Many industrial and academic chemists and physicists came under military control during the Great War, but post-war research by the Royal Engineers Experimental Station at Porton Down and the continued operation of the National Research Council were exceptions to the overall pattern; wartime chemistry funding was a temporary redirection of a field largely driven by industry and later medicine, while physics grew closer to industry than to the military. The discipline of modern meteorology, however, was largely built from military funding. During World War I, the French civilian meteorological infrastructure was largely absorbed into the military. The introduction of military aircraft during the war as well as the role of wind and weather in the success or failure of gas attacks meant meteorological advice was in high demand. The French army (among others) created its own supplementary meteorological service as well, retraining scientists from other fields to staff it. At war's end, the military continued to control French meteorology, sending weathermen to French colonial interests and integrating weather service with the growing air corps; most of the early-twentieth century growth in European meteorology was the direct result of military funding. World War II would result in a similar transformation of American meteorology, initiating a transition from an apprenticeship system for training weathermen (based on intimate knowledge of local trends and geography) to the university-based, science-intensive system that has predominated since.