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Show Weather Enters Big Business Field of World's Armies, Navy, Trade and Farms ? - V ' ' ' ' . I ' ' - , - . i , ' i e ' ' ' ' , ' ' I ' -r 4 ' ' - tr , - - ' ' . - k r ' o . . ( A This photo shows the effect of weather on the soil on a south Pacific island. This truck is really mired. eludes technical operation and interpretation of results recorded record-ed by radio-sondc, a small box containing a single-tube short wave transmitter. Sent aloft on a balloon, the transmitter gives temperature and humidity readings read-ings 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 fliers, who observe conditions along the flying routes. According to the Office of War Information, In-formation, the AAF and the navy weather forces have been made possible pos-sible by the careful selection of men from the ranks to specialize in weather information, by intensive By WALTER A. SIIEAD WNU Staff Correspondent. There is one thing in which the nation's farmers and our military leaders have a common com-mon 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 opera-tions can come only through close observance of the scientific scien-tific predictions of the weatherman. weath-erman. For the weather is often used as a military weapon weap-on by our military strategists, and our farmers are dependent depend-ent upon the vagaries of the weather to harvest a record production, or a crop failure. No military operation whether it Is a minor sortie by a group of fighters, fight-ers, a bombing mission on an enemy city, naval bombardment of a Jap Island, a ground attack in China, or a large scale invasion is never blueprinted blue-printed unless latest weather information infor-mation is first consulted. Success of an attack is ofttimes dependent upon clear weather, though American forces have profitably exploited bad weather to make offensive strikes against the enemy. Our military strategists were quick to recognize the importance impor-tance of accurate meteorological ' data, and so have greatly ex-l ex-l panded the network of observa-! observa-! tion posts, trained thousands of officers and enlisted men and I adopted new technological de-; de-; vices to guarantee reliable fore-' fore-' casts. Together, the AAF, the navy and the U. S. Weather bureau weather tystems form a vast network of information, research, observation ind forecasting reaching from the United States to all parts of the world. Observation units vary in size from two men occupying a hut on an isolated Atlantic or Pacific Isle to a major research station with a full staff of specialists. The AAF maintains several major research centers and more than 1,000 observation and forecasting stations reaching from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and its weather report system spreads and moves as rapidly rapid-ly as the fighting fronts. The nerve center of this vast, scattered weather weath-er force is in the Pentagon building build-ing in Washington where approximately approxi-mately 250 persons watch the weather weath-er in all regions of the world and prepare long-range forecasts and special studies to guide our high strategy planners. Navy Maintains Stations. The navy maintains about 1,400 observation and forecasting stations, including about 14 major weather "centrals." In some instances erological units may be aboard Uagships or aircraft carriers, or on advanced island bases and the units tnay consist of one man on a small ship or a full-fledged "central" with a full complement of 100 or more officers and men. How the navy weather bureaus have grown since 1940 may be seen by the fact that in that year navy aerology under the bureau of aeronautics aero-nautics consisted of less than 200 officers of-ficers and men in about 50 units, whereas today the personnel totals about 6,500 officers and men assigned as-signed to the 1,400 units. The AAF staff of weather specialists numbers 20,000 officers and men, and the force of observers alone has grown from 50 to 10,000. Service provided by these thousands of forecasters in- X j would encounter rough seas on the journey from North Africa. But at the same time our forecasters predicted pre-dicted tranquil waters in Sicilian harbors, and the almost miraculous calming of the seas as our landing craft neared the Sicilian shores has become a military classic. Admiral Halsey took advantage of the cover of a "zero-zero" storm after aft-er 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 Rabaul 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 ack-ack and dive bombers. bomb-ers. Low wind velocity was required so that our screen would not suddenly sud-denly veer and cover our target instead. in-stead. Conditions were exactly as predicted and ordered. Many other instances of the use of weather forecasts by our militarists are given, for instance in-stance in the Normandy invasion, inva-sion, weather was bad and the sea choppy, but the forecasts were that severe conditions would prevail for at le?st 21 days after the D-Day chosen. Axis Are Weather Conscious. Both Germany and Japan are extremely ex-tremely weather conscious and both have used weather, particularly bad weather, to screen their activites. For instance, Germany's battle of the bulge in the Ardennes was undoubtedly un-doubtedly arranged to coincide with bad weather that would keep our superior su-perior air strength incapable of decisive de-cisive blows, while German ground forces, numerically stronger at that point, smashed through. A clearing break in the weather came ultimately ulti-mately and our air power went into action to help stop the German offensive. of-fensive. 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 be-cause of their weather miscalculations. miscalcu-lations. They attempted to bring reinforcements to New Guinea under un-der a storm front so that our planes could not spot their movements. An unexpected or miscalculated shift dissipated the storm front. The troop and supply armada was spotted spot-ted by our reconnaissance planes. They were attacked and destroyed by the AAF in the famous Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Methods used by various countries Germany took advantage of bad, overcast weather, with rain and snow to make their counter-attack in the Belgian bulge in the Ardennes. Ar-dennes. Low visibility and cold kept our superior airforce grounded, until clearing weather gave us a break. 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 ac-curate 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 important weapon. weap-on. 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 in weather forecasting vary. The AAF and the navy use the Norwegian Norwe-gian theory of air masses and polar fronts and the long series of daily weather charts of the world prepared pre-pared by the weather bureau as a basis. Research Essential. Almost endless research was necessary nec-essary to code the world's weather data. Starting in 1942 the weather bureau, in cooperation with the military mili-tary services, started in this task using all available weather information informa-tion in the northern hemisphere for each day since 1899. This information informa-tion was replotted and reanalyzed, transferred into a standard code and into a punch card system. In- this way 30 years of weather were charted chart-ed and analyzed within a year. From the areas studied by the army, high priority sections, where military action ac-tion 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 500,000 cards are recorded re-corded each month. Excessive rain has caused a landslide on a military road somewhere on the Italian front. |
