The Explosive Ordnance Disposal rating (EOD) was the outgrowth of a civil defense project that began in 1941 as a response to the German bombardment of London and the devastation that was being caused by time-delayed bombs. Because of the very distinct possibility that the United States could enter the war at almost any time and that enemy bombing of cities and industrial areas might follow at some point thereafter, a School of Civilian Defense was formed in April, 1941 at the Chemical Warfare School at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, and bomb disposal techniques were to be taught there.
For assistance in setting up the school that specialized in bomb disposal, the Commandant of the Chemical Warfare School turned to the War Department, the forerunner of today’s Department of Defense. As a result, the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department was tasked with training both civilians and military personnel in this highly dangerous line of work, with the Office of Civilian Defense assigned the jobs of bomb reconnaissance and disposing of incendiaries stateside. A Bomb Disposal School was established at the Ordnance Training Center at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, also in Maryland, in 1942.
Around the same time, the Chief of Naval Operations created a Mine Disposal School in May, 1941 at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.. The first class was made up of volunteers who had previously graduated from the Naval Mine Warfare School in Yorktown, Virginia; they became the school’s first graduates in August of that year. In 1942, U.S. Navy Bomb Disposal School was created on the campus of American University in Washington, and four years later the Mine and Bomb Schools were combined at the Bellevue Annex of the Naval Gun Factory.
Soon thereafter, the new school was relocated to the Naval Powder Factory, in Indian Head, Maryland. With the move, a training course called “Explosive Ordnance Disposal” was launched—and the EOD classification was firmly established as a distinct, specialized classification in which Sailors could become experts. In fact, all U.S. military personnel seeking their branch’s equivalent of the Navy EOD NEC qualifications attend the same 38-week Basic EOD Training Course that eventually evolved from this original Explosive Ordnance Disposal program.
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