Slashdot Mirror
A Physicist with the Air Force
An anonymous submitter - anonymous because of the database crash that wiped out several hours of data today, sigh - sent in this tale about the duties of a physicist during World War II.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Oh so THAT'S why my karma is now 105,000!
You're using her as bait, Master!
...but he neglected to mention which house---sounds like a scurve to me....
This all was probably necessary, but it's much better when you can have this kind of fun in peacetime.
At the pilot's insistence (I will not repeat his heated words), I dislodged the target by jumping on it while hanging from a bomb-bay rack and wearing a parachute, just in case.
For those who didn't read the article (after all, if you did, this comment is worthless to you), he's talking about a training "dummy aircraft" for gunners to practice shooting at that didn't drop from the bomber that was carrying, and jammed in the bomb bay, preventing the doors from closing (which meant they couldn't land). Quite a hilarious mental picture if you ask me ;)
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Yeah! I was born too late... ~sigh~
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
There was a post over to a MySQL vs Postgres flame fest once (on phpbuilder, iirc) that stated that while MySQL was prone to falling over every now and then, it had never lost any data. It guess that's the end of that one then.
Does it look like RedHat have made the right choice with postgres then?
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Nonetheless, the personnel officer at the Washington, DC, area discharge center wrote the words "no active duty" on my discharge papers. That characterization nearly got me reinducted, and it disqualified me from the GI Bill. This last injustice has, however, since been rectified. On 7 December 2000, I received from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas a revised discharge "from active duty," entitling me, at age 81, to the benefits of the GI Bill.
At least it seems that the army finally got things together.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I like hearing stories like this, and this one is no exception, but I must commend this guy on his memory and detail after 56 years. Hehe, notice how he said "And then I came up with a way to count the gunner's score" or some such quote, then says about how someone else was the group leader? (DuMond?) Maybe not everything he said is true...
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Let's face it, probably the most fun most scientists have is in the middle of a war. If nothing else, it makes for great drinking stories, and it is often easier to get things done.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
is a news site based on Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"Lets see...if I divide the mass of this, by the volume of that, multiply by the 'Q' factor of this approach vector, ofcourse keeping in mind the varible wind density...ahhh ha! yes! I'VE FOUND THE VELOCITY OF A GERMAN!"
***********Disclimer************
This was meant to be in no way offensive to Germany, or it's people: the Germans.
One can easily find the velocity of Americans by simply substituting the 'Q' factor with the square root of 5.2
At first I thought he was kidding about the slide rule club - I guess we're this generation's equivalent.
It's a little sobering to think of these engineering problems in their human context - even ignoring the fact that he's talking about bombers, it's striking to think that they had enough data to calculate 70-to-1 fighter-to-B29 kill ratios on rear attacks and 3-to-1 kill ratios on front attacks.
The opportunity to make adjustments to decisions as theoretical data are replaced by empirical data is exciting and rewarding. But I'm glad my adjustments don't have an immediate impact with respect to people living and dying.
This is an article which really makes me appriciate what we have today. If someone today told me I had to perform computations on a slide-rule while fending from enemy attack, I would think they're joking. But this is what they actually went through.
My favorite line of the entire article (in reference to the fabrication of slide rules used in the missions):
But, to avoid paperwork and delivery delays, I chose to have them made at the Harmon Field sheet-metal shop on Guam. At that time, there wasn't much combat damage to B-29s. So the repair crews readily gave up some of their beach time for a few bottles of Old Granddad.
Yep, things we're certainly different back then!
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I've sometimes speculated that Shockley didn't like my Shoran slide rule and therefore went back to Bell Labs to invent the transistor that put us out of business.
I do not work in and have had very little exposure to research science. I have read many stories, fiction and non, of competition providing motivation, even the base fuel to researchers in their endeavor to innovate. My grandfather, who was an optical engineer, related to me some stories of his time working in the optics research division of a very large and respected corporation during the fifties and sixties. Though they were on the same "team", the level of competition at that facility was as high as any he had ever seen in any of his experiences, including his time in the military and as an amateur and professional boxer.
I would be interested to hear from people that are directly exposed to research sciences what role competition plays.
the simplified statistics look like a trap; he treats them as a simple metric of the bomber's vulnerability to attack from different angles. i wonder if the bombers faced more frontal attacks early in their mission - before they had released their bombs and were still carrying lots of fuel.
or perhaps less experienced pilots would tend to mount attacks from behind.
the guy sounds very clever, but when i see statistics like that i start wondering about what they're really measuring.
The above post was obviously in jest, but I've got an Initial Value Problem here that's kicking my ass & if I post it too low noone will see it: If anyone who still remembers their diffeq, I'd appreciate the help:
:(
y''-y=e^x
y(0)=1
y'(0)=0
the unforced solution is of course y=k1*e^-x + k2*e^x
the best I've been able to do for the forced is
y=1/2 * x * e^x
which meets the equation but not the conditions
I used to know this stuff, and I need to know it once again. I'm betting I'm missing something dumb on the forced.
thanks in advance,
AC
There is no need to do it at this volume. SQL is designed for big enterprises and handling request robustly. Same at work we use unix enviroment for simple tasks and swithing to win2000 if we need to
do something more complicated and advanced. You don't buy spaceshuttle to fly around country!
After all, this tale of yesteryear is published in "Physics Today".
(Oh wait, this isn't FARK. Nevermind.)
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
anonymous because of the database crash that wiped out several hours of data today
Are we going to see a post detailing today's slashdot database adventures? eg- what the probable cause was, what data was lost (besides an article about something being "always on"), what's being done to prevent such errorsi nthe future?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I was the supposed "anonymous" submitter of this story. But alas, I cannot divulge my identity due to the DMCA.
no that was admiral Yamamoto, this is the original battleship Yamato.
And I especially note this one:
:)
``Requests for special slide rules grew. To respond quickly, I set up a paperwork-free design and production service. Our streamlined procedures took advantage of the fact that officers had a monthly liquor allowance but enlisted men did not. To secure a special slide rule, the requesting officer would pay with two bottles. I would pass these contributions along to the enlisted members of the 949th Topographical Company, who did the drafting, calculations, and reproductions. Somehow our service enjoyed a de facto priority second only to the production of mission maps.''
My God...it's the grandfather of "Free as in Beer!"
I wonder how many times more powerful our modern day computers are compared to this articles "computerized slide rule"? :)
Raise your carma today, upgrade to the untested and unproved slashcode 2.2 and be buggier then any other program out there.
:)
i hope there are no security risks with 2.2... but oh well. you gotta upgrade someday.
so when will slashdot be themeable so i can choose different ugly colors?
look in your history of tech at the time of ww2 ... they actually did rotate pilots and flight engineers through 8 week long classes here on campus, and housed them in dabney and page by god too, or maybe it was blacker too i forget exactly which of the houses. teaching flight crews dead reckoning and celestial nav, yup you didnt realize the tech was a trade school didya, look again it still is but for engineers and academic researchers :)
use Signature::Witty;
Directly from the article:
Lubricating with alcohol
That is the best subject heading ever posted in a Slashdot article, ever.
hof, baby.
Please, in the interest of free speech, just don't read this if you feel the need to mod it down, otherwise read on...
i am quite tired of some of the people on this site who are quick to criticize slashdot for having downtime. I am willing to bet these same people probably have not had to face a pissed off boss and manager breathing down your kneck while trying to revive a mission critical server that is "not supposed to fail".
And these same people probably don't realize that halph your down time is for describing to your boss why some , very expensive mind you, servers that are "not supposed to fail" are in pieces on the floor.
these same people, would probably hide in the corner mindless chanting 'all your base are belong to us' while hoping the men with the white coats dont come....
thank you for your time
mr xtermz
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
"anonymous because of the database crash that wiped out several hours of data today"
yeah i posted that artical, give me credit
please update....hehe
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
...that's why they're called the "new" houses---I think they were built around 1960, in the post-Sputnik funding wave.
The reason people hassle /. for having downtime, is that these are the same people that tell us that Linux is infalliable, and that Windows NT/2000 suffers continuous downtime. If you can't walk the walk, don't talk the talk.
This reminds me of an excellent Isaac Asimov story. I think he foresaw our reactions to the history of computation quite well.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Perhaps if you used a Microsoft SQL server, you wouldn't have had this trouble. And if you did, you could have called and talked to a friendly, knowledgeable support person who would have you up and running in minutes.
Live and learn.
The article was funny, and a good reminiscence, but:
Shockley, Teller, and LeMay
what an unholy trinity that is!
Shockley, the Nobel Prize winner who determined to devote his life to eugenics;
Teller, the brilliant scientist who pushed the DoD further into the realm of "The Super", and beyond;
and, finally, LeMay (brilliantly portrayed by George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove"), the hawk's hawk who would stop at nothing to achieve global superiority for his country, even at the expense of the American people.
These men, while they performed great deeds in their lifetimes, are to me a good example of how excessive hubris in the scientific and technical arena can be a very dangerous thing, indeed. None of these men can be considered Great Men, in my opinion, because they wandered from the path of integrity and truth in their zealous pursuit of technology for technology's sake.
But the article makes for a great read, and I'm sure in their day these men were admired and respected. I have the advantage of hindsight, and hope that we can all learn from these men how, for some vicious mole of nature in them, even the greatest of men are prone to fall!
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
anonymous because of the database crash that wiped out several hours of data today...
Hey, Cowboy Kneel, Commander Taco, etc.. at least some of your users want to know all about the gory details of how and why the database melted down.
We need you to tell us. We live vicariously through you.
Hope the downtime was the worst of the damage.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
anonymous because of the database crash that wiped out several hours of data today, sigh
That's okay. Losing Slashdot for the day was bad, but it's worth it when you picture all the trolls and karma whores desperately trying to take advantage of the second chance to get first post on the Mac metadata story.
"Gah! I click Reply and it goes back to the main page! But i need to post, it says 0 comments! Reply! Reply! Augghhh!"
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Right, it's nit-picking, but this fellow should know better: after all, he was there! The Air Force was formed in '47 out of the Army Air Corp. My Dad joined the Army in '42 or '43 and was assigned to the Air Corp... He seperated along with about ten million other guys not long after VJ day
" This war story begins in 1935 at Brooklyn Technical High School, where my physics teacher, Simon Weissman, introduced me to most of the physics that I was eventually to use in World War II."
Don't let this article give you a favorable opinion of Brooklyn Tech.
It reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllly is a bad school. I don't know why it's still a NY "Specialized High School."(Did they mean to call it "Special" High School)
Anyhow, I got one more year of suffering in brooklyn tech left.
Somebody shoot me point blank with a sniper rifle.
--
Violators will be prosecuted and prosecutors will be violated.
"We fill out this form in triplicate. One we keep, one we send to headquarters and one we destroy so the Russians won't get it."
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
The Air Force was technically the Army Air Corp during WWII... but who's counting :)
The article reminds me a lot of "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!".
that this would make a good movie, not a good article on a physics site. Its got its share of action and war etc.
I suppose it'd be a bit too intelectual for hollywood though.
"To facilitate the calculation, I developed a special slide rule that used the general principle of multiplying two quantities by mechanically adding distances proportional to their logarithms."
He pretty much described right there the basic concept of any sliderule ever used by anybody. All that was needed was to figure out the trig formula and making the numbers different on a normal rule. And for this the Army Air Corps needed a PhD candidate? I didn't know they had PHBs that long ago.
BTW: Is it my imagination or do we no longer need P tags?
After six weeks of data collection and statistical analysis, I completed my report. My analysis showed that, in attacks on our B-29s from the rear, it cost the enemy 70 lost fighter planes, on average, to shoot down one of our bombers. But in frontal attacks, the Japanese lost only three fighters for every B-29 they downed. This result differed starkly from the results of a massive combat simulation study, done back home, that had concluded that B-29s would be most vulnerable to attacks from behind! In light of the new findings, bomber formations and tactics were modified to bring greater firepower to bear against frontal attacks. These changes, together with some minor technical modifications, largely solved the problem
Any guesses what they were doing wrong with the "massive combat simulation study"?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
There's no question that the most effective and efficient form of "governance" is a benevolent dictatorship.
Two problems: It's never benevolent for long, and it's never benevolent to dissent.
It's also illustrative to consider the concept of "governance", and why efficient "governance" is a really lousy thing anyway.
That's why the U.S. "government" is designed at its inception to be as inefficient as possible, and why it took four-score and seven years before someone was able to install an efficient "governance" under it. And that brought war.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I believe you mean "Ze Germans"
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
It's amazing what a little "alcohol lubrication" can do to speed up the production line!
An older way to refer to Ancient Japan.
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
You mean where he was at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, and he figured out how to open the combination locks on other people's desks? What a great story. I especially liked his interaction with the house locksmith.
Thank god I did not think it was a kernel problem....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
sign change error? ;-)
(how many times, if you were a technical student, have you ever calculated a negative mass or something and realized it was a simple sign error somewhere in the middle of a pages-long computation?)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There's some good stuff at score level 1
So true, so true.
I would have modded up your comment for that sig. alone -- except I wasted all my mod points on the article that got "lost" today when Slashdot was up and down. (A good read, if unoriginal, read by the way about whether a wireless world and the changes it has already made to our social structures.)
Ah well. Even with the bugs being worked out and the ever-present MS bashing, Slashdot is still the best place for consistantly insightful thoughts on the 'Net...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
From the article:
This "turn computer" proved useful 50 years later, when Edward Teller asked me, in hindsight, to investigate whether a humane high-altitude "demonstration" detonation of an atomic bomb over Tokyo Bay would have been feasible.
That was a really touching comment. I've often wondered how Teller (the father of the atomic bomb) felt about his necessary creation of a monster. Bless him.
My favorite quote:
Sad that the tiger who provided such companionship to Calvin would one day finally go completely crazy.
Anonymous cowards do too know how to spell, dammit.
He trained people to shoot the big ole guns that blasted planes out of the sky. Well they towed a dummy airplane behind a real one. Sometimes while praticing advanced manuvers the trainee would for getwhich plane he was shooting at and would give the pilot a heart attack.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
An Austrian sparrow, or a Prussian sparrow?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Hello Gladys.
Here on Slashdot we use the Shift key. It produces UPPER CASE letters that you can start your sentences with!
And yes, I know, IHBT.
deus does not exist but if he does
Not to mention that little dot thingy, "."
What you say is somewhat true, but if you know why you're taking losses in a certain situation you're more likely to make the most effective adjustments.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This is an article which really makes me appreciate what we have today. If someone today told me I had to perform computations on a
slide-rule while fending from enemy attack, I would think they're joking. But this is what they actually went through.
It's not like the pilot had to fly and use a slide rule at the same time. The B-29 carried a crew of 10 to 14. Computational tasks were performed by the navigator, co-pilot, and bombardier.
Pilot workload in today's warcraft is higher than it was back then. All those jobs are now done by one, or at most two, crew, along with multiple computers.
Designing something usable in combat with hastily trained crews was a neat trick.
This "turn computer" proved useful 50 years later, when Edward Teller asked me, in hindsight, to investigate whether a humane high-altitude "demonstration" detonation of an atomic bomb over Tokyo Bay would have been feasible. The higher the detonation altitude, the less time the B-29 would have for turning away from the impending shock wave.
OK this sounds scientifically correct - but what was the actual answer to Mr. Teller's question?
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
... in my days we did extreme physics!
NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella, -- Ulrich Drepper
Michael, SAP/DB is free, and transaction safe, and hence recoverable if the machine crashes. Might be worth checking it out. It's GPL, too.
Cheers!
If you were using the master-slave replication that's built into MySQL, you wouldn't have this problem.
Admit it. Who bought The HTML book because:
I found it interesting that he'd done computations regarding whether or not we could have done a "demonstration" bombing, and that it wasn't feasible.
The B-29 over Nagasaki was barely far enough away to avoid destruction as it was; if we'd done the "demonstration" so many Slashdotters occasionally complain about, it would have been a suicide mission.
Slashdot is a pretty big volume website.
Combine high volume, unreliable software and a toy database with the often-demonstrated technical incompetence of the staff and you have the disaster that is Slashdot.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
All that would prove is that editors are NOT the all-knowing creatures they wish us to belive them to be.
How about after you ask them, you educate them. Then maybe some good will come of the effort.
Great article! But this has be puzzled.
Not until 6 August did I learn that these heavy pumpkins had been the 509th's practice bombs for the atomic bomb they dropped that morning on Hiroshima. The pumpkin charts could be used for offset bombing with atomic bombs.
Why would you need to offset bomb with an atomic bomb? I would think you could drop it pretty much anywhere since it's going to destroy everything for several miles!
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Patton said "If the men can't fuck, they won't fight". Sure, sex is an incentive for lonely young men; and smart officers know it. My grandfather was in WWII and he said seizing chateaus in France was the source of Cognac and wine to dole out the bravest units of the day. War is hell and watch out for the hangover.
Anonymous cowards do too know how to spell, dammit.
Seeing that Slash has decided to mangle our postings (the link describer), why stop there ? Let's discourage AC's from posting anonymously by randomly inserting misspielings, or W0RDZ TH4T L00K K00L and H4XX0R
PS - What does Slash do if you do post a Goatse.cx link ?
Don't be ungrateful. How much time do you spend here? For *cough FREE cough*. So there was an outage. Go outside for a few hours, instead of insulting the people who run the site. Whatever you may think of their editorial discretion (which we can all complain about at one time or another), Slashdot works almost all the time, and you love it.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'd assume the same thing happened to you.
Unless you're using a really *BIG* nuke, you'll blow out windows for several miles plus a few and wipe out unreinforced structures for several minus a few miles.
Against hardened targets, you'll need to be close even using a low-midrange nuke like the WWII-tech ones. The shock wave is only really effective against wood-frame structures, windows, and unshielded personell.
Think of it this way-- if you want to immediately kill the personnel in a tank, you'd better hit them pretty much pinpoint.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I trust that not all American ex-servicemen still believe:
"After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 brought the US into World War II,
(...)"
or rather, if they do, then I hope that other Americans can look beyond this myth. You have to go back another hundred years to find the first angry shot fired between the two nations, but more about that later.
The recent release of "'Pearl Harbour' as approved by the US Military" alienated non-US audiences (the Limeys hated it!), and media outlets reported on the relationship between Hollywood and the military.
Even John Wayne knew Uncle Sam had played a few hands before December - or have you forgotten his performance in Flying Tigers?
The following is from p. 93 of "Higher than Heaven, Japan, war, and everything", by Barrel & Tanaka (1995 Private Guy International):
-----
Up the Tigers
The Flying Tigers started arriving in China in mid-1938 and took part in the battle of Hankow. They were strictly mercenaries paid by results: a monthly wage of $US600 and a bonus of $US500 every time they downed a Japanese plane. Even though the USA wasn't fighting Japan yet, in April 1941 President Roosevelt signed an order which allowed regular US servicemen to resign and join the Tigers. The P-40 Tomahawks were dubbed 'Tigers' by the media, because they each had a double row of shark's teeth painted on their nose.
(Former aerial circus star Lt.Col. Claire) Chennault's first serious deployment was in the battle for Burma where he devised a special 'tag' technique to allow the somewhat obsolete planes to fly in pairs and protect each other while dealing with the faster Japanese aircraft. In 1942 the Tigers grew to become the USAAF's Fourteenth Air Force.
-----
SVG veterans themselves proudly declare their involvement, and ten years ago the US Government recognised them as having been on "active duty" from December 1941 to July 1942, and as a result were eligible for veterans' benefits.
Now go back a hundred years to July 1853 to find the US Navy and Commodore Perry, with full 'discretionary powers' from President Fillmore, anchoring his 'black ships' (or 'Kuro fune', a term coined for fear of any threat from outside) for a few days in Tokyo Bay, then marching 300 armed sailors ashore to drive the point home.
What did the US want? To open shipping routes, and for whalers and other merchant vessels to stop and refuel. Ironically, it was American whale hunters who developed the local Japanese appetite for whales into a national taste - now defended as an ancient cultural rite that can't be disturbed.
-----
Perry's Pacific ideas and adventures were savoured with enthusiasm by American admirals and generals. The Japanese also remembered Perry's offensive attitude. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku described his attach on Hawaii's Pearl Harbour in December 1941 as the 'return of Perry's visit'. When the Japanese signed the surrender on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, the US flag that was displayed was the one that flapped on the stern of Perry's steam frigate the USS Mississippi.
-----
(viz., p37)
Some good examples here of the adage 'you reap what you sow'. I wonder what the two seeds that were sown in August 1945 could grow into, with the proper attention.
(Australian Coward)
I've never actually gotten any beer for my open source work, but I've gotten plenty of employer-provided pizza for my commercial work.
I earned my dischage from the Marines in '93, after 8 years service in the infantry and data processing fields (rifleman AND a computer programmer - the best of both worlds).
On my discharge paperwork, the DAY of my dischage, the company clerk (a guy who *knew* me) had entered, for my Occupations Specialty "Heavy Equipment Operator, 2 years experience" and nothing else.
I raised a shit fit with the guy and the Warrant Officer in charge of S-1 (a perfect example of who should *not* be a WO) - they would not tear it up and redo it - it had been signed by the C.O. They DID have a form with attached to the back of the form, stating that the orignal form was wrong and listing what I done and when.
It's worth nothing that they took my word for my MOS and years of experience, and didn't check my SRB. In hindsight, I could have slipped some really _good_ stuff in there. .
Display some adaptability.
I don't understand how this was classified as funny and not science or something like that. I found this article particularry interesting. I did however find it funny how a comendation letter from a general is so point by point and not personal.
Um, yeah. Back in your hole now, freak.
If that's a troll, why is slashdot down weekly due to database problems???
If they were running oracle with a skilled staff, it would never be down.
Only Time Will Tell....
The first problem was the development and testing cycle times. I was used to the IBM 360 turnaround times for punch decks of 2-4 hours (often overnight because of the classification of the programs (Secret, Top Secret, SCI)). The TI-59 was slow, so I developed a sort of emulator on the HP9825 desktop "Calculator" so I could get faster turnarounds. In those days computers belonged to "Data Automation" (AD), so we only got the HP9825 because the case said "Calculator". The system had a tape drive, card reader, plotter, printer, full keyboard, 32-character display and 4K of memory with its own programming language, but hey, the box said "Calculator" so, by the book, it wasn't a computer. By emulating the TI59 on the HP9825 I was able to do real-time run/debug/correct style programming that was really fun compared with the batch style programming we were using on the IBM 360.
By using some really tight code I was able to simulate the flight and deployment of the booster and the three reentry vehicles, computing the cross range and downrange perturbations and the resulting fuel costs, and estimate the total fuel used to deliver the RVs to the three targets as input by the user. This all had to fit in the 960-step/100 memory register of the TI59. Considering that amongst other things I had to invert a 3x3 matrix, space was pretty tight.
Using data from the actual targeting programs used in the Minuteman III, I built some curve fitting functions for fuel usage, used simple spherical trig range and azimuth calculations and managed to get within 5% of the actual fuel usage (the program's estimate was always close to the projection from the mainframe, and was usually in the
The final program was to be carried on the ABCP (KC-135 "Looking Glass") to permit quick evaluation of proposed retargeting of MMIII missiles.
The obvious (and wrong) answer - put more armor where there are more holes. This is wrong because you are looking at a biased sample. In fact, if you assume that the holes are distributed uniformly over the planes (also a bad assumption, but hey...), then you would want to place more armor where the planes were hit least, since the ones that were shot down are more likely to have been heavily hit in exactly those places where your sampled planes were not hit.
For a moment consider what happened in the ETO (European Theater of Operations). The B17 (another Boeing design) and the B24 (Consolidated) both entered the war in europe without much protection from a frontal attack. This was due to the same studies mentioned in the article. The assumption was that the closing speed of a frontal attack would be too great for a fighter to be able to aim reliably. This prooved to be correct at the onset of operations, but the Germans quickly learned that a rear quarter attack was pretty difficult. This gave the Germans motivation to perfect the frontal attack, which they did. This attack proved even more effective when the bombers began to fly in massive formations. All a fighter pilot had to do is get to the front of the bomber stream and fly straight down it. Picking one target, letting off a few rounds, then the next. Many bombers were shot down this way. The solution for the B17 and B24 was to impliment a nose or, in the case of the B17, a chin turret to cover the frontal attack. Incedentally , the Aiming device used for the B17's chin turret was a simplified version of the system pioneered in the development of the B29.
The chin turret was impossible to install in the B29 as it has all that plexi up front. Plus, just as in the B17, the front gunner was also the bombadier.
"Chemestry is Physics without thought. Mathematics is Physics without purpose."
Japan murdered MILLIONS of innocent Chinese, so we should encourage China to kick the shit out of Japan.
and the list goes on and on and on. How about you stop being a fucking moron, my illogical friend? How about just looking at the relevent facts. One country attacked another. The attacking country murdered MILLIONS of innocents in their lust for power and blood. If a 'conventional' bombing and attack had taken place then not only would MANY MANY MORE allies have lost their lives, but MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MORE Japanese (civilian or otherwise). (and this, my illogical friend is based not on just projections but on past battles in WWII)
Stop being a fucking asshole just to get attention and rebel with your 'angst'. It was a fucking war. It was started by the Japanese. It was ended by the defenders. The aggressors, besides the obvious violent imperialist nature, murdered MILLIONS of innocents in their quest of hate and power. The 'poor victims' of Japan seem to overshadow the victims of every other country, including the Chinese that were massacered.
Lets talk about Japanese soldiers taking Chinese infants by the feet and ankles, and then swinging them like a club against dense objects? Lets talk about the old, infirm and wives or other children that were used as live targets for guns, swords and bayonets. Lets talk about all those Okinawan's that were seen as 'not pure' and exterminated.
I pity people like you who live in a fantasy realm that you can pick and choose what aspects of reality you choose to use as your arguments. I despise you because you are the type that is the FIRST to support and enact mass murder and other attrocities and then justify it as 'for the children'. You sir, are a monster! And pray I never meet you.
Surely the hypocricy and irony is not lost on those here. Don't start muddying the waters by accusing anyone who doesn't perform some heart crossing/sidewalk spitting ritual when WW2 or the holocaust specifically is mentioned as being for it. It would be illogical, incorrect and hypocritical. Please seek help. Maybe your lobotomy can be reversed.
I pity you and hope you will someday take a look at the sad and pathetic existence that is your life. You need professional help.
Nazi coward, login next time, so I can forward your detailst to the proper authorities!