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continuing...
As research on the SCR-268 moved towards the development of the mobile SCR-270 and the fixed
SCR-271, RADAR found a natural home throughout the U.S.
military. An improvement on the original SCR-268, the 270
and 271 were intended to become the foundation upon which all of the future
airborne RADAR, MEW (Microwave Early Warning) RADAR, and
RADAR countermeasure devices
of the military would be built. And from there, in each of
these categories, families of follow on systems were
intended to grow.
In some cases progress was made, while in other cases by the
time the systems were ready for field deployment the needs
of the war had changed. In the end however, the important
thing is the
fact that all military RADAR systems owed their heritage to the U.S. Signal
Corps’ first ever RADAR system, the SCR-268.
RADAR Progresses
Early tests on the SCR-268 were so successful that it was felt justifiable
to undertake expanded experimentation. With this in mind
the Signal Corps’ Aircraft Radio Laboratory authorized the
formation of a Radio Position Finding Section, to develop
RADAR systems for the expected coming war. Note here the
phrase ‘the expected coming war,’ as at the time the Signal
Corps was one of the few groups that felt events in Europe
were moving towards war. The rest of the world seemed
oblivious to the problem, and satisfied that all of the lessons of war that could be
learned had already been learned in WWI. After the carnage
of WWI they felt that there
would never be another world war, Orson Welle's
War of The Worlds excepted of course. Regardless, the Radio
Position Finding Section set about improving on the
SCR-268’s design.
After the successful demonstration of the SCR-268 in May
1937, project engineers got busy readying the system for
further tests and technical improvements. Originally they
had planned to leave the equipment where it was and simply
continue with the work that had to be done. Instead, Chief
of Staff General Malin Craig, who had seen the tests and
been thoroughly impressed, ordered that it be dismantled and
moved to a location where ongoing tests and system
development could be kept more private and beyond probing
eyes. This resulted in the Signal Corps selecting a location
on the holly covered sand dunes at Fort Hancock, on Sandy
Hook in New Jersey. A narrow, quiet spit of land reaching
northeast towards New York City, Sandy Hook proved ideal for
further quiet testing, as nearly daily fog kept even
most local fishermen from seeing the RADAR installation.
The OIC for the project to improve upon the performance of
the SCR-268 was Captain Rex Corput. He was supported by a
civilian chief of the new Radio Position Finding Section, a
Mr. Paul E. Watson. Together they set about turning the
facilities on Sandy Hook to their benefit.
[1]
In many ways Sandy Hook was a perfect choice for RADAR
development and testing, as the facilities there that
comprised Fort Hancock met the needs of the researchers,
and, since the Coast Artillery managed Fort Hancock, and the
Signal Corps was developing the RADAR system to meet the
needs of the Coast Artillery, the arrangement was ideal. As
many WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War Officers that passed
through Fort Monmouth also know, Sandy Hook and what is now
known today as the Fort Hancock Historic District is only a
short drive from Fort Monmouth, providing a pleasant place
to take a break from Signal Corps training and perhaps have
a seaside picnic with a loved one, while looking at the city
of New York on the horizon.
Best of all however, because of its proximity to New York’s
airports, the location lay along the route network of the
then heavily traveled military and commercial air routes
heading towards La Guardia and the many other airports
spread throughout the region. This made Sandy Hook
absolutely perfect for detecting airplanes by radio pulses,
just as it had proven in earlier tests on direction finding
systems aimed at detecting ships at sea by heat
transmissions. And of course, being a peninsula, the
location afforded near total privacy, as there was only one
land route to the sand spits and that was easily controlled.
Yet while most who headed to Fort Hancock to work found it
ideal, after only a little while on the peninsula its
disadvantages began to become obvious and nearly as numerous
as its benefits. For one, Sandy Hook sits barely above
absolute sea level. This meant that in order to avoid radio
skip along the water, antennas had to be lifted high into
the air. In the case of the SCR-268, the expedient used to
accomplish this task were four 100-foot spruce poles.
Unfortunately, even this didn’t work as well as was expected
and so tests saw the antennas being moved back onshore
again, and set up along a 225 foot high ridge near the Coast
Guard lighthouse station at Navesink.
Another problem that soon became obvious was that while on a
pleasant day Sandy Hook was ideal for a picnic, pleasant
days at this spot on the East Coast of the U.S. were few and
far between. The peninsula was totally exposed to every form
of ugly weather, from broiling, baking sun in the summer to
iced over winters, seasonal gales, and fog that seemed to
last forever. So bad was the weather during the late 1930s
testing period that one of the worst hurricanes of the times
struck in September 1938, going down in history for its
ferocity. The biggest impact of this weather however was
that it cost the team of engineers precious time… several
months… as they tried to adjust their schedules to the
vagaries of life along the seaside. This caused endless
complaints from the Army Air Corps and Coast Artillery
Corps, the two key parties waiting for the systems to be
released for their use.
From a technical perspective, the primary objective was to
redesign the system to improve its accuracy for use in
directing fire during an antiaircraft raid. In this regard,
there was a lot to be done. For one, the thermal detection
element was not nearly up to its intended purpose. Adding to
this, while somewhat less difficult to fix, the step-by-step
motor that drove the vertical antenna proved unreliable,
constantly breaking down when placed under load. This
seemingly minor problem, of a motor breaking down, is one of
the many little issues of its kind that drove the Signal
Corps between the wars to focus on, develop, and issue a set
of MIL-SPEC (aka MIL-STD) standards to force civilian
contractors to raise the quality of their work.
Even so, when looked at in totality, most of the problems
the Signal Corps faced were mechanical in nature, and less
so related to poor circuit design or theory. In the area of
radio theory, the pulse-and-echo theory that the system was
tying to put into practice was sound and without fault. All
it needed to function was equipment whose mechanics were up
to the stress of constant use in rough environments. For
example, the problem was more one of how to seal vacuum
tubes, than whether the tubes would respond properly as
voltage levels were changed across their grids.
Research and improvements thus moved along in fits and
starts, with breakthroughs in circuit design needing to wait
for mechanical manufacture improvements to catch up with the
desired end product, only to see circuit design leap forward
again once the product was made available, only to wait
again for better means of manufacture to produce a yet newer
desired end component.
To keep things moving along,
research, design and testing moved along by "work sections," with
one group of technicians working on improving the transmitter, while another
tried to improve the cathode ray oscilloscope’s receiver,
and yet another group of engineers focused on the antennas.
Among the improvements that came along during this work was
the development of the ultrahigh-frequency vacuum tube; a
means for controlling and synchronizing the double-tracking
or lobe-switching system; improvements in the transmitting
antennas; improvements in the final design of the “keyer,”
and most importantly improvements on the final design of
the SCR-268's transmitter. All of these, when assembled into
one cohesive unit, resulted in what became known as the
SCR-270.
Lest the reader think that the resulting unit was a product
of corporate America, most of the early prototype was built
by enlisted men stationed as part of the 62d Coast Artillery
Regiment, Antiaircraft section, at Fort Hancock. These men
not only did their normal duty on the spit of land, but also
helped build the RADAR unit itself and test it. Well skilled, these
men proved invaluable in uncovering problems that would need
to be fixed before the RADAR could be deployed.
Interestingly, while originally an artillery man, their commander, 1st
Lt. Albert F. Cassevant, went on to become the 20th
Commanding Officer at Ft. Monmouth, in 1958.
[2]
With the SCR-270 well on its way to becoming ready for full
manufacture and deployment, new development began on both
the 110- and 240-megacycle versions, as well as a new
heat-detector unit too. Yet while much work was done in all
of these areas, progress was made only on the 110 megacycle
design, as the 240-megacycle design required a specially
designed transmitter tube that proved beyond the
manufacturing capabilities of the systems of those days.
Overall, the problem was one of generating enough power to
be able to send a strong enough pulse out so that there
would be energy left over after it rebounded... enough
energy for the signal to be able to
be detected on its return. To make sure nothing was left to
chance tests were conducted across all of the commercially
available high-frequency tubes then available. RCA came out
the winner, in spite of the fact that in order to generate
the power needed the amount of voltage being applied to the
tube gave it an average life expectancy of less than twenty
hours! RCA belayed these concerns by saying that given time it would be able to fix this
problem, and so the Signal Corps decided to settle on a
transmitter design using six tubes instead of the original
two, with a circuitry similar to that included in the
proposed RCA transmitter design. Even so, not wanting to be
left hanging if RCA was unable to improve on their
manufacturing techniques, the Signal Corps backed up its
decisions by placing an additional contract with
Westinghouse for them to build a yet even more powerful tube.
As 1938 rolled along a number of tests were conducted for
the Army brass and everyone seemed pleased with the
progress. To improve on both research and test conditions,
the sand spits of Sandy Hook began to sport new buildings.
Of strange shape and looking desolate sitting out at the end
of the peninsula, most looked like something between a barn
and an aircraft hangar. Curious civilians along the mainland
shore had no idea what these buildings were, but those on
the spit knew they housed antennas. Their strangeness in
look came about because of what appeared to be 1880s
construction techniques… something not common at the end of
the 1930s. The reason for this was that the buildings
weren’t allowed to have any metal in them, and so were not
only made of wood when metal would have been better and more
prevalent, but the construction techniques
used post, beam and peg construction wherever possible, with
nails only being used where absolutely necessary.
Overall, the buildings had to be high enough to house the antenna, but strong
enough to stand the nearly constant winds and seasonal
gales. As for the reason no metal could be used, obviously
it was to avoid spurious echoes that might affect target
measurements.
Along with these new buildings two commercial companies
moved onto the peninsula: Western Electric and Westinghouse.
Their task was to construct a total of eight antennas and
their shelters, as well as a huge trapezoidal structure to
link the antennas.
Hand in hand then, by the end of 1938 the Signal Corps’
determination to bring this new weapon system to the field
began to pay off. Purpose built buildings appeared,
electronic tests showed good progress was being made, and
the civilian manufacturers were beginning to refine their
manufacturing to the point that the components being
delivered were working better and better. One of these areas
in particular helped the Signal Corps make great progress in
terms of system accuracy.
The particular area that proved to be a breakthrough came in
the means by which the system could attain the accuracy
level of the thermal element without suffering the
reliability and failure rates that came along with use of
the thermal element. Specifically, as was alluded to earlier
in this article, tests suggested that the
thermal element could be eliminated if “lobe switching” was
used instead. An improvement on a technique relating to the
principle of the radio ranging station, the change proved to
work.
For the uninitiated, with a range station two towers
transmitted two different signals. One transmitted a Morse
Code letter “A”
signal ("dit - dah") and the other an “N” ("dah - dit"), thus creating what was in
effect two dot-dash and two dash-dot lobes of coverage.
These lobes merged at their outer margins, allowing the
pilot to know that he was “on the beam.” To apply this
principle to RADAR all that needed to be done was to build
the receiving antenna in a double array format, with each
covering the lobe of the angle at which it was erected. The
result was an antenna system that could be switched from one
lobe to another, receiving two signals instead of one. These
two signals could then be coordinated on the oscilloscope,
to a degree of precision as good as if not better than with
a thermal element. Yet as discussed above, while the theory
was sound, the challenge was in physically making the
equipment needed to make this system work in a battlefield
environment.
Research Efforts Are Consolidated
In the late 30s it was typical that major changes to
development programs took place as the fiscal year changed.
For the Signal Corps’ Radio Position Finding Section that
change came in June. Because of this, in June of 1938, the
program was redefined, with the intent of consolidating the
progress that had been attained during the past fiscal year
(1937 - 1938) and laying out a new tactical plan to bring
the work done to date to a new level. At the same time, to
oversee these changes, a new Director of the Laboratories
was assigned, Lieutenant Colonel Roger B. Colton (later
Major General).
When Colton looked at the structure of the research then
underway he felt that that while continuing work on the
SCR-268 should proceed with haste, enough progress had been
made in parallel technology areas that a sizeable element of
research should be reassigned towards development of the
first offshoot of the SCR-268, the SCR-270 and SCR-271
systems. In Colton’s mind these two systems promised greater
capability for RADAR, even though the equipment needed to
achieve this capability could not at that time be reliably
manufactured.
As a result, these two avenues of development took up almost
all of the available manpower and budget, to the extent that
two other promising areas became stepchildren to the
268–270–271 programs. Those were development of a means to
detect enemy surface vessels as they approached a friendly
coast, and range finding equipment that could fill in on
many levels. Over time, these two areas did receive funding
and manpower, with the surface vessel detection equipment
eventually hitting the field in the form of the SCR-296, and
the ancillary range finding system appearing as the SCR-547.
What the reader can see from this is that as research
progressed it soon became obvious to the Signal Corps that
any number of new RADAR based systems could be developed. It
was just a matter of prioritizing which ones and in which
order. Thus, while the research had started with the single
goal of producing a searchlight-laying device for
antiaircraft batteries, by the middle of 1938 other services
were knocking on the door asking for RADAR systems of their
own. To keep from spreading itself too thin, the Signal
Corps focused on first developing the basic system in
question, then on making it portable, and then on exploiting
the ancillary capabilities the technology offered, for use
in other areas.
This strategic approach of first developing the core
technology, then making it more mobile and accurate, and
then passing the technology off laterally to other military
areas for use in support of their own needs could be seen most
clearly with the SCR-270–SCR-271 systems. In their case the
core SCR-268 technology was made portable, after which it
was re-designated as the SCR-270–SCR-271 systems, in the
form of a short range, mobile gun laying system. The lateral
tossing to the side of the football came in the form of the
technology being passed on to the Naval Research Laboratory,
for their use in developing a short range gun laying RADAR
system for their own shipboard use. The point being that the
Signal Corps realized that while it “owned” the core
technology and knew most about it, the Naval Research Lab
had far more knowledge about what was needed in the form of
a short range RADAR system for onboard use. And so while
cooperation did take place between the two services in
developing the Navy’s RADAR systems, the Signal Corps gave
somewhat free reign to the Navy.
What was unsaid in all of this was that there was an
additional reason why the Signal Corps made a lateral pass
of technology to the Navy, and that was so that progress
could be made in meeting the Navy’s needs without also
having to tell them all that the Signal Corps knew about the
underlying theory, technology and equipment needed to bring
these systems to life. Why this concern on the Signal Corps’
part? Because the Signal Corps was still wary of letting too
much information about its research get out in the open,
especially as 1939 rolled along and the rumblings of war in
Europe began to be heard. So for the Signal Corps, the
solution was simple, until things settled down again, the
plan was to keep the core technology under wraps, distribute
that which was necessary to the sister services, and
otherwise tighten and lock the gates to Fort
Hancock, and draw the blinds, while the Corps proceeded with
its research.
With the Army Air Corps the situation was a bit different
than with the Navy. With the Air Corps there was no sister
service to speak of. That is, much of the support afforded
to the Air Corps still came from the Signal Corps, as it was the
stepfather for this fledgling organization. Because of this,
the Signal Corps realized that if someone was going to
develop a longer range RADAR system for the Army Air Corps
it was going to have to be the
Signal Corps. With this in mind, the Signal Corps set about
developing a long range, early warning system able to assist
Army Air Corps interceptor squadrons.
The technical problems that beset the Signal Corps in
addressing the Air Corps’ needs dealt mostly with modifying
the core technology from the SCR-268 so that it could scan
at long range from a permanent site. That is, mobility did
not seem, at first at least, as important as range. The
reader can see the reasoning behind this thought process by
recognizing that detecting an airplane 100 miles away in a
thousandth of a second was important, while the
reaction–detection time needed for one 1,000 miles away was
much less so. Or at least, that is what was thought until
the Army Air Corps started showing the Signal Corps that
aircraft speeds were going up faster than the Signal Corps
ability to increase the range of its RADAR.[3]
When that became obvious suddenly the need to find incoming
enemy aircraft earlier and father away from a RADAR site
became a critical necessity. Part of the solution to this
was to develop massive, fixed antenna arrays set atop
equally massive towers. This architectural structure became
a hallmark of the SCR-271, as the higher and bigger the
array, the better the chance that the range could be
extended, if only because of improvements in line-of-sight
coverage. Yet while the objective started out for range,
more range, and still more range, as research progressed it
also became obvious that mobility could not be sacrificed
either. This then is what led to the dual SCR-270 and SCR-271
designations, again, the former being mobile and the latter serving
the needs for fixed early warning detection systems.
This constant trade off of mobility versus range was forced
on Signal Corps researchers not because of the limitations of
electronic theory, but because of limitations on what could
be built and maintained on a practical bases. While from
here in the 21st century this may all seem trivial, back at
the end of the 1930s the problem of making equipment that
worked reliably was truly intractable and mostly unsolvable.
To come up with solutions that helped make the systems
smaller while more powerful at the same time, everything was
tried, from extending frequency bands to building bigger
tubes and/or bigger antennas.
And so it continued, research tried higher frequency bands
(from 110 all the way up to 240), larger tubes, higher
power, bigger antenna arrays, and everything under the sun
in an effort to get the ideal RADAR system up, running, and
into production. Hopes were raised, and then dashed, as for
example when in late summer of 1938 a preliminary model of
the SCR-271 located a bomber at seventy-five miles distant.
Unfortunately, the Westinghouse tube being tested was not
yet perfected, and turned out to be unreliable. By the time
Westinghouse was able to produce a reliable version of the
tube, its power had dropped to the point that the same
bomber could barely be found at 50 miles. Since by then the
engineers were looking for a 120 mile range, hearts sank.
Similarly, the Army Air Corps’ original specifications
omitted any concern for target aircraft's height, and so no measuring
capabilities were developed for this area. Later, when the
need became obvious, everyone was sent scrambling back to
the drawing boards to figure out how to address this issue.
Experiments on double-tracking versus single tracking
accuracy levels, different forms of lobe switching, single
antenna systems for both transmitting and receiving,
applying the spark-gap principle to the joint switching
mechanism, and on and on, all proceeded in a race to build a
RADAR system good enough to carry the country through the
war that now appeared on the horizon. In the end, after more
than 4,000 tests and readings on the progress of development
of the SCR-268, it still fell short of the level of accuracy
the engineers wanted to see. Useful as a RADAR device, yes…
but meeting the needs of the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ desired
specs, no.
What was finally brought to the field then was a system that
had an average error of nearly four degrees (70.9 mils) in
azimuth and more than two degrees in elevation, when what
was desired was a maximum deviation of one degree in both
azimuth and elevation. Worse, at the time no one understood
that at low angles the detecting capability of RADAR almost
completely disappeared due to refraction; or in other words,
all of the research that was taking place on development of a short-range set was due to fail.
All in all, while the four degree error rate for the azimuth
was bad, the error rate for the elevation was tolerable.
That is, it was close enough for government work, and would
suffice for the time being. And so the SCR-268, in its near
original design as first developed, was put into
production and sent into the field.
The first place where it found ready acceptance was in
Panama, where its operators were shocked to find out that
you could actually see and track the flight of artillery
shells, something that had never been seen before.
Type 3, SCR-268-T3, was the production model that was
standardized on and put into production. While the Signal
Corps’ engineers, somewhat snobs about RADAR by that time,
disliked it, everyone else saw its value and didn’t complain
about what it lacked, because what it provided them with was
better than nothing. From a field Officer’s position, it
served the task of pointing searchlights well enough, and
while bulky and less than perfect for true precision
gun-laying, was still better than having to guess where the
enemy was. Perfect or not, it did contribute a lot to the
issue at hand, as, for example, it made it possible to lay
down an effective antiaircraft barrage during overcast
conditions, something that could not have been done without
it.
With the SCR-268 being shipped to the field, work on the
SCR-270 and SCR-271 continued. By the time the war was
underway the systems that finally made it into the field
and were most used (i.e. valuable) proved to be the original
SCR-268 and the SCR-270. The 271, which was designed for
fixed use, simply fell by the wayside as mobility trumped
power when it came to combat RADAR usage.
Perhaps most memorable of all, the SCR-270 earned its
stripes on December 7, 1941, although the brass above it
should have lost theirs.
A number of SCR-270's were shipped to Hawaii in the second
half of 1941. By December 1941 six of them had been set up
around the perimeter of Oahu. One of these six was located
at the northern most tip of the island, at a place known as
the Opana Station.
During the month of December these six radars were being
operated each day, but only during the three most dangerous
hours of the day, from 0400 to 0700. Today many look at this
and think it was shortsighted and a sign of poor command
control that the RADARs were operated for only a few hours. Having read this article thus far, the reader
likely already knows why the stations were run only during
these hours: if they were run any longer the tubes of the
time would have burned out, and without a reliable supply
coming into the field from Westinghouse, steps simply had to
be taken to ration the use of the equipment so that when it
was needed it was available and it worked. Thus, in order to
avoid burning out the tubes, the Opana station was shut down
when air patrols could be mounted…which, of course, began
with the commencement of daylight.
On 7 December 1941, two men were on duty at Opana. Again, if
the reader was paying attention during this article he knows
that three men were needed to operate the SCR-270. Why then
only two? The answer: the lure of the bright lights and bars
of Honolulu had dragged one away on leave, with a day pass.
As 0700 approached the station was readied for shut
down and the logs were completed. During the previous three
hours nothing unusual had been seen, and it was so noted.
Knowing that the truck due to take them back to base would
be late, Private George E. Elliott, one of the three operators, asked his supervisor, Private
Joseph Larue Lockard,
if he could practice a bit more… under Lockard’s
supervision.[4] Lockard o.k.’d the request and Elliott slid
back into his seat and began to tune the RADAR and cycle it
through its field of view.
At 0702 an echo appeared on their scope such as neither of
them had ever seen before. It was large, it was luminous and
it bloomed at a range of 132 miles.
For a few minutes Elliott readjusted the oscilloscopes,
re-aimed the antennas and played with the dials thinking
that something must be wrong with the equipment. By 0719
they had both decided that there was nothing wrong with the
SCR-270. At exactly 0720 they reported their finding to the
Information Center at Fort Shafter.
The bloom they reported was made possible by the United States Army Signal Corps.
- - - - -
If by some miracle on that morning you lived atop the Punch
Bowl in Hawaii, had an SCR-270 of your own in your front yard, got up,
and at 5 minutes to eight in the morning, with a cup of coffee in your hand, casually walked out to
it, you would have seen its oscilloscope blooming just like
Elliott's—a mere 35
minutes from the time of his report. The target it
painted would have covered the screen. It would have shown, with extremely good accuracy thanks to the double
lobe circuitry, targets at an elevation of between 25 and 5,000 feet...
almost all of which would have been circling over Pearl Harbor.
Epilogue
While in this article we focused at length on the
development of RADAR, we wish to emphasize that in this and
the preceding three articles on America Between The Wars our
objective has been to understand how America has
consistently, throughout the years, gained an uncanny
ability to prepare its military for the needs of war, even
prior to the onset of warfare. Our point has been that part
of the answer to this is that during the 1930s timeframe
the Signal Corps took on the singular responsibility of
preparing itself and its sister services to fight a future
war.
What the Signal Corps knew then was that the kind of
downsizing that takes place at the end of a war, as was
being done at the end of WWI, while easily applicable to
manpower requirements, should not be applied to the
development of newer technological systems that have the
ability to bring improvements to a country’s war fighting
capabilities. Because of this, forward thinking planners
like Major General George Owen Squier, Chief Signal Officer
at the end of WWI, and especially Major General Joseph
Mauborgne, the Chief Signal Officer that presided over the
Signal Corps between WWI and WWII, set in motion plans to
assemble and prepare the kinds and types of signal equipment
and systems that would be needed when and if a “WWII” ever
broke out.
More than just making plans to accumulate material to
support the men these Generals set about assuring that the
Signal Corps worked hard to make better the types of
materials and systems that would be available when and if
another war came. More to the point, they went about this
task with a sense of haste. Not haste as in panic, mind you,
but as in ‘with a purposeful sense of urgency.’ In other
words, under their leadership the Signal Corps took the
attitude at the close of WWI that its task was not to sit
back and enjoy having won the war, but get busy preparing
for the next one, just as though it was scarcely but surely
over the horizon.
The secret to the Signal Corps’ success in this effort was
that it defined for itself a dual task of developing more
effective war fighting hardware and integrating it into an
improved command and control system, by using a three step
approach:
First they mounted an aggressive research effort to find out
the limits of what could and could not be done with the
technology at hand and the state of science as it then
stood.
Then they took the output of this research and used it to
modify and improve the performance of off the shelf public
market products… products which on their own might fall
short of military needs, but were nevertheless close enough
in capabilities and performance so that concentrated
engineering design changes might result in a truly
breakthrough piece of war fighting equipment.
Finally, they only did this in those cases where effective
command and control systems could be built up around the
hardware to assure that the maximum benefit attainable out
of the new technology or armament could be gained by field
commanders.
Considering that the Signal Corps did all of this between
the wars, without computers, in an analog capacity, when no
one else cared, simply by dint of determination, it is
astounding what these men were able to do. Much as
W. Edward Deming did in modern times,
principally in
Japan, in creating the
"Plan-Do-Check-Act" production cycle, aimed at higher
quality product output, the Signal Corps in the late 1930s
did the same... redefining
what research, design, development, and manufacturing was
all about.
It was a singularly unique event in American history, and
should be recognized for the fact that it catapulted America
ahead of all other countries, in all manners... from
productivity to economics. Cynics may say that it was only
because the rest of the world was, at that time, still
recovering from the ravages of WWI, which had just then
ended, that America progressed... but we would disagree.
What the U.S. Army Signal Corps did between the wars was
simply amazing... it was akin to what happened in England
when it fomented the Industrial Revolution between 1760 and
1864... and in the process changed the world.
Is it too much to claim that the strategic thinking of the
Signal Corps’ leaders between the wars had the unintended
result of making America the world’s first Superpower? Some
might say that such a claim is too much of a stretch. We
would say otherwise. We would say that among the credits
that belong to the Signal Corps are these…
● Helping America field for WWII the world’s best equipped
fighting man; equipped with the most advantageous and
effective arms and equipment ever brought to the
battlefield,
● Creating for America and its armed services a
technological advantage over the world that neither its
allies could match nor its enemies could catch up with,
● Initiating and fostering a partnership with academia that
pushed the knowledge of science and technology further than
it had ever been since the dawn of time, and continues
to do so today,
● Building an alliance with America’s industrial complex
where the product development and manufacturing efforts that
ensued out-produced, outperformed, and outlasted all of the
world’s other warring powers,
● Established a tradition of spinning-off the benefits of
military technology to the civilian sector, a trend that has
helped make the world safer and easier to live in.
In our view the Signal Corps, not singlehandedly we grant
you, but surely as the leader of the pack, made America what
it is today. It did this by recognizing back then that the
challenge of life… in war and in peace… is a challenge for
the mastery of science and technology.
Master these two and
you will master your world.
Footnotes
[1] Once WWII got underway Captain Corput went on to be
promoted to Colonel, where he served in the Eighth Army under General
Eichelberger as his signal officer. Among his duties was to take over the
combat tasks that remained un-resolved after the Sixth Army invaded Luzon,
Leyte and the adjacent islands.
- To return to your place in the text click here:
[2] To see a list of Ft. Monmouth Commanding Officers,
click here: é- To return to your place in the text click here:
[3] For a gauge of the speed of detection
required, recall that a radio impulse travelled both away from and back to
the antenna at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second.- To return to your place in the text click here:
[4] Lockard went on to become a member of Army Signal
Corps OCS Class 42-06, at Fort Monmouth. While on this website his class is
shown as graduating on July 13, 1942, in reality the class was so large that
it held two ceremonies, one on 12 July, and the other on 13 July. Lockard received his commission
on July 12, 1942. Click here to see the Class Page for OCS Class 42-06 on
this website .
Click here to jump to an external link with a bit more information about Candidate
Joseph Larue Lockard's life.
é- To return to your place in the text click here:
Additional Sources
Development of Radar SCR-270, By Arthur L .
Vieweger and Albert S . White; publication date not shown.
Harry M. Davis, The Signal Corps Development of U.S.
Army Radar Equipment, Pt. II, 1945, SigC Hist Sec File.
Davis, 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
Interv, SigC Hist Sec with Arthur L. Vieweger,
Tech Staff Evans Sig Lab, Belmar, N.J., 15 Apr 47.
Harold A. Zahl, From an Early Radar Diary,
Coast Artillery Journal, XCI, No. 2 (March-April, 1948).
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).
R. I. Wilkinson, A Short Survey of Japanese Radar,
Electrical Engineering, LXV (August-September, 1946).
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