Electronics Training Program

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.

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.

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