Show weather enters big business field of worlds ai armies mies navy trade and farms by WALTER WALTE R A AD staff correspondent there is one thing in which the nations farmers far and our military leaders have a common stake an element which can upset the most carefully laid military plans and the most meticulously planned agricultural program the weather the farmers success in planting and harvesting and american combat success in combined land sea air operations can come only through close observance of the scientific predictions of the weatherman for the weather is often used as a military weapon by our military strategists and our farmers are dependent upon the vagaries garies ia of the weather to harvest a record production or a crop failure no military opera operation tion whether it Is a minor sortie by a group of fighters a bombing mission on an enemy city naval bombardment ol of a jap island a ground attack in china or a large scale invasion Is never blueprinted unless latest weather information is first consulted success of an attack is dependent upon clear weather though american forces have profitably exploited bad weather to make offensive strikes against the enemy oar military strategists were quick to recognize the importance ol of accurate meteorological data dat and so BO have greatly expanded the network of observation posts trained rained thousands of cf officers and enlisted men and adopted new technological devices to gua guarantee reliable forecasts together the the navy and the U S weather bureau weather systems BY stems form a vast network of information research observation and forecasting reaching from the united states to all parts of the world observation units vary in size from two men occupying a h hut ut on an isolated atlantic or pacific isle to a major research station with a full staff of specialists the maintains several major research centers and more than 1000 observation and forecasting stations reaching from the arctic to the antarctic and its weather report system spreads and moves as rapidly as the fighting fronts the nerve center of this vast scattered weather force is in the pentagon building in washington where approximately person swatch the weather in all regions of the world and prepare long range forecasts and special studies to gulde guide our big high strategy planners navy maintains stat stations ions the navy navy maintains about 1400 observation and forecasting stations including about 14 major weather centrals in some instances units i may be aboard flagships or aira aircraft raft carriers or on advanced island bases and the units may consist of one man on a small ship or a full fledged central wl with th a full complement of or more officers and men ilow how the navy weather bureaus have grown since 1940 may be seen by the tact fact that in that year navy serology under the bureau of aeronautics consisted consist edof ot less than officers and men in n about 50 units whereas today the pe personnel ronnel totals about officers and men assigned to the 1400 1400 units the staff of weather specialists numbers officers and men and the force of observers alone has grown from 60 50 to service provided by these thousands of forecasters in 7 5 this photo shows the effect of weather on the soil on a south island this truck Is really mired eludes technical operation and interpretation of results recorded by sonde a small email box containing a single tube short wave transmitter sent aloft on a balloon the transmitter gives temperature and humidity readings at various heights there are also repair technicians schooled in the maintenance of delicate weather instruments communications men who radio or teletype weather reports back to headquarters and aircraft weather reconnaissance urs fliers who observe conditions along alone the flying dying routes according to the office of war information the and th the e navy weather forces have been made possible by the careful selection of men from the ranks to s specialize alize to in weather information by intensive ka 7 0 Z s X germany took advantage of bad overcast weather with rain and an snow to make their counterattack counter attack in the belgian bulge in the ar dennes low visibility and cold kept our superior air force grounded until clearing weather gave us a break a tation station training and by releasing personnel from the weather bureau for military duty and replacing them by new civilian recruits weather important weapon according to our military men accurate evaluation of weather plus the constant flow of up to the minute meteorological information from all theaters of war make it possible to use weather as an an important weapon cited as examples of weather strategy is the sicilian invasion plotting of prevailing winds and of the movement of cold air front over italy indicated our invasion ships C excessive rain ams caused a landslide an a military road somewhere on the italian front would encounter rough beas on the journey from north africa but at the same tima our forecasters predicted tranquil waters in sicilian harbors and the almost miraculous calming ot of the seas as our landing craft neared the sicilian shores has become a military classic admiral halsey took advantage ot of the cover ot of a zero zero storm aft alter raiding the marshall and gilbert islands with visibility zero and ceiling zero his ships large and heavy enough to ride out the storm were meanwhile safe from enemy air attack at detail plotting of the upper air strata enabled our forces to lay down a smoke screen to blot out our vessels and our planes from japanese and dive bombers low wind velocity was required u ired so that our screen would not suddenly veer and cover our target instead conditions were exact exactly ly as predicted and ordered many other instances of the use of weather forecasts by our militarists are given for instance in the normandy Norma invasion sion weather wets was bad and the sea gea choppy but the force forecasts abts were that severe conditions would prevail tor for at least 21 days after the D day chosen axis are weather conscious both germany and japan are extremely weather conscious and both have used weather particularly bad weather to screen their for instance germanys germanas Germ anys battle of the bulge in the Ar dennes was undoubtedly arranged to coincide with bad weather that would keep our superior air strength incapable of decisive blows while german ground forces numerically stronger at that point smashed through A clearing break in the weather came ultimately m tely and our air power went into action to help stop the german offensive according to the navy the japs are not as far advanced in weather technique as either germany or our own military in at least one instance a japanese plan of action did not work out as scheduled because of their weather miscalculations they attempted lo 10 bring reinforcements to new guinea u under n a storm front so that our plan planes e s could not spot their movements an url unexpected expected or miscalculated shift dissipated the storm front the troop and supply armada was spotted by our reconnaissance planes they were attacked and destroyed by the in the famous battle of the bismarck sea methods used by various countries in weather forecasting vary the and the navy use the norwegian theory of air masses and polar fronts and the long series of dilly daily weather charts of the world prepared by the weather bureau as a basis research essential almost endless research was neo essary to code the worlds weather data starting in 1942 the weather bureau ip in cooperation with the military services started in this task using all available weather information in the northern hemisphere for each day since 1899 this information was re plotted and reanalyzed transferred into a standard code and into a punch card system in this way 30 years of weather were charted and analyzed within a year fro from M the areas studied by the army high priority sections where military action would most likely take place a similar card system was evolved and total weather tabulations to date cover about 55 million cards at present about cards are recorded each month |