134 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



tion and personnel between the field units and the home office was essential. 

 A rotation of assignments permitted field men to renew their acquaintance 

 with laboratory developments and provided an opportunity for training 

 members of the group in field work through practical experience. Success 

 in early operations led to the establishment of several subgroups to deal with 

 submarine operations, air operations, amphibious operations and naval gun- 

 fire support, antiaircraft fire, and special problems, including suicide attacks 

 by Japanese airplanes against American vessels. 



OFS Activities in Europe 



In the European Theater of Operations (ETO) NDRC already had effec- 

 tive mechanisms for supplying technical consultation to both high and low 

 echelons through the OSRD London Mission and the work of the British 

 branches of the M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory and the Harvard Radio Re- 

 search Laboratory. These agencies were functioning effectively and there 

 was no need for OFS to exercise jurisdiction over them. It was decided 

 rather that OFS should use them when expedient for attachment of new 

 missions which it might be asked to sponsor in the European theater. 



Thus, unless the military orders specifically prevented, every OFS man 

 going eastward was advised to stop in at the London (or later, Paris) Office 

 with a copy of his instructions from OFS. There he was given guidance on 

 his mission and help with his fiscal affairs. He was also familiarized with 

 a channel for sending reports and requests to OFS which commonly proved 

 faster and more direct than the military channels normally available for 

 communications of a technical nature. The use of this channel was always 

 with the approval of the military and copies of the communications were 

 usually sent concurrently through military channels. 



Perhaps the single most important and certainly the most colorful OFS 

 project in the European theater was the ALSOS Mission. This was a joint 

 Army-Navy-OSRD activity that involved sending a group of outstanding 

 physicists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers and other scientists into the 

 territory recently won and close on the heels of or even along with the 

 advancing armies. Its primary object was to secure an immediate over-all 

 picture of German scientific research in the war effort and especially to 

 find out with the greatest possible speed what progress German scientists 

 had made in the critical field of atomic energy. 



From the days when American troops made a successful landing in Italy 

 until the end of the war, OSRD sent some sixty scientists into enemy- 

 occupied and finally into enemy territory. They were engaged in assembling 

 accurate information regarding the personnel, laboratories, institutions and 

 industrial firms engaged in scientific war research for the enemy; prompt 

 apprehension and questioning of the scientists and technical men and the 



