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Chapter 7
Naval Operations Analyst 1947 to 1978
I began hunting for a job. One of my friends suggested
that I apply for a job in a small research group at the Navy
Department since he thought that I might know the director, a
professor on leave from MIT. I followed up on his suggestion
and ended up working for the next fi fteen years for MIT's
Division of Sponsored Research.
Early History of Operations Research
In May 1942, German submarines were sinking American
ships faster than they were being built. The U.S. Navy
Department before World War II was generally considered
more security conscious than the War Department. The
idea of civilians knowing the Navy's secret war plans and
warship fi ghting capabilities and limitations was unheard
of. The Navy had civilian physicists and chemists working
at the Naval Research Laboratory and the Naval Ordnance
Laboratory, but they were all working on technical problems
not operational or intelligence problems.
However, the Chief of Naval Operations had established
an Antisubmarine Warfare Unit at the First Naval District
headquarters in Boston with Captain Wilder Baker, USN in
charge. Captain Baker had just returned from several months
in England observing how the Royal Navy was working to
protect British ships from U-boat attacks. The British had
established what they called an operational research group of
civilians headed by a professor from Birmingham University,
Professor P.M.S. Blackett (who later won the Nobel prize
in Physics in 1948). Captain Baker went from Boston across
the Charles River to MIT in Cambridge and asked Professor
Philip Morse in the Physics Department if he would establish
and be in charge of a new secret scientifi c research group for