Seventy Years Ago: May 23, 1943, Secret Weapons Test

May 23, 1943, the US Army tested a new secret weapon: incendiary bats.

Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry exposed the whole story in a column printed in 1990. I would simply copy and post the relevant portion about the bat project as blogger Brad DeLong did, but I read the Miami Herald's warning about copyright. What might be called the bloodthirsty copyright notice. So I followed their instructions and put a link to the entire column here.

I recommend you pay no attention to the part of the column about air dropped trout and go right to the interesting part about incendiary bats. Hey, there was a war on.

Oriental Water Treatment Plant

Yesterday morning the Town Board and a number of citizens visited Oriental's water treatment plant. The Town Manager gave a briefing on new regulatory requirements including increased testing.

The tour began with an outside tour and explanation of the major components of the plant. Many questions were raised both by the commissioners and the citizens attending.

Following the outside briefing, attendees went inside the water treatment plant to view its condition and to receive information on maintenance and repair that needs to be accomplished.

First impressions: too much deferred maintenance.

Tornadoes In Oklahoma

The people of Oklahoma, my home state, are strong, patient and persistent. They live in tornado country. After every big tornado comes through, they pick up the pieces and start over again.

Tornadoes aren't like hurricanes. No weather service can predict the path of a tornado, how big it will be, how long it will be on the ground. No house of mere wood and brick can withstand a tornado as strong as the one that struck Moore, Oklahoma yesterday.

It has been always thus.

That's why, when I was a child in rural parts of the state, every farm, every large building, every school, had a storm shelter.

I once attended a two-room, four grade school, a large white-painted frame building with an out house in the back. We had a storm shelter.

Another school I attended, East of Oklahoma City, held eight grades in six classrooms, and had an underground storm shelter big enough for all the students, the teachers and the residents of about a dozen nearby houses.

It was good to know which of your neighbors had storm shelters.

When the weather was right for tornadoes (and we could tell) we would stand outside and watch the gathering clouds, especially those of a greenish hue with tendrils reaching down toward the ground. As the clouds approached, we would debate whether to go to the school and seek shelter.

I remember photographs in the Daily Oklahoman in 1947 when a massive tornado destroyed the town of Woodward, west of Oklahoma City. The town rebuilt.

I was living in Tulsa in 1999 when the last big twister hit Moore and damaged other towns all along the Turnpike between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

That being said, while admiring the pluck of the people, I am appalled at the indifference of their elected leaders.

Why did the two elementary schools in Moore that Monday's tornado decimated not have storm shelters?

This is inexcusable.

Sixty-five years ago, Oklahomans knew how to protect their school children.

This is not the sort of thing a state's leaders should forget.

More On Robots And Humans

Norbert Wiener, a mathematician at MIT six decades ago, wrote down what we need to know about what he called "the new machine age." In other words, the world of robots.

He wrote an essay to be published in the New York Times, but the essay never saw the light of day. Now, six decades later, at least a portion of it has been found and is published here.

In a burst of clarity, Wiener foretold the likely effect of computerization by comparing the computer to a genie. "These new machines have a great capacity for upsetting the present basis of industry," Wiener explained,  "and of reducing the economic value of the routine factory employee to a point at which he is not worth hiring at any price. If we combine our machine-potentials of a factory with the valuation of human beings on which our present factory system is based, we are in for an industrial revolution of unmitigated cruelty."

He described what must be done to avoid this cruelty. "We must be willing," he emphasized, "to deal in facts rather than in fashionable ideologies if we wish to get through this period unharmed. Not even the brightest picture of an age in which man is the master, and in which we all have an excess of mechanical services will make up for the pains of transition, if we are not both humane and intelligent."

"Finally," he warned, "the machines will do what we ask them to do and not what we ought to ask them to do. In the discussion of the relation between man and powerful agencies controlled by man, the gnomic wisdom of the folk tales [that is, of genies and bottles}, has a value far beyond the books of our sociologists."

We should let that be a warning to all.

Robotics, Offshoring And Economics: Another Take

Interesting dialogue in today's New York Times. Worth reading all of the comments. Pay special attention to the cartoon that illustrates the article.

Seventy Years Ago: May 19, 1943 - Battle of The Atlantic Turning Point

By May 19, 1942, the Allies had begun to turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic. German submarines were achieving less and less in their effort to interrupt the flow of goods from America to England. Not only had Allied equipment and procedures improved to the point that escort ships were able to defend against submarines more effectively, aircraft were able to detect and attack submarines at greater distance from land.

Here is an account of one successful effort against submarine wolf packs.

A key element in increased Allied success was the effective use of communications intelligence, including code breaking and high frequency direction finding. By this time, all of the technical means of detecting and tracking submarines had improved to the point that German submarine operations had become very hazardous.

A significant organizational change occurred on May 20, with formation of the U.S. 10th Fleet, essentially a paper organization headquartered in Washington, DC.

Tenth Fleet's mission was to destroy enemy submarines, protect coastal merchant shipping, centralize control and routing of convoys, and to coordinate and supervise all USN anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training, anti-submarine intelligence, and coordination with Allied nations. The fleet was active from May 1943 to June 1945.

Tenth Fleet had no ships of its own, but used Commander-in-Chief Atlantic's ships operationally; CinCLANT issued orders to escort groups originating in the United States and organized and operated hunter-killer groups built around the growing fleet of small Escort Aircraft Carriers.  Tenth Fleet never put to sea, had no ships, and never had more than about 50 people in its organization. The fleet was disbanded after the surrender of Germany.

Seventy Years Ago: May 17, 1943 In Europe

May 17, 1943, the B-17 Memphis Belle completed twenty-five missions over Europe. They were the first US bomber to complete that number of missions. It was unusual enough that the Army made a documentary featuring Memphis Belle.

Here is a very interesting summary on Brad DeLong's blog.

Town Manager Steps Down Early

Picked off of Town Dock this morning:

"Saturday May 18, 2013

"Oriental’s Town Manager Bob Maxbauer is stepping down June 30, six months earlier than previously scheduled. Mayor Bill Sage made the announcement yesterday afternoon after a closed door session at the Board’s budget meeting. Sage said Maxbauer planned to run for a seat on the Town Board this November.
At the budget meeting, there were strong indications Maxbauer was also seeking future employment with the Town once his $56,000-a-year stint at Manager ends. Maxbauer spoke at length about a “dire need” for repairs at the Town’s water plant and presented himself as the licensed employee who could renovate the plant with the Town’s Public Works staff, as well as operate it. As such, he asked the Board to allocate $160,000 for Public Works salaries next fiscal year — instead of the $120,000 the Board has pencilled in."

"Maxbauer claimed it would cost the Town less for him to rebuild the water plant using public works employees than for the Town to hire an outside contractor. (Maxbauer made a similar pitch to the Board a year ago about the Town Hall project, which he oversaw and which ended up costing more than was allocated.) At the budget meeting, there was no mention of putting the water plant renovation job out for bid."

"More on the story coming…"

Very interesting.