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A Physicist with the Air Force

Posted by michael on from the meet-new-and-interesting-people,-and-kill-them dept.

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.

1 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Slide Rule Club by Dr.+Dew · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.