Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

"Speed and mobility are important in this business," Mr. Whitney explains. "When the armed services want a job done, they want it done fast. It's up to us to get hold of the right man and move him where he's needed. If we can't locate the man ourselves, we don't hesitate to ask our Embassies or military headquarters abroad to assist us. They're very helpful that way. "For example, the Air Force recently wanted a spe- cial microwave survey made for a two-way radio installa- tion at Fontainebleau in France. The man with the best technical background for the job happened to be in Tokyo. We got hold of him out there by telephone via Signal Corps headquarters. He hopped a plane and had his survey under way within a week in France. The Flying Forty "As a matter of fact, this type of thing is becoming so widespread that RCA's Engineering Products Division — which builds electronic equipment for the services — decided to help us with a flying Squad of Forty based in Camden, N. J. It's a mobile engineering reserve, each member ready to take off for Tibet or Tunisia just about as quickly as a local repairman can leave his shop to handle a job in your home." Most of the technicians, according to Mr. Whitney, have a sound electronics background before they're selected by RCA. They're given a fine-tooth security investigation and then assembled at Gloucester for a five-to-six week refresher and indoctrination course. "In addition to the government security check, we do a pretty thorough screening job on our own," Mr. Whitney explains. "We look for fellows with tact, good personalities and stable backgrounds. We don't want the type of man who will go to India and make public Tank obstacles in central Germany form a background for Mr. Reed and Ed Johnston, former RCA Service Com- pany supervisor for the U. S. Armed Forces in Europe and now at the U. S. Air Force Airways and Air Com- munications Service in Washington. wisecracks about cows. In other words, we try to get men who will be a credit to the country and to RCA when they're abroad." Some of the foreign work is so highly classified, according to Mr. Whitney, that "we don't even know what many of our boys are working on." Once they report to the local commander, they are, in effect, on his staff. "In this connection, we tell them pretty frankly about the hazards they might run. A few of our men have had tight squeezes in the past, and they might in the future. In the Korean War, one of our technicians stayed with his equipment in Seoul until the rear guard evacuated just minutes before the North Koreans entered. Another was in Teheran during the Mossadegh coup. He had to get out with the British oil men and he had a close shave in doing it." The Old Appeal Despite the hazards, Mr. Whitney says, many of the technicians take to life abroad. Some stay four or five years. Some, of course, follow the established G. I. custom of falling in love and marrying foreign women. "I guess a half-dozen of our men from the Far East, for example, have married Japanese women. Some have returned to the States with their wives and are working for us here. That's fine as far as we're concerned." There is a less glamorous side of the Government Service Department but one that is in every sense as vital as foreign service. A large staff, under Mr. Reed's direction, devotes itself to the preparation of technical manuals, equipment diagrams and digests of new in- formation for government use. This material flows into the armed services in a steady stream. It keeps techni- cians in step with industrial electronic activities. Then, too, there is the domestic service, larger in scope than the foreign. The home staffers work at air bases, Signal Corps installations. Naval electronic cen- ters. They also give technical instruction, and they also work with highly classified experimental equipment. A typical example is the Air Force Missile Test Center at Cocoa, Fla., where one of Mr. Reed's groups has just tackled the job of maintaining and analyzing electronic guidance apparatus for the latest in Air Force missiles. To maintain organizational unity, Mr. Reed twice a year brings in his top foreign technicians—his field managers as he calls them—for a meeting at Camden and Gloucester. Many of them come half-way around the world as casually as a Kiwanian would go from New York to Philadelphia for a Golden Rule session. Like Mr. Reed, they are wedded to the idea that theirs is a world-wide business, and that time and distance are minor obstacles to accomplishment in this electronic age. )8 RADIO AGE