Getting To Now

It was Sunday, December 7, 1941, just a little after 11:00 am in the small Texas town of Seguin. Four young men rode in a brand new black 1941 Chevrolet sedan, loaned from the father of two of them, the local Chevrolet dealer. The men were each a year apart in age. William Lovett 18, Dick Ryan 17, Thomas Lovett 16 and myself, Art Dickerson 15. I was in the front passenger seat admiring the new car radio which had a novel short-wave band in addition to the AM band which was tuned to WOAI in San Antonio. The sounds of "Chattanooga Choochoo came over the radio We were tapping our feet. Abruptly the music stopped and a voice announced, "There has been an attack by Japanese aircraft on U.S. Navy ships at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This is real, it is not a test."

We sat stunned and silent. I recall thinking, this changes everything for all of us. The future proved the accuracy of that thought and the difference a year of age could make. All four of us would become officers in the coming World War II. Not evident was the tremendous technical progress that World War II would engender and how this would change a nation's lives far into the future.

Willy Lovett, 18 a student in engineering at Texas A&M, would join the Army Air Corps and become a P-51 pilot. Flying in China in 1944, his plane was shot up by the Japanese. Wounded he attempted to land at Kunming airfield. He crashed a 1/4 mile from the end of the runway. Kunming was being evacuated ahead of Japanese occupation. He and his plane were simply left in place. Willy was an accomplished cello soloist and the most co-ordinated football linebacker with whom I had ever teamed. His abandonment was to me unforgivable, evacuation notwithstanding.

Dick Ryan, 17 a student at the University of Texas Seminary in Austin would become a Navy deck officer. He participated in the 1944-5 island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. At one point his Destroyer was ordered to test the accuracy of Japanese artillery on an island in advance of its' invasion. They drove at flank speed directly toward the island to test the distance at which firing would begin. When it did, they wheeled about and steamed away, testing accuracy. They survived, the Japanese did not. Dick was very bright and an excellent basketball player. He would survive the war and become a minister as was his original intention. He served happily at a church in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Thomas Lovett, 16 also became a Navy deck officer. He was late for the Pacific Island campaign, but in 1945 suffered through the Great Pacific Typhoon, which just before the bombs were dropped on Japan, caused the loss of two destroyers capsizing in the winds up to 150 miles per hour. He also survived and became a minister as he longed to be. He proudly served a church in Seguin, Texas.

I, Art Dickerson 15, a student in Seguin High School would graduate in 1943. Classed as 4F because of 3 amputated fingers, I would not be drafted. The amputation was the result of a science experiment in 1939. In class we saw a match struck and while blazing put into a test tube. It consumed the oxygen and extinguished. At home I tried the same experiment with a small copper tube I found at a construction site. It was a dynamite detonator.

I did not face the draft, but received an interesting offer from a Navy recruiter. If I would enlist, he would approve me for either the V-5 or V-12 officer training programs. This was too good to pass up. I considered both programs. The V-5 led to a commission in the Naval Flying Service. The V-12 led to a commission as a Naval Deck-Engineering officer. My father, bless him, did not lean on me about the choice. V-5 had the glamour of being a combat pilot. V-12 led to an electrical engineering degree which the family could not otherwise afford. At that time the Navy considered the war would not end until late 1947. My class would be scheduled for the invasion of Honshu, the main island of Japan in 1946 when I would have just turned 19. I opted for V-12 and engineering There would be plenty of war left then for me to serve my country.

In 1945 the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended that plan. As Secretary of the Navy, Louis Johnson began the dismantling of the worlds most powerful fleet. This was so thorough that in early 1946 there were no navy black shoes size 9 1/2, the most common one. No new orders had been placed. My class graduated with a BSEE and a Deck-Engineering officer commission. We were promptly transferred to the USNR with blank orders for active duty if required. This initiated a feeling of shame that the Navy had furnished my rations, quarters and training for 2 1/2 years and I could not repay America that debt.

* * *

The major progress in various technologies during the war was not generally envisioned at the start and in any event was highly classified at the time. The present-day analysis of massive arrays of data to discover hidden patterns owes its' beginning to "Operations Research" which began in 1942 as a tactic against the German U-boats which torpedoed inbound ships of food and came close to starving England in 1941-2. All known reports of sightings at sea, spy messages on land or aircraft radar contacts were put into a common data base which early computation searched to determine the number of submarines entering and exiting the Bay of Biscay off of France. When the total was high, massive aircraft attacks were launched at night in the bay to detect the subs on the surface charging their batteries. When the number was low, routine maintenance of aircraft and crew relief was in order. In 1943 this tactic destroyed so many U-boats that they ceased to be a threat to England's supply lines.

I have a friend who was the Engineering Officer on a German sub at that time. He stated that they would surface at night and with no indication on their radar signal detectors they felt confident they were safe. Then in the sky, searchlights would come on and an aircraft would drop depth charges. They concluded that the threat was new infra- red detection equipment on the aircraft. In truth it was Operations Research plus aged German radar detectors that did not sense a change of the Allies radars to new higher frequencies. The Ops Research doctrine was that whenever the kill-rate of subs sunk as a percent of subs in the bay dropped, the radars would shift to a new higher frequency. In 1943 the U-Boat fleet came close to destruction. In 1944-5 hunger began to appear in Germany as land forces reduced German farming.

Radar itself changed hugely during the war. At the start the antenna towers in England were up to 160 feet long. By the end of the war antennas of only 4 foot long were in use on aircraft. At the start, anti-aircraft shells were fired with no kill unless they hit the aircraft. By the end, they carried small Doppler radars which caused them to explode at the closest approach to the aircraft. Kill rates jumped hugely. These antennas were only inches long.

Thus, in WWII technical progress accelerated exponentially leading to the total change in life we see today in the mid 2010's. This book is an interior insight of portions of that progess as viewed from the memoirs of an electronics engineer participating in the developments of that age

Twas Brillig

My father once said that the fascinating thing about history is that it's baked fresh daily and so shows the amazing variety of human experience. This is particularly true in times of rapid change.

The year 1946 brought great change in the United States. A military force of 14 million men and women was reduced to 3 million.. The returning 11 million found housing in short supply and many foodstuffs still rationed. The manufacture of military supplies stopped abruptly and the changeover to industrial and residential goods began to fill the shortages generated by four years of exclusive focus on military needs. I was one of the 11 million, a newly commissioned naval officer, no longer needed and so transferred to inactive reserve. However, with the orders came my freedom to get married. The Navy had wanted no active duty married ensigns and I had given them my word. So there I was, newly married to Collie Dickerson, twenty years old, a graduate engineer with a specialty in what would later become "electronics".

This situation attracted an offer from General Electric to be a "test engineer" on probation for one year at a pay of $1.00 per hour. The good news was a raise to $1.18 per hour for reasons I never learned, but probably indicating a poor response to the $1.00 scale. I also had an offer from Aramco at $1.60 per hour, but that was in Arabia with the status of wives unclear at that post. So, Schenectady and GE was the objective as Collie and I packed our entire belongings in the trunk of a 1937 Plymouth coupe, a gift to us from my Dad.

The GE test program was well conceived as training for new engineers. They spent at least one year in three month assignments at various GE manufacturing locations, testing the products of each plant. This allowed the management to get a perspective on the individual and the new prospective hire got a "hands on" education in the company's products. At the end of a year, the "test-man" could negotiate a position with any location where he had served. If none of them were interested, it was back to the street. For 90% of the applicants, it was a success for both parties.

I presented at the main gate of the GE Schenectady works with my offer letter in hand. That earned me a temporary pass and directions to the test office. The big guard in the blue uniform pointed and said, "About half a mile down the main road here. It'll be on your left. Has big columns out front. Don't look like no other building in the plant. You can't miss it."

I started down the main road, surprised to see buildings on both sides stretching for close to a mile. Most of them were dirty red brick with a uniform style dating back before the change of the century. Passing the open door of one building I saw a vertical lathe turning with a steel work piece that had a diameter of at least 15 feet. The machinist was actually inside the work and rode it around past the lathe tool which turned off a spiral of steel which immediately oxidized to a brilliant blue color. Clearly this plant did things on a massive scale.

The guard was correct, the test office resembled a bank or city office in contrast to the old red brick buildings. Inside, I sat for an interview with the test scheduler, who was interested to learn that I was a Navy communications officer. He pointed out that GE had a contract to develop and produce the "Mark-56 fire control" for shipboard guns of 5"-38 caliber. He thought that would be a good match as the main effort was on the computer that controlled the tracking and pointing of the guns. So I walked back almost to the main gate and presented my orders to the supervising engineer at the Aeronautics and Ordnance Department. His desk was located on the ground floor of a comparatively modern three story building. The second floor had been removed to permit the installation of a 5"-38 naval gun turret, which at that moment was pointing almost straight up, extending well through the space where the second floor had been.. The heating ducts along one wall extended from the ground up to the third floor and showed extensive damage. Noting my fascination with this, my guide observed. "Yeah, the control has some stability problems. It got loose last week and the gun barrel cleared away some of the heating ducts." He though for a moment then said, "I'm sending you up to D.D. Scott. He's in charge of the potentiometer production. They've been having some problems."

* * *

While I was settling down inside GE, Collie was out looking for a place for us to live. In that place and time this was nearly impossible. She eventually located a 10x12bedroom over Wah Lee's Laundry and next door to Hogan's Bar and Grill. We came to know Wah quite well as there was no way to do laundry in the bedroom except for socks and underwear. Wah did not put your name inside a shirt, he put his name, WAH. He sent the shirts out to be washed and ironed. With his experience he remembered the customer as soon as he saw the shirt. I was puzzled, but delighted that he never lost one of my shirts.

The 10x12 bedroom rented for $35. per month and the pay of $1.18 per hour put severe restrictions on our eating style. Collie had a hot plate that served to prepare hot dogs and canned beans. Lunch was cheese sandwiches and breakfast was corn flakes. Hamburger at that time was $.38 per pound and Velveeta was $.79 for a two-pound loaf. We found that if we were careful, we could afford a movie once every two weeks.

With gasoline at $.19 per gallon, travel worked out to about a penny a mile and furnished low-cost entertainment. Upstate New York was truly beautiful and our weekend activities soon included car trips with friends to the wonders of Lake George and Thatcher Park.

* * *

Back at the Aeronautics and Ordnance Department, I settled in with D.D. Scott to learn of the problems with potentiometers. Scott had been a Signal Corps officer in Germany. He produced several boxes of instruments shipped as his personal reparations program before leaving Germany. These he had assembled as a test fixture to give a precision reading of the resistance of the potentiometers, which were like the volume control on a radio. That had been done before I arrived, but the test readings varied over time and were simply not trust worthy. Scott's order was simple – "fix it."

I sat with the test fixture and the marvelous collection of German instruments for the better part of a day, watching the drift in the resistance reading. I arranged a 150 watt lamp so that I could examine the setup in good light. When it was turned on the reading began a speedy shift and settled to a new value. I puzzled over this with no results and decided to call it a day. When I turned the light off, the reading began a movement back to its' initial value. It was several minutes before my brain came through with a possible explanation --- the error was the result of temperature changes in the test fixture. Memory searched back to physics lectures and found the term Peltier Effect. It occurs when two different metals touch each other. A small voltage is generated and the value of the voltage changes with temperature. The lamp was changing the temperature of the wire contacts and hence the voltage in the circuit. This voltage was the source of the resistance reading. Hence the drift in reading was caused by a change in temperature of the wires.

The next day I located a heat gun and used it to repeat the result I had seen with the lamp. The drift was there alright, multiplied by the greater temperature generated by the gun. I found Scott and demonstrated the effect to him suggesting that we have the wireman take the entire fixture apart and redo it being sure that only one metal, copper, was used throughout. He was skeptical, but had no other way to go, so he ordered it.

Now, doubt assailed me. This was my first assignment. What if I had caused this extra expense and Peltier Effect wasn't the problem? Would they fire me outright or just ship me off to some hopeless assignment testing technology that had not changed in 50 years.

Two days later the job was finished and an unhappy wireman was giving me a doubting look, but carefully not saying any thing. I recorded the reading and then turned on the heat gun, directing it straight into the test fixture. I assumed my most confident expression, but a trickle of sweat came on at the hairline. The reading held rock-solid. I continued with the gun for five minutes, there was no change in reading. The wireman breathed a soft, "Son of a bitch." He smiled, nodded his head and left the room.