The Signal Corps: The Emergency (To December 1941) (United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services, Signal Corps Volume 1)

xiii, 383 pp. Green cloth, gilt titles. Includes 2 charts (one of which is a large fold-out showing the expansion of the Signal Corps during the war), 37 illustrations, appendix, bibliographical note, glossary, and index. "The War Department's prewar planning grossly underestimated the demands for communication that the kind of war in which the United States was about to engage would impose. The Emergency examines this planning. It sketches the growth of the corps from its birth in 1860 to the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939 (Chs. I-III). The narrative establishes the breadth of the corps' mission and describes its organization, doctrine, and programs of research and development, since all of these deeply affected its activities in World War II... Each of the main activities of the corps is treated: research and development; procurement, testing, and evaluation; the storage, distribution, and maintenance of devices and systems of communication; and the elaborate training programs needed to see that all of these activities were accomplished effectively." (United States Army in World War II Reader's Guide, pp. 121-3).