Minesweeping: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1955

 In a perfect world where everyone spent their time following the paparazzi who follow me around, you all would have learned not to take my complaints about my work schedule too seriously. The last time I did this, I was getting ready for a grueling week that did not, in fact, emerge, thanks to the timely deployment of my entire paid time off bank. But! In the last week I had split days off, always bad for my productivity, and an exciting variety of shifts that made it worse. I ought to be reporting this in a "view from thirty thousand feet" sort-of tone, in that the reason that I'm not posting my December technology postblogging this morning is that I started a new Baldur's Gate 3 run yesterday instead of working on it. But my excuse for that is tired, etc. 

On the bright side, I'm a little over half done, and have a long weekend for Easter followed by a vacation week. So! Don't cry for me, post-Peron Argentina set on a bright course of democracy for all.

Our current King reached the apex of his active naval career as the commander of a "Ton-"class minesweeper, one of the enormous class of minesweeper/minehunters built in the mid-Fifties. Timing is right for the ships, and the Prince is in the  news, even if it's hard to get a picture of him in his service uniform that isn't camped by Getty Images. Relevance, 1955-style! 

Shiny!

Or so I say, holding a poker face. In fact, as hard as it will be for visitors to this blog from the distant future to believe, we're in the middle of a global crisis brought on by an American attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran conducted in spite of four decades of acknowledged American naval mine warfare deficiencies. The Persian Gulf is narrow and shallow, its entrance strait particularly so, with Iran controlling its northern shore, and vast quantities of shipping, and in particular, oil tankers, pass through it. Warhawks in Washington have been pushing for an attack on Iran for this entire period, without much self-awareness in general (at this very moment as I write, an interview with John Bolton is up at Vox to the effect of "But not like this!"), but historically very conscious of these deficiencies and a solid record of trying to solve the problem with magic battleships. That is, "Littoral Combat Ships," and not "battleships," but "magic battleship" is more euphonious. 

How did we get here? Mine warfare is hard is how we got here.

Gathering the Bones XXIII: The Royal Proclamation of 1763, Manifest Destiny, and The Reality of 19% Grades

 

Lana Del Rey? I'm so old I remember when "Lana Del Rey" was an ironic comment on "Lana Del Rey." But I guess she decided not to go away, and I'm grateful because that means I can post  an original version of the John Denver chestnut: 

Almost heaven, West Virginia/
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze

The story, as I have it, is that at some vague point in the Eighteenth Century, vast numbers of Scotch-Irish migrated  from, you know, Scotland or Ireland or around about there, to the crestline of the Appalachians. For it was at this clear, geographic line that they were barred from going further by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. George III by this action set himself against the westward drive of the American people that is such a large part of its essential nature, a Western drive bound up in the natural progressiveness of the American spirit, about which I can no longer even. The drive naturally soon resumed after the matter of the Revolution was dealt with, but by this time the Scotch-Irish had settled into the "Appalachians," where their Elizabethan accent persists unchanged to this day, denoting the antiquity of their origins and the oldness of their nature, as otherwise indicated by their charming habits of old time country music, square dancing, and making and consuming illegal alcohol products.

Line Scanning: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1955

 My familiarity with all of this begins with vignettes in Charles Stross novels in which Concordes and the like demonstrate that there's something to high Elizabethan British aviation technology by penetrating American air defences. Since sourcing pastiche science fiction novels is no basis for a system of historiography, I remained agnostic until I arrived at OPERATION SAGE BRUSH, which I find pretty fully summarised online here with respect to land operations,  and with respect to air superiority operations by Not A Pound For Air to Ground at Youtube.

SAGE BRUSH opened with 9 Aggressor B-57s crossing the Exercise's "Truce Zone." The Canberras of the attacking force easily evading defending interceptors and nuked 18 air bases as far north as Tennessee. Our narrator summarises the lesson of the Exercise as the one about the bomber always getting through and goes on to talk about the upcoming generation of American fighter bombers, blaming the Great Mistake of the Vietnam War on an excessive emphasis on atomic warfare (275 simulated atomic bombs with 15 simulated megatons was used by Aggressor forces alone in an exercise area consisting basically of Louisiana, a rather smaller area than, say, West Germany). This being a judicious combination of strategic velleities and hobby horses, I will defer to Newsweek, which focussed on the transient technological aspects, successful jamming and the unstoppable speed of the B-57. I mean, general atomic war is a bad thing, but they actually built F-111s and Buccaneers, and tried to build TSR-2s, so in some sense this part is more important. No-one, apparently, gives a shit about backward-wave oscillator, aka the "carcinotron," for reasons unknown to the author

As the electrons travel down the tube, they interact with the RF signal. The electrons are attracted to areas with maximum positive bias and repelled from negative areas. This causes the electrons to bunch up as they are repelled or attracted along the length of the tube, a process known as velocity modulation. This process makes the electron beam take on the same general structure as the original signal; the density of the electrons in the beam matches the relative amplitude of the RF signal in the induction system. The electron current is a function of the details of the gun, and is generally orders of magnitude more powerful than the input RF signal. The result is a signal in the electron beam that is an amplified version of the original RF signal.

Just kidding. Let's talk about Latin grammar next! But Concordes dropping James Bond pastiches on Cthulhu-occupied Washington (spoilers I guess) is a bit more graspable than analogue electronic circuits. Just one aspect of all this is tactical reconnaissance to find atom bomb targets, which you don't want to waste, there being only 300 of them to spare. (On the bright side, the defending side in SAGE BRUSH had twenty-five bombs to spare  for not-Louisiana at the end of the exercise.) The line is very pithy: The TSR-2 was to carry sidescanning "line scan" optics, which previously had gone into a pod on the Buccaneer. So what was that thing they did with the lines and the scanning?

Postblogging Technology, November 1955: Even the Moderate Adlai Stevenson

The Ballad of Davy Crockett hit the Top 10 twice in 1955, by two different artists. Leaving the historic Crockett aside (JFC he was a Shawnee, deal with it). "Justice was due every Redskin band." What do you even do? RIP Estes Kefauver.

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

The idea was good, but the material wasn't up to 
it and they took it too far. 

Fall is here, and I have to say that, as materialistic as it sounds, it is very nice to be making good money and not from a family allowance. James had leave, and we took the family up to Napa in our very nice new 405. (Fortunately the neighbours take it for granted that it is family money, and I don't correct them, because I am a liberal, but I am also a hypocrite, because it is just safer that way.) 

We saw the Ks for the first time since their return from Europe. I regret to say that all does not look entirely happy on the domestic front, but there is the thought that they will do it for the children, and one might hope that misery will lead to a great novel. One's fingers are crossed. We also saw, in a more bohemian way, V., who is making quite the splash on the science fiction literary scene, if not precisely the money. He pretends Bohemian diffidence, but I'm sure that he would be more comfortable being diffident with more money! On the bright side he introduced us to some friends, wild-eyed vintners, if you can imagine, and leaving us half-convinced that there's a reason to be wild-eyed about California wine. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Jordan River Is Deep and Wide: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1956

 

So we are sorted at work about how this humble blogger is going to be plugged into our current workplace "the retail emergency is forever" scheme:

Saturday: 6-230; Sunday, 10-6:30 "Need experienced people in the mid shift on our busiest day," until Saturday at 3PM, at which time it was changed by text message to 6-2:30: Monday, 6-2:30: Tuesday: 6-2:30: Wednesday, 1:30-10 "The DM will visit tomorrow, we need the department in good shape." It's good to be wanted at work, but if I asked you to guess what I did on Thursday, and you answered, "Managed to sleep for six hours, then sat on the couch eating stale chips and watching Youtube clips, taking a break every hour to nap," you would be right! As it turns out, I wouldn't have been able to finish it on Sunday morning, either.

And this is why this post is largely in response to things Newsweek will cover in our next installment of postblogging, which was about one quarter done Saturday afternoon when I gave up and went out for dinner.  

Math time:

+

=

The point of this week's technical appendix is that some people say that British Airways ruined the British aviation industry by rejecting British planes, and some people say that British aviation ruined British aviation by forcing the Britannia on British Airways. In the spirit of the Internet these days, I'm going to present the case that it's actually "both"! And along the way I'm going to drag in some infrastructure projects of the mid-Fifties that are also having a continuing impact in a little part of the world that I like to call "the Middle East," which you probably haven't heard of. We're very geographically educational around this blog! 

Postblogging Technology, November 1955, I: The Path of Duty

First week at Number 1 started 26 November. Princess Margaret isn't exactly a working class hero, but I bet she's vibing to this right now!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

After the excitement of playing secret agent for a few weeks, I am afraid that my life has turned into that of a junior associate doing her best to get her billable hours up and having to watch her children being raised by someone else. 

Since elsewhere I'm on about the history of Route 40 and the French and Indian
War, here's another reminder that there is no such thing as the crest of the 
Appalachians. This is about a day's walk from Gnaddenhutten. 

I have to confess that the thought of turning in some masterpiece of corporate "raiding" and half-retiting on my laurels was very attractive. Otherwise, it will be hard for James and I to spend anywhere near as much time together as we would like. Hawaii and San Francisco aren't that far apart, at least for dashing airmen, but trans-Pacific dashes can be wearing for any of us. At least he is not in Washington flogging the SeaMaster on. And, yes, if we want to give little James-James and Vickie a little brother or sister, it would be best to do it before James is put aboard an atomic aircraft!

We are not thinking about moving from Palo Alto, although thank you for your offer. The house is nice, and the train is punctual and a good time to do some paperwork --at least in theory!  


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Fiasco: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1955

 i)

ii)

iii)

(Photo credits are Navy, Air Force, and a Vickers-sourced advertorial that  I consider to be public domain. Look, you pretend that it's journalism, I pretend that it isn't proprietary.) 

Three technological objects, three fiascos, two countries, two lessons, one post!