Yankee Scientist

(See Cover)

To U.S. scientists, the turning point of World War II was March 20, 1943. That was the day that U-boat sinkings began to sag like a beaten fighter. Bigger and bloodier battles have since been--and are yet to be--fought, but, in the scientists' log, none more decisive. And no one knows better than they how close the United Nations came to losing the crucial Battle of the Atlantic.

Last week a small part of the story could be told. The struggle against the U-boats was primarily a battle of technology, and in the summer and fall of 1942 Allied technologists heard disturbing news about the U-boat's growing effectiveness. New German devices and tactics were steadily increasing the submarines' kill. U.S. scientists, too, were working on new devices, but there was no predicting how soon they might begin to produce results. That winter the Allied high command sweated through perhaps the worst period of the war, awaiting a U-boat campaign which might virtually cut off communication between America and Europe.

That it never came was due to a double break: the Germans got their improvements into play later and the Allies earlier than expected. When the chips were down, U.S. scientists won. In the last ten days of March, 1943, U-boat ship sinkings dramatically dropped two-thirds. They have continued to decline ever since. At 1943's end, Adolf Hitler publicly acknowledged that "one single technical invention of our enemies" had checked his U-boats.

That was not quite correct; no one device but a combination of new techniques and tactics was responsible. But his unwilling tribute was much appreciated by the anonymous army of U.S. scientists who are fighting a deadly, technological war.

Secret Army. Their general is a shrewd, imaginative physicist, Dr. Vannevar (rhymes with beaver) Bush, in peacetime president of the Carnegie Institution's vast scientific empire. His job is unprecedented in U.S. military history: as chairman of the Army & Navy's Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment, he is the first civilian technician ever to sit in the highest war councils. The Office of Scientific Research and Development, which he commands, is in effect a fifth branch, G5, of the military general staff. Under OSRD (working with the Army's and Navy's own laboratories), practically all the nation's military-scientific research is mobilized.* OSRD has a National Defense Research Committee (weapons), a Committee on Medical Research.

Bush's army consists of 6,000 of the top U.S. scientists. They work on assigned jobs, under nonprofit contracts, in some 300 university and industrial laboratories. Their pay is their normal laboratory salaries. They get no royalties, no bonuses, no medals. Their work is surrounded with fantastic secrecy. When they meet for group talks, the meeting place is first searched from cellar to attic for eavesdroppers. Clerical workers often do not know even the name of the weapon being developed in their own laboratory. A few supersecret projects are carried on in isolated, walled villages which no one is allowed to enter or leave except on special permits. For further protection, each scientist is usually assigned only part of a problem. Bush's group, not really a team, in general works like a squad of golfers in which each player is handed a club, told to shoot for a faraway green which he can not see.

In total, OSRD is an enormous enterprise, spending about $135,000,000 a year. To date it has contracted for more than 2,000 investigations, completed 564, produced well over 200 new devices. The only official clue to what OSRD is doing is in the titles of its 18 divisions: e.g., radar, subsurface warfare, radio, explosives, new missiles, "special projectiles" (perhaps rockets), fire control. Of these, far & away the biggest is radar ($30,000,000). Second: subsurface warfare ($19,000,000).

The Soldier's Eyes. In radar, OSRD has carried on somewhat like the airplane designers who picked up where the Wright brothers left off. Credit for discovery of the 20-year-old radar principle is in dispute between two U.S. Navy researchers, A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Young, and a Scottish physicist, Sir Robert A. Watson-Watt. The British were the first to use radar (which they call the radio locator) in the Battle of Britain. But OSRD has converted the first crude radar into something of almost human intelligence and with superhuman powers.

A radio beam follows the earth's curvature, instead of sailing into space, because it bounces along a reflecting roof of electrically charged particles, called the Kennelly -Heaviside layer, which blankets the earth's outer atmosphere. Physicists have measured the height of this layer, varying from 60 to 1,200 mi., by bouncing radio waves off it and catching their echo on a receiver. The first hint of radio's possible usefulness as a ground-level detector came when experimenters noticed that a ship moving between a transmitter and receiver interfered with radio waves. The basic radar instrument had three main elements: 1) a short-wave sender-receiver which could bounce back a beam, through clouds, smoke or rain, from a small object (e.g., a plane or ship) as much as 130 mi. away, 2) a vane to determine the object's direction, 3) sensitive electronic tubes to measure the object's distance by timing the echoed beam, which travels with the speed of light -- 186,000 mi. a second.

These basic radar principles are by now well known to all the belligerents. But OSRD's newer instruments have greatly increased radar's usefulness. One new ap plication which has already been revealed is the use of radar with antiaircraft guns to direct fire.

The Sailor's Ears. But in hunting sub merged submarines, sound waves, rather than radar, must be used. Ordinary sound waves do not help, however, because they radiate in all directions, like ripples from a stone dropped in a pool. What is needed is a sound beam that will travel in a straight line and bounce straight back.

Such a beam was found during World War I by a French physicist, Paul Langevin, in the very high frequency range of inaudible impulses: supersonics. But not until World War II was the supersonic detector developed into a reliable instrument.

Not to be confused with the well-known sound detector which picks up a sub marine by the noise of its screws, the supersonic locator uses a beam and its echo, just like radar. It became a practical device when a method of interpreting the supersonic signal was developed. Recently it has helped make submarine-chasing more sure. The first official disclosure of the device was made three weeks ago by Secretary Harold L. Ickes, who reported that the Interior Department planned to make use of it for locating schools of fish.

Though radar and submarine-fighting devices are perhaps OSRD's most valuable contributions, to the men on the fighting fronts OSRD is known for a profusion of more prosaic but vital inventions. The weekly output of its own and allied scientists is amazing. Last week's, for example: a new 500-lb. oil-and-magnesium fire bomb (called "the Goop") which cannot be extinguished; an electronic gadget for regulating air pressure in plane super chargers; two new hard-hitting armored cars (one U.S., one British) which carry cannon and can fight tanks; a safe new bomb fuse with a tiny propeller which unscrews and primes the firing mechanism while the bomb falls; a new putty for filling dents and crevices in plane wings, which, by cutting wind resistance, saves 180 horsepower.

Indicative of science's immense, wide-ranging role in the war are these war-born U.S. inventions:

P: Torpedoes which steer themselves, can travel five miles at better than 50 m.p.h.

P: A chemical treatment of wool that makes soldiers' suits mothproof and wash able.

P: Methods of fireproofing flying suits, clothing, bedding, upholstery.

P: Recoil-absorbers that make it possible to mount a 75 -mm. cannon in a plane.

P: Power-operated plane gun turrets and automatic gun sights.

P: Rockets (and their cousin, jet-propulsion), which have many uses -- e.g., as a light arm (the bazooka), in cannon and anti-aircraft guns, for boosting heavy planes off the ground.

P: Fluorescent and phosphorescent materials which enable soldiers and airmen to see objects at night.

P: Methods of speeding the production of penicillin.

P: A revolutionary mosquito bomb, using a rapidly spreading gas (freon) to disperse insecticide, which instantly fills a room or tent, kills all insects within a few minutes, lasts 20 times as long as an ordinary spray.

Short-Order Duck. Such are U.S. scientists' short-order wonders, often telescoping into a few months developments which would normally take five years of research from idea to finished product. Perhaps the best example of how Dr. Bush's group works was its famed amphibian truck, the "Duck." The problem: to produce a 2 1/2-ton truck (based on an amphibian jeep previously designed by OSRD) which could run on land and water and do heavy duty in beachhead operations. It was a job at which many had failed; most attempts had simply placed an ordinary truck on pontoons, with dampening results. OSRD assigned the ticklish part of the design, not to a truck maker, but to a firm of yacht designers, Sparkman & Stephens. They were to produce a watertight hull; General Motors, Yellow Trucks, the truck chassis and motor.

Two months later, OSRD's team had put its Duck into production. The Duck has been invaluable in Pacific landing operations. It can carry 35 to 50 men, plows through heavy surf, drives in & out of steep shell holes.

In war-blase Washington, OSRD is regarded almost with awe. Significantly, this is less because of its scientific accomplishments than because of its smooth operation. OSRD is one of the few executive agencies that in four turbulent years has had no internal quarrels, no tiffs with Congress, no reorganization; its original line-up of top men is still intact. Of course, OSRD, being virtually a military secret, is also virtually invisible. But it is not completely invisible; and much of the credit for its immunity from attack has been due to OSRD's able, self-effacing boss, Vannevar Bush.

Tinkering Yankee. Lean, sharp, salty, 54-year-old Van Bush is a Yankee whose love of science began, like that of many American boys, in a passion for tinkering with gadgets. Born in Everett, Mass., near Boston, grandson of a whaler and son of a Universalist preacher, Bush feels most at home in a Cape Cod fishing boat. Possessed of insatiable curiosity and a prodigious memory, he has solid learning in the more obvious forms of literature (he quotes Kipling and Omar Khayyam by the yard), likes to read philosophy, plays the flute, loves symphonic music, has been a successful farmer and turkey raiser, is a fascinated and fascinating lecturer, and as a scientist has contributed substantially to progress in applied electricity and electronics.

He is rarely without a pipe in his mouth, a pencil in his hand and an idea for "a better way" to do whatever is being done. At home, in peacetime, he relaxed by working in a cellar machine shop building boats, driving a tractor on his New Hampshire farm. Now much too busy to indulge his various hobbies, he nonetheless startled his wife this winter by suddenly taking up late evening basket-weaving.

A Tufts man ('13) and engineering graduate of M.I.T. and Harvard, Bush taught electrical engineering at M.I.T., where he developed his famed differential analyzer, a mechanical brain that does intricate mathematical calculations. Mathematicians consider this machine (now in use by Army ordnance researchers) one of the most important inventions in modern laboratory technology. Bush left the vice-presidency of M.I.T. to become the Carnegie Institution's president in 1939. During World War I he did Navy research on antisubmarine devices. He has two sons in World War II -- an Army lieutenant and an aviation cadet.

Bush's Idea. OSRD was Bush's idea --and a prewar one. Alarmed at U.S. unpreparedness in military technology, in 1940 he rounded up a few scientific cronies --Harvard's Chemist-President James B.

Conant, M.I.T. 's Physicist-President Karl I. Compton, Caltech's Physicist-Dean Richard C. Tolman -- and cooked up a plan to organize the nation's research in case of war.* President Roosevelt quickly approved the plan. With the addition of University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Alfred Newton Richards (for medicine), M.I.T.'s Jerome C. Hunsaker (aviation), the Army's Harvey Bundy (special assistant to Secretary Stimson) and Rear Admiral J. A. Purer, this group still constitutes the U.S. scientific high command.

Bush faced an immensely difficult job. Some problems:

P: The Enemy: Again & again Bush has warned his military colleagues not to underrate their foes. Says he: "In military science, the enemy is damned smart."

P: Speed: OSRD has a hard & fast deadline--the very last of its devices must be ready for use not later than the summer of 1945.

P: Professional Pride: Scientific research generally pays off, if it pays at all, in professional recognition and prestige. But in OSRD Bush has had to enlist the nation's best scientists with nothing to offer but patriotism and anonymity; it is doubtful whether some of them will ever get public credit for their discoveries.

P: Manpower: For many of his young researchers, Bush has had to fight a tug of war with the Army. Creative scientific research is a young man's game, almost exclusively so in a young technology such as electronics. Says Bush: "Hell's fire, only youngsters can do it because only they know it."/-

P: Allied Teamwork: One of Bush's proudest accomplishments is the coordination of research between the U.S. and Britain. There is complete exchange of information : OSRD has an office in London; the British Central Scientific Office has one in Washington.

P: Relations with the Military: To jealous Army & Navy brass hats, OSRD was a civilian upstart, invading a field traditionally under exclusively military control. But Bush cleared this hurdle neatly by taking his whole show backstage and letting military men get the credit for his scientists' inventions. Result: a silk-smooth harmony between OSRD and the military that seems almost too good to be true.

Like almost everybody else, Vannevar Bush thinks of himself as essentially a man of peace. He regards himself as working at a disagreeable but necessary assignment. He refuses to be drawn into discussions as to the possibilities of OSRD inventions for the peace to come. OSRD's sole job, he considers, is to shorten the war. But one thing he would like to see continued after the war--something like OSRD. Says he, hammering his desk with his fist: "If we had been on our toes in war technology ten years ago, we would probably not have had this damn war."

* For strictly industrial research (materials, etc.), WPB has another agency, the Office of Production Research and Development.

* In one military field, aviation, U.S. research was well advanced, thanks to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,

/- Last week President Roosevelt, while calling for review of the draft status of under-26 workers, promised the American Chemical Society that he would try to keep young scientists at their jobs.

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