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DisasterMan
why so many messages were terse. The classic message was
from a Naval Pilot who sent the famous message "Sighted
Sub. Sank same." Large planes had a radio operator to send
and receive messages using Morse code.
The War Department was expanding from pre-war
strength of about 350,000 men to the wartime requirement of
8 million. Someone decided that more offi cers were needed
as soon as possible. Reserve offi cers had been called to active
duty "for the duration." An order was issued that offi cers
must have six weeks in grade before being promoted instead
of the pre-war practice of keeping offi cers at the same rank for
three years or more before promoting them. Bill must have
come on active duty about the same week that I did, because
we were both promoted to First Lieutenant after six weeks on
active duty. Then someone else decided that that order was
insane and a new order came out that offi cers had to be six
months in grade before being promoted. Sure enough, we
were both promoted to Captain, Signal Corps Reserve after
precisely six months. However, I remained a Captain for the
next three years. Bill Hewlett was transferred to a special job
in the New Developments Division of the War Department's
General Staff where he was promoted and stayed there until
the end of the war in 1945.
I was assigned to be a courier one day. The Chief Signal
Offi cer had asked the British if Robert Watson Watt (later Sir
Robert Watson Watt), who had invented radar for the British,
would make a survey of all installations in the United States
of the SCR-270 radar. The one on the island of Oahu in the
Territory of Hawaii had detected the Japanese formation
of more than 100 carrier-based bombers at a range of about
130 miles as they were approaching to bomb Pearl Harbor.
None of the other SCR-270s seemed to be working. Watson
Watt was fl own to the Panama Canal Zone and then to other
locations on East, Gulf and West Coasts to inspect the sitting
of the SCR-270. His SECRET (big deal in those days) report
was very critical. He found that almost all the SCR-270s were
put in the wrong place for a radar antenna. They had been