import and implications of the british-innovated r-crowned
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Import and Implications of the British-innovated
R-crowned Techniques in World War II
By
Jiro Anzai
For some time now it has been a growing fad for the Japanese to deride Great
Britain and dispense with her as the hopeless country being plagued with an abom-
1inable sickness called the English Disease, arrogantly pointing out such elements as
her relatively low GNP ratio and Pound-value depreciations as if they have been
the sole indicator of the nation's true strength and worths. Although such the emo-
tive attitude towards Britain can often be hard not to feel, the writer of this article
believes that beyond these surface phenomena lie a number of British innovated
techniques or methods whose utilitiesand values are of such an enduring nature
that they are stillshining out like a modern-day tiara high above the world, in
such the forms as the Rolls-Royce Aero-engines, and such sophisticated things as
Operational Research (Operations Research being its adapted name in America),
Radars and Sonars, and Photographic Reconnaissance.
Among the above-mentioned techniques none of them have decreased in their val-
ues ; in fact, one British innovated techniques or Operational Research whose direct
roots could be traced to the anti U-boat or anti Luftwaffe efforts,although presently
more familiarized by the American nomenclature Operations Research, is now the
stock-and-trade item among modern business, engineering and communications world,
needless to emphasize its original use.
This becomes more markedly in the fieldof the anti-submarine warfare. No one
indeed thinks of it without the use of SONAR or sound navigation and range ; bui
when we come to think of its roots, again we see that this too happens to be j
very English product in its original form; initiallybeing innovated through the dil
igent endeavours of the ASDIC or British Anti-sub Detection Investigation Commit
tee. And if we stretch imagination, in the fashion of including arithmetic into th<
old Three R's, as 'Mthmetic, we may as well be permitted to name Sonar as sonai?
thus placing it as among the new categorization by the author of the New Three i?'s
or more than that, as the New Four or Five R's; indeed, we could name, Radars
Sonars, Rolls-Royces, Operational Research, and Photo Reconnaissance as such. A
any rate even the moderately versed with the modern world's communications am
controls would realize that without those R's crowned techniques we could scarcely
cope with the world. In fact, the author of this article believes even the so-callec
Reconnaissance Satellites,currently possessed only by such the major super-power
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Import and Implications of the Bntish-innovated R-crowned Techniques in World War II
as America and Russia, are inheriting the legacy of the British innovated Photo.
Reconnaissance.
The outsiders would have a curious impression at this inclusion of the Reconnais-
sance Satellite as the English legacy. The truth of it is, although it is not the di-
rect product of her, its basic idea or the constant observation of the ground far be-
lew by means of high-powered cameras day and night is the direct extension of the.
British crowned technique Fhoto Reconnaissance, again a littlebefore and during
the ww 11, that had earned a great part of the Allied victories. To be sure, all
the major combatants of the War had possessed plenty of cameras ;in fact, in pho-
to-equipment wise, both German and Japan had had superb lenses. Nevertheless, no-
one except Britain had fathomed the finer calibrations of the photos taken by theユ
use of the stereoscopic analysers. The superioritv gained by this British method not
only surprised the proud French Reconnaissance outfit but impressed the Americans.
so much that they quickly seized it like a torch-bearer and carried it into the levels.
of the supersonic U-2, SR 71, and finallyof the Reconnaissance Satellites.
For all this, since the crashing defeat there has been a view being entertained in
Japan that the Allies' Victory or victories to be exact had been brought about large-
ly by the direct application of the America's mass production and mass munitions ;.
nothing is far from the truth, however. In the so-called Battle of Britain, it hap-~
pened to be the Germans that had boasted of the mass superiority, and yet as im-
mortalized in the Churchillian epitaph for the airmen, “Never in the fieldof human
conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," it had been those few English
that had won over. But however great the few pilots' Herculian effoi"tshad been,
had they not been aptly assisted by the intricate operations of the so-called Home:
Chain early warning radars, and crude but effective operational research teams,
they could not have obtained such the magnificient results.
Whenever the author of this article hears our so-called opinion leaders proudly
blurring out Japanese supremacy basing their grounds on the GNP and Few-value
ascendancy, he could not help feeling a weird kind of creep and apprehension as.
2though he were seeing a revived ghost of the victory disease that had disastrously
seized the entire Japanese Navy during the euphoric period, or the days after the,
fall of Singapore and just before the crashing defeat at the Midway.
The die-hard Anglophiles would say that a mere visit to Oχbridge campuses, ob-
serving students' devotion to studies, or witnessing honest services being rendered
by doctors and other hospital staffs,or the very presence of the Rolls-Royce aero-
engines on nearli? every commercial airliner in the world, needless to say of theこ
Rolls-Royces in motorcars, are enough for any one to dispel such a shallow one-way
prediction. 刄hile these well-wishers would bring no harm, the author believes that
the present situation is such that we could not possibly ignore. Moreover, inversely
speaking from these repeated cropups of the hasty negativism, we should learn
something about the British legacies whose presence, although they have been here
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Tiro Anzai
all through, has been escaping our none too analytical minds.
In the firstplace, the author of this article should like to call the reader's atten-
tion to the curious course the developments of the vital radar systems had taken
on both sides. The fact has it that in the early phase of the so-called Battle of
Britain the British Air Defense has been using our Dr. Yagi's invention Yagi aerial
array as the vital part of their radar-directed searchlights, the very fact had been
entirely out of the Japanese knowledge. Inversely speaking, this fact alone betrays
the British power of discernment at its height. As we recall now, Dr. Yagi had
3come up with his powerful directional array device in 1926, but no one in Japan at
the time saw any use in it. Very disappointed Yagi went on a world tour, carrying
with him a set of his array. Now, some time between that year and 1939, a hand-
ful of the British sharp eyes at the Telecommunications Establishment must have
seen the thing's million worth. The another fact that this had been passed to Amer-
ica, and the Allies had been utilizing Yagi array to their best uses for years had
never dawned on us tillour seizure of Singapore or of the Philippines. And even af-
ter we had examined the captured radar-controlled guns and read the Yagi array
inscriptions on the apparatus, no one on the locale could establish the identity.
Certainly, stories of foresight versus hindsight, or regretting versus rewarding
pasts, are not our monopoly. In fact, at the outset of the Pacific War, even the great
Churchill had been more than purturbed at the news that the Royal Navy's two
prize ships Prince of Wales and Repulse had been sunk by the Japanese air attack.
Ever since the Battle of Britain, there have been plenty of peoples in the world
that would give credit to the Spitfires with their Rolls-Royce "Merlin" engines for
their bringing the crowning victory to the RAF against the German Luftwaffe.
While the author of this articleis not hesitant to join in the same appraisal, he
believes that the vital part being played by the Reconnaissance Spitfires that had
spearheaded in the fieldof Photo Reconnaissance could hardly be ignored. Coupled
with the dependability of the Rolls-Royce aero-engines, the success of the Photo-
graphic Reconnaissance can be referred to as the success of the Triple R's.
The impressive figures in the early phase of the European World War II, in that
the reconnaissance Spitfire unit had covered so much areas without a single mishap,
while both the British Bomber Command and French scout units had lost so many
aircraft, even in their covering far less areas, betray more than anything else, the
supremacy of the British foresight and ingenuity involved.
For all this, this sort of reasoning seems to have been falling on the dead, and
nearly everyday we see our economists or scholars of a sort busily denouncing Brit-
ain as a finished-offcountry, the country to be pitied with. And yet when these
people book an airplane ticket for overseas, they would expect a plane equipped
with the best and most dependable engines at present, which happen to be of the
Rolls-Royce or the genuine English product.
The point the author would like to consider is the success story of the British
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Import and Implications of the British-innovated R-crowned Techniques in World War 11
night fighter defense operations, as compared to the miserable failure one of the
Japanese Imperial Home Defense efforts.Needless to say, both Great Britain and
Imperial Japan are of the earnest-to-goodness island nation. During the Battle of
Britain the German bombers and fighters would reach England within thirty minutes
or less, while in the Battle of Japan the enemy bombers or American bombers need-
ed several flying hours to reach any major target. For all this, the Britishers had
won, and we had failed s)miserably. To be sure, there are many people that would
love to account the whole differences for the sheer weight or might of the Ameri-
can Forces.
But as soon as we give a point by point analysis, we soon discover this is almost
j myth ;instead, the British R-techniques that had c・ome just in time more than
anything en masse,皿ved the way for the Allied Victory ;indeed. even in a small
point of the night fighting, such as how to eliminate the blinding gun flares, the
Britishers went on to the task with characteristic calm and succeeded in eliminat-
ing the machine-gun flares by the re-use of the exhaust ! What the British had done
is a masterpiece of the ingenuity ; they did nothing to the guns themselves, they
simply let the blinding flashes get sucked into the eχhaust fumes, utilizing the nega-
4tive pressures ! Such a simple device, we would say ; but the thought had never
occurred to us;instead, we took so much trouble in mounting the dorsally firing
guns on our night 毎
Compared to the dorsal guns, the British innovation cost anyone's air force far
less time and money.
Just how little the daily combats between the RAF and the £iびtwaffe had been
taken in as the true lessons could be symbolically testifiedif one would be willing
to examine the following anecdote.
When the Battle of Britain had been going on dead earnestly,the Imperial Japan
had been stillneutral, the status of which enabling the Japanese Government t)
keep its embassy door open in London ; among the embassy staff were the Imperial
Japanese Navy's naval attache and his aides. And one of those crack aides happen-
ed to be a veteran flyer and commander called Minoru Genda, who happened to
plan the Pearl Harbor strike two years later. His post-war memoirs that come in
two volumes tellof his bystander observations of the Battle of Britain and of the
5British perseverances, and yet nowhere there is a sign that he had sniffed at the
existence of radars or the efficientoperations of radar system that came to seal
the running records of his carrier task forces, due to the lack of the anti-air ship-
boriie radar on the carrier Akagi aboard which he ha)pened to be the senior air
staff officer,at Midway.
Nothing is more symbolic than this episode in the comparative nature of discern-
ing power. Indeed, so long as our thinkings are kept for eχcusing away the things
that followed. we are not only evading the issues to come, but nearly slee)ing to
be shocked.
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TiroAnzai
More often than not we hear the Kamikaze attacks were the finalresort, the last
we could put up, due to the shortage of munitions and materials, and to the short-
age of the skilled pilots.While this expresses certain truths about the late phase of
the Pacific War, this again betrays our lack of the discerning foresight. As early
・as at the World War I, the import of the sea route defense or the convoy defense
had been before us for 6面lesson/and inasmuch as the World War II had commenc-
毛d on the European Theatre at least two years ahead of the Pacific War, this again
betrays our lack of discerning foresight. We could have been well pre)ared for
anti-submarine operations. But the actual state had been so pitifully inadequate.
and once the Allies had corrected the faults in their torpedoes, the Japanese con-
voys felli面o the fate of the sitting duck, even the destroyers or the very ships
that were supposed to be hunting the subs became just another prey to be sunk.
For all this, today if one asks the average Japanese what Sonar or Asdic is, chances
are, almost ten out of ten, you would draw a blank.
As such is the situation even now, the presence in the Royal Navy of the power-
ful anti U-boat gadget or the ASDIC had not only escaped the Japanese episonage
system, but also the scanning power of the present-day commentators. The essen-
tially continental German would have escaped the censure for her failing in the na-
val matter, but the island national Japanese failing in the convoy defense is not
only ineχcusable an event, but symbolic of our mental make-up; ours is always on
the offensive, at the cost of the defense.
To be sui"e,there are people who would account the failure of both Germany and
Japan for the historical circumstances, one of the typical views as such being the
following quote from Alfred Price's.
How was it that the Germans came to find themselves continually 'trotting
after' in the radar race? From 1936 till1942 Britain, always on the defensive,
had littlealternative but to concentrate her finest scientificbrains on the devel-
opment of radar…Until the winter of 1941 the German armed forces were
continually on the offensive; radar was of little use to them. and they made
few demands on their scientists…When, in the summer of 1943, the Germans
realized the plight they were in because of their backwardness in radar, it was
6 too late.
This can be a fair statement, one of those modest behaviours so typical of the
English gentlmen. But had we shouldered everything pertaining to the defense on
■circumstances, we w岫Id have missed the actual play of often far more deciding
factor or the power and inner composition of the decision makers.
Just how important this decision making had been even in the radar, is eloquently
・exposited in c. p. Snow's penetrating lecture series delivered at Harvard in 1960,
which is now available in a book form entitled“Science and Government." The book
is in essence an inside story of the ・celebrated Churchillian Government, especially
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Import and Implications of the British・innovated R-crowned Techniques in World War II
of a duel between two patriotic scientists of eχtremely high calibre whose respective
personality had so much to do with the fate of what l have been calling the British.
R-crowned techniques.
According to the reveals by Sir Snow, contrary to the well-circulated notion that
the famed Sir Churchill had had in his cabinet a person nick-named Prof whose
timely and apt advices had often saved Britain from the onslaughts of Hitler, care-
fully steering the old watchdog Churchill to his victory over the Hitlerian forces.it
was largely due to the leadership and foresight of the little-known man Sir Henry
Tizard (1885-1959)that had won so much for the Battle of Britain.
The following quote, more than anything else, betrays the importance of this.
decision making in the British defense matters, and consequently the entire course
of the national destiny.
Thisstory is about two men and two choices. The firstof the two men is Sir
Henry Tizard …l believe, along with a number of Englishmen who are inter-
estedin recent military-scientifichistory that Tizard's was the best scientific
mind that in England has ever applied itself to war. l further believe, although
ingeneral l take a pretty Tolstoyan view of the influence distinguished men
upon events, that of all the people who had a share in England's surviving the
airbattles of July to September 1940, Tizard made a contribution at least as.
7 greatas any. It has not yet been properly recognised.
While this is no place where the statement made by Sir Snow debated, one point
that is very clear here is the importance of the person on the national scale, espe-
cially on the decision making. We could enumerate a series of circumstances condu-
cive to the certain historical outcome, but so long as the history's real subject is
human, the role played upon the history by man can hardly be dissolved into the
mere circumstances. At any rate, radar to asdic, every important gadget picked up
by a handful of the toplevel decision makers had in due course proven that they
had been right in their evaluations and assessments. Just why the equal efficiencies
and foresights had not been available in the British efforts against Japan, are inde-
ed a very challenging matter to be tackled in later issues.
And so we have to limit our evaluations on the European Theatre at this time.
Nevertheless, even from the Snow's eχposition we could see the import of opera-
tions Research.
Today, even our super-market trainees would hear the words operations Research.
proudly spoken to by the in-service lecturer or senior staffas though he had invent-
ed the thing. Moreover, without the OR, our post-war successes at the Super Eχ-・
press or passenger plane as Ys-11 and for that matter even the successful supermar-
ket operations would have been naught.
While both Germans and Japanese might have been doing here and there some
sporadic attempts at calculations nearing OR, the intricate operations research or
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Jiro Anzai
operational research teams had been non-eχistent outside the Allied camp.
But here again, had the articlewriter voiced Operational Research in Japan, the
chances are ten out of ten he is liable to be asked if he had misspelled operations
Research ;inversely speaking, the thought that the now celebrated OR had been of
the British ingenuity, and had been called Operational Research until it had beea
taken into America-seems never occurred to the average man in office. This inci-
dence in turn reflects how littlethe average office workers and trainees had read
about the past history of the so-called OR. So long as this total lack in seeking
anything to its roots is limited to the average office workers' level, it is not so
serious a matter, but when the essentially same sort of neglect and negation of the
past legacy are getting a prone tendency, this should be mended.
Now once again turning back to the roots of the Photographic Reconnaissance,
we find again the British supremacy in this sky-high activity. Using the high-flying
spitfires and later Mosquitoes, unarmed but carrying a number of cameras, the PR
outfitin the RAF or the Photographic Reconnaissance unit had been supplying mil-
lions of vital informations to the British High Command. As we 100k closer, we
find that the initialeffortshad been made by an Australian named John Cotton
with his Lockheed Electra plane, disguised as a private commercial plane, taking a
number of vital photographs over Germany even before the War, for the RAF. As
the war came. it fellsquarely upon the shoulders of the RAF to carry on. Here
again the Britishers had turned up a knuckle, surpassing all the other air forces'
efforts.That was the use of a stereoscopic analyser ; a device itself had been a
Victorian toy once favoured by the Queen and her followers as one of the peaceful
pastimers ;it was Michael Spender, a brother of the famous poet Stephen Spender,
that had taken it as the RAF's secret weapon towards Victory. Doubling the pic-
tures and looking at these through the stereoscopic sights, one could obtain the far
sharper details for the analysis, thus began the amazing paths of the Photo Recon,
naissance that had gone on its way to the now earth-circling Reconnaissance Satel-
lites.
Although a great deal of these miraculous works have been accounted in Constance
8Smith's Evidence in Camera, ox the Story of Photographic Intelligence in World War
II, the point l would like to stress here is the calm twist in the thing that had been
as innocent as a toy by the British hands. And it has turned to one of the most
effective secret weapons in the ww !I. Not only that, today every major power
has been utilizing this British borne legacy, bringing it to the ever-deepning com-
pieχitiesand sophistications.
For all this, it may be only we the war-time generation that have been having
so much feeling for the British legacies. Yes, indeed, nearly forty years ago, the
skies over the south-eastern England had been constantly ablaze, with their other-
wise azure dome of the heaven being incessantly pock-marked from the bursts of
the British anti-aircraft guns or interlaced with the tracer-bullets of the invading
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Import and Implications of the British-innovated R-crowned Techniques in World War II
Messerschmitts and Dorniers or those from the avenging guns of the defending
Spitfires and Hurricanes. Hardly a day had passed without one of those deathduell-
ing combatants drawing graceful vapour trails across the midair canvas of the En-
glish skies, or in the worst fate plum・etting down like a Satanic comet ・exuding
flashes and black trails!
Now that the course of that War had long ceased to run its due course, no one,
except few enthusiasts and sentimental veterans, seems to have been paying any
attentive eye on the import and implications of the Baf:tie 0f Britain and of the
British-innovated techniques (being hatched by a hair's breadth priority due to the
amazing foresight )fthe few professionals on the British Establishment)that had
not only made Great Britain survive the Battle, but also changed the basic struc-
tures of the controlling mechanisms of all, these British initiated methods or by-
products of the war, could be so crowned as the R-capped techniques.
The facts stand, both Germany and Japan, the defeated nations that had been
all preys to the combined tridents of the Allies' R-capped techniques or the Radar,
Sonar, Photo Reconnaissance, Operations Research, and Rolls-Royce aero-engines,
are now more than at even keel with the US or the United Kingdomレon the peace-
time activities. It is true of us that both Germany and Japan are two of the best
allies to the Anglo-American democracy. For all that, more than anything else, the
・author of this article would like to stress on the facts that the present day world
is more than anything else being manipulated by means of radars, sonars, opera-
tions resarch, photo reconnaissance, the very techniques initiated by the Britishers
in time of crisis, and on the point that:if there has indeed been さ lesson to be
learned it is this British capability of turning the worst plights to their utmost
goods. It is 臨町for us the well-dressed Germans or Japanese to look down on the
English men and women who are basking in the sun, calmly watching the water in
the Serpentine, whose clothings are none too gocd lo)king. But the sobering thought
pops up in my mind, ringing a warning bell, is it so all right with us, to denounce
the English and depart with her? Is it not another hasty judgement, as one our
forefathers had committed at the time 0f the Battle of Britain?
References
1. Kenichi Kayatna, Eikokレbyo-no-Kyokim or the Lessons that the English Disease teaches us,
(Kyoto, PHP Press, 1978)
2. Mitsuo Fnchida, Midway, (Tokyo, Shuppan-Kyodo, 1955)
3. H. Tokumaru, Invitation to Electronics,(Tokyo, Kcdansha, 1978)pp. 202-205
4. E. Bishop, Mosquito, (London, Ballentine, 1971)p. 78
5, Minoru Genda, Memoirs, (Tokyo, Bungeishunjyu, 1955)
6. Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness, (London, William Kimber, 1967)p. 243
7. c. p. Snow, Science and Government, (Cambridge, Harvard Univ・,Press, 1976)p. 4
s. Constance Smith, Evidence in Camera, (London, David and Charles, 1976)
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