Collection on World War II Training Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

During World War II, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was host to various academic and training programs. It offered multiple special courses for the government's Engineering, Science, and Management War Training Program (ESMWT) whose primary objective was to prepare more people to handle professional and technical responsiblities related to defense. In addition MIT had already established by 1940 a meteorology course for U.S. Weather Bureau staff and continued in meteorology by creating customized meteorology courses for Army and Navy personnel. MIT also ran a Navy V-12 College Training Program, an academic program which was also designed to supplement the number of commissioned officers in the United States Navy. The program ran between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1946, with courses offered in a condensed time frame. MIT participated as well in the (ASTP) Army Specialized Training Program to educate more army personnel in engineering and science. MIT faculty were responsible for teaching the majority of the special courses.

A specialized radar training program, part of a broader Engineering Defense Training (EDT) program sponsored by the US government, was established at MIT in June 1941. The focus was to educate a core group of Army and Navy personnel about the theory and operation of microwave radar so that they could be ready to use nascent radar technology that was expected to be essential to forthcoming military efforts.

The MIT Radar School was organized to serve programs for the Army (Army Electronics Training Center) and the Navy (Naval Training School, Radar). Classes (a three-month program) were first taught on the MIT campus in buildings 18 and 32. Since radar systems were classified as “secret,” classrooms and participants were under military guard. In May 1942 the school moved to a former industrial building several miles from the Cambridge campus at 470 Atlantic Avenue in Boston overlooking Boston Harbor. Radar systems were installed on the roof of the “Harbor Building” for instructional purposes, and the Boston Harbor islands and their structures provided convenient testing opportunities.

Instruction was coordinated by faculty on loan from the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT, augmented by additional civilian and military instructors. A textbook, Principles of Radar, edited by J. F. Reintjes, was compiled by members of the instructional staff and formally published after the war ended to make microwave information available to industry and university engineering departments.

The Army program ran from June 23, 1941, to June 30, 1945, and the Navy program was completed December 15, 1945. By the end of the war almost 8,800 students had completed the training.