Saturday, August 10, 2013

To Serve Man

If we bumped into each other on the street and told you about two guys who get on a blimp for a four hour flight only to disappear without a trace you'd think I was either nuts or telling you the plot to something I saw on TV. Well, at any rate the only the only thing I can guarantee is that I didn't see this on TV! There are days throughout this that I feel like some dime novel  detective. Jim Hutton in the 1970's "Ellery Queen" television show most of the time, pacing around absentmindedly trying to piece all the bits of facts together into the timeline. The facts are all that matter

The L8 story was a mystery not because anyone was hiding anything but because of all the events that occurred during that period in history paled in comparison.

I've come to understand it's many stories. It's about how people act during dark times.It's about ingenuity. It's about courage under fire. It's a story of people who know about the value in self-sacrifice, inner strength, character and intelligence. Strength through unity while still allowing a broad diverse set of minds to explore and the discipline to know what was going turn the tide of the war. This was the real purpose of the NDRC and it's evolution into the OSRD. It was this self sacrifice that accounted to connections failing to be made. The civilian scientists in involved quickly realized that for the whole setup to work and be productive and show results, they knew they'd have take the ego of their military partners into consideration while developing and that they would need to appear to take a back seat to the men used to leading the charge.

It's so much more than just a freak accident. It's not just an unfathomable mystery. It's both strange and heroic. No dark government conspiracy theory.  Nothing paranormal. Just a different spin on Shakespeare's  As You Like It, "All the World's a Stage" monologue, but I think that the ages of man are more about good times and dark days. Humanity has had both and will continue to have both in varying degrees and all we can do is control how we react.

I was in Baltimore, Maryland last weekend working an angle on the L-8 research and came across a new picture of the L-8 just before it crashed at Daly City. Every time you think you think you have all that there is to know life has a way of reminding you it's all so much more complex than we all like to imagine.As far as I know no one has seen it widely since it was first published in the papers in 1942, and I've never seen this photo anywhere else. The quality isn't great but it's a sign of that there are always more to be found and life and mysteries are never that cut and dry. I was actually looking following another lead involving the British, the pre-war years and the involvement of the British Security Commission in the Tizzard Mission bring the 3 cm magnetron to America.

Baltimore Sun June 12, 1942 - taken from up the hill from it's final resting place.


About my theory of the events surrounding the disappearance of the L-8 crew. I think you can subscribe to two logical theories. The first is that one fell while trying to make some repair on the ship, falling to his death. The sudden loss of weight of the first man caused the blimp to suddenly upend causing the second to fall out the door. If you have been following this blog you'll have caught on to the connection between the L-8 mystery and the development of radar and other inventions by the NDRC/OSRD. The accidental death of the two men aboard occurred through a curious and random set of circumstances, some direct, some not.
Without getting into a bigger discussion on fate and God, I'll just say that there was no malice in any of what happened but that as with each of lives we live is the intersection of  the set of events driven by random events  circumstances, fate, man and God. It's an imperfect world we live in and the best we can hope for is that we find ways of getting through bad times intact and make our part of the puzzle better.

 No one had any ill will in any of this. No one knows what will happen but much of what will happen is driven by the past and interactions of events we do not have any control over.  The story is about the set of circumstances that lead to the accident. Perfection is not possible, but how we react to adversity is all we can control. The men aboard the L-8 did what they were supposed to do and through no direct fault they fell from the gondola that day due to side effects from experimental equipment aboard.

How did I come to that conclusion? It's the only way the facts fit and still have the events make sense.

The story told by the people familiar with the mystery tell bits and pieces. A lot of the story is wrong or missing important facts in different sources. Rift with confirmation bias, people see what details they need to make their personal theory work - and only what fits. From the start I made myself a promise that I would not fall into that mindset. Question everything honestly and openly even if it means your own disappointment.

Option One: They fell out into the water and their bodies were missed. The L-8, lightened by the weight of two men raised above the limit of the built-in safety value, opening it, and slowing releasing the helium and leaving the L-8 to the prevailing winds and it's final resting place.

Simple solution. Occam's Razor fans will go with that one, but it leaves too many unanswered details.

Solution Two.

At the inquest so many of the first people who took the stand were asked if they had seen any one aboard the L-8 or talking with the two pilots before the take-off. One after one they all said "No" until one man responded that he had seen indeed seen  two civilians had been aboard the gondola with the pilots in the hour or so before the take-off of Love Eight. Who were they and what took an hour to discuss?

Realizing that the L-8 was intact and all the bits were working in the post crash check-out confused me. Reading the radio log I kept reading that the radio operator kept trying to raise the crew and commented that it sounded like someone was trying to respond. But the radio was working in the post checkout. Even the Baltimore Sun article that contained the picture above discusses that the radio was blaring when the first people arrived on the crash scene. What changed so that one minute the crew couldn't communicate but then the radio is just fine?

The L-8 normally had a crew of three aboard but that morning the mechanic who was on her was ordered off at the last minute because it was too heavy. Speculation suggested that maybe the fog and rain added extra weight, yet it only rained less than a tenth of an inch the whole month of August 1942. The fog that rolled in the day before was no heavier than that day so I had to explain why the L-8 was one person too heavy.

Lots of these types of points  pop up when we replay the events of that day. They left me unsatisfied by the Solution One and so I kept digging looking to fill in the blanks until I had details and a story that fit together.

The fact that everyone important to the story of this accident on the other side of the country is from New Jersey - as understandable and flattering it is to a Jersey native - was statistically troubling. So why the disproportionate Jersey representation?

After I found the inquest records and eliminated that there was a surprise attack from a submarine or a rogue wave  that washed the crew away, but that two sets of witnesses saw the L-8 heads back towards San Francisco under control, and one person reporting that they saw the L-8 approaching the Golden Gate Bridge yet the search was out in open ocean?
Was there any reason to think that they were out there?

As I was sat at the National Archives on Pennsylvania Ave in Washington one weekend going through the indexes for the Navy finance records during WW2, I came across another  another important "hmmm.." moment. I should mention that as I start researching I keep a list of important names and locations handy. So as I was winding through the index records I was scanning for my names and places. The names that stood out were Reyes Point and the Farralone Islands. They both show up as having had electronic equipment deliveries. The Farralone entries were not a surprise but Reyes Point was a puzzle at that point I didn't find any reference to anything more than a geographic point used as part of the L-8 patrol route. What was at Reyes Point?

Well one thing lead to another and I discovered that Reyes Point was a Bell Labs site, that the Farralones, besides being a radio listening post, had a radar site on it. The connection between all the  involvement of the men from New Jersey was an easy guess since blimps were involved.

As I started investigating the work that was done at Lakehurst and the surrounding area military sites I started with a number of trips to the National Archives as well as searching New Jersey newspapers looking for clues about what might have been going on at Lakehurst. I also started trying to get the DOD records for anyone involved I could find records for. I soon came across the L2/G-1 accident and it stood out enough to make it worth investigating for a connection. I quickly foun dthat the connection was that the L-8 was the replacement for the destroyed L-2.

I have been looking for the the L2/G-1 JAG inquest records, still as yet unsuccessfully, and I'm sure they would have helped get me where I am sooner, I found that the records of the NDRC/OSRD at NARA and NARA2 held bits and pieces of a story most people - even those very familiar with WW2 - ever knew.So much of what I read was familiar on the surface but I'd sit for days and read records, everything from technical works to personal letters, that filled in so much more detail to the stories. The word that comes to mind is "honesty". I don't mean that the stories we're told are lies but that they are often distillation of very complex stories. In an effort to make them digestible for the readership or maybe the limitation of the writer, the story is simplified.

A reader of this blog reminded me of just how far I travelled to unravel this story.

The last blog about Dumbo was from a source I don't recall, but it came from some where in my travels. Most likely NARA2, but I started going through notes trying to see if I could track down any written references to DUMBO 1 or 2 when I was still uncertain about radars role in the L-8 incident. I've been refreshing my memory lately.

Box 52B at Waltham, Mass. contains the photos of the equipment used in DUMBO 1 and 2 but it contained an important clue to reinforce the idea that radar was at fault. The mounting for the dish that transmitted-received the microwave energy of the radar unit contained a soft plastic material in the early models and it was too soft to hold up to bouncing around and the dishes quickly became misaligned and pointed askew when the radar operator thought they were pointed in the right direction.

Other boxes contained complaints about the mica windows in the TR tubes, the component that allows the radar antenna to both "send" and "listen". The windows would leak and let EMF energy through.

More boxes, different problems. Complaints from air fields from Ohio to Florida complaining about the problems radar caused with radio on planes with radar. Pilots were unable to use both at the same time and before they realized it many pilots were flying in without contacting the tower, low on fuel unable to wait and not realizing what the problem was.

The first units produced were hand crafted. Eventually they were manufactured in a more typical fashion but never quite so since radar was so secret, they never let any one set of people really see the whole thing. Radar was treated much the same way the atomic bomb was. The magnetrons built a few miles from my home in New Jersey. I was fortunate enough to have worked at Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ. In fact I spent the 80's and 90's working at Bell Labs throughout New Jersey as a contractor. Not a day goes by that I don't mourn it's passing.

In nearby Newark and Harrison, electronic sub-components were manufactured primarily at Westinghouse before they were sent to the primary contractor, Philco, for final assembly.

When radar was first developed blimps were chosen as the first choice for deployment since blimps could stay up for long periods of time, carry many people and become flying laboratories.

I was looking through records of the OSRD kept at Waltham; letters, telegrams, lab books. Anything that lead me to who might have been in California in August 1942 and why.

The super-klystron was developed at the University of California and arrangements were made to made for two scientists to fly out and test it. One was a scientist by the name of Bainbridge. I spent a week at waltham last year at Waltham reading through Bainbridge's lab books.At that point I didn't know who he was but I quickly saw the brilliance in the the works and drawings. Well almost. It turns out everyone has seen his work. Years later at Alamogordo, NM it was his finger that set off the first atomic blast on the trigger switch he designed.

In August of 1942 radar was in it's infancy and problematic. Lots of engineering and solutions to be figured out before it was ready for prime time but as the saying goes "time and tide wait for no man". The world is imperfect and we just do the best do with what we have.Airborne radar units took about an hour to install and the weight of one man. Hmmm.

Radar helped explain the radar interference problem. The weight issue.  The batteries being drained between the time the engines stopped turning the generators and the final crash.


Roosevelt had made reference to the Japanese being a problem when he signed the creation of Treasure Island for use as the site of an upcoming Worlds Fair. The first thing you would note looking at the five versions of the speech is the evolution involving the spin involving the impending need to prepare for war.
Reviewing the blueprints for "world fair grounds" the first impression I had was that it looked like runways with building placed on top that could later be removed. It seemed well thought out and dual purpose.
The speech dedicating Treasure Island was given in 1938.

After all, everyone knew there was a storm coming.

Radar operates in the microwave range and we're all familiar with when happens when direct microwaves at matter with water in it. Like people. It heats things up.

The book "Radio-Frequency and ELF Electromagnetic Energies: A Handbook for Health Professionals" by R. Timothy Hitchcock and Robert M. Patterson from Wiley was very useful in helping figuring out what would happen if a radar unit was aboard the L-8. The book help me figure out what could happen to a man when exposed to levels of energy produced in early radar units. In this case, the unit could heat someone up to about 103 degrees Fahrenheit ( 40 degrees Celsius ), producing a fever high enough to make you pass out, or maybe do something reckless and dangerous enough to fall to your death. Thermal heating via radio waves was and is still in common use.


Microwave energy development was originally attempted in order to create a death ray. It proved impractical for reasons I won't go into here. Germany abandoned radar development because what they really wanted was a  death ray capable of killing fields of troops at a distance and nothing so mundane as a way of detecting remote objects. Other countries dropped the idea of a death ray quickly but continued development of microwave energy based tools.

I have two working examples from the period. One was from St. Louis Worlds Fair exhibit that used microwaves beamed across a crowd at some ears of corn which would pop to the amazement of the crowd.
The other, not at all amusing, comes from Japan. The Japanese developed a prototype of the death ray, testing it on small animals and "dogs". This is not a political forum but I'll suggest anyone interested in this topic watch the History Channel episode on "Weird Axis Weapons" and research what the use of that word may mean. That suggestion comes with a big red warning label if you're squeamish as does reading the Hitchcock/Patterson book. It's not for everyone and I think most of you will understand that there is a suggestion that the Japanese tested their prototype on people.


 Should the dish become misaligned and the energy from the antenna directed into the gondola towards the pilots, they would have started to feel strange but would not have been able to get word back via radio.
Switch off the unit, but the switch isn't working. Head home but you feel feverish and may even pass out.
Make bad fevered decisions. Fall out.
You can't understand what is happening and just like a burning building, jump out.


One man falls and the blimp, suddenly lighter, bounces up dramaticly at an odd angle throwing the second man out the now open door. The blimp rises to the height the emergency release value opens dropping down, the wind blowing the L-8 inland and into the headlines.

 The hand of God or fate, you live, you die.

                                                 Otto


15 comments:

  1. Hello. I just came upon your blog, via the ghost-blimp page. This is very interesting - I have to read through all your posts!

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    1. Thanks for the kind words. I'm going to keep putting up more details as time allows. I was supposed to drive to Washington today for a research trip to the National Archive to try and find the last important bit of the story.

      This past week I visited the grave of Dr. Hoover who died aboard the L-2 and put a page on the site Findagrave.

      I'm thinking I may put up other non-Ghostblimp related stories up. Over the years I've been going through so many records thinking that some things would make things to investigate once I was done with the L-8. Little did I realize it would be such a long winding thread. I'll be trying to fill in more of the detail of the NDRC/OSRC and the MIT Rad Lab in upcoming weeks, but my small piece of all the work they did doesn't do them credit.

      Thanks again and I hope you let people know about the story of the L-8, the L-2 and G-1.

      Otto

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    2. The collision happened just two months prior to the accident of the L-8. They had to re-organise a lot.

      What a way to die, suffocated by Helium from the own airship.

      I am eagerly awaiting your next post!

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  2. I recommended your blog on "google+", but I have no idea whether this will lure people over here - I really hope so! It is a joy to follow you on your research. A phantastic story. As you may have seen I read through the entries in chronological order - I guess the sighting of a possible survivour after the war was just an accidental resemblance, a coincidence, a phantasma so to speak?

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  3. I just found it in his service record and no one had ever mentioned it before. I want people to have all the facts not just what I think fits my story.
    I thought it was interesting.
    At first I thought it might be impossible to fall from that height but I was surprised to find that people have survived so who knows, but it is possible.
    It might be another mystery for someone in the Phoenix area to investigate. If they do I hope they post it here.
    Thanks.

    Otto

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  4. A friend asked a simple but interesting question: Where is the antenna?
    I followed the link you gave to the National Naval Aviation Museum and looked at the gondola of L-8 - of course given it's long service history after the incident, it may have changed, adapted etc, but on contemporary photographs too I can not detect something like an antenna.

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  5. That is an excellent question. Thank your friend for me.
    It was one of the first questions I asked myself once I had the idea "What if radar is involved?"
    The visit to Pensacola was helpful because I could see that there were doors that flipped open. Later on, while going through thye NDRC/OSRD records for the group that made special materials like plastics, they were making and testing materials that were radar transparent. They started noticing that some materials they used reflected back some of the microwaves, so they needed to find something that kept the weather out. Remember radar would be going on ships, airplanes, trucks, and whatever they could imagine. In the pictures I published online somewhere is a picture of a K blimp ( much bigger than an L size blimp). They first used K blimps and thought of the rack system that would crank down the the antenna. A dish antenna is shown in the picture. They also used bar antennas. The rack looks like what the contraption used in the original Frankenstein movie, cranked up and down. The one on the blimp had a few complaints. The how thing would twist and come off the rack pointing in the wrong direction or getting struck halfway down. The mounting system for the antenna had to take a lot of bouncing around. The joint that had to absorbed the shock of bouncing around in the air but had to swivel also. After a while the original joints would fail because of the material was too soft ( part of the learning curve ) and the antenna would point in the wrong direction. Say, inside the gondola instead of outside, causing you to get a fever or pass out eventually.
    Great question. I think maybe you just inspired the next blog. Thanks.

    Otto

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  6. I am a total technical idiot, sorry. But you (or one of the sources you cite) mentioned that the gondola had something built in the floor, ahead, some device for looking for submarines (if I remember it correctly). Maybe there is a kind of compartement already, so no need to nail something to the wall.
    What would have been the weight of the "thing" - I have no idea how such an apparatus would look like, how many separate parts etc. - at least more than the weight of the mechanic Hill who stayed behind, a grown man in the 1940s - around 80 kg?
    They would 1) need something that sends, 2) something that receives (the mentioned dish), 3) a ?-tron that spins around and produces the ray of energy - and 4) something to display the results, like an Oszillator; weight is limited; storage space is limited. The "K" could lift more, so they already must have started to miniaturize the equipment - and it must fit into a bomber or a fighter.
    Is something to be found in a museum? Either airforce or some institution specialized on electrical communications engeneering, if such a special collection exists (... maybe just in front of your doorstep ...). :)

    Okay, that are my two cents of Hirnschmalz!

    Will you publish a book about L-8? I would love to read it!

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    1. Radar units went on blimps early in 1942. They were hand built and the total weight by the the time August rolled around was about the weight of one man. The magnetrons were built at Bell Labs, Whippany NJ at first. Radar was as big a secret as the atom bomb and different companies were making parts. The primary contractor was Philco ( Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia), but Westinghouse in Newark, NJ was responsible for a segment of the units. The antenna didn't need to rotate if you had a bar antenna with a send and receive. The L blimps had a rack above the pilots and a small "room" in the back of the gondola, but there is space under the floor also. Besides the magnetrons built by Bell Labs something called a Klystron tube was also used to generate microwaves for radar. The Super Klystron tube was invented at a school in California. All the top colleges all across the US were represented in the NDRC/OSRD. The display of the A-scope was something like 2 inches in diameter.
      The NDRC ( later reorganized into the OSRD) was made up of both military and civilian scientists who invented everything from plastic, explosives, paints for air planes, Dukw's for the Navy, LORAN, radar, radar jamming, proximity detectors for shells, and on and on. Vanevar Bush ( no relation - it's the first thing people ask me ) was a civilian and reported directly to President Roosevelt. One letter discussing his importance to the war effort suggested that if the secret service had a choice of having to save Bush or Roosevelt, Bush was more important to winning the war. After studying the work of the NDRC/OSRD I believe that's true.
      Before radar, blimps used MAD - think of it as a metal detector - to try and locate subs under the surface. The success rate was low. Blimps are slow and if the crew visually spotted them the enemy sub had plenty of time to submerge and move. MAD was used to try and find were they moved to. Statistics had the success rate at something like 3%.
      I'm still looking for a sample of the units. I have lots of blue and drawings. I have two places to try - MIT has a museum and the Air and Space Museum has an archive that has more than documents but actual devices. I do this in my spare time - I'm a computer consultant. In fact I used to work At Bell Labs Whippany a couple of times - but I'll be heading off to Washington soon.

      Great questions...
      I'll leave you with one final thought. One question I needed to answer is about what's missing. No toolkit.
      Rafts, parachutes, secret documents, etc....no toolkit.
      It suddenly mattered when I read notes complaining about defective on/off switches - off didn't necessarily mean off and Transmit/Receive tubes leaked energy.
      I am working on a book. The whole story is really three parts and I'm working on finding the L-2/G-1 Judge Advocate Inquest investigating the crash. I know more or less what happened and but the story that I started with was "simple" compared to were I ended up.
      I was talking to a friend and realized tat I was interested in getting the story told. We live in a time were too many people learn history from Hollywood movies. They make it interesting and sometime the truth is twisted or forgotten if it's not interesting enough to be a box-office hit. I'm writing ( and rewriting ) and hopefully I'll get the book done soon after I find the L-2/G-1 folder. Most of it is written but I need people to understand some of the basics or it will be too dry for most people. I often compare it to telling people about the story of Jack the Ripper or the Titanic - everyone knows those stories - so if you have a new twist or additional information you don't have to start telling the whole story. I'm trying to write it so you don't need to be a EE or a Physics professor.


      Otto

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  7. Toolkit. Did one exist?
    Surely: It's military - there is a standard solution.

    1) It was none on board from the start.
    2) The crew threw it out.
    3) It fell out with the crew.
    4) It fell out when L-8 was tumbling around on the ground (the open door was fixed, can be seen in photographs).

    When everything else is in place - not just on board, but in place - and the only thing is missing is a toolkit (if it was on board), it would mean that the crew used the thing, id est they took it from the storage place to where they needed it. I think of a kind of metal Werkzeugkasten like this. No idea what they actually had. Possibly some wooden box for safety reasons, if there is a problem with electrostatics, but again, I am a technical idiot.

    Truth is tricky, everybody has one. I think its great that you do this research, and I like to follow you through the files. I hope you can finish your text soon - this file must be locateable, somewhere has to be an index and a Findbuch! Maybe its near the L-8 inquest?

    A question of understanding: What is "EE"?

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    1. Electrical Engineer.

      Your asking great questions...
      Not sure what happened to the kit or whether it had one in the first place. No one mentions it - that's what bothered me. Your conclusions are correct but recall that the L-8 crashed twice. Once at the golf course along the coast when the bomb dislodged and the second time in Daly City.

      I found the mechanic who flew with the L-8 back after it was repaired and they had a problem with the control chain and needed a toolkit and didn't have one. I asked him the same thing. Was it standard issue? Doesn't seem so and even if they did someone may have walked away with it. He ended up jury-rigging something to get the chain back on and everything was fine.

      That question about the toolkit lead me to think what I would do if I were up there. If I decide to try and go outside to fix something, why not tie myself? Put on a parachute - They were at 900 feet near the Golden Gate. Even if the estimates were lower I think human nature would "insist" that I put on a parachute to make me feel like I had a chance. Why not write a note explaining that there's a problem? Planes sight the L-8 and no one signals and no one radios back. They're trained to free balloon if the engines cut out but they are seen approaching the Golden Gate Bridge and not far from Treasure Island.

      I keep coming back to "It's because they can't."

      Regarding then index and Findbuch. Things get misplaced occassionly as was the case with the L-8 records. It took years to track them down. Sometime the indexes are incomplete. The index for the NDRC/OSRD records in Washington are great and accurate. Boston has over 1600 square feet of boxes and the index is incomplete. A gold mine of buried treasure! I could spend the rest of my life reading folders and updating the databases there.

      My hope is that one day they get the money to digitise it all and make it available online. So much to see and so little time to go through it all. What little I could capture with my camera and macro lense for my research is the slightest fraction of all the amzing documents they have. My new favorite place is a room in the Library of Congress in the Adams building with all the NDRC/OSRD technical papers.
      Thanks.

      Otto

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  8. According to the "Tube Museum" and this page of the collector H.-T. SCHMIDT a Klystron or a Magnetron itself is not very large.
    According to what SCHMIDT writes about the production of tubes in the US, on board of L-8 was most probably something produced by Western Electric from the 700 series - that is what in Germany the GEMA (no connection to the actual organisation of the same name) produced.

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    1. They were experimenting with Klystron tubes. For the L-8 I believe it is an experimental Klystron only because of a telegram I found.

      The Tizzard mission brought over the 3cm Magnetron, which we duplicated at first. Yes it would be Western Electric at some point. Eventually Westinghouse made some improvements and was granted a patent for an improved version. The companies who worked under NDRC/OSRD contracts did it under certain conditions - too long to go into here - but the key one was that they kept any inventions they came up with after the war. They did not profit from the war, during the war, in fact professors working for the NDRC/OSRD were paid by their universities at the same pay they made teaching class or whatever they did, and the schools were reimbursed.

      One Division of the OSRD was called the Office of Field Service. They were formed later in the war, but they were technical scientists who would go to the front or in some cases work behind the lines. If fighting troops captured some new enemy device they wanted someone who could understand it there and they would be right behind the troops. Others would deliver and train soldiers on new devices that were developed.
      Others would do field studies or other specialized work. The book "Combat Scientists" is a great book ( only one maybe ) on this part of the OSRD.

      Dank.

      Otto

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  9. A very interesting theory, thanks for sharing it! You've obviously done a tremendous amount of research. Have you visited the National Electronics Museum outside of Baltimore (http://www.nationalelectronicsmuseum.org)? They have a large collection of historicl military radars plus documents, manuals, and other records going back to WWII. (The museum was originally founded by Westinghouse radar engineers and was supported by the company until they sold off their radar division.) I wonder if their staff or volunteers would be able to provide you with additional useful information. They have a sizable archives and library.

    I did research there many years ago for my history Master's thesis (on the history of the Navy's early jet engine program). It's a unique place and well worth a visit even if they don't have anything that can help with your research. Good luck and keep us posted!

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  10. Thank you for the lead. I haven't visited it yet but I feel a road trip coming on! The small collections surprise me. So much of the history has been plowed under. I spent years commuting to Newark, stopped in traffic right by the Westinghouse byuilding, and it was only after it was a pile of rubble did I find the connection between my story and Westinghouse, Newark! I didn't get a chance to take photographs.

    I'll be sure and check this out. Baltimore is only a few hours drive.

    I know the theory may sound strange to some but I've been going through documents for an interview I'm giving on the L-8 and I was thumbing through the digital images of documents that convinced me I was on the right track ( or at least not loony ). It's helped work out that this isn't some flight of fancy. I may post one of the documents regarding the use of radar and MAD for submarine detection.

    Thanks again for the lead and the kind words.

    Otto

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Comments should be topical and civil. Questions are welcome but I may not be able to always supply answers. - Otto