From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 07:39:32 MST
On Sunday, March 23, 2003 2:31 AM Reason reason@exratio.com wrote:
>> The US and the Russians ended up in a race to develop
>> sea launched nukes. They ended in a tie, with both
>> nations fielding a semi-workable system in 1960. But
>> the Nazis demonstrated a missile that could be launched
>> from a submerged U-boat, fly to a distant target and
>> hit with great accuracy, way back in 1943. Given
>> they had no computers, that was one hellll of an
>> accomplishment for those days. Grandpa was smart.
>
> The British developed applications of electromagnetism
> and information theory (radar, the first computers,
> degaussing techniques, etc) while the Germans were
> building on materials science and industrial production
> (better tanks, submarines, guns, rocketry, jet engines,
> etc).
>
> Russian tanks were better than German tanks by 1944.
I think part of this was that the Germans got comfortable being in the
lead and didn't think the war would last that long. The Allies, on the
other hand, seemed to go whole hog. I guess a generalization can be
made here: nothing fails like early success.
Also, for many advances, the Germans did rely on espionage, sometimes in
very tricky ways. See _Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New
Century_ by Angelo Codevilla for how, e.g., Oplinsky, an undercover
German agent, got the French magazine _Aero_ to report on French
advances in aviation technology. Oplinsky owned the magazine, so while
the information his reporters published would be censored, he still had
access to it and passed this along to the Germans during the late 1930s.
(See pp309-10 of ibid. I reviewed the book in 1994 and my review is
online at: http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/IP1_Know.html ) This
doesn't explain everything, but it might explain a lot.
Later!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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