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The Electronics Training Program (ETP) was the name commonly used for an unusual, difficult, and selective training activity of the United States Navy during World War II (WWII). The ETP combined college-level classroom instruction with laboratories involving highly complex electronic systems that were classified Secret, resulting in a level of training reported to have been the most intense and difficult ever given to enlisted servicemen. A highly regarded Naval officer noted that the ETP graduates were in the top three to five percent of the Navy’s wartime personnel, officers as well as enlisted men. ==Background== As America entered WWII, there was a crisis concerning the availability of men qualified to maintain the huge amount of complex electronic equipment being procured for Navy’s ships, aircraft, submarines, and shore stations. The Navy had over 200,000 personnel, but only a few hundred were radio technicians, most having obtained their qualification through self-study and on-the job training. Further, only a few had any knowledge of radar, the technology that would be extremely important in the war. The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was established in 1923 at Bellevue, District of Columbia. At the urging of Albert H. Taylor, head of the NRL Radio Division, an affiliated electronics training operation was added on the campus in 1924. Organizationally under the Training Division of the Bureau of Navigation (BuNav), the Radio Materiel School (RMS) was the Navy’s first school in this rapidly developing technology. The Navy’s use of radio started in the early 1900s, but equipment using vacuum tubes – and thus the electronics era – came into being around World War I. During its first decade, the RMS gave two six-month classes per year with about 50 men in each; the graduation rate averaged around 70 percent. Admission involved passing a difficult examination. The instructors were senior Petty officers or Warrant officers. Lectures on up-to-date topics were often given by scientists and engineers from the NRL. As more electronic equipment was added to the Navy, the RMS increased in size and the curriculum was divided into two parts. A Primary element of three months covered the mathematics and basic theory, and a five-month Secondary element included some further theory but centered on laboratory work in hardware. Radar was added to the curriculum in 1940, upgrading the instruction to Secret-level Classified information. Chief Radio Electrician Nelson M. Cooke was responsible for the Primary element, and Lieutenant Commander Wallace J. Miller was the Officer-in-Charge of the overall RMS. In preparing for war, the BuNav directed that the RMS-Bellevue operation be replicated at a site in the vicinity of San Francisco, California. Miller was responsible for planning the implementation and recommended this to be on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay; development of RMS-Treasure Island began at the end of October 1941. This new RMS would accommodate up to 800 personnel in training. In mid-1941, the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer), in cooperation with the BuNav, began development of the Aviation RMS (ARMS) to train technicians for airborne equipment maintenance. Located on the campus of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, this would accommodate up to 500 students. Sidney R. Stock, previously head of a college program in aviation and radio technology was recruited as a Lieutenant Commander to organize the ARMS. Before it had graduated any students, planning began for transferring the ARMS to a more secure location, Ward Island, near Corpus Christi, Texas. The annual output of operations at RMS-Bellevue, RMS-Treasure Island, and ARMS would be a few thousand, but the BuNav estimated that the wartime requirement would be in the tens of thousands. Further, the depth of capability of graduates from the existing instruction was also inadequate. Electronics would have a major role in the next war – which was now inevitable – but equipment, if not maintained, would be worthless. The NRL and the newly formed Radiation Laboratory, as well as a number of industries, were developing electronic systems that were far above the average maintenance capabilities of existing Navy technicians. This was especially true after late 1940, when Great Britain shared its electronic secrets (including the cavity magnetron) during the Tizard Mission. These shortcomings were a crisis that required an immediate solution. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Electronics Training Program」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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