132 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



accelerate acceptance and procurement. Although the military in Washing- 

 ton were commonly sympathetic and willing to help in arranging such 

 missions, they could not insist on sending civilian visitors to an operating 

 command in the field. Here the theater commander was the supreme au- 

 thority. He could refuse such missions if his staff were not convinced of 

 their desirability; yet the real need was for an opportunity to convince the 

 staff of the utility of the equipment. The divisions often urged that OFS 

 use its good offices in the close contacts with high levels of Army and Navy 

 which it was establishing both at home and in the field to bring about an 

 invitation from a theater commander for a division representative to visit 

 the areas under his control. 



Facilitating Exchange of Scientific Information 



The presence in OFS of men who could be emissaries not only for the 

 OSRD development program but also for the technical services was wel- 

 comed by all to whom a free flow of technical information was important 

 and who had suffered from the inability to communicate freely with the 

 ultimate users of newly developed equipment. OFS therefore established 

 with NDRC and with the Service laboratories procedures that would lead 

 to rapid procurement of technical information, agreeing in turn to supply 

 them with firsthand information that came back through miUtary channels 

 from the field service representatives. 



Groups of OFS consultants maintaining more or less stationary head- 

 quarters in the field developed libraries for the whole command, containing 

 not only the material procured through the OFS central office but also tech- 

 nical reports from Service branches on the mainland and operational reports 

 originating in the theaters. Correspondence and technical reports which soon 

 began to flow back from OFS men in the theaters commonly contained 

 requests for information, for equipment, or for personnel. Over two hun- 

 dred requests were received from the Middle Pacific. Approximately half of 

 them were requests for information concerning the production status, avail- 

 ability, shipping dates or operating characteristics of radar equipment of all 

 kinds. Some of them led to development work by NDRC or by the Services. 

 Forty requests for equipment were received, a substantial number of them 

 for radar spare parts, preproduction models, or test equipment. Seventy-one 

 requests for reports involved nearly 400 separate documents published by 

 NDRC, CMR, the Services and other agencies. Films, photographs and 

 drawings were sent out to the theaters in large quantity. 



About 150 requests were received from the OFS headquarters in the 

 Southwest Pacific. Approximately one third of these were for equipment, 

 generally for the development of new equipment to meet problems unique 

 to that area. 



