Procurement emergency period

On 8 September 1939, one week after the outbreak of war in Europe, President Roosevelt issued a proclamation of "limited national emergency. This led to a greater emphasis on preparedness throughout the armed forces. While all CWS activities felt the impact of this declaration, procurement was affected more than other functions. The main current of CWS developments in the emergency period was the industrial mobilization program. 

The most pressing manpower need of the procurement districts in the early part of the war was for inspectors. In the emergency period, as indicated above, newly hired inspectors were sent from the districts to Edgewood Arsenal for training. These employees upon their return to the districts helped train more recently hired inspectors. Once war got under way this method could not satisfy the greatly expanded need for inspectors. 

The emergency period witnessed a steadily increasing demand for chlorine. With the inauguration of its procurement program in the summer of... 

Complications arose in storing and issuing chemical warfare materiel no less than in its procurement. These complications began to appear in the emergency period and continued to challenge the CWS throughout the period of the war. 

These same files, supplemented by other source material, were consulted for the emergency and war periods. The author found valuable information on the Chemical Advisory Committee to the Army-Navy Munitions Board in the files of the Chlorine Institute and the Manufacturing Chemists Association. He also searched the retired files of the Army-Navy Munitions Board, some of which were in the National Archives and others in the Pentagon. He obtained data on various aspects of CWS procurement and distribution from retired files of the Assistant Secretary of War (ASW), the Under Secretary of War (USW), the Army Service Forces (ASF), the Operations Division (OPD) of the War Department General Staff, the War Production Board (WPD), and the War Department Manpower Board (WDMB), all in the National Archives. 

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