Accessory to War
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More recently, a staff historian for the US Army’s Communications–Electronics Command states in the CERDEC Monthly View of July 2009, published by the Army’s Communications–Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, in an article honoring the “flawless” performance of the radar itself:
On Dec. 7, 1941, three SCR-270 radar sets in operation on the northern shore of Oahu recorded impulses between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., indicating the approach of what would turn out to be two Japanese reconnaissance planes. . . .
One of the radar stations reported the findings to a Navy lieutenant on duty at the Information Center at Fort Shafter, Hawaii. The lieutenant reported it to another Navy lieutenant, who determined that the Navy “had a reconnaissance flight out, and that’s what this flight was.”
At 7:02 a.m., the radar detected an aircraft approaching Oahu at a distance of about 130 miles. The Signal Corps radar operators telephoned the Information Center at Fort Shafter and reported a “large number of planes coming in from the north, three points east.” The operator at Fort Shafter informed his superior that the radar operator said he had never seen anything like it, and it was “an awful big flight.” (Floyd Hertweck, “ ‘It was the largest blip I’d ever seen’: Fort Monmouth Radar System Warned of Pearl Harbor Attack,” cecom.army.mil/historian/pubArtifacts/Articles/2010-01-01_0900-FILE-CERDEC%20Monthly%20View%20July%202009%20-%20SCR%20270.pdf, accessed Dec. 11, 2015; link disabled)
42. Brown, Radar History of World War II, x, 5–6.
43. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 279–80. Martin Harwit, former director of the National Air and Space Museum, also views technology as strongly determinative: “The most important observational discoveries result from substantial technological innovation in observational astronomy[, and a] novel instrument soon exhausts its capacity for discovery.” Harwit, Cosmic Discovery, 18–19.
44. T. R. Kennedy Jr., “Theory of Radar: More Information on Radio Detection Device Is Made Public,” New York Times, Apr. 29, 1945; William S. White, “Secrets of Radar Given to World: Its Role in War and Uses for Peacetime Revealed in Washington and London,” New York Times, Aug. 15, 1945.
45. Randall, “Radar and the Magnetron,” 314.
46. Quoted in Kaiser, “Case Study: British Radar,” 38. Women were crucial to that “operational efficiency,” because it was they who took on the task of closely monitoring nuances in the incoming signals—the “small wiggles in oscilloscope traces”—at the Chain Home early-warning stations. Radar, declared Watson-Watt, was “the secret that was kept by a thousand women” (Watson-Watt, “Radar Defense Today,” 230). Brown quotes an Australian explanation as to why women proved so valuable: “Women did make the best radar operators, because they watched the screen” (Brown, Radar History of World War II, 2, 64). Kaiser, too, acknowledges the role played by women: “Due to a sort of unconscious pattern recognition, operators, particularly the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (the WAAFs), acquired the skill to detect signals even below noise level” (38).
47. Brown, Radar History of World War II, x, 6.
48. In 1946 Watson-Watt painted a sunny portrait of UK wartime cooperation across sectors in the effort to develop and improve radar: “a co-operation which, I believe, was unsurpassed and unequalled in any part of the war effort. It was a co-operation in which the natural philosopher and the engineer in the university worked with the physicists and the mathematicians and the workers of all kinds in the industry, with the men in the Government establishments and with the uniformed forces, from top to bottom rank, making an extraordinarily reassuring and happy story of full interplay between all the contributory factors necessary to the winning of the war.” Randall, “Radar and the Magnetron,” 314.
49. For details on early research in planetary radar astronomy, see Butrica, See the Unseen, 7–27.
50. Lovell belatedly discovered this fact in 1977, while visiting the radio telescope at Effelsberg, near Bonn, and discussing collaboration between Jodrell Bank and the German facility, whose director was Otto Hachenberg. At dinner, Hachenberg raised the topic of doing science during the war years and said to his counterpart Lovell, “I am well aware of your wartime occupation because as a young man then working in Telefunken I was sent to investigate the equipment in a bomber that crashed near Rotterdam in 1943.” Lovell, “Cavity Magnetron in WWII,” 288.
51. Butrica, See the Unseen, 21–26.
52. William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (New York: Random House, 1998), 67–68.
53. See, e.g., Burrows, This New Ocean, 94–123; David H. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992), 34–57. Hitler, in fact, had ordered the destruction of Germany’s research facilities and research records, and Wernher von Braun and his colleagues had been ordered off the main V-2 facility at Peenemünde. As Burrows writes, “Where Peenemünde’s rocketeers were concerned, however, getting rid of the only card they had with which to barter their futures would have been unthinkably stupid.” Von Braun understood that those records and those rocketeers “were a treasure trove of data on the world’s operational ballistic missile technology and the starter set for going to space.” So his assistant and a group of unhappy soldiers crated fourteen tons of irreplaceable, indescribably precious documents, carried the crates into a vaulted room inside an abandoned mine shaft, and dynamited the entrance, sealing the room. Meanwhile, the rocketeers maneuvered to turn themselves over to the Americans, in an operation that came to be known as Paperclip (Burrows, This New Ocean, 108–16).
54. Remark to a colleague, as quoted in Jonathan Allday, Apollo in Perspective: Spaceflight Then and Now (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000), 85 n.1.
55. The first round of one hundred US-produced V-2s were to be built from 360-plus metric tons of V-2 parts rushed out of Germany’s underground Mittelwerk factory in late summer 1945 and shipped to the United States by the US Army’s Special Mission V-2 prior to the Soviet army’s takeover of the area. However, by January 1946 it had become clear that many components were either damaged or simply missing. It appeared that only twenty-five V-2s could be assembled with the available parts and that they would have to be assembled quickly, because some components were deteriorating as they sat in the desert Southwest. DeVorkin, Science With a Vengeance, 48, 61–62.
56. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance, 154, 67. DeVorkin contends that war rather than science held the reins, writing, “Military goals had indeed become scientific goals in the warhead of a V-2 missile.”
57. Watson-Watt, “Radar Defense Today,” 240.
58. Letter from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal to Merwyn Bly, Senior Engineer in the Bureau of Ships, Dec. 4, 1945, on the occasion of Bly’s receipt of the Distinguished Civilian Service Award for his role in the development of chaff, wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_%28countermeasure%29#/media/File:Letter_from_Secretary_of_the_Navy,_James_Forrestal,_to_Merwyn_Bly.jpg (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).
59. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 295–97. Contemporary chaff is often made of thin, aluminum-coated wire or glass fiber.
60. “Counter Radar Devices,” Science News Letter for December 8, 1945, 355; Col. Arthur P. Weyermuller, USAF, “Stealth Employment in the Tactical Air Force (TAF)—A Primer on Its Doctrine and Operational Use” (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 1992), 2, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB443/docs/area51_18.PDF (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).
61. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 288–98.
62. USAF, “Air Force Stealth Technology Review,” June 10–14, 1991, “Tab A: Value of Stealth,” nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB443/docs/area51_14.PDF (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).
63. P. Ya. Ufimtsev, Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction (Izd-Vo Sovetskoye Radio, 1962), trans. Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command (Dayton, OH: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 1971), viii, v. Re Skunk Works, currently about 90 perce
nt of their projects are classified, and most are “so secret that employees can’t tell one another what they’re working on.” W. J. Hennigan, “ ‘Chief Skunk’ at a Hush-Hush Weapons Complex,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012. But see “Skunk Works Critique of Secrecy and Security Policies,” Federation of American Scientists: Project on Government Secrecy, fas.org/sgp/othergov/skunkworks.html (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).
64. “The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs—Declassified Documents Describe Stealth Facility in Nevada: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 443,” ed. Jeffrey T. Richelson, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Oct. 29, 2013, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB443/ (accessed Apr. 20, 2017). Another, recent approach to stealth aircraft revisits the possibilities of cloaking. Engineers at Iowa State University have developed a flexible radar-trapping “meta-skin”: small split rings filled with a liquid metal alloy and embedded in multiple layers of silicon that can be stretched/tuned to capture different wavelengths. When an object—such as, hypothetically, a successor to the B-2 bomber—is wrapped in the meta-skin, it suppresses radar from all directions and angles. Siming Yang, Peng Liu, Mingda Yang, Qiugu Wang, Jiming Song, and Liang Dong, “From Flexible and Stretchable Meta-Atom to Metamaterial: A Wearable Microwave Meta-Skin with Tunable Frequency Selective and Cloaking Effects,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016), 21921, doi: 10.1038/srep21921; “Iowa State engineers develop flexible skin that traps radar waves, cloaks objects,” Iowa State University, Mar. 4, 2016, news release, www.news.iastate.edu/news/2016/03/04/meta-skin (accessed Apr. 20, 2017). Re the design differences between the F-117A and the B-2, Moore’s law over ten years gives 6.67 doubling cycles, which equals a factor of 100 increase in computing power.
65. At a meeting held by SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in 1976, the vice president for R & D at Hewlett Packard, Bernard Oliver, quoted from a 1971 report by NASA’s Project Cyclops (in which he participated) that introduced the term “water hole”: “Nature has provided us with a rather narrow band in this best part of the spectrum that seems especially marked for interstellar contact. It lies between the spectral lines of hydrogen (1420 MHz) and the hydroxyl radical (1662 MHz). Standing like the Om and the Um on either side of a gate, these two emissions of the disassociation products of water beckon all water-based life to search for its kind at the age-old meeting place of all species: the water hole.” Oliver then remarks, “It is easy to dismiss this as romantic, chauvinistic nonsense, but is it? We suggest that it is chauvinistic and romantic but that it may not be nonsense.” See Bernard M. Oliver, “Colloquy 4—The Rationale for a Preferred Frequency Band: The Water Hole,” SP-419 SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, history.nasa.gov/SP-419/s2.4.htm (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).
66. For a historical overview of what are generally termed nonlethal weapons, see Ando Arike, “The Soft-Kill Solution: New Frontiers in Pain Compliance,” Harper’s (Mar. 2010), 38–47. Re the USAF’s ADS system, Arike writes, “Active denial works like a giant, open-air microwave oven, using a beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets to 130 degrees and force anyone in its path to flee in pain—but without injury, officials insist, making it one of the few weapons in military history to be promoted as harmless to its targets” (38). The extent to which the US military wishes to stress the nonlethality and limited impact is evident in the DoD’s Non-Lethal Weapons Program’s webpage titled “Active Denial System FAQs,” on which the DoD states that fifteen years of research and more than thirteen thousand volunteer exposures have demonstrated that the weapon (ADS) “is safe.” In Q9, it addresses the question of whether the system works like a microwave oven (answer: no) and emphasizes the difference in impact of millimeter waves vs. microwaves: “The ADS, a non-lethal directed-energy weapon, projects a very short duration (on the order of a few seconds) focused beam of millimeter waves at a frequency of 95 gigahertz (GHz). A microwave oven operates at 2.45 GHz. At the much higher frequency of 95 GHz, the associated directed energy wavelength is very short and only physically capable of reaching a skin depth of about 1/64 of an inch. A microwave oven operating at 2.45 GHz has a much longer associated wave length, on the order of several inches, which allows for greater penetration of material and efficiency in heating food. The ADS provides a quick and reversible skin surface heating sensation that does not penetrate into the target.” jnlwp.defense.gov/About/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/ActiveDenialSystemFAQs.aspx (accessed Apr. 20, 2016).
67. Like its predecessors, the KH-11 was a secret affair. Space technology sleuth Craig Covault, veteran of nearly four decades of journalism at Aviation Week, recently told the exciting tale of how he, his magazine, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arranged to preserve that secrecy—an arrangement that held until the late summer of 1978, when the arrest of a CIA employee who had sold the KH-11 manual to the Soviets for a laughable $3,000 opened the door for Covault to write about something that was already partly public. So as not to blow the cover off the program completely, he says, he agreed to “dribble in the details across many issues of the magazine, not trumpet the whole program at once.” Craig Covault, “Anatomy of a Scoop,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 2016, 32–33.
68. One early USAF experiment in spy satellites, SAMOS, which got under way shortly after Sputnik, was not of the standard film-return type. It took pictures on film, developed and scanned the film in orbit, and relayed the data via a radio link. But only a few dozen images a day could be transmitted, owing to the slowness of the system. Because this yield was regarded as insufficient to be of value, SAMOS was canceled in the early 1960s.
69. “Lockheed Martin Honors Pioneers of Recently Declassified National Reconnaissance Satellites,” press release, Jan. 25, 2012, Lockheed Martin, www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2012/january/0125_ss_satellite.html (accessed Apr. 21, 2017).
70. Figures for resolution and other features vary from source to source. Among the sources consulted were the fact sheets, reports on declassification, and other materials available at Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, “The Gambit and Hexagon Programs,” www.nro.gov/history/csnr/gambhex/index.html, including “Hexagon: America’s Eyes in Space,” Sept. 2011, www.nro.gov/history/csnr/gambhex/Docs/Hex_fact_sheet.pdf. Other sources were T.-W. Lee, Military Technologies of the World, vol. 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood/Praeger Security International, 2009), 142–49; “U.S. Satellite Imagery 1960–1999: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 13,” ed. Jeffrey T. Richelson, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Apr. 1999, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB13/#26; Dwayne Day, “Reconnaissance and Signals Intelligence Satellites,” US Centennial of Flight Commission, 2003, www.centennialofflight.net/essay/SPACEFLIGHT/recon/SP38.htm; Craig Covault, “Titan, Adieu,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 163:16 (Oct. 24, 2005), 28–29; John Pike, “Eyes in the Sky: Satellite Reconnaissance,” Harvard Int. Rev. 10:6 (Aug./Sept. 1988), 21–23, 26; Jeffrey Richelson, “Monitoring the Soviet Military,” Arms Control Today 16:7 (Oct. 1986), 14–15; Jeffrey T. Richelson, “The NRO Declassified: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 33,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, Sept. 2000, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/index.html; “Military Surveillance Sat,” Encyclopedia Astronautica, www.astronautix.com/fam/milcesat.htm#chrono; National Reconnaissance Office, “Released Records,” www.nro.gov/foia/declass/collections.html. (All online sources accessed Mar. 25–26, 2016.)
71. William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth (New York: Forge/Tom Doherty Associates, 2006), 141ff.
72. “Mission to Comet Tempel 1: Deep Impact: About the Mission,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/deep-impact/ (accessed Apr. 21, 2017).
73. NASA, “The Deep Impact Spacecraft: Overview” (with links to “Flight System,” “Impactor,” and “Instruments”), May 11, 2005, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/spacecraft/index.
html#; NASA, “Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July with Deep Space Fireworks,” July 4, 2005, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/media/deepimpact-070405-1.html; Shyam Bhaskaran, “Autonomous Navigation for Deep Space Missions,” American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SpaceOps 2012 Conference, Stockholm, www.spaceops2012.org/proceedings/documents/id1267135-Paper-001.pdf (accessed Apr. 21, 2017); P. Thomas et al., “The Nucleus of Comet 9P/Tempel 1: Shape and Geology from Two Flybys,” Icarus 222 (2013), 458.
6. DETECTION STORIES
1. Bernard Lovell, The Story of Jodrell Bank (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), xii, 170, 29.
2. Lovell, Jodrell Bank, 196.
3. Lovell, Jodrell Bank, 197–208, 217–29. The suddenly formidable military value of the Mark I was that it “totally unexpectedly appeared as the only instrument that could be used as a long distance radar capable of giving warning of the launch of an ICBM in the USSR”; it was instantly clear “that Britain had built a unique instrument which was in great demand for commanding and receiving the telemetry from US and USSR satellites, particularly those venturing far out into the Solar System.” Francis Graham-Smith and Bernard Lovell, “Diversions of a Radio Telescope,” Notes & Records of the Royal Society 62 (2008), 197; Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, “The 250ft Mk I Radio Telescope,” www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/mk1.html (accessed Apr. 20, 2017). See also Tim O’Brien, “When Was the Lovell Telecope at Jodrell Bank First Switched On?” Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, University of Manchester, Oct. 29, 2014, www.jodrellbank.net/lovell-telescope-jodrell-bank-first-switched/ (accessed Apr. 20, 2017).