Camp Detrick activation

This action by the Secretary of War led the Chief, CWS, in January 1944 to raise the Special Assignments Branch to the status of a division. The new division, known as the Special Projects Division, was headed successively by Cols. Martin B. Chittick, J. Enrique Zanetti, and H. N. Worthley. In carrying out the main responsibility for biological warfare preparations the division supervised the activities of some 3,900 persons, of whom about 2,800 were Army personnel, about 1,000 Navy, and nearly 100 civilians. The majority of these were stationed at Camp Detrick, and the remainder were divided among the headquarters of the Special Projects Division in Washington and the other BW installations. The approved organization chart for 16 September 1944 listed 9 Army officers and 8 civilians and 6 Navy officers and 7 Navy enlisted men in the headquarters... 

Mention has been made of the biological warfare installations established in World War II. ° Camp Detrick, the first and most important of those installations, was activated on 17 April 1943 under the command of Lt. Col. William S. Bacon. Bacon was succeeded by Cols. Martin B. 

Administratively, Horn Island was a substation of Camp Detrick from its activation until June 1944 when it became a separate installation under the jurisdiction of the Special Projects Division, OC CWS. Because of its... 

In April 1943, a little more than two weeks after the Army began construction at Detrick Field, Camp Detrick was formally activated. The Horn Island installation, with its 2,000 acres of sand dunes and scrub, began operations in October 1943. These were restricted to preliminary small-scale experiments because the island was only ten miles away from the mainland and because it was belatedly discovered that for two-thirds of the year the prevailing winds blew toward the mainland. 

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