LIAISON WITH THE ARMED SERVICES I55 



Project Liaison Officers provided a means for the quick exchange of in- 

 formation. Through them arrangements were made for tests. In the late 

 stages of a development, they were the intermediaries in the necessary prompt 

 selection of a commercial organization for engineering and production. 

 These later stages were facilitated by the Eegineering and Transition Office 

 of OSRD, which itself was a useful liaison agency with the procurement 

 branches of the Army and Navy. Project Liaison Officers existed to speed 

 the project from initiation to the final stage of large-scale Service procure- 

 ment. 



Lack of continuity in Liaison Officers on projects caused frequent com- 

 ment throughout the war from Chiefs of NDRC divisions. A new Liaison 

 Officer lacked knowledge of the work in hand. This situation was about 

 equally serious in the Army and Navy. At the Radiation Laboratory both 

 Services maintained reasonably large staffs, as did the Navy with the Divi- 

 sion 3 rocket work at the California Institute of Technology, so that there 

 was always someone present at these places who knew the work; but this 

 was not the case with NDRC as a whole. 



As the Liaison Officers most often were designated by the technical 

 branches of the armed services, they reflected the attitudes and were sub- 

 ject to the prejudices and opinions of their military superiors in those 

 branches. Officers who had worked hard with limited resources felt a justi- 

 fiable pride in their establishments and resented in some cases the intrusion 

 of a civilian group which might possibly supersede their organizations. 

 Some few older officers of the technical branches of both Services had an 

 attitude of proprietary interest in the development of military equipment. 

 They had the feeling, perhaps, that they were the professionals in a field 

 which was their own and where civilian scientists were intruders. Coupled 

 with this in a few cases was an overzealous branch loyalty tending to lead, 

 without deliberate intention, to identifying loyalty to the branch with the 

 broader interests of the Service as a whole or of the country. Such mistaken 

 branch loyalty seriously handicapped in some cases the relations of OSRD 

 to the Services. 



One sometimes troublesome pitfall was oversecurity. The Services at times 

 were reluctant to divulge confidential data, though this was essential if 

 successful designs were to be undertaken. The Navy in the earlier years was 

 particularly security-minded; officers did not want to give information to 

 civilians for fear it would be given to others. The assembling of all existent 

 information was a first step in undertaking a problem. Actual and not syn- 

 thetic data were needed; it was not sufficient to furnish interpreted informa- 

 tion in the form of supposably similar cases. Civilian scientists at times were 

 inhibited from attacking a problem because they were not given the back- 

 ground information. The situation improved very gready during the war, 

 as officers of the Army and Navy came to know the civilian scientists. 



