286 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



more important programs and freely answered questions of Committee 

 members. As a result the reception by that subcommittee was always friendly 

 and OSRD proceeded with the assurance that there was a reasonable prob- 

 ability of obtaining as much money as could be spent wisely. 



OSRD maintained no public relations office. For five years the Executive 

 Secretary had the responsibility for press relations in addition to his other 

 duties; and so light was the task, so co-operative the press, and so little the 

 time required that he was able to handle it personally. As the end of the 

 war approached it became desirable to arrange a program of publication 

 of results of OSRD research, a subject which is discussed below in connec- 

 tion with the Committee on Publications. When Burchard succeeded Stewart 

 as Chairman of that Committee, he was also placed in charge of press rela- 

 tions because of the intimate connection between the two subjects. 



During the last few months of active OSRD operations there was a 

 noticeable shift in attitude toward publicity. Service press releases on OSRD- 

 developed equipment began to appear, some of which made no reference 

 to OSRD but attributed credit for the equipment to Service personnel. The 

 error was understandable, for often the person preparing the release had no 

 way of knowing the OSRD participation, and he assigned the credit to the 

 officers associated with the equipment when he first learned of it. In other 

 releases, recognition of OSRD participation took the form of naming indi- 

 viduals who were not those who would have been selected by persons 

 intimately associated with the development. 



Scientists who had willingly become anonymous to advance the war 

 effort were not particularly happy to have the veil lifted to give credit for 

 their work to other men. To alleviate the situation a joint Board on Scien- 

 tific Information Policy was established in June 1945, by the joint action of 

 the Secretaries of War and the Navy and the Director of OSRD. This Board, 

 under the chairmanship of John T. Tate, Chief of Division 6 of NDRC 

 and Assistant Chief of OFS, issued four reports entitled Radar — a Report 

 on Science at War, Electronics Warfare — a Report on Radar Counter- 

 measures, Optical Glass Substitutes: A Scientific Answer to Mass Output, 

 and U. S. Rocket Ordnance — Development and Use in World War II. A 

 fifth report, on war metallurgy, was prepared but not issued. 



All except the third of these reports were printed by the Government 

 Printing Office; that one was issued in multilithed form. It was the Board's 

 endeavor to have its releases accurately assess the relative contributions made 

 under Army, Navy, and OSRD auspices, give credit where it was due, 

 and apprise the public (within the limits imposed by military security) of 

 the scientific advances in the field of the particular release. The Board's 

 activities were curtailed at the cessation of hostilities, so that, unfortunately, 

 comparable reports were not made for all fields of OSRD operations. 

 Most of the scientific talent of the country was engaged during the war 



