World War II: GW and the Missiles Project

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On November 5, 1945, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) sponsored a series of broadcasts over the Mutual Network. These broadcasts explained the hitherto highly secretive work of American scientists during World War II. The third speaker in that series told the story of the work of Division 3, the rocket ordnance division, which was one of the twenty-one working divisions of the National Defense Research Committee. The following is an excerpt from that broadcast.

George Washington University's contribution to the work of Division 3 was of paramount importance. The rocket development division was given the specific job of developing rocket ordnance weapons for combat use by all branches of the Army and Navy.

In 1940 and 1941, when the nation began to prepare its defenses, our armed forces had no rocket weapons in service use and only very limited and uncertain plans for them in prospect. By V-J Day, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps had fired millions of rockets at the enemy in all theaters of operations, with telling effect.

The magnitude of the military use of rocket ordnance can be illustrated quickly with a few figures giving the dollar value of rocket production. During 1945 the Army rocket procurement was running at the rate of $150,000,000 per year. The Navy procurement program began with a modest $9,000,000 in 1943, jumped to $95,000,000 in 1944, and by the summer of 1945 had increased to the rate of $100,000,000 per month -- as much as the Navy was spending for all other types of ordnance combined. This enormous outlay resulted in the main from the research and development work done in the two major laboratories of Division 3, NDRC.

New weapons do not just occur. The route from the research laboratory to the fighting front involves many steps and many people. The transition of any new device from the laboratory to full scale use takes anywhere from five to twenty years in peacetime. During the war this process was telescoped to approximately two years and even less in some cases. Saving time and providing powerful new weapons meant saving men's lives and winning battles. This immense job, involving as it did overlapping spheres of responsibility on the part of the Army, the Navy, the civilian scientists, and industry, could not have been done without certain vital assets. First was the element of unselfish collaboration among all who participated. Second was the genius, talent, initiative of our people, and devotion to the job. Third was the important asset of full interchange of information and knowledge with our British allies who had gone to work in their laboratories several years earlier and had already laid the basic groundwork for the development of many new weapons used in this war. We in this country were able to catch up quickly and save months of trial and experiment only because we were given full benefit of British knowledge and experience freely and without question. Nowhere was this more true than in the field of rocket development.

The research and development work of Division 3 was centered in two major laboratories; one in the eastern section of the country at Pinto, West Virginia, near Cumberland, Maryland. This laboratory, the Alleghany Ballistics Laboratory, was operated under an OSRD contract by The George Washington University of Washington, D.C. Supporting the work at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory were other groups under OSRD contract; the Budd Whell Company of Detroit and the Bell Telephone Laboratories of New York City. In addition, contracts with the Universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Duke provided small scientific groups to work on fundamental studies on rocket powders.

On the west coast a large laboratory was organized, staffed, and operated by the California Institute of Technology. There large groups were organized to investigate and study all phases of rocket ordnance work, develop complete rocket weapons, including propellants, igniters, firing systems, launchers, fuses, fire control systems, metal parts, etc., and set up pilot-production facilities to produce the new rocket weapons in sufficient quantities to introduce the weapons into training and combat use while industry was tooling up for full production. Supporting the central group at the California Institute of Technology were approximately 500 subcontractors, ranging from one man garages to the largest West Coast steel fabricators.

At their peak, the major laboratories of Division 3 together employed approximately 4,000 people, of whom about 800 were trained scientists and engineers. With but a single exception, not one of these technically trained men had had any previous experience with rocket development. The group included physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, astronomers, biochemists, and engineers of all types. Their quality and training, however, were equal to the tasks before them, as results proved. I am proud to speak for them and for all the others who worked so faithfully yet anonymously behind the curtain of wartime secrecy.

The basic problems of warfare, both offensive and defensive, are easily recognized and understood, but solutions in the form of new weapons and tactics are more difficult. New weapons are developed both in response to and in anticipation of tactical problems. The effectiveness of a new weapon or combination of weapons may be so decisive that long established tactical doctrines are completely outmoded. The supreme example is the atomic bomb. Its immense destructive power makes obsolete our classical concepts of warfare.

Our programs of rocket development, therefore, were extremely sensitive to the basic tactical and strategic problems facing the fighting forces at any given time and, more important, those problems which could be anticipated months ahead. When the war in Europe ended, our work in the rocket ordnance laboratories began to diminish and it ended with V-J Day, save for the problems of termination and transfer of our laboratory facilities to the Services to become part of the peacetime facilities of the Army and Navy for the development and improvement of rocket ordnance of all types. The pattern for the future is all too clear if the knowledge and talents of the scientist are to be used in a great armaments race. Already at hand or but a few years away, are super long range rockets with atomic bomb warheads, guided missiles, poison gases many times more effective than those previously known, bacteriological warfare agents, and other weapons too numerous to mention. Almost to a man, those of us who have been privileged to serve our country in the rocket ordnance laboratories hope that the world can organize itself to prevent forever another war."

Note: This was taken from a transcript of the actual broadcast.

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Author or Source: University Archives subject files; Mutual Broadcasting Program, 1946
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: G. David Anderson, University Archivist and Historian

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