Dissertation Research: The Origins and Development of Combat Information Centers During World War II

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research project is an historical study of the United States Navy's efforts to develop sophisticated "command and control" technologies prior to and during the Second World War. Specifically, it explores the development of Combat Information Centers (CICs), focusing on efforts to integrate complex human-machine systems under the exigencies of war. As developed and utilized during the war, the CIC was primarily an information station, established to collect, evaluate, and disseminate tactical information to task force commanders and ships' commanding officers. How best to organize the equipment and specially-trained personnel that together made up a CIC was a problem of enormous complexity. By studying the Navy's efforts to solve this problem, the project seeks to explain how the evolving relationship between humans and machines altered warfare at sea. The principal research method for the project involves traveling to official archives in order to view official and unofficial documents (e.g., letters, memoranda, reports, etc.) produced during the time period under investigation and related to the topic under investigation. This process is time consuming and requires a physical presence at relevant archives, frequently for several weeks at a time. For this project, the majority of archival documents are located within the greater Washington DC area.