Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Such rationalization is analytical and quantitative (even numerical). It was first used on an extensive scale at the end of the nineteenth century to solve problems of mass production, and led, step by step, to assembly-line techniques in which regulated quantities of materials (parts), power, labor, and supervision were delivered in a rational arrangement of space and time to produce a continuous outflow of some final product. All elements in the process were applied to measurable units to a system operated in accord with a dominant plan to achieve a desired result. Naturally, such a process serves to dehumanize the productive process and, since it also seeks to reduce every element in the process to a repetitive action, it leads eventually to an automation in which even supervision is electronic and mechanical.

From the basically engineering problem of production, rationalization gradually spread into the more dominant problem of business. From maximizing production, it shifted to maximizing profits. This gave rise to “efficiency experts” such as Frederick Winslow Taylor (whose The Principles of Scientific Management appeared in 1911) and, eventually, to management consultants, like Arthur D. Little, Inc.

This point had been reached by 1939, when rationalization was still remote from ordinary life and very remote from politics and war. As in so many other innovations, the introduction of rationalization into war was begun by the British and then taken over, on an enormous scale, by the Americans. Its origin is usually attributed to the efforts of Professor P. M. S. Blackett (Nobel Prize, 1948) to apply radar to antiaircraft guns. From there Blackett took the technique into antisubmarine defense, whence it spread, under the name “Operational Research” (OP), into many aspects of the war effort. In its original form, the Anti-Aircraft Command Research Group, known as “Blackett’s circus,” included three physiologists, two mathematical physicists, one astrophysicist, a surveyor, a general physicist, two mathematicians, and an army officer. It was a mixed-team approach to operational problems, emphasizing an objective, analytical, and quantitative method. As Blackett wrote in 1941, “The scientist can encourage numerical thinking on operational matters, and so can help to avoid running the war on gusts of emotion.”

Operational research, unlike science, made its greatest contribution in regard to the use of existing equipment rather than to the effort to invent new equipment. It often gave specific recommendations, reached through the techniques of mathematical probability, which directly contradicted the established military procedures. A simple case concerned the problem of air attack on enemy submarines: For what depth should the bomb fuse be set? In 1940 the RAF Coastal Command set its fuses at 100 feet. This was based on estimates of three factors: (1) the time interval between the moments the submarine sighted the plane and the plane sighted the submarine; (2) the speed of approach of the plane; and (3) the speed of submergence of the submarine. One fixed factor was that the submarine was unlikely to be sunk if the bomb exploded more than 20 feet away. Operational Research added an additional factor: How near was the bomber to judging the exact spot where the submarine went down? Since this error increased rapidly with the distance of the original sighting, a submarine which had time to submerge deeply would almost inevitably be missed by the bomb in position if not in depth; but, with 100-foot fuses, submarines which had little time to submerge were missed because the fuse was too deep even when the position was correct. OP recommended setting fuses at 25 feet to sink the near sightings, and practically conceded the escape of all the distant sightings. When fuses were set at 35 feet, successful attacks on submarines increased 400 percent with the same equipment.

The British applied OP to many similar problems: (1) With an inadequate number of A.A. guns, is it better to concentrate them to protect part of a city thoroughly or to disperse them to protect all of the city inadequately? (The former is better.) (2) Repainting night bombers from black to white when used on submarine patrol increased sightings of submarines 30 percent. (3) Are small convoys safer for merchant ships than large ones? (No, by a large margin.) (4) With an inadequate number of patrol planes, was it better to search the whole patrol area some days (as was the practice) or to search part of it every day with whatever planes were available? (Calculations of a mathematician, S. D. Poisson, who died in 1840, showed that the latter was better.)

Some of OP’s improvements were very simple. For example, a statistical study of sightings of German submarines by patrol planes showed that twice as many were seen on the left side of the plane as on the right side. Investigation showed this was because the plane flew on automatic pilot, allowing the pilot (on the left side) almost full time to watch the sea, while the copilot on the right side was busy much of the time. Assignment of another crewman to the right side when the copilot was busy increased sightings about 30 percent. Until late 1941 the RAF bombed German cities as they were able. Then OP, using the German bombing of Britain as a base, calculated the number of people killed per ton of bombs dropped, and applied this to Germany to show that the casualties inflicted on Germany were about 400 civilians killed per month— about half the German automobile-accident death rate—while 200 RAF crewmen were killed per month in doing the bombing. Such bombing could never influence the outcome of the war. Later it was discovered that the raids were really killing only 200 German civilians (almost all noncombatants contributing little to the war effort) at the cost of the 200 RAF fighting men each month, and thus were a contribution to a German victory! These estimates made it advisable to shift planes from bombing Germany to U-boat patrol, so that the German submarine war, which was really strangling Britain, could be brought under control. A bomber, in its average life of 30 missions, dropped 100 tons of bombs on Germany, killing 20 Germans and destroying a few houses. The same plane in thirty missions of submarine patrol saved, on the average, 6 loaded merchant vessels and their crews from submarines. As might be expected, this discovery was violently resisted by the head of the RAF Bomber Command, Chief Marshal Sir Arthur (“Bomber”) Harris.

Closely linked with this was the question whether it was better to use Britain’s shipbuilding capacity to construct escort vessels or merchant ships. This involved the choice between saving existing merchant ships or outbuilding the losses from submarines. It required a statistical study of the effectiveness of escort vessels. At the time, the Admiralty regarded small convoys as safer and large ones as dangerous, and had forbidden convoys of over sixty ships. They assigned escort vessels to each convoy at the rate of three plus one-tenth of the number of ships protected. OP was able to show that this assignment rule was inconsistent with the prejudice against large convoys. Studying past losses, they showed that convoys of under 40 ships (averaging 32 each) suffered losses of 2.5 percent, while large convoys of over 40 ships (averaging 54 ships each) were twice as safe, with losses of only 1.1 percent. Using information from rescued German U-boat crews, OP was able to show that U-boat success depended on the density of escort vessels around the perimeter of the convoy and that the percentage of ships sunk was inversely proportional to the size of the convoy. By 1944 a convoy of 187 ships arrived without loss. If the shift to large convoys had been made in the spring of 1942, rather than in the spring of 1943, a million tons of merchant shipping (or 200 ships) could have been saved. The combination of larger convoys, and the shift of some planes from bombing Germany to submarine patrol, turned the corner on the U-boat menace in the summer of 1943 and helped save many ships which were used in the Allied amphibious landings, especially on D-Day in 1944.