Detection; Detectors;

Radar, ASV.

AI-10 radar, adapted for ASV: 263

and Air Corps: 198, 253, 257-58, 273

American and British, relative merits of: 252

British: 198ff., 252ff., 272

Canadian manufacture of British: 259

requirements for, U. S.: 270

secrecy of British: 253

10-centimeter, advice to procure: 273

Detectors

and Air Corps: 257-58

airborne: 193-94, 251

Alaskan stations for: 278-79

British types: 252ff.

Night Watchman: 267

production of, time required: 288

Deutschland: 189

Development program, Signal Corps, Air Corps

arraignment of: 271

De Witt, Lt. Gen. John L.: 243, 278

Diamond, Harry: 32

Direction-finders and -finding: 18, 32, 36, 41, 120,

257. See also Radio Compass; Navigation.

Air Corps delivery schedule for: 258

and aircraft identification: 197

British: 251, 258, 260

Distribution: 60, 61. See also Procurement.

District of Columbia: 74, 95

Division of Defense Housing Coordination, Office

for Emergency Management: 276

Divisions, triangular: 106, 134, 135, 147, 162, 207

signal complement in: 84

and Signal Corps mission: 134

"Dole Derby," 1927, and radio beacon: 30

Doppler method: 39, 43, 194

Dowding, Sir Hugh: 255

Downing, Capt. J. J.: 33

Draft boards: 205

Draftsmen, training of: 216

Drew Field, Tampa, Fla.: 288

Drum, Lt. Gen. Hugh A.: 137, 149, 182

Duncan, R. D., Jr.: 27

Dunkerque: 161, 197

Du Pont Company: 33, 242

Duprene, and wire production, investigation of use

in: 33
364 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Dutch Guiana: 283

Dutch Harbor, Alaska: 275, 279

Dynamotors: 244

Eastman Kodak Company: 82n, 169

Eastrop, Tex.: 292

Eatontown Signal Laboratory: 33

Echols, Gen. Oliver P.: 271

Economy, civilian and military: 174

Edison, Charles, Assistant Secretary of the Navy:

46

Educational orders: 61, 67, 103-04, 170-72, 246

Edwards, Maj. Paul S.: 150, 200, 251, 253, 255,

256n Eiffel Tower radio transmitter: 19

Eighth Corps Area Depot, Fort Sam Houston, Tex.,

Signal Section of: 294

Elder, Col. Eugene V.: 59, 60n, 167

Electrical Laboratory, Signal Corps: 27n

Electromagnetic waves and spectrum: 4, 6, 27, 33,

35, 38, 41, 95, 195, 262n

Electronics Training Group: 207, 288-91

Ellesmere Island, expedition to: 11

Elmendorf Field, Anchorage, Alaska: 275, 276

Emerson Radio and Phonograph Company: 245

Emmons, Maj. Gen. Delos: 200-201, 255, 256

Empress of Asia: 291

Engineers, Corps of: 6n, 8n, 21n, 22, 237-38, 279,

282, 286, 299

and aircraft warning system, Hawaiian: 302, 305

communications projects by, support of: 56

equipment of, thermal: 39, 44

photographic activities: 21n, 79

radar sites, Hawaiian: 302-03

radio wave projects, interest in: 44

searchlight development, responsibility for: 39

technical committee of, Signal Corps representation on: 78

Engineers, Signal Corps need for: 109, 167

England. See Great Britain.

Enlisted Department, Signal Corps School: 210,

211, 217, 219, 288

Enlisted men. See Personnel.

Equipment: 110ff. See also Communications

equipment; Radar; Radio; Telegraph; Telephone; Wire.

American, and British airborne developments:

191

bids for, inviting of: 73

communications, for 50,000 aircraft a year: 185

cost of selected items, 1941: 176

depot repair and reissue of: 60

detector: 257. See also Detection; Detection,

ASV; Detectors.

meteorological: 261

and military characteristics: 93n

production of, time required: 69, 288

standardization procedure: 73

testing of: 73, 133, 250

Equipment Branch, Wright Field: 89

Equipment Section, OCSigO: 296

Ethiopia: 69, 95

Evans, Walter, attendance at communications conference: 298

Ewa, Oahu, T. H.: 303

Executive Control (Section) Division, OCSigO:

297

Executive Office, OCSigO: 72, 297

Expediting: 61

Expeditionary force messages (EFM's): 18

Facsimile: 3, 57, 79, 194

Factory plan: 65

Fairbanks, Alaska: 275, 278

Fairey, C. R.: 193n

Fairfield, Ohio: 100

Falk, 1st Lt. Byron A.: 62, 63

Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation: 103

Federal Bureau of Investigation: 241, 242

Federal Communications Commission: 77, 97, 146,

157, 183, 259

Federal Telegraph Company: 159

Federal Works Agency: 238

Ferenbaugh, 1st Lt. Claude B.: 82n

Field Artillery: 22, 23, 34, 233, 236

FM radio, enthusiasm for: 157, 158, 179

SCR's-161, 178, 194 and 600 series for: 117, 179,

184, 249

and Signal Corps mission: 134

signaling in, tactical: 16, 45, 48

Field Artillery Board: 28, 157

Field kitchen, heater for, interest in: 145

Field printer, Signal Corps work on: 138

Field radio operators, training of: 215

Fifth Supplemental Program (1941) and handietalkie radio: 249

"Fillers" and "replacements": 211-12

Film (or films). See also Training films.

distribution: 229

industry: 80

libraries, Signal Corps: 230

sound: 81-82

Fire control: 35, 238, 300

Fire Island, N. Y., and experimental radioing: 12

First Army: 137ff., 149, 158, 177, 178, 234, 236,

287

First Supplemental National Appropriations Bill

(1942), Signal Corps appropriations under:

249, 293n

Fiscal Section, OCSigO: 72

Fisher, Col. Benjamin F.: 11n

Flags, signal. See Signal flags; Wigwag.

Flares, detection use in World War 1: 36

Flash ranging

apparatus: 241

sets, FA need for: 295

Flashlights (TL-122): 176

Flat, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275
INDEX 365

Floyd, John B.: 10n

Foreign aid, controversy over: 245-46

Foreign orders for equipment: 168, 170, 246-47.

See also Lend-lease.

Fort Armstrong, T. H., 300-line switchboard serving: 300

Fort Benning, Ga.

Army Pigeon Service: 83, 223

maneuvers in 1940 at: 152

sound film for training at, production of: 80

Fort Des Moines, Iowa: 179

Fort Dix, N.J.: 60n, 237

Fort Duncan, Tex.: 9

Fort Hancock, N. J.: 122, 124, 267

aircraft identification at: 191

radar work at: 121-23, 187

Fort Jackson, S. C.: 5

Fort Knox, Ky.

antiaircraft exercise at, Air Corps: 39

equipment, Signal Corps, exhibit of: 142, 144—

46, 159

radio conferences at: 157, 164-65

radio equipment at: 145, 231

Fort Leavenworth, Kans., training center at: 20-21

Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., organization of 275th

Signal Construction Company at: 284

Fort Lewis, Wash., training of 202d Signal Depot

Company at: 237

Fort McAndrew, Newfoundland, radio facilities at:

281

Fort Monmouth, N. J.: 21, 29, 71, 85, 122, 149,

209ff., 267, 272. See also Signal Corps Replacement Training Center; Signal Corps

School.

and aircraft warning program: 150, 207, 215,

300

Army Pigeon Service: 83-84, 222-23

commandant of: 162, 220

crowding at: 211, 225

development work at, consolidation of: 89-91

electronics training at: 290

expansion of: 212-14, 219-20

experimental work at: 44, 84

film production at: 224-25, 229

housing at: 211, 214-15

laboratories at: 27n, 45, 71, 98-101, 175, 188,

295

microwave work at: 92

Morse code training at: 107

organization at, 1941: 219-20

population of, spring 1941: 220

replacement pool at: 210

Reserve officers training at: 74, 206

Signal Corps Board at: 77

Signal Corps School at: 209

Squier Laboratory at: 45

strength at, garrison: 213

Fort Monmouth, N. J.—Continued

thermolocator at, marine, production of: 39

as training center: 71, 74, 107, 206, 209, 216-

17, 220, 290

units: 82, 101, 207, 215, 220, 290, 300 and VHF complex: 266

Fort Monroe, Va.: 125, 128

Fort Myer, Va.: 11, 95-96

and naval radio installation, effort to merge:

96

17th Signal Service Company to, assignment of:

56n

Signal Corps facilities at: 53, 57, 96

Fort Pepperell, Newfoundland, radio transmitter

at: 281

Fort Richardson, Alaska: 209, 221-22, 275, 276

Fort Riley, Kans.: 13

Fort Sam Houston, Tex.: 83-84, 148, 223, 294

Fort Shafter, Oahu, T. H.: 223, 300, 303

Aircraft Warning information center at: 303-04

9th Signal Service Company at: 300

radio communication between Station WAR and,

difficulty of: 301

SCR-270 at, installation of: 303

Fort Sheridan, Ill., 50th Signal Battalion at: 280-81

Fort Sherman, C. Z., SCR-271's at: 151n, 284

Fort Sill, Okla., loop radio (SCR-77) at: 28

Fort Simonds, Jamaica, B. W. I., detachment of

12th Signal Service Company at: 282

Fort Whipple, Va. See Fort Myer, Va.

Foulois, Maj. Gen. Benjamin D.: 14n

and radio research and development: 91, 93

Fourth Army

aircraft warning companies for: 287

cable link with Alaska: 277-78

and commercial communications facilities for

1940 maneuvers: 153n

and training films: 227

and training of signal personnel: 236

Fowler, Prof. R. H.: 193, 195

Fox, Capt. Alonzo P., effort to convert silent films

to "talkies": 80

Fox Movietone News, effort to produce sound film

for training purposes: 80

Frame men, training of: 211, 214n

France: 16, 129, 137, 166-67, 210

French, Capt. Edward F., procurement responsibility of: 63

French Guiana: 283

Frequencies: 33, 117, 119. See also Electromagnetic waves and spectrum.

allocation problems of: 3, 77, 141, 142, 164, 183n

Frequency modulation: 77, 121, 141ff., 172, 178ff.

See also Radio, FM.

Armstrong, E. H., inventor of: 142

attitudes toward: 142-47, 157-58, 179

capture effect: 184-85
366 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Frequency modulation—Continued

and radio altimeter experiments: 186

testing and demonstration of: 142ff., 157, 158

Freya radar. See Radar, German.

Funds, Signal Corps: 44, 67, 100, 158. See also

Budget, Signal Corps.

for communications equipment, British: 258

for educational orders: 104

for Radio Position Finding Section: 145

for research and development: 35, 104

G-1: 25, 206, 210. See also War Department

General Staff.

G-2: 25, 195

and communications equipment: 255

photographs as source material for analysis by:

79

and plant security: 241

G-3: 163

and equipment plans: 73

and training of photographers: 80

G-4: 25

and budget making: 72

and equipment plans and schedule: 73, 257

and laboratory building at Fort Monmouth, bids

for: 99

and telephone service between Army and nonArmy areas: 238

Galápagos Islands: 147

Galvanometer: 27

Galvin Manufacturing Corporation: 165, 231

Gander Lake, Newfoundland: 281

Gardner, Brig. Gen. John H.: 44, 187, 254, 261,

263

Gasser, Brig. Gen. Lorenzo D.: 99

General Accounting Office, and contract awards:

174

General Cable Corporation: 245, 247

General Electric Company: 63, 142, 264, 266, 268

aircraft identification, design for: 191

contracts with: 169

and educational orders: 103

equipment, FM, orders for: 144

FM, experimental work on: 172

GCI, British, effort to reproduce: 268

IFF: 253

industrial information: 63-64

laboratories of: 43

RCA, formation of: 49

Generators: 18-19, 115, 117

field, portable: 248

hand-cranked: 117

PE-75 and -77: 115

Georgia Institute of Technology, Signal Corps

ROTC unit at: 74

German Air Force. See Luftwaffe.

German Army, exploration of idea of field teletype by: 114

German military methods and equipment, studies in

service journals of: 95

German Navy, radar research of: 42

Germany: 41

and CH radar sites, attacks on: 200

radar of: 129

radio use by: 176

transmitters, VHF, difficulties in development

of: 120n

wire equipment of: 115-16

Gettysburg, Union signaling at: 10

GHQ

Air Corps, Signal Corps responsibility for communications in: 185

Air Force: 46,78, 255, 287

signal service: 108

Gibbs, Maj. Gen. George S.: 11n, 88, 296

communications advances, comments on: 57

and Postal Telegraph and Cable Company, relationship with: 77

preparedness measures, opinion concerning: 175—

76

radio hams, comment on: 53-54

responsibilities of: 70-71, 78

Signal Corps laboratories, policy on merging: 90

WAMCATS, attitude toward proposed sale of:

70

Gillette, Lt. Col. Melvin E.: 82, 224, 225, 229-30

Glass, commodity committee for optical: 66n

Goering, Hermann, interest in radar: 42-43

Goniometric stations, principal use of: 18

Goniometrics. See also Direction-finders and -finding.

responsibility for: 6

Goolrick, Lt. Col. Robert, comment on responsibility

for navigational radio: 92-93

Governors Island, N. Y., report on SCR's-293 and

294 by Signal Officer at: 159n

Grace, Col. J. J., and training of signal personnel:

236-37

Graf Spee: 189, 194

Graham, George A.: 33

Graybar Electric Company, Inc.: 169n

Great Britain: 5, 41, 42, 255

aircraft radio compass, access to: 170

cable order from: 247

electronics observers in, U. S.: 199-200, 257

ETG assignment to stations in: 289ff.

purchases in United States: 246. See also Lendlease.

radar, progress in: 187, 255ff.

radiolocation research under war stimulation:

129

Greater Antilles: 283

Greely, Maj. Gen. Adolphus W.: 11, 12, 238

Green, Maj. Gen. J. A.: 193

Green, Maj. J. W., Jr.: 219

Greenland: 147, 208, 280-81
INDEX 367

Griffin, Lt. Col. Frank, interest in radio hams: 54

Griffith, D. W.: 81n

Grindavik, Iceland, use of SCR-270-B at: 279

Grotta, Iceland, British radar at: 279, 280

Ground arms, employment of pigeons by: 221

Ground Forces. See Army Ground Forces.

Ground-controlled approach (GCA): 5, 5n, 30,

121

Ground-controlled interception (GCI): 5, 5n,

256-57

Guam: 208

Guatemala: 283

Guerlac, Henry: 6n

Guest, Maj. Wesley T.: 28, 141, 179, 183

Guianas: 281

Gulf of Panama, Toboga Island in, installation of

SCR-271 on: 284

Gulkana, Alaska, ACS installation planned for: 275

Gun-layer, radar: 124

Guthrie, Capt. Ralph R., procurement responsibility of: 63

Hagood, Maj. Gen. Johnson: 48

Hague, The, international congresses in: 78

Haines, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Haleakala, Maui, T. H., radar station at: 302-03

Hallicrafter HT-4: 162

Hammond, Capt. Elton F.: 85

Handie-talkie: 5, 88, 111, 155, 184, 249

Harbor defense, cable plant for, special characteristic of: 238

Harborside Terminal Building, Jersey City, N. J.:

293

Harmon Field, Newfoundland, radio facilities at:

281

Harris, Air Marshal Arthur T.: 269

Hartford, Conn., ARRL at: 54

Harvard University

and electronics training: 288, 290

Graduate School of Business Administration:

60n, 67, 71

Hawaii, Territory of: 30, 52, 57, 83, 286. See also

Hawaiian Department,

aircraft warning in: 151, 300ff.

radar in: 151, 266, 301ff.

radio communications between Station WAR

and Fort Shafter: 301

signal companies in, 1941: 300

strength in, Signal Corps troop, 1927 and 1937:

73-74

Hawaiian Department: 38, 39, 221, 223, 300, 303,

305

Hayden, Maj. Gilbert: 85, 90, 253, 254, 268

Hazen, Brig. Gen. William B.: 11n

Head and Chest set, HS-19, estimated quantity for

1941: 176

Headset, HS-23, estimated quantity for 1941: 176

Heat location: 38, 41, 47. See also Thermal detection (or detectors).

Hegenberger, 1st Lt. Albert F.: 92

Navigational Instrument Section, Wright Field,

responsibility for: 89

pioneer flyer: 88

radio, Air Corps, comment on Signal Corps handling of: 93

radio beacon, use on flight to Hawaii: 30

Height-finding

and SCR-268: 255

and SCR-270: 256

Heliograph: 5, 11, 11n, 16, 92

Heller, Robert, contributor to development of

SCR-270: 123, 123n

Henry, Col. William C., selection of Signal Corps

photographic personnel: 225

Hepburn, Admiral Arthur J., at demonstration of

pulse equipment: 46

Hershberger, William D.

and beat detection: 40

and pulse detection: 43, 44, 45

radio optics by, article: 33

RCA, move to: 45

Hershey, Maj. Gen. Lewis B.: 292n

Hertz, Heinrich R.: 12

electric waves, demonstration of reflection by

metals of: 41-42

optical properties of radio, work on: 33

Hessel, Maj. John: 123, 141

Hickam Field, Oahu, T. H.: 300, 304

Hignett, Squadron Leader, and conference on communications equipment: 256n

Hildreth, Lt. Col. Raymond C.

expert in supply: 59, 60n

and plan to move 202d Signal Depot Company

to San Francisco for training: 237

Hill, Capt. Gay: 52

Hilliard, Dr. William P., at communication industry conference: 298

Hobe Sound, Fla., Signal Corps training center for

AW personnel at: 288

Hodges, Gen. Courtney H., criticism of signal communications by: 160

Hoffman, Maj. E. L.: 92, 93

Hoffman, Samuel O., thermal detection, work on:

27, 39, 125

Holabird Signal Depot: 60n

Holland, Maj. A. E.

photograph, military, study on: 102

and photographic training: 224

Hollywood, Calif., and Signal Corps photography:

82, 225-26, 229

Hollywood Daily Variety: 226

Homing beacons, installation of: 30

Hoorn, Lt. Col. Frederick W.: 81, 82n

and photographic training: 101-02, 224

Hoover, President Herbert: 67
368 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Hopkins, A. A., submission of Southern California

Edison Company's AW program: 97

Hopkins, Harry: 169

Horle, Mr. C. F.: 298

Hornet, plans for IFF tests aboard: 266

Horns, use in sound-locating equipment: 36, 47

Hough, Col. Ira D., and recruitment of communications specialists: 76

Housing, at installations of ACS: 275-76. See also

Defense housing.

Howland Island: 208

Hudson River, FM transmitter at Alpine, N. J.,

overlooking: 142

Huelsmeyer, Christian, patents of: 41

Hull, Dr. L. M., of Aircraft Radio Corporation:

298

Hydracoustics: 36

Hydrographic Office: 10n

Hyland, Lawrence A.: 40, 43

Iceland: 208, 275, 279-80

Ickes, Harold L.: 169

Identification, friend or foe: 258, 259, 264-66.

See also Aircraft identification; Radar, IFF.

British: 200, 253ff.

controversy concerning: 264-66

requirements for, U. S.: 270, 274

Ignition interference: 145

Imperial College of Science and Technology: 192

Industrial inventory, Army War College's: 63

Industrial mobilization. See Mobilization, industrial.

Industrial and Scientific Research, office of Director of: 193n

Industrial surveys: 65, 67

Industry: 79, 172, 192

expansion of: 65, 167, 237-38, 241

and production surveys: 63-67

protection of: 174

Signal Corps attitude toward legislative curbs

on: 168-69

Signal Corps depending on: 49, 76, 80, 136.

See also "Big Five."

Infantry: 6n, 16, 35, 88, 157, 233, 236, 292

communications in, responsibility for: 23, 24

CSigO and: 135

divisions, and signal plans and equipment: 108,

117, 133

handie-talkies for: 184

radiofrequencies and development of communications for: 141

radios for: 117, 118, 138, 139, 140, 155, 157-

58, 162, 165, 182

Signal Corps liaison officers with: 296

and Signal Corps mission: 134

Signal Corps School, liaison with: 210

signal responsibilities of: 48, 73, 110, 133, 236,

295

signaling in, tactical: 48

Infantry—Continued

Tanks component of, merging of Mechanized

Cavalry with: 164-65

walkie-talkies for: 45, 184, 231

wire, field, kind of insulation desired for: 104

Infantry Board: 233

Infantry units

1st Division: 215, 234

24th Division: 300

25th Division: 300

33d Division: 236

11th Regiment: 177

Information center, AWS: 136, 278-79

Infrared rays: 36, 38-39

Ingles, Brig. Gen. Harry C.: 11n, 160, 284, 286, 299

combat communications, views on 1920 reorganization of: 24

wire communications, opinion regarding use of:

283-84

Inside men, training of: 211, 214n

Inspectors, need of Signal Corps for: 167

Installer-repairmen, training of: 214n

Institute of Radio Engineers: 298

Instrument landing: 30, 121, 195

Insulating

machines, materials supply and production demands of: 244

materials: 103, 154, 244, 250. See also Latex

insulation.

Insulators. See Ceramic insulators; Phenolic insulators; Porcelain antenna insulators.

Intelligence

operations: 106

pictorial: 79

radio: 18, 74, 83, 134, 210. See also Radio,

monitoring and interception of.

reports: 79, 190

signal: 106, 120, 207

technical: 190, 191

Inter-American relations, international meetings

furthering: 78

Intercept radar

airborne: 198, 252-55, 257-59, 261-63, 270,

272-73

ground-controlled: 5, 5n, 251, 253, 255-57, 260,

267-68, 270, 272

Interception

Air Corps responsibility for: 97

air-to-air. See Intercept radar, airborne; Radar, AI.

VHF system of, disadvantages of: 257

Interceptor command: 269, 286-87, 305

Interceptor squadrons, interest in early-warning

radar for: 124

Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee: 77,

78

Interior, Department of the: 243, 302-03
INDEX 369

International Aid Division, Services of Supply:

247n. See also Defense Aid Division.

International conferences, representation of Signal

Corps at: 78

International Division, Army Service Forces. See

International Aid Division, Services of Supply.

International Morse code: 10, 11, 107, 111, 116,

117, 138, 140

International Telephone Development Corporation, proposal for RPF using cross beams: 189,

190

Interphone

AC demand for: 251

equipment for aircraft: 18

RC-36: 8

systems: 295

Interrogator-responsors: 191, 197

Interstate Commerce Commission: 77

Inventory, of excess equipment: 240

Ionospheric reflection, demonstration of principle

of: 42

Iron dust, shortage of: 250

Italy: 69, 115, 129

Item procurement plans: 65, 67

Jamaica, B. W. I.: 207, 282, 283, 284, 299

Jamming: 6, 47, 253

Japan

quartz, purchase of: 245

radar: 129

wire equipment: 115

Jeffers, William N.: 169

Jersey City, N.J.: 293

Jewett, Dr. Frank B., at communications conference: 298

John A. Roeblings' Sons

educational orders placed with: 103

wire (W-110-B) contract with: 171

Johnson, Louis, explanation of educational orders

by: 103

Joint Army and Navy Board, responsibility of

CSigO to: 78

Joint Army-Navy maneuvers (1932) use of mobile

pigeon loft in: 84

Joint Army-Navy Munitions Board: 62, 78, 170,

244, 246

Joint Radio Committee, and questioning of adopting British Mark III model IFF by: 265-66

Jones, Jesse: 169

Joubert, Air Vice Marshal Sir Philip, and planning for ETG: 289

Judge Advocate General, opinion concerning funds

for new laboratory building: 99

Judge Advocate General's Department: 8n

Juneau, Alaska: 58, 275

Justice, Department of: 50

Kaaawa, Oahu, T. H., installation of SCR-270

at: 303

Kahuku Point, Oahu, T. H., designation of fixed

radar site on: 303

Kahuku Ranch, Hawaii, T. H.: 303

Kanakanak, Alaska, ACS station at: 275

Kauai, T. H.

aircraft warning company personnel on: 300

radar station at Kokee: 302

Kawailoa, Oahu, T. H., installation of SCR-270 at:

303

Kelly Field, Tex.: 83, 100

Kenney, Brig. Gen. George C., concurrence with

arraignment of Signal Corps: 271

Ketchikan, Alaska: 58, 275, 277

Kilauea Point, Kauai, T. H.: 303

King, Admiral Ernest J., and 1941 joint exercises:

234

King, Brig. Gen. Henry L. P.: 297

King George VI, reception of ETG by: 291

Kingston, Jamaica, B. W. I.: 282, 283

Knudsen, William S.: 169

Koblenz, Germany: 19

Kodiak, Alaska: 275, 278

Kokee, Kauai, T. H.: 302-03

Koko Head, Oahu, T. H., installation of SCR-270

at: 303

Kolekole, Maui, T. H., proposed site for fixed radar

station: 302

Kotzebue, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Krueger, Maj. Gen. Walter, and radio communications for Third Army maneuvers (1941): 234

Labor: 168, 241, 243-44

Labor, Department of: 243

Labor Section, OUSW: 243

Laboratories: 71, 90, 175, 295. See also Aircraft

Radio Laboratory; Bell Telephone Laboratories; Camp Evans Signal Laboratory; Batontown Signal Laboratory; Electrical Laboratory,

Signal Corps; Signal Corps Laboratories; Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory; Squier

Laboratory; Training Film Production Laboratory.

Labrador: 208

Lack, Fred R.: 181

Ladd Field, Fairbanks, Alaska: 275

Lake Erie, experiment with airborne pulse radar

over: 198, 199

Lakehurst, N. J., testing of British GCI radar at:

268

Lamp, LM-35, 1941 needs: 176

Lanahan, Col. Francis H., Jr.: 234, 297

Lance-pole lines, temporary: 136

Landing-aids, electronic: 295

Langley, Samuel P.: 12

Langley Field, Va.: 127

thermal detection work at: 27, 36, 39, 125

Langmuir, Irving: 19

Lansford, Lt. Col. Willis R.: 291

Laryngaphones: 33, 45
370 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Latex insulation: 104, 232

Latta, 1st Lt. William B., and Signal Corps officercandidate training: 218

Lattin, Col. J. D. B.: 35n, 297

Lawton, Col. Kirke B.: 229, 235

Lawyers, need of Signal Corps for: 167

League of Nations: 78, 95

Leahy, Admiral William D., witness to demonstration of pulse equipment: 46

Lee, Brig. Gen. Raymond E., military attaché: 291

Lee, Gen. Robert E.: 10n

Lend-lease: 247, 289

Act: 166, 245-46

provision of signal equipment under: 247

wire (W-110) under, demand for: 248

Lens, special, for long-range detail: 3

Lesser Antilles, radio connections with Caribbean

Defense Command: 283

Letters of intent, purpose of: 174

Levinson, Nathan, relations with Signal Corps: 225

Levy, Lucien, and invention of superheterodyne:

19n

Lewis, Oliver, on disadvantages of FM: 143

Lexington Signal Depot, Avon, Ky.: 60n, 294

Liaison officers, Signal Corps: 296

Life, and course for still photographers: 224

Light

polarized: 27

in World War I detection: 36

Light location: 41

Limited Emergency: 141, 170, 210, 221

Lincoln, Frederick C., advice on use of pigeons in

Alaska: 221

Line foremen, training for: 211

Lineman: 214n, 215

Link, Fred M., mobile radios, and FM: 145, 158,

182, 183, 184

Lisbon, Portugal, international congresses in: 78

Little Round Top: 10n

Little Silver, N. J.: 28

Loading coils: 34, 45, 116

Lobe-switching. See Radar, lobe-switching for.

London, England: 18, 251

Long Island, N. Y.: 12n, 128, 149, 255

Long Island City, N. Y.: 158, 225, 255

Long lines: 34, 77

Loomis, Dr. Alfred: 256, 262

Loran. See Beacons.

Los Angeles, Calif.: 71

"Lost Battalion," and the pigeon service: 16

Lothian, Marquess of, request for British-American

exchange of technical information: 191

Louisiana, maneuvers in: 152, 153-54

Lovett, Robert A.: 256, 260, 269, 270, 273

and Air Corps signal needs: 259

Olmstead's efforts to satisfy demands of: 272

and procurement of signal equipment: 258, 259,

260

Lovett, Robert A.—Continued

and SCR-270, report on: 268

Luce, Henry R., Signal Corps film training arrangements with: 224

Luftwaffe: 5, 42-43, 151, 197

Lynch, Maj. Harry: 294

Machine tools: 59, 66-67, 170-71

Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company: 55-56, 76

Madrid, Spain: 78

Magnetron. See Vacuum tubes.

Magnets: 244

Maitland, 1st Lt. Lester J., use of radio beacon in

flight to Hawaii: 30

Mala Point, Panama, site for SCR-268: 286

Manawahua, Oahu, T. H., designation of fixed

radar site at: 303

Maneuvers. See also First Army; Second Army;

others.

1937: 84-86

1939: 137, 139, 152-53

1940: 153-54, 234

commercial communications facilities for,

cost of: 153n

FM radio after, demands for: 178-79

in Louisiana, inadequate tactical communications in: 176

1941: 233ff.

Carolina, reaction to SCR-268 at: 267

in Louisiana, and report on SCR-270: 268

VII Corps, use of telegraph printer in: 233

Washington, State of, inadequate signal

training for: 237

Manganese, use in W-110 wire: 68

Manila, P. I., radio facilities at: 52

Manpower: 61, 133, 160, 204

Manual of Signals: 10, 58

March Field, Calif.: 96-97

March of Time, The, and course in motion picture

making: 224

Marchetti, John, and design of radar keyer: 123

Marconi, Guglielmo: 12, 41-42, 142

Marine Corps

and Aircraft Warning System, Hawaii: 305

airfield at Ewa, Oahu, T. H.: 303

electronics training for officers of: 290

liaison with Signal Corps: 210, 296

recruitment efforts of: 204

Marks, Maj. William S.: 141

Marriner, Lt. Col. A. W.: 252-73 passim

Marshall, Alaska: 58

Marshall, Gen. George C.: 175, 298, 302

and communications, views on: 23, 176-77, 296

and Mauborgne, replacement of: 272, 272n

and Olmstead: 272, 298

and racial segregation in Army: 218

radio types, reduction of: 294, 295, 296

SCR-270, at demonstration of: 128
INDEX 371

Marshall, Gen. George C.—Continued

training films and training problems: 152, 214,

216, 228

Martinique, F. W. I.: 283

Marvel, O. E., contributions to radio-controlled

automobile: 28

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 33, 196,

252. See also Radiation Laboratory,

electronics training at: 288, 290

instrument landing equipment, development of:

121

Signal Corps personnel to, assignment of: 71, 74

Matejka, Brig. Gen. Jerry V.: 24-25, 160, 177, 291

Material (or materials): 244, 246, 250. See also

Equipment; Raw Materials.

Materials and equipment, commodity committees

on: 65-66

Materiel Branch, OCSigO: 297

Materiel Division, AC: 99, 259, 271

Mauborgne, Maj. Gen. Joseph O.: 11n, 28, 88, 94,

96, 100, 109, 148, 162, 168, 172, 189, 190, 234,

297, 299

and Aircraft Warning: 97, 98, 149-50

and Armored Force's signal needs: 163-64

BTO, urging of radio reflection for: 190

development program, Signal Corps, comment

on: 151-52, 175

and mission, Signal Corps, expansion of: 25, 134

and mobilization plan, conference for development of: 107

and procurement, Signal Corps: 247-48

and radio, aircraft, development of: 13

and radio, FM: 142, 144, 157, 158, 178

retirement of: 272, 272n

and SCR-268: 256

Signal Corps, characterization of: 106

and Signal Corps relations with AC: 163, 252-

72 passim

static elimination, work on: 27

Maude, Maj. R. C., survey of Trinidad, B. W. I.,

wire facilities: 282

Maui, T. H., aircraft warning company personnel

stationed on: 300

Mauretania, use of thermolocator in tracking: 39

Maxwell, James C.: 12

McCook Field, Ohio: 28

McCormack, Rep. John W., and placement of

Signal Corps contracts: 169

McGrath, Alaska, ACS installation planned for:

275

McNarney, Brig. Gen. Joseph T.: 291

Meade, Brig. Gen. Frank C.: 162, 256n, 297

Mechanized Cavalry: 147, 157, 158, 160, 164, 179,

181. See also Armored Force.

Mechanized Cavalry Board: 142

Medical Corps, photography by: 79

Medical Department: 8n, 9n, 59, 78, 238

Meriden, Conn., testing of SCR-270 at West Peak

in: 128

Messengers: 4, 16

Messer, Capt. Herbert G.: 91, 93

Metals Reserve Company, RFC, responsibility for

stockpiling quartz and rubber: 244

Meteorograph. See Radiosonde.

Meteorological Service: 21n, 28, 32

Meteorological stations in United States: 21n

Meteorology: 10, 21, 28, 30-33, 35, 71, 78

Metz, France, testing of French radar at, 1938:

43

Mexico

plans for radio connections with Caribbean Defense Command: 283

use of radio in U. S. Punitive Expedition into:

16

Meyers, Lt. Col. Bennett E., comment on AC

interference with Signal Corps supply: 273

Mica, commodity committee for: 65-66, 103, 244

Microphones: 45, 246, 250. See also Laryngaphones.

Microwave Committee, formation of: 263

Midway Island, detail of 407th Signal Company,

Aviation, at: 300

Miles, Col. Nelson A.: 11n

Military Academy. See United States Military

Academy.

Military characteristics of equipment, responsibility for formulation of: 73, 93n

Military Courtesy and Customs of the Service

(film): 227

Military Personnel Division, OCSigO: 290, 297

Miller, Col. Fred G.: 235, 236

Miller, Brig. Gen. Henry J. F.: 271

Millikan, Robert A.: 27, 38

Milliken, Brig. Gen. Charles M.: 60, 160, 298

Mineralogist, The, opinion on use of domestic

quartz crystals of editor of: 155

Ministry of Aircraft Production, British: 192, 258,

260

Mirrors: 5. See also Heliograph.

Mission, Signal Corps: 3, 6, 9, 28, 59, 82, 110,

133-35

in Administrative Communications: 48

and disputes with AC: 88ff., 185

encroachment upon, attempted: 22, 48

and role as combat arm: 8, 23, 133-34

tactical: 48, 133

Mitchel Field, N. Y.: 128, 149.

Mitchell, Col. Hugh: 72, 296

and AI-10, testing of: 261, 262

and British equipment: 260

and FM radio: 143-44, 145, 179, 182

and IFF equipment: 266

and radar development: 187, 194-95, 270

and radio needs of Armored Force: 164
372 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Mitchell, Brig. Gen. William: 14n, 61

Mobile Bay, Union signaling at: 10

Mobilization: 208, 230. See also Affiliated Plan,

Signal Corps; Protective Mobilization Plan,

industrial: 22, 62ff., 76, 105, 166, 169

National Guard: 205

Model Shop of Radiation Laboratory, "crash" construction in: 261

Montreal, Quebec: 291

Moore, James, and development of lobe-switching

for radar: 122

Moore, Col. John C.: 159n, 236, 237

Moore, Maj. Gen. Richard C.: 272

Moran, Col. Richard B.: 163, 177, 179, 182

Morse, Samuel, F. B.: 4

Morse code: 10, 11, 14. See also International

Morse code.

Motion picture cameramen, training of: 216

Mount Kaala, Oahu, T. H.: 302, 303

Munitions Board. See Joint Army-Navy Munitions Board.

Munitions Building: 48, 50, 53

Munitions Control Act, 1937: 246

Munitions Program: 241, 249, 251

Muroc Lake, Calif.: 86, 87, 96

Murphy, Lt. Col. William H.: 91, 305, 306

Mycalex, insulating material, shortage of: 250

Myer, Brig. Gen. Albert J.: 9-10, 11n, 58

conflict with Secretary Stanton on control of

telegraph: 10

founder of the Signal Corps: 10

and wigwag: 4, 10

Naknek, Alaska, ACS installation planned for: 275

Napoleon Bonaparte, and use of semaphore stations: 5

Narsarssuak, Greenland: 280

National Academy of Sciences: 121, 298

National Broadcasting Company: 146n

National Bureau of Standards: 27, 30, 43, 155,

181, 244

National Capital Park and Planning Commission,

desire for Battery Cove site: 57n

National Defense Act: 20, 22, 52, 62, 105-06, 161

National Defense Advisory Committee, and quartz

crystals: 181

National Defense Research Committee: 252, 263,

290

and AI: 252, 262

establishment of: 173, 201

and ETG: 288, 290

Radiation Laboratory, establishment of: 196,

252

and Tizard Mission: 193

National Geographic Society, and balloon ascension

into stratosphere: 32

National Guard: 20, 26, 137, 161, 184, 203, 205

officer training at Signal Corps School: 209-10

as personnel source for Signal Corps: 161, 204-

06

and Signal Corps officers under PMP: 147

National Parks Service, authorization of use of

Maui, T. H., radar site by: 303

National Youth Administration, examination of

labor prospect by: 244

Naval aviation, co-operation with Signal Corps:

46

Naval Research Laboratory: 43, 44, 155, 181

infrared (heat) detection work of: 38-40

pulse equipment, work on: 46, 198

radar consultation with Signal Corps: 124

radio wave reflection, observation of: 42

radiolocation study at: 39

Navesink lighthouse station, Coast Guard, and radar experimental work: 122, 128, 149

Navigation: 5, 6, 30, 89ff., 120, 127, 185-86. See

also Beacons; Radio compass.

Navigational Instrument Section, ARL: 89, 91, 186

Navy, British: 193, 266n, 279

Navy, U. S.: 34, 52, 96, 120, 185, 270, 290, 296

AI-10, adaptation to uses of AVS detector by:

263

and Aircraft Warning System, Hawaii: 304, 305

and altimeter development: 187

ASV detectors, British: 258

and communications equipment: 53, 137, 176,

252, 254

communications personnel of, high rating for:

205

and direction-finders: 120, 258-59

and IFF: 191, 197, 264, 266

information exchange (Tizard Mission): 192,

193

and proposed message center merger: 50

and radar developments: 44n

radio, FM, attitude toward: 184-85

radio specifications of, 1926: 52

Navy Yard, communications equipment provided

by: 53

Negro troops, request for: 284

Nelson, Donald M.: 169, 173, 293

Neosho, Mo., Signal Corps RTC at: 215, 292

Neutrality Act, 1937: 168

New Cumberland General Depot, New Cumberland, Pa., Signal Section of: 60, 294

New Jersey State Building and Construction Trades

Council, and new laboratory building at

Wright Field: 99

New Orleans, La.: 283

New York Central Railroad: 27

New York City, N.Y.: 12, 27, 39, 57, 76, 80, 280

New York General Depot, Signal Section: 60, 68,

84, 100, 293
INDEX 373

New York Port of Embarkation: 280

New York Signal Corps Procurement District: 60,

63, 66, 68, 100, 173, 241-42, 293

Newfoundland: 11, 208, 281

Nicaragua: 283

Nicodemus, Lt. Col. William J. L.: 11n

Night Watchman. See Detectors, Night Watchman.

Noble, Dr. Daniel E.: 183-84

Nome, Alaska: 12, 275

Nomenclature. See SCR, meaning of; Radar,

names for, various.

Normandie: 38, 39, 40, 43

North Africa, use of FM SCR-293 and -294 in: 183

Northern Ireland: 292

Northwest Airlines, Alaskan radio station of: 277

Norton Sound, Alaska: 12, 58

Nulato, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Oahu, T.H.: 38, 266, 300ff.

Obstacle-detection and collision-prevention project: 186-87

Oceanport Creek, N.J.: 214

O'Connell, Col. James D.

and crystal control of radio: 141, 181, 182

field switchboards, comment on: 233

and FM vehicular radio: 183

Office of the Chief Signal Officer: 50, 60, 84, 155,

225, 274, 282, 293. See also Chief Signal

Officer.

budget estimates in, preparation of: 167

and communications industry: 298

and crystals, supply and use of: 155, 180-81

and equipment, mass production of: 167-68

and FM: 146, 157, 183

growth of, and expansion plans for: 21, 71, 108

and mobilization matters: 68, 107, 230

organization and reorganization of. See under

Signal Corps,

radio, Armored Force, approval of channels for:

182

supervision in, centralization of: 71

and training equipment: 236

Office for Emergency Management: 276

Office of Production Management: 244, 293

Office of Scientific Research and Development:

173, 188

Officer Candidate Department, Signal Corps

School: 218, 292

Officer-candidate schools, and the Signal Corps:

218

Officers. See Personnel.

Officers Department, Signal Corps School: 210,

290, 292

Officers' Reserve Corps: 148

Ogden, Utah, General Depot at: 294

Ohio State University, Signal Corps ROTC unit

at: 76

Okabe, Kinjiro: 43, 195

Olfus, Iceland, British radar at: 279, 280

Olin, Capt. Charles L.: 218

Olmstead, Maj. Gen. Dawson: 11n, 161, 214, 220,

272, 294

administrative specialist: 59-60

Caribbean area inspection: 284, 299

Marshall testimony concerning appointment of:

272n

Marshall's directive to: 294, 295, 296

and organization and reorganization, Signal

Corps: 296-98

and Signal Corps tradition of desiring centralized

communications: 296

and tables of organization, evaluation of: 148,

150

and training expansion, appropriations for: 287

training sites, recommendation of: 292

vehicular radio project: 161-62

Opana, T. H., radar at: 266, 303, 305

Operations Branch, OCSigO: 60n, 288, 297

Operations and Training Division, General Staff:

228

Ordnance, Department: 8n, 9n, 232, 238

and educational orders: 103

and factory plans, usefulness of: 65

infrared (thermal) detection work of: 38-39, 44

sound-locating equipment, interest in: 36

technical committee of, Signal Corps representation on: 78

Orlando, Fla.: 292

Osaka, University of. See University of Osaka.

Oscilloscope: 43, 127, 253, 257. See also Vacuum

tubes.

Otis tests: 204

Ottawa, Ontario: 254, 258

Otter Point, Alaska, ACS installation for: 275

Ozark Mountains, Signal Corps RTC in foothills

of: 292

Pan American Airways, Alaskan radio stations of:

277

Panama. See also Panama Canal,

and aircraft warning: 149, 286, 298

interception command for: 287

radio and wire facilities at: 52, 283-84

SCR's-270 and 271 for: 123n, 125, 151, 302

troop strength in, Signal Corps: 73-74

Panama Canal: 30, 83-84, 149, 151, 167, 243, 281,

282, 283, 300. See also Panama,

aircraft warning facilities for: 87-88

communications of: 56, 282ff.

IFF radar, need for: 253

Panels, communication: 5, 16, 155, 176, 234, 236

Paramount Pictures, offer to sell film studio: 225

Paratroopers, short-range radio for: 231

Paris, France: 5, 18, 19, 78

Patent rights: 29, 30, 40, 41, 32n, 192, 232, 241,

259

Patterson, Robert P.: 169-70, 174, 270, 298
374 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Patterson Field, Ohio: 33, 100, 101, 254, 273

Patton, Col. George S., Jr., and Signal Corps installation at Fort Myer: 96

Pay scale, Air Corps, difference between Signal

Corps pay scale and: 163

Pearl Harbor, T. H.: 56, 197, 300

Pershing, Gen. John J.: 16, 21, 84, 133

Personal Hygiene (film): 227

Personnel: 161, 175, 299. See also Strength;

Training.

administration, Army, and misunderstanding over

"fillers" and "replacements": 211-12

aircraft warning: 286ff.

civilian: 106, 108-09, 167

military: 73-77, 105-09, 147-48, 151, 167,

204ff., 218

shortages of: 73, 160, 167

specialized. See Specialists.

women: 108, 170, 277, 292

Personnel Division, OCSigO: 71

Petersburg, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Phenolic insulators: 234

Philadelphia Electric Company, provision of power

for Signal Corps facilities in Philadelphia: 294

Philadelphia Signal Corps Procurement District:

60n, 294

Philadelphia Signal Depot: 293-94

Philco Corporation: 263, 266

Philippine Islands: 83, 184, 286

radio facilities in: 12, 52

Signal Corps troop strength in: 73, 74

Photographic Division, OCSigO: 71, 80, 82, 102,

224

Photographs, Signal Corps collection of: 79

Photography: 4, 6, 78ff., 101f., 223ff. See also

Training films; Signal Corps Photographic

Laboratory.

instructors for, Signal Corps civilian: 224

motion picture: 79, 80

and photographic services: 71, 223ff.

sound: 80

still: 6, 79

tactical: 102

training during 1940 emergency in: 80, 101, 210

Pictorial Service: 81

Pigeon Breeding and Training Center: 83, 220, 223

Pigeons: 5, 9, 11, 16, 71, 78, 83-84, 221ff.

fanciers of, co-operation with Signal Corps: 223

feed for: 64

lofts for: 83, 84

training: 222

units for use of, Signal Corps: 223

Pigg, Col. Albert M.: 59, 60n, 68

Plan position indicator: 253, 257, 260

Plan WHITE, and military communications in 1921:

49

Planning: 60-69, 95, 170ff., 230, 240. See also

Mobilization; Procurement, planning; Protective Mobilization Plan,

for airways communications: 99

and the Emergency: 170

mobilization: 62

as phase of supply: 60

procurement: 58ff.

Plant, definition of: 238

Plant Division, Materiel Branch, OCSigO: 297n

Plant Engineering Agency: 238

Plant expansion: 173, 232, 237-38, 245

Plant protection: 241ff.

Plant Protection Survey Division, FBI: 241, 242

Plant and Traffic Division, OCSigO: 50, 56, 71,

238

Plattsburg, N. Y.: 138, 139, 149

Point Barrow, Alaska: 11, 275

Police, communication networks of: 57

Porcelain antenna insulators: 234

Port Heiden, Alaska, ACS installation planned for:

275

Port-au-Prince, Haiti: 283

Post Office Department: 77

Postal Telegraph and Cable Company: 20, 55, 76,

77, 98, 107, 239

Powell, Lt. Col. Carroll A., Signal Officer for

Hawaiian Department: 300, 304, 305, 306

Pratt, Brig. Gen. Conger: 89, 91

Presidio, San Francisco, Calif.: 243, 278

Princeton, N. J., test of radar at: 46

Private enterprise, fixed communications systems

and: 48

Procurement: 104, 173ff., 230-31, 242, 246. See

also Supply; individual Signal Corps procurement districts by name.

for Air Corps and air communications: 92, 251ff.

and distribution: 60

item procurement plan: 65, 67, 68

in 1940: 169, 241

planning: 58ff.

requirements: 167, 240-41

in World War I: 16

Procurement Planning Section, OCSigO: 59, 62-

63, 67n, 68, 170, 171, 180, 244

Production: 104, 166ff.

letters of intent: 174

mass production, radio: 66, 172, 180

Prosser, Maj. Gen. Walter E.: 81

Protective Mobilization Plan: 68, 147, 150, 167,

170, 172, 208, 240, 241 and Affiliated Plan: 108

aims of: 166

allotment for divisional signal units from: 108

field telephones and field wire requirements: 248

and obligations under, Signal Corps: 170, 208,

212
INDEX

Protective Mobilization Plan—Continued

and tactical signal equipment: 175

Provost Marshal General's Department: 8n

Public Buildings Administration, and telephone

construction in defense housing areas: 238

Public Laws 664, 671, and 703: 173

Public Works Administration, allocation of funds

for communications equipment: 56, 57, 93, 94

Puerto Rico: 96, 150, 167, 234, 282, 283, 284,

286, 299

Pulse detection. See Radar, pulse.

Punitive Expedition into Mexico: 16

Pupin, Michael: 14

Purchasing, shift to procurement districts: 71

Purchasing missions, foreign: 246

Quarry Heights, C. Z.: 84, 283, 284, 286

Quartermaster Corps: 8n, 9n, 52n, 56, 59, 212,

237, 252

Quartermaster General, and suballotments to Signal Corps for emergency construction: 237-38

Quartz crystals: 180-82, 244-45

commitment to use of, significance of: 183

importance and use of: 103, 120, 139, 140, 141,

146-47, 155, 165, 183n

production problems: 147, 180-82, 245-46

Questionnaires, industrial: 63-64

Quidi Vidi Lake, Newfoundland, installation of

radio transmitters at: 281

Radar: 4, 5-6, 40ff., 121ff., 185ff. See also Beat

detection; Detection; Detection, ASV; Detectors; Identification, friend-or-foe; Intercept

radar; Plan position indicator; SCR's.

AI: 193-94, 196, 201, 258, 270, 273

for Alaska: 151, 279

altimeter. See Altimeters.

ASV: 5, 193-94, 196, 200, 201, 251, 258, 263, 270, 273

British: 41. See also Radar, AI, ASV, CH (and

CHL), GCI, GL, IFF; Plan position indicator.

BTO: 5, 188, 189, 190, 195, 252, 254, 258, 263, 270

in the Caribbean: 248ff.

CH (and CHL): 42, 129, 190, 194, 195, 200,

251, 253, 256, 264, 267, 279-80

for Coast Artillery. See SCR-268.

contributions to, international: 6n, 38, 41-43

EW (early-warning): 193

GCI: 5, 251, 255-57, 268, 270

German: 42, 129, 194, 199

GL (gun-laying): 193, 253

in Hawaiian Islands: 151, 300ff.

in Iceland: 279-80

IFF: 5, 194, 197, 255, 258, 264-66, 270. See also Identification, friend or foe.

Japanese: 129, 194

lobe-switching for: 122, 124, 193

Radar—Continued

names for, various: 41

navigational: 5, 127

PPI. See Plan position indicator,

pulse: 39, 44, 45, 46, 97, 186-87, 193-94, 198-99

responsibility for, Signal Corps: 63n

secrecy of: 42, 97, 122, 124, 187, 198-99

SLC (searchlight control): 46, 88, 124, 172,

193, 199

Radiation Laboratory. See also Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

establishment of: 196

and radar, AI: 258, 261, 262, 263, 273

radio altimeter and BTO work, assignment of:

188

Radiation spectrum. See Electromagnetic waves

and spectrum.

Radio: 5, 28, 29ff., 84ff., 116ff., 175ff., 231ff. See

also Frequency modulation; SCR's.

aircraft types: 28, 117ff.

AM: 142, 144, 145, 146, 165, 179, 184

for Armored Force: 162ff., 180f.

British: 251, 254

for Cavalry: 73, 231

cost, selected SCR types (1941): 176

crystals. See Quartz crystals.

DF. See Direction-finders and -finding,

discipline: 237

for Field Artillery: 45, 117f., 157f., 184, 249

FM. See Frequency modulation.

German: 116n, 117

for Infantry: 117f., 138f., 157ff.

installation: 25

intelligence. See Intelligence, radio,

and mass production: 66, 171-72

meteorograph. See Radiosonde,

monitoring and interception of: 6, 154

pipsqueak: 190, 201, 258

receivers. See also Superheterodyne receiver.

BC-189: 30

BC-312: 139, 162

BC-342: 162

stations. See also Army Command and Administrative Network; individual station call

letters.

Alaskan: 275

by 1908: 12

traffic: 49

types of, effort to reduce in number: 294, 295,

296

vehicular: 12, 88, 117, 138-39, 142, 144, 158ff.,

176

voice: 107, 138, 140

before World War I: 5, 13, 14, 16

in World War I: 18-19

Radio altimeter. See Altimeters.

Radio compass: 30, 89, 93, 120, 121, 170, 185
376 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Radio Corporation of America: 55, 76, 157, 283,

298

altimeter work of: 187

communication specialists from: 76

contracts with, Signal Corps: 169

and crystal supply: 181

and FM: 146n, 158, 179, 181

formation of: 49

laboratories of: 40, 43, 45, 46, 187, 189

radar work of: 40, 45, 123, 125, 172, 187, 253

and Signal Corps first sound movie camera: 81

telephone of, sound-powered: 34

Radio Engineering Laboratories: 158, 178, 182

Radio Laboratory, Signal Corps: 27n

Radio Manufacturing Association: 298

Radio Position Finding Section, SCL: 121, 124, 145

Radio range. See Beacons.

Radio relay (link): 3, 116, 120n

Radio Section, SCL: 40, 45, 46

Radiofrequency Control Section, OCSigO: 141

Radio-Keith-Orpheum: 225

Radiosonde: 5, 32

Radiotelegraph and -telegraphy: 5, 18, 29, 111

Radiotelephone and -telephony: 5, 29, 58, 111, 140,

179

Radioteletype: 5, 57, 111

Randolph Field, Tex.: 100

Rapid City, S. Dak.: 32

Raw materials: 103, 168, 244-45

Ray, 1st Lt. P. Henry, Point Barrow party: 11, 12

Raynesford, Capt. Robert W.: 85

Reactance modulation: 146, 180

Reconstruction Finance Corporation: 169, 173, 244,

245

Recruiting, Signal Corps: 20, 76, 147-48, 290

Red Bank, N. J.: 162, 197, 198

Red Cross, and AARS: 55

Red Hill, Maui, T. H., proposed site for fixed

radar station: 302

Redman, Comdr. Joseph R., opinion on FM: 142-

43

Reeder, Brig. Gen. William O.: 153, 154, 155, 233

Reels: 34, 68, 111, 241

Regular Army Reserve, signalmen in: 148

Remote control equipment: 159

Reorganization, Signal Corps. See Signal Corps,

organization and reorganization of.

Repeaters: 154, 162

Replacement Training Centers: 216, 230, 236

Camp Crowder, Mo.: 292

Fort Monmouth, N. J. See Signal Corps Replacement Training Center.

Replacements, differing definitions of term: 211-12

Research and development: 18, 26-47, 82, 88-

94, 110ff., 145, 185ff., 230ff. See also

Laboratories.

of airborne equipment: 90-91

British: 200

Research and development—Continued

controversy over, Air Corps-Signal Corps: 88-

94

Research and Development Division, OCSigO: 44,

71, 77, 156, 157, 158, 266, 297n

and FM: 143, 144, 164, 179

and quartz for use as radio crystals, opinion

upon: 155, 181

radio reflection projects, secrecy of: 187n

Research and Engineering Division, OCSigO: 35,

38, 43

Research Laboratory, Signal Corps: 27n

Reserve officers, Signal Corps: 20, 26, 74f., 167,

209, 210, 212, 217, 218, 289

Advisory Council of: 298

appointment from film industry: 225

source of: 151, 205-06

Reserve Officers Training Corps: 74-75, 137, 206,

290

Restorer, and reconditioning of Alaska cable: 277

Reykjavik, Iceland: 279

Richon, Maj. George L.: 218

Rio Kato, Panama: 284, 299

Rives, Lt. Col. Tom C.: 54, 89, 90, 91, 93, 143,

144, 157, 254, 295

Roosevelt, President Franklin D.: 93, 97, 169, 293

and ETG: 288, 289

and 50,000 aircraft, request for: 172

and NDRC, establishment of: 173

and scientific co-operation with British: 192, 201

SCR-187, use in broadcast of inauguration of:

119

Royal Air Force: 193, 197, 199, 246, 251

Royal Corps of Signals: 161n, 246

Rubber: 33, 34, 66n, 68, 103, 244

Ruby, Alaska, ACS installation planned for: 275

Rumbough, Brig. Gen. William S.: 72, 76, 292

Russell, Brig. Gen. C. W., attitude toward adoption

of British communications equipment: 268

Russell, Brig. Gen. Edgar: 79n, 133

Sabine River: 152

Sacramento Signal Depot: 60n

Sadtler, Col. Otis K.: 297, 298

Safeguarding Military Information (film), saving

on: 227

St. John's, Newfoundland: 11, 281

St. Lucia, B. W. I.: 282, 283

St. Michael, Alaska: 58

Saltzman, Lt. Col. Charles E.: 297

Saltzman, Maj. Gen. Charles McK.: 11n, 25, 52,

61, 77, 78

peacetime responsibilities of: 70-71

view of 1920 reorganization of combat communications: 24

San Antonio, Tex.: 52, 57, 83, 85, 100

San Francisco, Calif.: 11, 52, 57, 237, 243, 278,

300, 301
INDEX 377

San Francisco General Depot, Signal Section: 68,

294

San Francisco Signal Corps Procurement District:

63

San Juan, P. R.: 283, 299

Sandy Hook, N. J.: 40, 122, 191, 268, 279

Sarnoff, Col. David: 62, 298

Saville, Maj. Gordon P.: 255

Schenectady, N. Y.: 142, 143, 144

Schilkee, German radar experimentation at: 42

Schofield Barracks, T. H.: 84, 223, 243, 300, 302

School and Literature Section, War Plans and

Training Division, OCSigO: 72

SCR, meaning of: 28n

SCR-77: 28

SCR-130: 29

SCR-131: 29, 117, 119, 138, 146, 158, 234, 241,

248, 249

SCR-132 and -133: 29

SCR-134: 29, 119

SCR-135 and -136: 29

SCR-140: 52

SCR-161: 117, 138, 155, 158, 179, 241, 248, 249

SCR-169: 249

SCR-171: 117, 138, 158, 177-78, 241, 248, 249

SCR-177: 117, 139, 176, 241, 249

SCR-178: 117, 146

SCR-179: 117

SCR-183: 57, 119, 176, 249, 250

SCR-186: 120

SCR-187: 57n, 119, 159

SCR-188: 57n, 118, 139, 176, 241, 251, 283, 299

SCR-193: 45, 119, 121, 138-39, 141, 160, 165, 176, 234, 241, 250

SCR-194: 64, 69, 85, 121, 139-40, 144, 146, 179,

234, 235

SCR-195: 85, 121, 139-40, 144, 178, 234

SCR-197: 121, 142, 155, 159ff., 176, 249, 283

SCR-206: 249, 250

SCR-209, assembly for 1937 maneuvers of: 85

SCR-210: 176

SCR-240: 119-20

SCR-242: 120

SCR-245: 45, 121, 138-39, 141, 142, 155, 158,

160, 165, 176, 177, 179, 241, 249, 250

SCR-259: 176, 266

SCR-261: 120

SCR-264: 120, 144

SCR-268: 44, 46-48, 97, 121ff., 135, 172, 187, 251,

256, 279-80, 284, 290

as airborne set: 197-98

for Coast Artillery: 46, 199, 255

cost of: 176, 241

demonstration and testing of: 46-47, 97, 187n

first factory-built set: 250

and GCI applications: 267-68

height-indicator, feature of: 255

secrecy: 122, 124, 172, 187, 198

SCR-268—Continued

thermal unit in: 42n

-T1, -T2, and -T3 models of: 125-26

and World War II, role in: 127-28

SCR-269 and -269A: 176, 247

SCR-270: 103, 121-29, 135, 149, 150, 161, 187,

251, 281, 299

for the Air Corps: 47, 255, 267, 271

contributors to: 123

cost of: 176, 241

demonstration and testing of: 128-29, 149

in Hawaii: 303-06

and height-finding: 256, 267

in Iceland: 279

inception of: 47

Japanese sets comparable to: 129

modification of: 256

transmitter tube used in: 125n

SCR-271: 121-29, 135, 161, 187, 249, 255, 299,

302

for the Air Corps: 47, 267

and aircraft warning: 149-50

in the Caribbean area: 282

as first radar in American defense system: 151,

151n

for Hawaii: 302, 303

in Panama: 151n, 284

towers for: 125, 284

SCR-274: 120, 176, 181, 251

SCR-283: 119, 176, 250

SCR-284 and -285: 179n

SCR-287: 119, 176

SCR-288: 248, 249, 250

SCR-293 and -294: 121, 159, 183, 184

SCR-296: 124, 127

SCR-299: 165, 184, 249

SCR-500 series: 118, 165, 183, 184, 231, 264

SCR-506: 139n

SCR-508: 8, 165, 182, 183, 231. See also

Armored Force, FM radio for.

SCR-509 and -510: 165, 180, 231

SCR-511: 73n, 231

SCR-515: 264, 266

SCR-516: 267, 268, 270

SCR-517: 263

SCR-518: 188

SCR-519: 198

SCR-520: 262

SCR-521: 263

SCR-522: 120, 266

SCR-527: 268

SCR-528: 231

SCR-532, -533, and -535: 264

SCR-536 and -538: 231

SCR-540: 262

SCR-547: 124
378 THE SIGNAL CORPS

SCR-584: 197

SCR-588: 267

SCR-600 series: 118, 184, 249

Scriven, Maj. Gen. George P.: 11n, 14n

SCS-2 and -3, description of: 267

Searchlights: 5, 20, 35-36, 39, 46, 47, 127, 149,

191. See also Radar, SLC (searchlight

control).

Sears, Roebuck and Co.: 293

Seattle, Wash.: 74, 96, 275, 278

Second Army: 165, 177, 235, 236

Secrecy and effects of: 39, 46, 92, 124, 187, 194,

198, 253

Secretary of the Navy: 40, 293

Secretary of War: 8, 10, 40, 168, 293. See also

Stimson, Hon. Henry L.; Woodring, Harry A.

contracts by, approval of: 169

at demonstration of SCR-268 and -270 radars:

47, 128-29

and General Olmstead: 272

and Signal Corps photographic personnel, recruitment of: 225-26

Secretary of War, Office of: 48, 50

Sector control system, ADC: 267

Security: 155, 193

British requirements: 253, 254, 259

clearance for: 243

plant: 241-43

Selective Service: 175, 203ff., 214, 216, 245, 249

Selenium disks: 244

Self, Sir Henry: 259

Selfridge, Lt. Thomas E.: 13

Semaphore: 5, 234

Service testing: 73, 127, 140, 254

Services of Supply: 247, 297. See also Army Service Forces.

Seward, Alaska: 275, 277, 278

Sex Hygiene (film): 227

Sferics: 78

SHADOW 82, Project, assignment of personnel of

ETG to: 292

Shearer, Capt. Alfred M.: 62, 63

Sheffield Scientific School, training of radar officers at: 288

Sherrill, Maj. Stephen H.: 85

Short, Dewey, bill for establishment of Signal Corps

RTC, Neosho, Mo.: 292

Short, Lt. Gen. Walter C.: 302, 304, 305, 306

Short-range navigation (shoran). See Beacons.

Signal, use of term: 8n

Signal air depot sections: 100

Signal Communications within the Infantry Regiment, training film: 27n, 81

Signal Corps. See also Mission, Signal Corps.

Air Service, separation from: 21n

as arm: 6, 7, 10, 134

bureau status for Signal Service, 1875: 10

Signal Corps—Continued

and first Army airplane: 13

and first Army airplane contract: 12

organization and reorganization of: 70-72,

296-98. For headquarters and field organizations of the Signal Corps, see under their

individual names.

origins: 9ff.

relations with the Army Air Corps: 88-94, 99ff.,

185ff., 251ff.

responsibilities, variety of: 82

units. See Signal Corps units.

Signal Corps Aircraft Radio Laboratory. See

Aircraft Radio Laboratory.

Signal Corps Board: 103, 160-61, 163

and aircraft warning: 88

composition of: 77

Signal Corps Bulletin: 33, 157

Signal Corps General Supply Depot, Washington,

D. C.: 60n

Signal Corps Laboratories: 20, 21, 39-47, 88, 113,

124, 159, 187, 220, 231ff., 256, 279

beginnings of: 18, 27n

and Bell Laboratories: 76

and FCC, relationship with: 77

and FM: 142n, 144, 158, 178, 180, 181, 182

growth of: 230

printer, field, work on: 138

and quartz crystals: 155

and radar: 44ff., 46, 194, 196, 199-200, 284

relations with ARL: 90-91

and teletype: 114

wire, field, development of: 103, 154

Signal Corps Liaison Office: 227, 229

Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory: 56n, 79,

82, 224

Signal Corps Procurement Districts: 170

Signal Corps Replacement Training Center, Fort

Monmouth: 212ff.

activation of: 212-15

components of: 220

and motion picture men: 224

racial policy of: 218

and radar operators, preparation of: 286

training at: 214-16, 230, 288

Signal Corps Research Laboratory, Bureau of

Standards: 27

Signal Corps School: 21, 26, 79, 148, 209ff., 230,

236, 280

aircraft warning, training in: 150. See also Aircraft Warning Department, Signal Corps

School.

composition of: 220

curriculum, condensation of: 210, 216-17

and Electronics Training Group. See Electronics Training Group.
INDEX 379

Signal Corps School—Continued

enlisted men's training at: 209ff. See also Enlisted Department, Signal Corps School,

fillers and replacements, training of: 211-12

numbers trained in 1941: 220

officer training at: 209-10. See also Officer

Candidate Department, Signal Corps School,

photography at: 79-80, 224

and radar operators: 286

and Signal Corps Board: 77

Signal Corps Technical Committee: 34, 73, 77,

158, 272

Signal Corps units: 20, 20n, 21, 161, 163, 207-08

Battalions

15th Signal Service: 220

50th Signal: 235, 280

51st Signal: 22, 26, 73, 85, 148, 152, 177,

207, 212, 215

52d Signal: 234

58th Signal: 236

62d Signal: 148

101st Signal: 161

Companies

1st Aircraft Warning: 149-50, 191, 207,

215, 280

1st Operation (AW): 149-50

1st Radio Intelligence: 148, 207, 215

1st Signal: 73, 149, 215

2d Pigeon: 223, 283

2d Signal: 73

3d Radio Intelligence: 148

9th Signal Service: 300

11th Signal: 84

12th Signal Service: 207, 282, 299

15th Signal Service: 207

17th Signal Service: 49, 52, 56

20th Signal Service: 220

21st Signal Service: 299

24th and 25th Signal: 300

33d Signal: 236

202d Signal Depot: 237

275th Signal Construction: 284

280th Pigeon: 223

407th Signal Aviation: 300

Miscellaneous

1st Signal Troop: 73-74

Signal Aircraft Warning Alaska: 209, 277,

279

Signal Aircraft Warning Hawaii: 209, 300,

305

Signal Aircraft Warning Panama: 149, 151,

286

Signal Aircraft Warning Puerto Rico: 299

Signal Aircraft Warning Task Force: 4, 279

Signal Corps Band: 220

Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps: 148

Signal flags: 10, 16

Signal Intelligence Section, OCSigO: 71

Signal lamp: 35

Signal Photographic Laboratory, GHQ: 225

Signal School. See Signal Corps School.

Signal Service: 10

Signal system, argument for unification of: 133-34

Simintak, Greenland: 280

Sitka, Alaska: 275, 278

Skagway, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Slattery, John J., and radar transmitter antennas:

123

Smith, Capt. C. E.: 145n

Smith, Maj. Wallace G.: 193, 261, 273

Smithsonian Institution, FM demonstration at: 157

Somervell, Lt. Gen. Brehon D.: 297

Sondrestromfjord, Greenland: 280

Soukaras, Capt. K. M.: 33

Sound and Light Section, SCL: 38, 40

Sound detection and locators: 19-20, 36, 41, 43,

47, 195, 241

Southern California Edison Company: 97, 102

Spa, Belgium: 19

Spanish Town, Jamaica, B. W. I.: 282

Spanish-American War: 12, 20

Sparta, Wis.: 177

Special Apparatus Engineering Division, RCA Manufacturing Company: 298

Special Army Observers Group, signal officer with:

291

Special Service Division, OCSigO: 71

Specialists: 56, 107, 108, 134, 150, 175, 204-05,

214

Spectrum. See Electromagnetic waves and spectrum.

Speech scrambling: 6, 27, 194

Sperry Gyroscope Company: 121, 188, 190

Spiral-four field cable: 116, 154n, 233

Spotting set, PH-32, estimated cost per set (1941):

176

Squier, Maj. Gen. George O.: 11n, 13, 14, 23, 27,

48, 50, 64, 83

Squier Laboratory: 45

Stanford University, and development of instrument landing equipment: 121

Stanley, Col. Stewart W.: 72, 297, 298

Stanton, Edwin M.: 10

State, Department of: 280

Statisticians, need of Signal Corps for: 167

Statistics Branch, OASW: 247

Steatite, shortage of: 244

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur: 221

Stewart-Warner Company: 103

Stimson, Hon. Henry L.: 170, 208, 226, 258, 270,

272, 298. See also Secretary of War.

Stodter, Capt. Charles S.: 226

Storage and issue: 60

Storms, Maj. Harry E.: 85

Strategic materials: 168
380 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Strategic Materials Act, authorization of stockpiling by: 170

Strength, Signal Corps: 105ff., 204ff., 292. See

also Mobilization; Personnel, passim.

ACS, enlisted personnel of, 1941: 275

for aircraft warning companies: 151, 287

in August, 1941: 292

in Hawaiian Department, 1941: 300

in 1921 and 1922: 22

in 1926: 52

in 1927 and 1937: 73-74

in 1939, 1940, and 1941: 105-06, 204n

of signal companies: 163

in World War I: 20-21

Stromberg-Carlson Company: 103, 157

Strong, Brig. Gen. George V.: 97, 150, 201

Stuart, J. E. B.: 10n

Subcommittee on Military Appropriations, House:

151-52

Sunderland, Gen. A. H., witness to demonstration

of future SCR-268: 47

Superheterodyne receiver: 19-20, 29-30, 32-33,

39, 119, 139, 162

Supply: 59ff., 170ff., 221, 240ff. See also Procurement.

for Air Corps: 99-100

catalogues: 61, 79

function, breadth of: 59

plans, color designations of: 63

Supply Division, OCSigO: 63, 71, 155, 167, 181,

237, 241, 250, 297n

Supply Planning Section, OCSigO: 67

Supply Priorities and Allocation Board: 298

Sutphin, Rep. William H.: 99

Sweden, order for SCR-288 by: 248

Switchboards

development of: 233

facilities, 1939: 138

and French models: 113

German: 116

operators, training at RTC: 215-16

types of: 113ff.

BD-9 and -11: attempted replacement of: 240

BD-14 (divisional): 113, 116, 154, 241

BD-71 and -72 (portable): 113, 116, 233

249

BD-80's: 114, 233

BD-89: 113, 116

BD-100: 154, 162n

SB-5 (small field): 116

Tables of basic allowances: 68, 148, 150, 170, 235

Tables of organization: 83, 134, 148, 149, 164, 235

Taboga Island, Panama, installation of SCR-271 on: 284

Tampa, Fla.: 288

Tank Corps: 19, 22

Tantalum: 244, 246

Target for Tonight (film): 196

Taylor, Dr. A. Hoyt: 39, 40, 42, 43

Taylor, Maj. H. C.: 297

Technical Services, Army: 8, 9, 78

Telecommunications Research Establishment, British: 188, 200, 201

Telegraph: 9, 111, 233

commercial vs. military telegraph service: 50

equipment. See also Switchboards.

Boehme: 57, 58, 95, 111, 134

TG-5: 34, 111

facilities in United States: 98

printing and printers: 117

replacement by teletype: 107

traffic, in the War Department: 50

trains (Civil War): 6, 10, 11

western lines: 11, 48

Telegraphy, earth (T. P. S.): 18

Telephone (or telephones): 9, 111ff., 284

administrative, on Oahu: 300

in aircraft warning: 86-87, 97

in Army posts: 238-40

battery-powered: 113

Bell System, percentage operated by, 1938: 107

British: 201

cord: 104, 139, 171, 176, 236

early: 12, 16

equipment. See also Switchboards.

EE-4 and -5: 34, 240, 248

EE-8: 34, 104, 113, 116, 138, 171, 172, 248

TC-1 and -2: 114, 249

TP-3: 113

plant: 238, 240

sound-powered: 34, 45, 113, 116, 135

Telephotography: 3

Teleprinter (or teleprinters): 33, 57, 77, 138, 162,

233

Teletype (or teletypewriters): 3, 4, 5, 33, 53, 111,

232-33, 300

British: 201

commercial: 138, 154

equipment

EE-97 and -98: 115

TC-3: 154

TG-7: 115, 138, 154

exchange (TWX): 57, 86, 106

mobile, for division and corps: 178

and Morse code, hand-keyed, replacement of:

107, 108

operators: 136, 211, 214n, 215

page printer. See Teleprinter (or teleprinters),

service, leased, for maneuvers: 138

systems, neutral and polarential: 115

and telegraph, replacement of: 107

Teletype Corporation: 115, 154

Television: 5, 57, 77, 79, 190
INDEX 381

Tesla, Nikola, comments on electromagnetic wave

reflection: 41

Tetley, Capt. Wilfred H.: 305

Theodolites: 32, 241, 249

Thermal detection (or detectors): 6, 20, 27, 36,

40, 42n, 122. See also Heat location; Infrarad

rays.

Blair's interest in: 38, 43

Coast Artillery,' Engineer, and Ordnance Corps

interests: 39, 44, 127

efficiency of: 39

responsibility for, Signal Corps: 44

and SCR-268, testing of unit in: 125

Thermotheodolite: 47

Third Army: 234, 236, 287

Thomason Act: 74, 105, 205

Tin: 33, 68

Tizard, Sir Henry: 192, 195, 201

Tizard Mission: 191ff., 232, 246, 251, 252, 263

Torch and flags: 4, 5, 10

Toul, France: 19

Tours, France: 18

Trailers: 162, 162ns

Training: 24, 25, 28n, 134-35, 209ff. See also

Electronics Training Group; Signal Corps Replacement Training Center; Signal Corps

School.

in aircraft warning and radar: 150, 287-91, 306

cadre system: 108, 207-08, 212, 288, 300

courses: 72, 210-11, 214, 215

equipment and aids: 209, 217, 236, 288

inadequacy of: 236-37

instruction and tests: 209-10

instructors: 26, 217

photographic: 79-81, 101, 225

of signal troops: 136

in WAR (WVA): 52

in World War I: 20-21

Training Division, OCSigO: 71, 297

Training Film Field Units: 82, 101, 224

Training Film Production Laboratory: 220, 224-25

Training films: 6, 21n, 80-82, 224ff.

for Air Corps: 101-02

production of: 224, 229

Signal Corps responsibility, since 1928: 80

survey on use of: 228

Transponders: 191

Transportation Corps: 8n

Treasury, Department of: 175, 244, 280

Trier, Germany, link in radiotelegraph network

(World War I): 19

TRIGGER, Project, assignment of ETG personnel to:

292

Trinidad, B. W. I.: 281, 282, 283, 284, 299

Trinidad Sector and Base Command: 286

Trinidad Telephone Company, Ltd., facilities of: 282

Tropical Radio, West Indian facilities: 283

Truck and earth borer: 176

Truck-and-trailer radio, for Infantry. See SCR197; SCR-299.

Trucks, radio operating and repair: 18

Truman Committee: 169, 227

Tubes. See Vacuum tubes.

Tungsten: 244

Tuve, Dr. Merle A.: 42

Twaddle, Brig. Gen. Harry L.: 228, 229

Twentieth Century-Fox: 225

Twin Lights, Highlands, N. J.: 128, 129, 279

Under Secretary of War: 242. See also Patterson,

Robert P.

Under Secretary of War, Office of: 242, 243, 293

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: 129, 246

United Fruit Company, and formation of RCA: 49

United Kingdom. See Great Britain.

United States Fish and Wildlife Service: 221

United States Military Academy: 21n, 74, 101,

133, 151, 206, 210

United States Military Telegraph: 10

United States Office of Education, financing of

ETG courses: 290

U. S. Rubber Company, educational orders placed

with: 103

United States Steel: 63

University of Birmingham, England, development

of multi-cavity magnetron at: 195

University of Illinois, Signal Corps ROTC unit

at: 76

University of Michigan, Signal Corps ROTC unit

at: 76

University of Minnesota, Signal Corps ROTC unit

at: 76

University of Osaka, Japan, work on radar at: 43

University of Wisconsin, Signal Corps ROTC unit

at: 76

Utah General Depot, Ogden, Utah: 294

Vacuum tubes: 18, 19, 43, 66, 92, 122, 139, 246,

304

acorn: 92n

cathode ray: 257, 290

klystron: 195

magnetron (resonant cavity): 40, 41, 45, 195,

196, 251-52

"micropup": 251

radar transmitter types (RCA): 123, 125

VT-122: 125n

Valdez, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Van Deusen, Brig. Gen. George L.: 124n, 214,

220, 301, 303

Van Voorhis, Lt. Gen. Daniel: 283, 284

Venezuela, radio connections with Caribbean Defense Command: 283

Very Pistols: 5

Veterans Bureau: 50

Vicksburg, Miss.: 223

Vieques Sound, P. R.: 284
382 THE SIGNAL CORPS

Vieweger, Arthur: 123

Vik, Iceland, British radar at: 279, 280

Vinson-Trammel Act: 168, 175

Visual signals: 5, 6, 9, 11, 16, 35

Waianae, Oahu, T. H., installation of SGR-270 at:

303

Wainright, Maj. Jonathan: 81n

Wake Island: 208, 300

Walkie-talkie: 45, 88, 121, 135, 155, 231

Wallace, Henry A.: 169

Walsh-Healy Act: 173

WAR: 52-53, 55, 57, 96, 280, 301. See also War

Department Message Center.

War Council, and procurement planning: 62

War Department: 10, 48, 50, 77, 97, 105, 149,

163, 173, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 217, 301,

302 and ACS: 58, 276

on Air Corps and Signal Corps relations: 93

commodity committees of: 66

and communications, centralization of control

over: 98, 296

CSigO as technical adviser to: 296

General Staff. See G-1; G-2; G-3; G-4; War

Department General Staff,

and Signal Corps mission: 134

and training films: 80, 82, 224, 228

War Department General Staff: 8, 73, 150, 163,

218. See also G-1; G-2; G-3; G-4.

and Air Corps and Armored Force needs, conferences on: 163

aircraft warning, control of: 286

and Army communications: 295

and budget making: 72

and Electronics Training Group: 289

and equipment development: 39, 73

proposal for radio network: 49

SCR-268, interest in: 123

and Signal Corps organization: 134-35

supply information: 63

training films: 228

War Department Message Center: 22, 50, 52, 53,

55, 56, 57, 59, 106

War Department Mobilization Plan: 63, 64, 68

War Department Radio Net: 49, 50, 52, 56, 57,

59

War games. See Maneuvers.

War Ministry, British: 202

War Plans Division, General Staff: 63, 93, 97, 150, 201

War Plans and Training Division, OCSigO: 71,

72, 162, 179, 297

War Supplies, Ltd.: 263

Warner Brothers: 225

Washburn, Capt. David E.: 124n

Washington, D. C.: 21, 27, 49, 50, 52, 57, 63,

78, 254, 283, 301, 304

Washington Barracks: 52, 59. See also Army War

College.

Washington Hotel, FM demonstration at: 157

Washington Signal Depot, closing of: 71

Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph

System: 12, 20, 48, 57, 58, 60n, 70, 73.

See also Alaska Communication System.

Watson, Lt. Col. Paul E.: 33, 46, 122-23, 125, 141

Watson-Watt, Robert: 42, 265

Watts, Col. Laurence: 62

Weather Bureau: 10, 27

Weeks, John W.: 48, 50

Weidemann, Fritz: 243

Wenstrom, 1st Lt. W. H.: 32

West Palm Beach, Fla.: 55

West Peak. See Meriden, Conn.

West Point. See United States Military Academy.

Western Electric Company: 20, 49, 63, 103, 144,

190

contracts with: 169, 172, 173, 262

and quartz crystals: 181

radio altimeter: 186

and Signal Corps radar development: 123, 172,

173, 262, 263 and Signal Corps radio sets: 120, 182, 183

Western Electric-Bell Laboratories, attitude toward

FM radio: 144

Western Union Telegraph Company: 20, 48, 55,

76, 98, 114, 239

Westervelt, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) William I.: 298

Westinghouse Electric Corporation: 43, 49, 63, 298

one of the "Big Five": 169

work on Signal Corps radar tubes: 123, 125

Westover, Maj. Gen. Oscar: 47, 91, 94

Wheeler Field, Oahu, T. H.: 300, 304

Wigwag: 4, 5, 92

Wildman, Capt. Leonard H.: 12n

Williams, Capt. Grant A.: 139, 142n, 145, 160, 182

Wilson, President Woodrow: 19, 49

Wind velocity, determination by radio or radar

(rawin): 5

Wire: 5, 33-34, 86, 110ff., 137, 138, 153-54, 162,

171, 232ff., 295

carrier systems: 154, 280, 295

commercial: 86, 97-98, 107

on contract, 1941: 247, 248

equipment

DR-4 and -5: 68

RL-26, -27A, and -31: 111

insulation for: 103-04

in mechanized division, expected use of: 164

on order for lend-lease: 247

production of: 16n, 61, 250

types of

W-110 and -110-B (field): 16n, 33, 34, 68,

104, 111, 115, 138, 153-54, 162, 171,

247, 248, 250
INDEX 383

Wire—Continued

types of—Continued

W-130 (assault): 34, 111, 115, 232, 234

in World War I: 16-17

Wire Section, Fort Monmouth: 33

Wire Section, OCSigO: 238

Wire throwers: 162, 195

Wired wireless: 27

Wireless. See Radio.

Wisconsin, 1940 Second Army maneuvers in: 165

Wolff, Dr. Irving: 40, 45

Woodring, Harry A.: 47, 106, 128-29, 149, 169,

170

Works Project Administration: 57

World War I: 16ff., 86, 111

and aviation: 14ff.

curtailment after: 48ff.

direction-finding (goniometry) in: 18, 36, 120

expansion of Signal Corps in: 20

meteorology in: 28, 30

and photography: 21n, 79

plant protection in: 241

procurement and procurement planning in: 16,

61

radio in: 18, 19, 84

and Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps: 148

signal units and total military strength in, comparison of: 161

tactical theory after, changes in: 133

World War I—Continued

telephone operators in, women: 108

wire and wire production in: 16, 61, 171

Wrangell, Alaska, ACS station at: 275

Wright, Orville and Wilbur: 13, 129

Wright Field, Ohio: 28, 30, 88, 89, 101, 127, 273

and AI equipment, testing of: 254, 258, 262

airborne pulse radar at, experiment with: 198

pulse altimeter at, Navy demonstration of: 187

and radio research and development: 90ff.

and training film production: 101, 224

Wright Field Signal Corps Procurement District:

100, 294

Wurzburg radar. See Radar, German.

WVA: 49-53

WVL: 283

WVY: 301

Yagi, Hidetsugu: 43, 195

Yakutat, Alaska, ACS outpost at: 275

Yale Sheffield School of Electrical Science, assignment of Signal Corps officers to: 71

Yale University: 33, 71, 288

Yeager, Col. Robert R.: 261

Yonkers, N.Y.: 142

Young, Leo C.: 40, 42-43

Yount, Maj. Gen. Barton K.: 260

Zahl, Dr. Harold A.: 122, 125

Zanuck, Lt. Col. Darryl F.: 225, 227-28, 230, 298

Zenith Radio Corporation: 245

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1994 360-519