Chapter 4 - Cultural Resources Report - 1996
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EVALUATION OF SELECTED CULTURAL RESOURCES  AT FORT MONMOUTH, NEW JERSEY:  CONTEXT FOR COLD WAR ERA,  REVISION OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES DOCUMENTATION,  AND SURVEY OF EVANS AREA  AND SECTIONS OF CAMP CHARLES WOOD by  Mary Beth Reed  Mark Swanson  NEW SOUTH ASSOCIATES  Stone Mountain, Georgia  Subcontractor for Geo-Marine, Inc.  and  Rebecca Procter  Marsha Prior June 1996

MISCELLANEOUS REPORT OF INVESTIGATIONS  NUMBER 125  Geo-Marine, Inc.  550 East Fifteenth Street  Plano, Texas for  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers  Fort Worth District  819 Taylor Street  Fort Worth, Texas

Project Diana, 1945-1946

In late 1945, in the lull that followed the Japanese surrender, a number of scientists at Fort Monmouth began working on a way to pierce the earth’s ionosphere with radio waves, a feat that had been tried just before the war without success and which many thought impossible (John DeWitt, personal communication 1995).  Project Diana, named for the Roman goddess of the moon, was designed to prove that it could be done.  Begun on an almost unofficial level by Evans radar scientists awaiting their Army discharge, the project was headed by Lt. Col. John J. DeWitt.  Operating with only a handful of full-time researchers, the project scientists greatly modified a SCR-271 bedspring radar antenna, set it up in the southeast corner of Camp Evans, jacked up the power, and aimed it at the rising moon on the morning of 10 January 1946 (Figures 9 and 10).  A series of radar signals were broadcast, and in each case, the echo was picked up in exactly 2.5
 

Figure 9. Project Diana radar antenna, 1946 (Courtesy, CECOM Historical Research Collection, Fort Monmouth).

Figure 10.Project Diana area, southeast corner of Evans Area, ca. 1946 (Courtesy, CECOM Historical Research Collection, Fort Monmouth).

 seconds, the time it takes light to travel to the moon and back (CECOM Historical Office 1994:5; John DeWitt 1946a, 1946b, personal communication 1995; U.S. Army Electronics Research and Development Command [ERADCOM] 1960s).

The importance of Project Diana cannot be overestimated.  The discovery that the ionosphere could be pierced, and that communication was possible between earth and the universe beyond, opened the possibility of space exploration that previously had been only a dream in adventure films and comic books.  Just as Hiroshima opened the nuclear age in 1945, Project Diana opened the space age in January of 1946. It would take another decade before the first satellites were launched into space, soon followed by manned rockets, but Diana paved the way for all of those achievements.  It even initiated the tradition of naming such projects after ancient Greek and Roman gods, like Mercury and Apollo.  For Fort Monmouth, Project Diana was a pivotal event that built on World War II expertise, but pointed the way to the future.

Thus, Fort Monmouth entered the Cold War era as a well-established site from which significant achievements in radar and communications technology had already taken place.  In many ways, the role that Fort Monmouth played in the Cold War was a continuation of these prior accomplishments.

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