Why was this so difficult to do in WWII? In great measure it was because back then most means of military communication in use was based on advances made in the civilian sector, and many times while these advances proved excellent they didn’t prove up to the challenges of war. In particular, communication as it existed at the beginning of WWII fell into two categories: minor advances in technology and creative advances in the form of communication available.

In terms of the forms of communication available at the beginning of World War II the military equivalents then were little different than the nonmilitary varieties used at that time. For example, the command teletypes used between various Army field headquarters in Europe were essentially the same as those one would have found on Wall Street or the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago, to transmit news or stock exchange ticker data. Even the exciting new “invention” of the motor-cycle messenger that the Army Signal Corps so effectively deployed throughout North Africa was little more than the motorized equivalent of the old hand-carrying Western Union bicycle boy that plied the streets of New York City. While their use was distinctive, and their importance beyond question, they were nevertheless nothing more than motorized forms of civilian mail carriers. And so it was with every other form of communication then available, from radio broadcasting to control towers, telephones to teletypes, and even railway semaphores… it was all little different from that available in the civilian world.

Which is why the Signal Corps was needed. At the beginning of WWII the Signal Corps was called on to bring a little organization to the concept of military communication by finding a way to not just repurpose what was available in the civilian world but also advance its development to suit the needs of the armed forces, while at the same time extending the known capabilities of communication far beyond that available to include forms and functions unheard of and un-thought of by either the civilian world or the enemy.

What resulted was an effort to develop better forms of communication along three main axis: general sensory signaling (typically signaling that was nonelectrical in nature), electrical signaling (typically as found and used over wires), and electrical signaling without the use of wires.

As an aside, the reader should recognize that the effort the Signal Corps undertook at the beginning of WWII to develop more effective means of communication in these three areas was a parallel effort. That is, development in these areas did not take place in a line of succession but simultaneously across all fronts. The result of this parallel effort in turn caused the structure of the Signal Corps to need to be changed… from what it was prior to WWII into what it became during the war, and in many, many instances even up until today. That is, the operational form that is seen in the Signal Corps today got its start early in WWII, with modernization and improvements being made along the way, in response to the need to develop world class forms of combat communication across the three areas listed above.

Looking at each of these in turn, we will classify them as Sensory Signaling (most usually of a visual or audible type), Wire Based Electrical Signaling, and Non-wire Based Electrical Signaling.

Sensory Signaling

Everyone knows by now that back in the Civil War Brevet Brigadier General Albert J. Myer codified an effective means of semaphore signaling, called within the Army at the time and even today wigwag signaling. What few of us today will recall however is that this form of signaling was still in solid use at the beginning of WWII, even while Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph approach to messaging was slowly making its way throughout the military. The reason wigwag signaling existed simultaneously with telegraphy was that they both served a purpose, and while in many instances telegraphy could easily replace wigwag, in others wigwag provided the only effective means of getting the message through… such as in the case of two ships at sea in need of passing encrypted, silent messages between themselves. Even so, as newer forms of tactical combat took the field during WWII Myer’s systematic wigwag flag based signaling quickly reached its limits. Morse's approach on the other hand seemed to show no boundaries to its capabilities, especially if it was coupled with non-electrical signaling.

In the interim though—that is, the interim in time that it would take between the state of communication at the beginning of WWII and where it needed to get to if the war was to be won—the Signal Corps had to make do with what it had. The result was that a whole series of elemental forms of signaling were used to fill the void between wigwag flags and telegraphy. Among the forms used to fill the needs of sensory signaling were not just the wigwags and semaphores, but also pyrotechnics, airplanes reading pieces of colored cloth spread on the ground (as was done in WWI), and most importantly the old standby pigeon.

In the early days of WWII pigeons were still a primary means of signaling and not surprisingly so were sirens and whistles. The problem with all of this though was that because these were sensory forms of signaling they all held one or more inherent limitation. So while they had value as a means of controlling railroad traffic (flags and beacons), sorting out supplies on a beachhead (wigwag), or passing messages between ships (blinking lights), they were not invisible to the enemy, were easy to misread, were of limited capacity, and were often useless during foul weather. While primitive, they had value, yet no modern war was ever going to be won with the limitations these forms of communication held. What was needed instead was fast, reliable, messaging that guaranteed the fewest mistakes possible. Or put another way, these simple forms of sensory signaling lacked capacity, speed, and precision. Electrification and the application of emerging technologies offered a solution to this problem.

Wire Based Electrical Signaling

Considering that telegraphy had already been developed and deployed in the civilian world by the time of WWII it was only natural to paint it olive drab and drag it onto the field of combat, along with all of its cousins, in every form available. Thus Signal Corps troops marched into the field alongside combat troops, deploying wire based electrical signaling paraphernalia along the way. Overnight the U.S. military began to see cables being strung, telegraphs being pounded, telephones being cranked, and hear teletypes clattering away. So pervasive was this effort that throughout World War II these forms became the predominant and principal form of communication the Signal Corps depended on. And while for the most part they held the field even these did not fill the void or serve the needs that combat commanders cried for. As a result non-wire based electrical signaling began to take its rightful place on the battlefield, and ever since the world of communication—both military and civilian—has never looked back.

Non-wire Based Electrical Signaling

With rapidity wireless devices began to leap from theoretical concepts bandied about the halls at Ft. Monmouth, through design and testing and onto the manufacturing production lines of companies across America. With the Signal Corps driving development the time taken to go from concept-to-reality shrunk from the slow leisurely pace it held before the war to, in many cases, only a few months. The fact is, the pace of technological development attained by the Signal Corps from the beginning of WWII up through the last third of the war was the first practical example of the existence of Moore’s Law, a concept first explained by Gordon E. Moore (one of the founders of Intel) in 1965... a time at which WWII was only a distant memory.[1]

Among the inventions that flowed from Signal Corps supported efforts were the radio, radiotelegraph, radiotelephone, radio-teletype, television, and RADAR. However, as opposed to how we see many of them today, their value was not as a means of entertainment but in their ability to achieve the hallowed goals of capacity, speed and precision in communication during combat. For example, the accomplishments of radio transmission in increasing the rate of teletype transmission from the average Morse Code rate of 30 WPM to an electric teletypewriter rate of over a hundred words a minute, transmitted reliably and without error, had a huge impact on the effectiveness of military communication. Even the ability to predict the impact of weather on combat operations improved because of Signal Corps' sponsored communication development. In this regard, reporting the weather locally by radiosonde became the standard. And who can forget the enormous impact the “handie-talkie” (a term Winston Churchill used to refer to the SCR-300, a device the rest of us call a walkie-talkie) had on combat. Something we think of today as an antiquated form of radio telephony, back when it was first introduced in war the walkie-talkie brought startling changes to how tactics were carried out.[2] 

The astute reader may have noticed our listing of television above, and wondered about its value during WWII, as obviously the form we see it in today had not yet come into existence until after the war was over. During World War II however it made its appearance in another form. Rather than finding a use in homes so that housewives could see Arthur Godfrey (whose first appearance on TV was in 1948, when his Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts began to be simultaneously broadcast on radio and television), television found its first use during WWII as a form of RADAR. One could even say that RADAR was the crown jewel of communication development during the second world war. With RADAR the military was able to guide aircraft at a distance, help them return to base safely, land in inclement weather, and of course detect the presence of enemy aircraft. It also allowed the military to map land masses as well as the approach of land while at sea; map storms, guide searchlights so that antiaircraft guns could hone in on targets, discover ships at sea and submarines under the sea, guide antiaircraft artillery, and in a revised form guide torpedoes. And it did all of this with unheard-of precision. On a technical basis it allowed the development and use of tactics and techniques that included GCI, GCA, LORAN, SHORAN, RACON, IFF, MEW, ASV, BTO, and RAWIN. Clearly, back in World War II RADAR was the new black magic.

While many of these forms of “television” were in fact experimented with and developed in the 1930s, they did not come to the fore as military hardware and systems until WWII, when they were proven to be desperately needed. Before WWII much of the experimentation on the technologies that led to forms of TV communication was done (1917 - 1919) at Camp Vail, in east-central New Jersey. In 1925 when the name of the camp/fort was changed to Fort Monmouth, and cost cutting measures forced the Electrical and Meteorological Laboratories and the Signal Corps Laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards to be relocated to Ft. Monmouth, and subsequently renamed the SCL, with a whopping 5 officers, 12 enlisted men, and 53 civilians, things really began to heat up. By the time 1934 rolled around radio-based target detection was well along in development. With a magnetron on loan from RCA research progressed to the point that RPF (radio position finding) became a viable technology. Interestingly, this coincided with the construction of Squire Hall (1935), a building all who have been stationed at Ft. Monmouth know well.

As RPF moved through its development it advanced from simple target awareness to microwave usage, Doppler shifted signaling, bi-static transmission and antenna arrangements, beat detectors, azimuth and elevation measurement development, use of dipoles on wooden frames as antennas (see picture behind acronym list above), ring oscillators, antenna lobe switching, and much, much more. Eventually, by 1938, the first Set Complete Radio (or Signal Corps Radio, as it is usually but incorrectly called) was rolled out. This unit, dubbed the SCR-268, was able to aim searchlights associated with anti-aircraft guns, but little else.

But that was just the beginning. Once this trick had been mastered it was just a matter of time before the U.S. Army Signal Corps brought to market the tools the other combat arms needed during WWII. With rapidity the SCR-268 morphed into the SCR-270, which, built by Westinghouse, began to make its appearance at Army bases in 1940. As we all know, an SCR-270 was in full operation near the island of Oahu on the morning of December 7, 1941. At 0720 its Signal Corps operators detected and reported a flight of planes heading due north; and we all know what happened next. By 0759 the Japanese were enjoying a site seeing tour over a bombed out Pearl Harbor.

The 270 was replaced by the 271, which was upgraded to the 518 which provided radar altimeter data for the Signal Corps' controlled Air Force. This technology was then expanded to include the SCS-51 which offered the first viable version of instrument landing assistance… a concept and technology that the world’s airline industry could not exist without today. All pause now… thank you U.S. Army Signal Corps for the modern American airline system! [Editor’s note: the Signal Corps’ development of the ability to land aircraft in bad weather can not in any way be blamed for today’s trend to strip search you when you want to fly on one of these aircraft. You will have to blame someone else for that mess. Try the TSA.)

In 1941 the research labs at Ft. Monmouth were relocated a few miles south to Camp Evans, in a building known as the Marconi Hotel (not an actual hotel folks… it was just called that). By mid-1940 the research being done by the Signal Corps began to be shared with our British counterparts and this led to even faster technology development. When the secret stuff the Brits were working on arrived at the Marconi Hotel development took off almost as fast as one of the new North American P-51 Mustangs (1940), or perhaps the Bell P-39 Airacobras [1941, an aircraft sent in mass to the Soviets as part of lend lease… which shows you what the Signal Corps' new Air Force branch thought of it].

After the mess at Pearl Harbor the Signal Corps got into true high gear, working around the clock and at a fevered pitch to develop systems able to protect the Panama Canal from a similar fate. Microwave was abandoned as the frequency of choice as frequencies in the 600 MHZ range were tried. Using four triodes and their associated circuitry, tightly packaged into one glass envelope, the Signal Corps was able to produce over 240-kW pulse-power at up to 600 MHz.

At about this point in time the numbering system used to designate communication systems seemed to go awry, at least from where we sit here in 2012. From the simple SCR 1, 2, 3, 4… etc numbering scheme things jumped to AN/TPS, TQL, CPS, VCS, and on and on. Regardless, development progressed and brought to the field the communication systems needed to achieve the earlier stated goals of capacity, speed, and precision.

All in all the task of finding a better way of passing information around the battlefield and back and forth between headquarters was conquered by the Signal Corps, at first slowly perhaps, but by the time of Pearl Harbor and after at full speed. As an exercise in corporate development… development being run and managed by an arm of the U.S. government, it boggles the imagination as to why this same feat cannot be accomplished today. With little doubt, today the U.S. government is unable to match corporate America when it comes to efficiency, low cost of operations and effectiveness of purpose… with the military having nominally abandoned their responsibilities for developing technology in entirety. Yet the U.S. Army Signal Corps did it back then.

Back during WWII though there was no other option. The task of finding a better way to communicate such that America could win the war it found itself in fell to the Signal Corps. Technologically speaking the distance from visual signals to RADAR was vast; yet both forms shared a basic functional need: pass information that was accurate, reliable, rapidly available, and able to be internalized by the participants.

What we see here then is not just the transformation of technology from a nice-to-have accoutrement to life, or a useful tool to help win battles, but the simultaneous transformation of the institution that enabled that transformation to take place: the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

This transformation, which began in earnest in the 1940's, led to the Signal Corps we know today. Embracing everything from the aforementioned electronic forms to still pictures, training films, combat newsreels, archiving, and much more: the Signal Corps pushed the envelope of what was considered “communication.” Without the Signal Corps redefining, back during the early days of the second world war, what communication encompassed many of these areas might never have received any formal attempt to develop them, or have been left to the whim of history for their progression. Instead, back in the 40s the Signal Corps took a holistic view of what was involved when people communicated and expanded its purview to encompass it.

As an example, if it weren’t for the Signal Corps the concept of “counter-communication” would have been left out of the equation… at least until a much later point in time, post-WWII, when some devious political hack would have discovered it. Instead, in early 1941, the Signal Corps recognized the value of disinformation and "spin" to the communication process and set about developing means and methods for the interruption, obscuring, or obstruction of what we might think of as “normal” communication. Because of this hardware elements like chaff were invented, as were "cigars" and "carpet," devices that were very effective in jamming enemy RADAR. Speech scrambling received attention too, as can be attested to by the excellent articles penned by our own Don Mehl, OCS Class 44-35, who has written and published on this website numerous articles on the SIGSALY (Green Hornet) and SIGTOT communication systems. The Signal Corps recognized early the value of being able to not only obscure our own communications but also both hinder and intercept telephone or other forms of communication coming from the enemy. In every way, from monitoring and interception to all modes of cryptography the Signal Corps stepped forward, embraced the need to control the communication process, and assured that on our side of the war we held in our hands the best means of communication available.

Whether used for simple or complex signaling, natural or artificial, supportive or disruptive, or serving single or multiple functions, the concept of passing information became an obsession for the men and women that led the Signal Corps during WWII. The mission must be accomplished at all cost... and it was.

But a price had to be paid for this determination to control and alter the future: the Signal Corps itself had to change.

The Place of the Signal Corps

Principally speaking, the tasks the Signal Corps needed to accomplish to help America win WWII needed to be done not by pursuing science for the sake of science, but through practical experimentation, with that pursuit taking place primarily in the areas involving electrical mechanics. This requirement that the U.S. military change the structure of the Signal Corps so that it could master and employ electrical mechanics caused the new WWII Signal Corps to move ever so slightly away from being just a combat arm to also becoming a member of what were then called the technical services. The net result was that for the majority of World War II the Signal Corps was thought of by those at the top as one of the seven technical services. For those of us who served through the Korean and Vietnam wars this helps explain the confusion we felt, and those “other” soldiers to whose units we were attached, as they wondered what exactly a Signaleer was. Were we one of them, or not?

The concept of classifying the Signal Corps as a technical service was significant as the term implied that the corps was focused not on field duty in combat but on the use and application of applied sciences. Up until this time the idea of the Signal Corps being some sort of group of eggheads was unheard of. Before World War II the Signal Corps was considered a combat arm, something that began at its inception in the Civil War. Now, with the onset of WWII, it was finding itself being tossed into the mix with the six other technical services, with folks looking at it as an agency of the Services of Supply instead of a member of the Army Service Forces. For many field Signal Corps Officers who were still not only ducking bullets in the field but actively engaging in combat in order to get the message through this simply would not do.

Structurally, in WWII, the entity known as the Army Service Force comprised one of three major groupings of resources of men and matériel. The other two were the Army Ground Forces and the Army Air Forces. As originally envisioned, the Army Air, Ground, and Service Forces were intended to be both interdependent as well as independent. With Signal Corps Officers fighting the idea of being reclassified as a service force, thus losing the combat designation they had held pride in since the Civil War, the question was how to handle the changes that demanded that the Signal Corps be free to advance technology as it wished, but still make it accountable for the results of its work, as that work was deployed in the field. In basic terms, the problem was where should the Signal Corps be placed in this group of three: Army Service Forces, Ground Forces, and Air Force.[3]

While some might say that the answer should have been to define a fourth classification, the truth was that it was easier at the time to simply concede to the obviousness of the fact that Signal Corps Officers (and troops) were in daily combat in the field, working to assure that what was needed to be heard and transmitted was in fact heard and transmitted. In other words, the WWII leaders at the time decided that bigger problems needed to be solved than whether the evolving Signal Corps was a combat arm or not and therefore defined the Signal Corps as being two services in one, which of course made everyone happy. The result was that although administratively the Signal Corps was designated to serve as a component of the Army Service Forces, its equipment, functions, and trained men were brought to the field via either the Ground or Air Force services. For most of us, even up to the time of the Vietnam War, this held true in theaters of war as well as defense and base commands.

So what was the Signal Corps during WWII, and how should it be thought of today? Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to see it as working to integrate every element of military communication and every user of each form of communication, from the President (for whom the Signal Corps provided communication links to the then called Situation Representation Room in the basement of the White House), to the Secretary of War, the Chiefs of Staff, the General and Special Staffs who ruled over theaters, task forces, defense and base commands, the Army Ground, Air, and Service Forces, all the way down to the subdivisions that controlled ground and air arms and services. In other words, while at the beginning of WWII it might not have started out so, by the end of the second world war the Signal Corps handled all of these and more. Even today it looks, smells and tastes much the same.

Today, in part because of its involvement in cyber security and intelligence gathering and dissemination the Signal Corps spends as much time managing key aspects of the multiplicity of army groups, armies, corps, divisions, regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons within which it has communication responsibilities as it does its own functions. It also spends an inordinate amount of time thinking of the future and planning for it, in terms of where communication is going and how the Signal Corps can help the U.S. military achieve swift, strong, adaptable, simple, and secure communication. Finally, it also spends a sigificant amount of time liaising with sister agencies in the various Air Force and Navy commands, sometimes down to the unusually granular level of things such as Air Force wings, groups, squadrons, flights, administrative divisions, branches, sections, subsections, and on and on.

The point in all of this is that while originally the thought was that the Signal Corps should be little more than an arm of the combat service it actually needed to provide a service akin to an overarching arm of the DoD itself. The work the Signal Corps did during WWII began a movement in this direction, with that movement accelerating throughout the Korean and Vietnam Wars until today. In modern corporate speak, since WWII it has been found that the Signal Corps needed to be able to act as everything from the military's IT Department to its IS, CIS, MIS, CS, and EE experts, providing both hardware, software, services, and management expertise throughout all of the “customer facing” areas and interface points the military has.

For those not familiar with the term "customer facing," it is worth a moment to note what comprises the customer facing aspects of today's military. In this context, customer facing means that area of the military that supports and services the “stakeholders” that must be dealt with in order to achieve the military's communication goals. Thus a customer facing interface point marks that specific locus where Signal Corps personnel and/or equipment come face to face with one of the Signal Corps' stakeholders, as it attempts to meet that stakeholder's needs.

In terms of who these stakeholders are, flitting here between the business world and the military world, we can say that such stakeholders extend far beyond customers (in military speak, think: the citizens of the country you are fighting for) to include shareholders (the people who provide the money you need in order for you to do your job… e.g. Congress); to the employees (members of the Signal Corps itself); third party customers (your allies in war); suppliers (everyone from the Navy, Coast Guard or Air Force that may provide a service to you or depend on a service you provide); to the companies that make your equipment; the allied countries and militaries that help feed, clothe and house you; communities (e.g. external parties that train your people, provide protection [e.g. Blackwater]); commercial organizations (e.g. those who assure that your equipment arrives on time); to all manner of remotely associated entities from suppliers to third party governments and regulatory agencies, legislative bodies, industry trade groups, professional associations, NGOs, advocacy groups, prospective recruits, local communities, the public at large, competitors, analysts and the media, alumni, research centers, and of course the future generations whose life and liberty Signal Corps efforts are trying to ensure. It's a long list, these stakeholders whose needs the Signal Corps is trying to meet.

Finally, it should not be missed that because it has integrated itself so completely throughout every aspect of the military's operation, the U.S. Army Signal Corps is homogonously the jugular of the military. If it gets cut, the war effort stops. Signaling comprises an indisputable operational need; without it the U.S. military's eyes and ears cease to be of value and its mind is without substance to parse. 

Which brings us to our conclusion, as a nation we owe a debt of gratitude to those rare military leaders of WWII who recognized the need for the Signal Corps to embark on a major transition, moving the unit away from its then traditional role towards one which would support the U.S. military well into the 21st century and beyond. Single handedly they defined a set of new responsibilities for the Signal Corps, tasks that took the Corps from a support arm with vague capabilities and capacities developed during World War I to becoming a crucial part of the WWII war effort and every war since then.

Our debt of gratitude must also extend to those WWII Signal Corps Officers who recognized the new role they needed to play, and both re-dedicated and redoubled their own efforts towards assuring that the Signal Corps acquired and mastered the capabilities it needed in order to meet the nation's needs… from developing new forms of communication to managing their supply to the field, training and staffing in their use, and assuring that those who needed these systems most had ready, responsive and timely access to them, along with well trained operators who could see to it that these systems worked. If you want to know the names of these Officers, you'll find the bulk of them listed here. We salute them all.

Footnotes 

[1] For more information on Moore's Law, please click here  )  - To return to your place in the text click here:

[2] Radiosonde: a radio probe able to read barometric pressure and other data at altitude and transmit it back to a fixed receiver on the ground. Today radiosondes measure pressure, altitude, geographical position (latitude and longitude), temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and cosmic ray levels. Radiosondes that measure ozone concentrations are known as ozonesondes. - To return to your place in the text click here:

[3] The Army Ground Forces drew in the Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps, Armored Force, Antiaircraft Command, and Tank Destroyer Command.  - To return to your place in the text click here:

Additional Sources

Thompson, R.L. (1947). Wiring a continent: A history of the telegraph industry in the USA, 1832-1886. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rivise,  M.J. (1950). Inside Western Union. New York: Sterling Publishing Company. 

WD, Introduction to Employment in the War Department—A Reference Manual for Employees, Aug 1942, p. 21.

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