RG-131: Papers of Colonel William H. Murphy

United States Army Signal Corps

William Herbert Murphy was born in Berlin, Germany, April 11, 1889, the son of US Consul General George Herbert Murphy and Margrethe Schmidt Murphy.  After completing his studies at the North Carolina Military Academy in 1907, Murphy attended McGill University in Montreal, earning a degree in electrical engineering in 1911.  By the time he received his MA four years later, he had returned to Germany, where he was American Vice Consul in Coburg during 1914.

The next year found him engaged in engineering research at the Technical Institute in Karlsruhe. Employment with the Marconi Company followed, but before Murphy could build a substantial career with the wireless communication pioneers, the United States entered WWI.

On July 16, 1917, Murphy was made a 2nd Lieutenant, Aviation Section, Signal Corps, Officers Reserve Corps.  During the war he attended the US Army Air Corps Technical School and the Army Chemical Warfare School.

In the postwar period he served in occupied Germany with the Signal Corps, Aviation Section.  He was then attached to the Signal Corps Radio Laboratory at McCook Field in Dayton, OH.

There Murphy began working with the principle of using radio and telephone to locate moving bodies.  His research led to two patents for his inventions in this realm.  His work eventually led him to early radar research and implementation.

Captain William H. Murphy, ca. 1921		Patent for Murphy’s creation of a system for locating moving bodies

Murphy was in Hawaii in late 1941and oversaw the establishment of the Opana Radar Station on Oahu. It was this station that picked up the Japanese air fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. His time was only temporary, however, as he had already been picked as the officer to oversee air warning development in MacArthur’s USAFFE command in the Philippines. Due to the Japanese attack on the Philippines in December 1941, Murphy was rerouted to Australia and eventually Java to perform the same functions as air warning development officer.

Murphy arrived in the Dutch East Indies just as the Japanese were making their push into that area and Java especially. Murphy was in a B-18 flying near Soerabaja, Java, when it was attacked by Japanese fighters and shot down on February 3, 1942.

Camp Murphy was dedicated in his honor at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds in Australia and during World War II served as a United States Army Air Corps facility.

The Murphy papers fill six boxes using approximately six shelf feet. Correspondence, Photographs, Photo Albums, and his scientific research are contained therein.

The collection contains a large number of images of World War I airplanes. A Spad is shown at left and a Fokker D7 at right.

In Germany Murphy was responsible for documenting the final disposition of Germany’s Zeppelin fleet.

This is part of the record of what happened to every German Zeppelin of World War I.