328 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



contracts. More important, the officers in charge of Service scientific pro- 

 grams must be of such caHber as to merit confidence in themselves and their 

 programs. The temptation to impart to the Service laboratories an omnis- 

 cience they do not deserve must be resisted, and the civiUan regarded as a 

 partner, not as an interloper. Above all, he must be given complete access 

 to all the information he needs to be effective as a scientist. 



Close contact with field operations. That persons responsible for design- 

 ing and developing equipment for field use should have an opportunity for 

 close and immediate observation of its performance under field conditions 

 would seem to be obvious. Where, as in the case of the OSRD-supported 

 branch laboratories in England, the developing group was in immediate 

 contact with the using group in the field, it was possible for the scientist to 

 appreciate the needs of the military, to design for them and to furnish modi- 

 fied equipment in a remarkably short time. Unfortunately, it was never 

 possible for OSRD to work out with the Services a completely satisfactory 

 over-all plan for assuring close contact between the scientists and the forces 

 in the field. 



The Office of Field Service played an increasingly important role in many 

 areas, but the degree of its usefulness varied with particular situations. Thus, 

 the Navy made it difficult for civilians to follow the course of new weapons 

 in the Pacific although the difficulty of working with some parts of the 

 Army was almost as great. The gap between the research worker in military 

 medicine and medical officers in the field was at least as great, and Htde 

 progress was made in bridging it during the course of OSRD operations. 



The problem inherent in this situation is not easy of solution, and it 

 oflfers a challenge to intelligent thinking on the part of the Services. The 

 scientists are by no means blameless in the delay in getting more efficient 

 field use of weapons and instruments. There was a tendency to place great 

 faith in the weapon or instrument itself, and the realization of the impor- 

 tance of the man-instrument combination was relatively slow in developing. 

 The temptation to continue laboratory work for the perfection of a piece 

 of equipment had an appeal which kept men in the laboratories when they 

 might have made greater contributions by moving into the field where they 

 could observe the operational performance of the equipment under condi- 

 tions of use. With the pull of the laboratory for the scientist and the reluc- 

 tance of the Services to give him access to operational information or permit 

 him to make his own observations, it is understandable that operational 

 analysis or field service was slow in starting and sporadic in development. 

 While it never attained a position which would warrant its copying in a 

 future emergency, it did progress to the point where it merits close study 

 as an indication of a path to be followed in the future. 



Scientific manpower. With the winning or losing of a war dominated 

 by scientific devices hanging in the balance, the United States never worked 



