United States Army Signal Corps
The United States Army Signal Corps is a branch of the United States Army responsible for creating and managing communications and information systems for the command and control of combined arms forces. It manages new technologies and portfolios, that are eventually transferred to other U.S. government entities; such responsibilities include military intelligence, weather forecasting, and aviation.
Mission statement
The USASC provides support for the command and control of combined arms forces. Signal support includes: network operations and management of the electromagnetic spectrum. Signal support encompasses all aspects of designing and installing data communications networks that employ single and multichannel satellite, tropospheric scatter, terrestrial microwave switching, messaging, video teleconferencing, visual information, and other related systems. The Corps integrates tactical and strategic base communications, as well as information processing and management systems into a global information network that supports knowledge dominance for Army, joint and coalition operations.History
Early history
While serving as a medical officer in Texas in 1856, Albert James Myer proposed that the Army use aerial telegraphy, a visual communications system that he developed, for signaling. When the Army adopted his system on 21 June 1860, the Signal Corps was born, with Myer as the first and only Signal Officer.Myer's first assignment in his new position was in the early 1860s Navajo expedition in New Mexico. In June 1861, Myer's system was used to direct the fire of a harbor battery at Fort Wool against the Confederate positions opposite Fort Monroe as a part of the Civil War. Flags were used for daytime signaling and torches were used at night.
Until 1863, Myer relied mostly on detailed personnel. Then, on 3 March 1863, Congress authorized a regular Signal Corps for the duration of the war. Some 2,900 officers and enlisted men served, although not at any single time, in the Civil War Signal Corps.
Myer's Civil War innovations included an unsuccessful balloon experiment at First Bull Run and, in response to McClellan's desire for a Signal Corps field telegraph train, an electric telegraph in the form of the Beardslee magnetoelectric telegraph machine. However, even during the Civil War, the wigwag system was losing significance in the face of the electric telegraph, which bypassed line-of-sight restrictions.
Myer used his office in downtown Washington, D.C. to house the Signal Corps School, although this was temporary. The location was later moved to Fort Greble, one of the Defenses of Washington during the Civil War, but this too was later found to be inadequate. Myer then chose Fort Whipple, where the school remained for over 20 years and ultimately was renamed Fort Myer.
Signal Corps detachments participated in campaigns fighting Native Americans in the west, such as the Powder River Expedition of 1865.
In July 1866, Congress decided that there should be a unit, or at least a cadre of Signal Officers, even in peace time. It then provided one Chief Signal Officer of the Army, with the rank of Colonel. Six additional officers and 100 men were chosen from the Corps of Engineers for the Signal Corps.
The electric telegraph, in addition to visual signaling, became a Signal Corps responsibility in 1867. Within 12 years, the Signal Corps had constructed, and was maintaining and operating, some 4,000 miles of telegraph lines along the nation's western frontier.
In 1870, the Signal Corps established a congressional mandated national weather service. Within a decade, with the assistance of Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, Myer commanded the weather service until his death in 1880.
The Weather Bureau became part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1891, while the corps retained responsibility for military meteorology.
In 1881, the Signal Corps participated in the First International Polar Year. One of the groups commanded by Lieutenant Greely became separated from their base camp and were marooned on an ice floe. Due to starvation and drowning, only seven of the original 25 volunteers survived.
The Signal Corps played an increasingly important role in the Spanish–American War of 1898 and the subsequent Philippine Insurrection. In addition to visual signaling, including heliography, the corps supplied telephone and telegraph wire lines and cable communications, enabled the use of telephones in combat, conducted combat photography, and renewed the use of balloons. Shortly after the war, the Signal Corps constructed the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, also known as the Alaska Communications System, introducing the first wireless telegraph in the Western Hemisphere.
In October 1903, Congress directed then Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus Greely an order. In October 1904, Congress appropriated for the Signal Corps to "build a flying machine for war purposes." Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General Adolphus Greely thus contracted the Wright brothers in 1908, who piloted the first aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
World War I
For more details on this topic, see Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps and Aviation Section, U.S. Signal CorpsOn 1 August 1907, an Aeronautical Division was established within the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. In 1908, on Fort Myer, Virginia, the Wright brothers conducted test flights of the Army's first airplane built to Signal Corps' specifications. Reflecting the need for an official pilot rating, War Department Bulletin No. 2, released on 24 February 1911, established a "Military Aviator" rating. Army aviation remained within the Signal Corps until 1918, when it became the Army Air Service.
During World War I, Chief Signal Officer George Owen Squier worked closely with private industries to perfect radio tubes while creating a major signal laboratory at Camp Alfred Vail. Early radiotelephones developed by the Signal Corps were introduced into the European theater in 1918. While the new American voice radios were superior to the radiotelegraph sets, telephone and telegraph remained the major technology of World War I.
A pioneer in radar, Colonel William Blair, director of the Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth, demonstrated the prototype that led to the SCR-268 in May 1937. Even before the United States entered World War II, mass production of two radar sets, the SCR-268 and the SCR-270, had begun. Along with the Signal Corps' tactical FM radio, also developed in the 1930s, radar was the most important communications development of World War II.
During World War I, women switchboard operators, known as the "Hello Girls", were sworn into the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Despite the fact that they wore U.S. Army uniforms and were subject to Army regulations, they were not given honorable discharges but were considered "civilians" employed by the military, because Army regulations specified the male gender. Not until 1978—the 60th anniversary of the end of World War I—did Congress approve veteran status/honorable discharges for the remaining "Hello Girls".
World War II
When the War Department was reorganized on 9 March 1942, the Signal Corps became one of the technical services in the Services of Supply. Its organized components served both the Army Ground Forces and the Army Air Forces.The Army Chief Signal Officer was responsible for establishing and maintaining communications service schools for officers and enlisted soldiers, ranging in qualifications from those holding doctorates to functional illiterates. The single pre-war Signal training site was Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. To keep up with the demand for more signalers, the CSO opened more training facilities: Camp Crowder, Missouri; Camp Kohler, California; and Camp Murphy, Florida.
The Eastern Signal Corps Training Center at Fort Monmouth consisted of an officers' school, an officer candidate school, an enlisted school and a basic training center at sub post Camp Wood. The officer candidate school operated from 1941 to 1946 and graduated 21,033 Signal Corps second lieutenants.
The term "RADAR" was coined by the Navy in 1940 and agreed to by the Army in 1941. The first Signal Corps Field Manual on Aircraft Warning Service defined RADAR as "a term used to designate radio sets SCR -268 and SCR-270 and similar equipment." The SCR-268 and 270 were not radios at all, but were designated as such to keep their actual function secret. Although important offensive applications have since been developed, radar emerged historically from the defensive need to counter the possibility of massive aerial bombardment.
In 1941, the laboratories at Fort Monmouth developed the SCR-300, the first FM backpack radio. Its pioneering frequency modulation circuits provided front-line troops with reliable, static-free communications. The labs also fielded multichannel FM radio relay sets in the European Theater of Operations as early as 1943. Multichannel radio broadcasting allowed several channels of communications to be broadcast over a single radio signal, increasing security and range and relieving frequency spectrum crowding.
In December 1942, the War Department directed the Signal Corps General Development Laboratories and the Camp Evans Signal Lab to combine into the Signal Corps Ground Service with headquarters at Bradley Beach, New Jersey. The department also directed the Signal Corps Ground Service to cut total military and civilian personnel from 14,518 military and civilian personnel to 8,879 by August 1943. In June 1944, "Signees", former Italian prisoners of war, arrived at Fort Monmouth to perform housekeeping duties. A lieutenant colonel and 500 enlisted men became hospital, mess, and repair shop attendants, relieving American soldiers from these duties.
One of the more unusual units of the Signal Corps were the Joint Assault Signal Company. These companies were Signal Corps units that were made up of several hundred Army, Air Corps, and United States Navy communications specialists specially trained to link land, sea and air operational elements. They saw combat throughout the Pacific and European theaters during World War II in late 1943. JASCOs were much larger than normal signal companies. The joint assault signal companies were the predecessor to the Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company that exists today. JASCOs represented but one of many unprecedented Signal Corps' activities in the Pacific theater. Shipboard fighting was a new kind of combat for Signal Corps soldiers. Army communicators sometimes plied their trade aboard Navy and civilian ships. Signal Corps personnel also served on Army communications ships.
In particular the Southwest Pacific Area formed a fleet, unofficially known as the "Catboat Flotilla" and formally as the CP fleet, that served as command and communication vessels during amphibious operations, starting with two Australian schooners Harold and Argosy Lemal acquired by the Army and converted during the first half of 1943 by Australian firms into communications ships with AWA radio sets built by Amalgamated Wireless of Australia installed. These initial vessels were joined by Geoanna, Volador and later by a more capable fleet as described in The Signal Corps: The Outcome :
The first task was to obtain ships more suitable than the Harold or the Argosy. Such a ship was the freighter passenger, FP-47, acquired by Signal Corps in March 1944, at Sydney. The Army had built her in the United States in 1942, a sturdy, wooden, diesel-driven vessel only 114 feet long, but broad, of 370 tons, intended for use in the Aleutians. Instead she had sailed to Australia as a tug. The Signal Corps fitted her with Australian transmitters and receivers, also with an SCR-300 walkie-talkie, two SCR-808's, and an SCR-608, plus power equipment, antennas, and, finally, quarters for the Signal Corps operators. The Australian sets were intended for long-range CW signals operating in the high frequencies; the SCRs were short-range VHF FM radios for use in the fleet net and for ship-to-shore channels. Armed with antiaircraft weapons and machine guns, navigated by a crew of 6 Army Transport Service officers and the 12 men already mentioned, the FP-47 was ready for service in June. Her Signal Corps complement consisted of one officer and 12 men.
The facilities of FP-47 were needed immediately at Hollandia to supplement the heavily loaded signal nets that could hardly carry the message burden imposed by the invasion and the subsequent build-up there of a great base. Arriving on 25 June, she anchored offshore and ran cables to the message centers on land. Her powerful transmitters opened new channels to SWPA headquarters in Brisbane and to the advance headquarters still at Port Moresby. At Hollandia, and at Biak, to which the FP-47 moved early in September, this one ship handled an average of 7,000 to 11,000 code groups a day.
Many film industry personalities served in the Signal Corps, including Stan Lee, an American comic book writer, Tony Randall, the actor, and Jean Shepherd, radio storyteller, author and narrator of A Christmas Story.
In 1942, General George C. Marshall ordered the creation of the Army Pictorial Service to produce motion pictures for the training, indoctrination, and entertainment of the American forces and their Allies. The APS took over Kaufman Astoria Studios in 1942 and produced over 2,500 films during the war with over 1,000 redubbed in other languages. The Army left Astoria studios and film production in 1971.
Julius Rosenberg worked for the Signal Corps Labs from 1940 to 1945. He was dismissed early in 1945, when it was learned he had been a member of the Communist Party USA secret apparatus, and had passed to the Soviet Union the secret of the proximity fuze.