NDRC OF OSRD — THE COMMITTEE 67 



a success. While it was resorted to in connection with developments of 

 several divisions, it was most generally used in connection with rockets for 

 the Navy and radar for both Army and Navy, in both of which cases the 

 procurement ran well into the millions of dollars. The situation, however, 

 was not a happy one for NDRC and OSRD, since it was one for which 

 the agencies had not been intended and which required inefficient use of 

 scientific manpower. Crash procurement hence was embarked upon reluc- 

 tandy, and for the sole reason that there seemed no practical alternative 

 which would deliver needed new equipment to the front as quickly. 



Absence of such an alternative was not owing to lack of legal power 

 on the part of the Army and Navy; both had the same powers as OSRD 

 and more. The great size and complexity of organization necessary to the 

 armed establishment in total war carried with them as an inevitable con- 

 sequence both the necessity for mass procurement and also the necessity for 

 extremes of specific detail which can be secured only at the expense of swift 

 action. Service procurement procedures, built to obtain large numbers of 

 definitely specified items, were highly effective in obtaining millions of 

 identical objects which could be specified to the last detail; they were in- 

 effective when the problem was one of securing a small number of items 

 the detailed specification of which had not been worked out to the final 

 decimal and which were wanted in a hurry. Had OSRD declined to enter 

 the field of crash procurement, a revision of Service procurement proce- 

 dures might have overcome this difficulty. Such revision would of itself 

 have required time and might have delayed the delivery of critical equip- 

 ment to die fighting fronts. 



As a Committee it was possible for NDRC to advise Bush on matters of 

 policy and to instruct its agents along broad lines. Obviously the detailed 

 supervision of a research program could not be exercised by the Committee 

 as such. The next two chapters will be devoted to the agents used by the 

 NDRC in supervising the research program — the Chairman's Office and 

 the divisions. 



