PRIORITIES AND PROPERTY 239 



Throughout the war electronic components were extremely scarce due to 

 the great demand for large quantities of newly developed electronic devices. 

 The Services themselves attempted to alleviate the confused production pic- 

 ture first by expediting and then by a system of allocation of component parts 

 to their most important production contracts at the expense of the lesser ones. 

 In the early days of the war the Army Signal Corps maintained a large 

 group of expediters in strategic manufacturing plants with considerable 

 success. This was followed by a joint Army and Navy expediting group, 

 operating under the name of Army and Navy Communication Production 

 Expediting Agency (ANCPEA), which continued its activities until Octo- 

 ber 28, 1942, when the Army-Navy Electronic Production Agency (ANEPA) 

 was formed. By this time practically all electronics production was in the 

 AA-i priority category since that rating was necessary for the procurement 

 of component parts. Another organization known as the Procurement 

 Precedence of Supplies, Material, and Equipment Committee, was estab- 

 lished to operate under the authority of the Joint Communications Board 

 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The task of this committee was to set up each 

 production contract in a precedence category. The precedence categories ran 

 from A, which was the best, to L which was last in importance, and there 

 was a set of "ground rules" to guide the placing of contracts in the various 

 classes. The expressions "precedence category" and "precedence listing" were 

 used rather than "precedence rating," for priorities were still in effect and 

 this undertaking was to be operative within one priority rating — AA-i. 



When a contract received its precedence number, ANEPA was charged 

 with expediting the contract in accordance with the precedence listing. The 

 WPB on January i, 1943, recognized this system of precedences to the 

 extent that manufacturers were authorized to observe them, but it stated 

 that an order without a precedence listing would still be filled in the regular 

 manner. In the beginning there was no provision for research, but later a 

 listing of D-250 was designated for research programs. In addition there 

 was provision that when a laboratory project reached the stage of develop- 

 ment where quantity production was envisaged, application could be made 

 for a better listing. The priorities section did not limit its expediting activi- 

 ties to ANEPA channels so far as research requirements were concerned 

 because the D-250 rating was not sufficiently high to be of much benefit. 

 In some development and limited production, however, it was necessary to 

 work closely with ANEPA because the Services had specifically asked that 

 crash programs be undertaken. The Engineering and Transition Office of 

 OSRD took over the responsibility for obtaining these specific listings, 



ANEPA was dissolved in June 1944, mainly because of the confusion 

 which existed in industry due to the fact that both ANEPA and WPB had 

 regional office representatives in the field doing the same job. WPB took 

 over most of the expediting activities for the Services. The Precedence Com- 



