OFFICE OF FIELD SERVICE I33 



Something over one half of the OFS personnel was engaged in the four 

 principal lines of activity specifically mentioned in the following pages, 

 namely ASWORG, ALSOS, the Operational Research Section in Hawaii 

 and the Research Section in the Southwest Pacific. The remainder had 

 highly varied and interesting assignments, but from an administrative 

 standpoint they operated directly with OFS headquarters in Washington 

 rather than through one of the four major activities. 



The Antisubmarine Warfare Operational Research Group 



The Antisubmarine Warfare Operational Research Group (ASWORG) 

 had been estabfished under a contract with Columbia University supervised 

 by Division 6 of NDRC. Shordy after the creation of OFS, it was made a 

 direct activity of that Ofi&ce and it became the largest single project activity 

 of OFS both in terms of number of men involved and in geographic dis- 

 tribution of their assignments. More than seventy specialists became mem- 

 bers of the group, about half of them added after the transfer to OFS juris- 

 diction. Representatives of the project were located in North Africa and 

 London, in Trinidad, Brazil and Newfoundland, in Hawaii and the Philip- 

 pines, at Boston, New York, Quonset, Langley Field, Miami, and Fort 

 Lauderdale. 



The contribution of operational research toward solving the antisubma- 

 rine problems established the ASWORG organization and its methods so 

 firmly that the Navy extended the scope of its responsibilities to activities 

 of American submarines in the Pacific, to naval air operations and then 

 finally to all types of naval operations. Whereas the group had concentrated 

 in the early days on such relatively simple matters as the operation of a 

 single aircraft on convoy patrol or submarine search, it was later dealing 

 with the complicated operations of whole task forces. The group was re- 

 named the Operations Research Group (ORG) in October 1944, and 

 transferred to jurisdiction of the Readiness Division in COMINCH.* At 

 the end of the war it was taken over from OSRD, with somewhat reduced 

 manpower, to become a permanent part of the Navy organization. 



A fundamental concept that characterized this project throughout its 

 history was that a large section of the group's membership should remain 

 as a central group working with the general staff in Washington, carrying 

 on the more theoretical tasks of statistically analyzing operational reports, 

 devising and interpreting tactics and assisting in the preparation of tactical 

 doctrine. Other members were assigned for temporary duty to the field 

 where they would work with the users of new weapons, could apply ideas 

 for new tactics in practice, and could recognize new problems to be trans- 

 mitted to the central body for further work. Free interchange of informa- 



* Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Fleet. 



