The Signal Corps Laboratories (SCL) was a research installation under the command of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Headquartered at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, SCL directed research on electronics, radar, and communication systems for the U.S. Army. Throughout its history, SCL operated under many names as the organizational structure of the Signal Corps and the U.S. Army changed over time.
History
Post-World War I The Signal Corps Laboratories emerged as a result of declining economic conditions that compelled the U.S. Army Signal Corps to consolidate its widespread laboratories. By the late 1920s, the Signal Corps administered seven different major laboratories across the United States. In Washington, D.C., it had the Signal Corps Electrical Laboratory, the Signal Corps Meteorological Laboratory, the Signal Corps Research Laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards, and the Photographic Laboratory at Fort Humphreys (now Fort Lesley J. McNair). In addition, the Signal Corps Aircraft Radio Laboratory was located at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, the Subaqueous Sound Ranging Laboratory was stationed at Fort H. G. Wright in New York, and the Radio Laboratory was established at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey.
In 1929, the Signal Corps transferred the Electrical Laboratory, the Meteorological Laboratory, and the Research Laboratory at the Bureau of Standards to Fort Monmouth where the Radio Laboratory resided. In 1930, the Subaqueous Sound Ranging Laboratory was also moved from Fort H. G. Wright to Fort Monmouth. Together, these five laboratories formed the consolidated Signal Corps Laboratories.
Initially, nine wooden buildings built in 1918 housed SCL operations. However, the need for more space led Colonel William R. Blair, the first director of the consolidated laboratories, to arrange the construction of a permanent laboratory building in 1934. When construction finished in 1935, the newly built facility was designated as the Fort Monmouth Signal Laboratory.
World War II
In light of the ongoing war in Europe, military interest in the United States reached a feverish level as many anticipated the nation’s entry into the second World War. From 1940 to 1941, the Signal Corps established three field laboratories near Fort Monmouth to supplement the expanding research efforts of SCL.
Field Laboratory Number One was situated west of Red Bank, New Jersey, and was primarily responsible for the development of ground communications technologies and radio equipment. Spanning 46 acres, the site was named Camp Coles in honor of Colonel Ray Howard Coles, the Executive Officer for the Chief Signal Officer of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Field Laboratory Number Two served as a location where Signal Corps researchers worked on wire, direction-finding, sound-and-light, and meteorological projects. Situated in Camp Charles Wood near Eatontown, New Jersey, the field laboratory later became known as the Eatontown Signal Laboratory. Field Laboratory Number Three acted as one of the principal facilities for radar research, development, and testing during World War II. Due to the significant military importance of radar at the time, the Office of the Chief Signal Officer made efforts to keep the covert activities of Field Laboratory Number Three separate from SCL’s general operations. Known as the Signal Corps Radar Laboratory, the facility was established at Fort Hancock in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, but work also took place near Sandy Hook in the boroughs of Rumson and Highlands. However, confusion over the sanction of the word “radar” prompted the U.S. Department of War to move the installation to a site in Belmar, New Jersey, where it operated under a different name. The field laboratory site was soon designated as Camp Evans in 1942 in honor of Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Evans, a World War I Signal Corps officer who had died in 1936.
Early in the war, the Fort Monmouth Signal Laboratory and Field Laboratories Number One and Two were collectively known as the Signal Corps General Development Laboratories (SCGDL). In March 1942, the U.S. Army was reorganized into three commands—the Army Ground Forces, the Army Air Forces, and the Army Service Forces—with the Signal Corps belonging in the last category. Then, nine months later in December, the operations at Fort Monmouth Signal Laboratory, Camp Coles, Eatontown Signal Laboratory, and Camp Evans were consolidated to form the Signal Corps Ground Service. By this point, SCL possessed a personnel strength of over 14,500 military and civilian personnel.
Post-World War II Following World War II, SCL and its field laboratories underwent several structural changes, as well as name changes, in order to better organize their activities.
In February 1945, the Eatontown Signal Laboratory was transferred from the Signal Corps to the Army Air Forces. The facility would later be renamed to Watson Laboratories and moved to Rome, New York in 1951. In April 1945, a general order by the U.S. Department of War renamed Camp Coles to Coles Signal Laboratory and Camp Evans to Evans Signal Laboratory. Two months later, Fort Monmouth Signal Laboratory was redesignated as Squier Signal Laboratory in honor of Major General George Owen Squier, the founder of SCL and Chief Signal Officer during World War I.
Most notably, the Signal Corps Ground Service was reorganized into the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories (SCEL) in May 1945. With the absence of the Eatontown Signal Laboratory, SCEL consisted of the newly named Squier Signal Laboratory, Coles Signal Laboratory, and Evans Signal Laboratory. As a consolidated laboratory, SCEL prioritized research pertaining to communication systems, radar, electron tubes, and component improvement as well as meteorology, proximity fuzes, and photography.
While the personnel strength of SCEL had dropped significantly after the war, the existing laboratory buildings were not large enough to house the laboratories’ growing workforce. By 1952, the laboratory buildings had reached maximum capacity, and the Signal Corps began planning the construction of a new laboratory building to consolidate all SCEL activities. In 1954, the Signal Corps began moving SCEL operations to the new but incomplete Albert J. Myer Center in the Charles Woods Area of Fort Monmouth. Named in honor of the first Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the new facility was commonly referred to as the Hexagon due to the building’s unique six-sided shape. However, the Albert J. Myer Center never realized its planned hexagon shape, purportedly due to misappropriated funds. As a result, the four-story tall building exhibited only four sides and permanently lacked two of its six intended sides. Upon consolidation, the individual laboratories of SCEL were divided into seven divisions: Communications, Radar, Countermeasures, Physical Sciences, Electron Devices, Production and Maintenance Engineering, and Components, Materials and Power Sources.
In 1958, the U.S. Army redesignated SCEL as the U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory (USASRDL). In that same year, USASRDL created the Institute for Exploratory Research to place greater emphasis on internal research.
White Sands Missile Range
The first recorded activity of SCEL at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) was on April 2, 1946, when the Signal Corps deployed a team of 10 men to the then-named White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) to assist the testing of the captured German V-2 rockets. By 1949, the U.S. Department of the Army established the SCEL Field Station No. 1 at Fort Bliss, Texas as a class II activity. Field Station No. 1 pioneered research in radar tracking and communication systems to provide support for the early missile programs at WSPG.
In 1952, Field Station No. 1 was reorganized into the White Sands Signal Corps Agency (WSSCA), which sought to improve munition performance by conducting high altitude and upper-atmosphere research. In 1954, WSSCA expanded to form three teams: one at Yuma Proving Ground, one at Dugway Proving Ground, and one at the Canal Zone in Panama. As part of its duties, the organization was tasked with conducting high-altitude and upper-atmosphere research using various rockets. These included the Nike Cajun rocket, the Army tactical Loki rocket, and the Arcas rocket.On May 1, 1958, the White Sands Proving Ground was officially renamed White Sands Missile Range.
By 1959, WSSCA was redesignated as the U.S. Army Signal Missile Support Agency (SMSA) after its size and scope of operations had doubled. SMSA was responsible for providing communication-electronic, meteorologic, and other support to WSMR as well as conducting research and development in meteorology, electronic warfare, and missile vulnerability. At the time, the meteorological activities at WSMR were under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Electronics Research and Development Activity as well as the Atmospheric Sciences Office, an organization under the operational control of SCEL at Fort Monmouth.
Closure In 1962, the U.S. Army went through a dramatic reorganization of its internal structure in response to a study directed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. At the time, the Signal Corps belonged to the Technical Services, a coalition of independently administered agencies that supplied weapons, equipment, and services to the Army. Originally created as part of the Army Service Forces (ASF) during World War II, this group consisted of the Quartermaster Corps, the Corps of Engineers, the Medical Department, the Ordnance Department, the Signal Corps, the Chemical Warfare Service, and the Transportation Corps. Even after the dissolution of the ASF in 1946, the Technical Services continued its operations, except for some changes—the Chemical Warfare Service was dropped and the Finance Department was added.
As part of the Army reorganization in 1962, Congress eliminated the Technical Services and transferred the material development and procurement functions of the Signal Corps to the newly created Army Materiel Command (AMC). On August 1, 1962, AMC established one of its subordinate elements, the U.S. Army Electronics Command (ECOM), at Fort Monmouth to continue the research and development operations previously helmed by the Signal Corps. Under ECOM, the USASRDL was renamed to the U.S. Army Electronics Research and Development Laboratory that same year. In addition, SMSA became a part of the Electronics Research and Development Activity (ERDA) at WSMR under ECOM. During the restructuring of ECOM in 1964, however, the U.S. Army Electronics Research and Development Laboratory was changed to the U.S. Army Electronics Laboratories.
Ultimately, the U.S. Army Electronics Laboratories was discontinued on June 1, 1965. The organization was then broken up into six separate Army laboratories: the Electronic Components Laboratory, the Communications/ADP Laboratory, the Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory, the Electronic Warfare Laboratory, the Avionics Laboratory, and the Combat Surveillance and Target Acquisition Laboratory. Around the same time, ECOM established the Institute for Exploratory Research. The Electronic Components Laboratory and the Institute for Exploratory Research would later merge to become the Electronics Technology and Devices Laboratory, and Vulnerability Assessment Laboratory would eventually emerge out from the Electronic Warfare Laboratory.
Research Upon consolidation, the Signal Corps Laboratories was primarily responsible for the design and development of communications equipment and the improvement of meteorological services. Much of its research pushed the boundaries of radio technology, so much so that the Signal Corps employed a standard nomenclature for radio technology where each item began with the letters “SCR.” These letters originally stood for “set, complete, radio” but instead came to signify “Signal Corps radio.”
Radar