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.

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 WW II, there was a crisis concerning the availability of men qualified to maintain the huge amount of complex electronic equipment being procured for the 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, which would be extremely important in the war.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was established in 1923 at Bellevue in the 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.

A new approach to electronic training

In November 1941, the BuNav set up an ad hoc committee to examine the changing requirements for electronic maintenance personnel and to propose a plan for meeting these requirements. Time was of the essence – war was imminent. The committee participants were primarily persons who were already fully knowledgeable of the situation. These included N. M. Cooke from RMS-Bellevue, W. J. Miller from RMS-Treasure Island and Bellevue, and S. R. Stock from the Aviation RMS. There were other practitioners as well as training specialists from the BuNav. On 8 December – the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor – William C. Eddy, a medically retired (deafness) lieutenant, joined the committee and quickly became its leader. An authority in the emerging field of television, Eddy had earlier started an electronics school for submariners.

A major topic of discussion was the type of technicians needed. As the hardware became more and more complex, the maintenance technicians needed broad as well as in-depth knowledge. Navy technicians would also be required to make rapid repairs on combat-critical equipment in locations where assistance from the outside – such as technical representatives of industries – would not be available. Modular design, where a failure might be corrected by changing out a module, was not yet in use; thus, maintenance required detailed circuit tracing and knowledge of the circuit theory. It was agreed that the ideal situation would be to recruit persons with an electrical engineering (EE) or similar education and put them through the existing five-month advanced segment of the RMS to learn Navy hardware. This approach, however, was not practical; persons with this background were not only very limited in number but also in high demand by industry and the military.

The Navy had sent a few men to a recently opened Royal Air Force (RAF) electronics school in a base at Clinton, Canada. This school was somewhat similar to the RMS and had been examined by Stock in planning the ARMS. A major difference was that the primary portion of the RAF school was given by a number of technical colleges throughout Canada. As the committee discussed possibilities of using a similar approach in an upgraded RMS, Eddy suggested that since the first two years of an EE curriculum covered essentially all of the basic topics, a shortened version of this curriculum might be used to produce the desired aforementioned EEs.

In a few days, a plan for training the desired technicians evolved. The central elements of this plan were the following: Like the existing RMS, the training program would have a primary school three months in length followed by a five-month secondary school. Admission would be through a to-be-developed classification examination for identifying persons with the capability and willingness to pursue the advanced, highly concentrated study. Primary school would be given by engineering colleges and cover the major topics normally included in the first two years of an EE curricula. Secondary school would center on Navy electronic hardware, but would include more operational theory and selected advanced topics from upper-level college engineering studies. Conducted at highly secure Navy facilities, instruction would be given by Navy and Marine senior enlisted personnel and Warrant Officers. To attract the desired students, men passing the classification examine could enter the Navy as Seamen First Class (bypassing the first two levels) and would go through Boot Camp in special companies. New Petty-officer ratings of Radio Technician (RT) and Aviation Radio Technician (ART) would be opened, with promotion, depending on performance, at various points in the training.

Eddy, then director of experimental television station W9XBK in Chicago, volunteered to provide both the space and instructional staff for a prototype primary school. He also volunteered to lead the development of the classification examination – thereafter popularly called the Eddy Test. Eddy had returned to Chicago and obtained concurrence from the station owner, Balaban and Katz; they not only approved but also made the space and staff available at no cost to the Navy.

The RMS-Bellevue and RMS-Treasure Island would continue in their existing locations and serve as secondary schools for shipboard and land-based electronics. Their existing Primary segment would be phased out as the new primary schools became fully operational. The Aviation RMS, which was just opening and preparing to move to Ward Island, Texas, would serve as the secondary school for airborne electronics.

The plan was submitted to BuNav, and was approved by Captain Louis E. Denfeld on 7 January 1942; Denfeld had been appointed only five days earlier to head up all Navy training. The program was initiated on 12 January with the opening of the prototype primary school at the top floor of the State-Lake Theater building in downtown Chicago.

Elements of the ETP

Other than the designation "Radio (or Electronics) Technician Training", no official name appears on records for the overall program; however, Electronics Training Program (ETP) was the commonly used name. Official records sometimes show different names for the two levels of schools: Elementary Electricity & Radio Materiel (EE&RM) rather than Primary, and Advanced Radio Materiel (ARM) rather than Secondary. Since there was little "elementary" content in the EE&RM curriculum, these initials were usually taken to mean Electrical Engineering & Radio Materiel.

As the local aspects of the ETM unfolded, the effort was designated Naval Training Schools-Radio Chicago, an official Navy unit commanded by Eddy. In a little more than two years after returning to active duty, Eddy was promoted to the rank of captain.

Radio Chicago

When fully operational, Radio Chicago had three major functions: conducting a prototype primary school, grading and maintaining records of Eddy Tests, and handling four Pre-Radio Schools in the Chicago area. It began with offices on the top floor of the State-Lake Theater Building at 190 North State Street, Chicago, then expanded to also occupy all four floors of a nearby building at 64 North State Street. Other functions included operating a teacher training school, building visual aids for classrooms, providing first-level medical services for the thousands of Chicago students and staff, and handling a reception and entertainment center where well-known musician Alvino Rey conducted the Radio Chicago Orchestra.

Prototype primary school

In the approved plan, Eddy would offer a developmental-prototype primary school with classrooms and laboratories in the experimental television facilities at 190 North State Street. Archibald H. Brolly, chief engineer of W9XBK and graduate of the University of California, Harvard, and MIT, led in developing the initial curriculum and served as the lead instructor. The first class was mainly composed of experienced electrician mates from the fleet and ham radio operators who had recently enlisted as petty-officer radiomen.