This is the continuation of a story begun on our October 2013 Home Page. To go to an archived version of that page, click here: October 2013 Home Page Archive. To return to this month's actual Home Page, click on the Signal Corps orange Home Page menu item in the upper left corner of this page.

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. é

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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This page originally posted 1 October 2013