Radio Research Laboratory (RRL) Field Station
Fred Terman at Stanford: Building a Discipline, a University, and Silicon Valley by C. Stewart Gillmor
xiii, 642 p. : 26 cm
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Page 227 — While the major group of RRL employees were located in Cambridge, there were other physical facilities. At the East Boston Airport, a hangar was leased for airborne test flights. Later, a larger facility was added at the National Guard Air¬ field at Bedford, Massachusetts, several miles northwest of Cambridge. The Florosa, Florida, RRL field station was seventeen miles from Eglin Air Force Base. The site at Florosa opened in June 1943 and allowed large-scale equipment tests and flights of multiplane formation tests. Florosa began in one Air Force trailer and grew to a normal staff of about nine with additional visiting RRL staffers and others from Bell Labs, General Electric, and Federal Telephone and Telegraph.Electric, and Federal Telephone and Telegraph. The local field had a 5,000-foot main runway and two auxiliary run¬ ways. In addition to equipment and technique tests, officers were trained in air¬ borne use of radar and RCM equipment for the various war theaters. Single men lodged and ate at the Florosa Inn and married staff lived in civilian housing at Fort Walton, six miles away.135 The field stations had their additional problems. Ter¬ man sent F. Clark Cahill, RRL’s associate technical director, to report on things several months after Florosa was opened. Cahill wrote that the Florosa staff felt like orphans. The army air force was very cooperative, he wrote, but RRL needed to send good people down to make sure the equipment got installed correctly in the test planes. And the problem of sufficient spare parts and test equipment needed was a familiar one.
Page 236 — As security efforts relaxed somewhat, the expected things happened. RRL staff sometimes forgot to bring their ID badges to work with them, or they lost their badges outright. This occurred so often that a new set of RRL badges was ordered for all. Two machinists from the Bedford Airport RRL hangar were dismissed for stealing gasoline; a guard at the RRL Cambridge labs was fired for being drunk on duty; Fred himself lost his briefcase in Union Station in Washington DC. On another occasion, Fred and OSRD senior executive Frank Lewis were officially chastised for discussing classified matters in the men’s washroom at the Officers’ Club at Eglin Air Field. As “penance,” NDRC Division 15 Director Guy Suits or¬ dered Fred to discuss security at staff meetings and send security warning letters to all section leaders and research associates. In addition, Suits sent warning no¬ tices to all Division 15 contractors about the dangers of lapses in security.153 In 1943, when writing to Felix Bloch, Terman urged caution and asked Bloch to amend a paragraph in a report to the Stanford trustees referring to “war research on microwaves in Cambridge,” worried that “some overzealous individual in the University publishing department will let the stuff out without change to the newspapers and then all hell will break loosed Terman concluded:
Page 239 — At the same time, the RRL field facilities expanded with the addition of hangar space and testing setups at Bedford Airport and the planning of a permanent field station at Florosa, near Eglin Air Field in Florida. Terman learned in August 1943 that Suits had complained to Karl Compton about the operation of the Florosa, Florida, station. Behind-the-back criticism did not suit Terman, who in turn noted that it was Suits who personally had chosen a GE colleague, Dr. Herbert Pollack, for the position as head of the Florosa field station.163 Three days later Terman distributed Pollack’s complaints, comments, and description of Florosa station to all RRL senior staff and group leaders, to make sure all were informed of what was going on.
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"The host unit at Eglin is the 96th Test Wing (formerly the 96th Air Base Wing).[2][3] The 96 TW is the test and evaluation center for Air Force air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems, and Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) systems."
