Radio Materiel School

The Navy established a radio school at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in early 1917. With the entry of the United States into World War I, the student body grew exponentially, necessitating the move to a more suitable location. Later that year, the US Naval Radio School was launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where for the remainder of the war it occupied Harvard campus buildings for classrooms and, somewhat controversially, erected a temporary barracks nearby on Cambridge Common.[7] Training focused on raising the student’s Morse Code operating ability, measured at the rate of words per minute. Students were drawn from Naval Reserve stations around the country. A recruit was sent to Harvard upon reaching an aptitude of 10 words per minute; when he improved to 22 words per minute he was graduated and immediately transferred to the fleet. By Armistice in November 1918, enrollment reached its peak at 3,480 men under instruction. With the war over, enrollment dwindled, and in April 1919 the remaining personnel were transferred to the Great Lakes.[8]

While enrolled at the school, students lived in dormitories and barracks on campus, while some boarded in local homes. Downtime was spent on excursions around the Boston region as well as socializing with local Cambridge residents in organized settings[9] as well as spontaneously,[10][11] and occasionally on a romantic basis.[12][13][14]

The RMS occupied space in one of the five initial buildings on the NRL campus and, although not directly under the NRL, it received administrative support from this organization. The mission of the RMS was to train enlisted men in the theory and maintenance of electronic equipment. Entrance required passing a difficult examination and several years of Navy experience in radio hardware. An extensive manual preparing candidate students was published by the NRL This manual included exercises for self-study in mathematics, electrical physics, and basic radio theory, as well as information on the organization and operation of the RMS.[18]

The six-month curriculum combined theory and hands-on practice, with the students as familiar with a slide rule as with a soldering iron. Lecture topics included advanced algebra, trigonometry, the slide rule, electrical and electronic circuits, communication receivers and transmitters, antennas, and servomechanisms. The laboratories involved experiments related to the lecture topics, use of electronic instruments, and radio communication system maintenance. All formal instruction was by senior Petty Officers or Warrant Officers. As new electronic equipment came from the NRL, it was incorporated in the instruction, often with special lectures and demonstrations by the same scientists who were doing the research and development. Navy students normally held a Petty-officer rating as a Radioman or Electrician’s Mate, and the top graduates were often promoted to Chief Petty Officer. During the initial decade, the RMS had two classes a year with 50 students each; on the average, about 70 percent of the entering students graduated.[19]

In addition to Navy personnel, the RMS had select students from the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Marines. Arthur Godfrey, who later became a well-known radio and television entertainer, was a 1929 RMS graduate from the Coast Guard. A student and then instructor in that period was Marine Sergeant William P. Battell; he was later commissioned and, during World War II, served as the Marine Quartermaster General.[20]

Nelson M. Cooke was a well-known instructor at the RMS. A 1928 RMS graduate, he later studied at the RES and was promoted to Radio Electrician. Further promotion to Chief Radio Electrician came in 1934, and in 1938, he was made a senior instructor in both the RMS and the RES. In this capacity, he wrote the applied mathematics textbook used in these schools; the book was later a highly successful publication of McGraw-Hill.[21] Cooke also devised a special slide rule for radio calculations that was manufactured and sold by Keuffel and Esser.[22]

Starting in the mid-1930s, the potential of another major war led to a major increase in Navy strength. To support this, the RMS also enlarged its training of senior-level maintenance personnel; it increased class size and students per class, and new buildings were added on the NRL campus.[23]

To obtain more student applicants, the requirement for radio experience in the Navy was eliminated. To compensate for this, the course length was increased to eight months and split into two segments. A three-month Primary segment covered mathematics, the slide rule, and introductory electric and electronic circuits; about half the time was spent in laboratories and fabrication shops. Chief Radio Electrician Cooke developed and led the Primary segment. A five-month Secondary or Advanced segment had the advanced lecture topics from the earlier six-month RMS curriculum, but with more laboratory time devoted to communication system and radio direction finder equipment.

In this same period, a revolutionary new radio application – later called radar – was emerging. At the NRL Radio Division, target detection and ranging by radio was first demonstrated by Robert M. Page in December 1934,[24][25] was demonstrated aboard the USS Leary (DD-158) in July 1936, and began to be installed on battleships in 1939, thus beginning a new era in warfare. This technology was highly classified, and the acronym RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) was coined by the Navy for use in unclassified identification; the noun radar quickly followed. Elementary radar was added to the RMS curriculum in 1940.

By early 1941, the RMS had increased its capabilities such that about 300 graduates per year might be possible. BuNav, however, was projecting the war-time requirements for radio technicians to be in the thousands. Thus, major changes in the training program were necessary. An aggressive recruiting activity in the civilian population was started in cooperation with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). In this, the requirement of prior Navy experience in radio would be eliminated for new recruits who had a year or more experience as a licensed amateur radio operator or a commercial radio service technician. Such volunteers, after Recruit training (Boot Camp), would be entered into the RMS as a 3rd- or 2nd-class Petty Officer Radioman and without having to pass the admission examination.[26]

To provide a major increase in training, BuPers directed that another school be opened on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. To be called the RMS-Treasure Island, this would have an authorized complement of 800 and a curriculum replicating the RMS-Bellevue operation. Led by Lieutenant Commander Wallace J. Miller, the RMS-Bellevue Officer-in-Charge, development started in October 1941.[27]

At the same time that the RMS-Treasure Island was being planned, the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) started the development of a totally new training program, the Airborne Radio Materiel School (ARMS). To be located on the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the ARMS would be a five-months course, entirely devoted to airborne radar maintenance. Sidney R. Stock, who had earlier founded a university radio and aviation program, was recruited as a Lieutenant Commander to organize this school. The annual output would be 500 Petty Officers rated as Aviation Radiomen. In early 1942, this was transferred to a more secure location, Ward Island, Texas.[28]