OR Forum—A Glimpse at an Operation Analyst’s World War II: “Report on the Combat Performance of the Remote Control Turrets of B-29 Aircraft”

Alex E. S. Green, Deborah S. Green () and Richard L. Francis ()
Additional contact information
Alex E. S. Green: Formerly at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Deborah S. Green: Valencia College, Orlando, Florida 32811
Richard L. Francis: Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611

Operations Research, 2015, vol. 63, issue 2, 262-268

Abstract: Alex Green was a pioneering operations analyst/researcher for the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. His February 1945 operations analysis “Report on the Combat Performance of the Remote Control Turrets of B-29 Aircraft” was classified and buried for 70 years. Stationed in the China-Burma-India theatre and addressing a problem of combat losses posed by General Curtis LeMay, Green used written reports and interviews to draw conclusions regarding direction of enemy attack on the B-29s, opposite those of a large stateside simulation study. Resulting in LeMay’s changes in B-29 flight formations and frontal armaments, his report also addressed B-29 gun dispersion adjustments and modifications to the analog computer in the plane’s nose. This paper examines how Green drew his conclusions under wartime conditions before digital computers. Apart from the extraordinary advances in computer technology, much of his methodology is still relevant today and a part of operations research (OR). This paper offers a window into the origins of OR and remarkable efforts of its pioneers.

Keywords: defense systems; force effectiveness; tactics/strategy; history of OR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.2015.1359 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:oropre:v:63:y:2015:i:2:p:262-268

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Operations Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().