FOREWORD 



Wo: 



ORLD WAR II was the first war in human history to be 

 affected decisively by weapons unknown at the outbreak of hostilities. This 

 is probably the most significant military fact of our decade: that upon the 

 current evolution of the instrumentalities of war, the strategy and tactics of 

 warfare must now be conditioned. In World War II this new situation 

 demanded a closer linkage among military men, scientists, and industrialists 

 than had ever before been required, primarily because the new weapons 

 whose evolution determines the course of war are dominantly the products 

 of science, as is natural in an essentially scientific and technological age. 



The Office of Scientific Research and Development, one crucial aspect of 

 whose history is ably told in this volume, was the medium through which, 

 in the main, scientists were joined in effective partnership with military 

 men. Such a partnership was really a new thing in the world and was a 

 partnership between groups which one might at first thought consider in- 

 herently incompatible. The military group, both because of the extreme 

 demands and extreme responsibilities of the profession of arms and because 

 of long and honorable tradition, is formally organized to a very high degree. 

 The scientific group, both because of the individualistic approach essential 

 to research and because of the sufficiency of the loosest of organization for 

 all practical purposes in normal times, is much more a gathering of indi- 

 viduals than a group in the professional or structural sense. 



For two such entities to develop a pattern of highly effective collaboration 

 — and that such a pattern was developed is clear in the record — demanded 

 much in the beginning from each. New lessons in understanding and evalu- 

 ation had to be learned both by the military and by the scientific. Old pre- 

 conceptions had to be overcome and old prepossessions foregone by both. 

 In the earlier part of the period it was inevitable that there should be much 

 expenditure of time and energy in these vital developments, inevitable also 

 that there should be disagreement and even outright friction. Honest and 

 strongly held opposing convictions often had to be reconciled. Obduracy 

 and narrow interests occasionally had to be rooted out. Both parties gener- 

 ally, however, were imbued with the same patriotism and actuated by the 

 same sense of urgent responsibility, which speeded the establishment of 

 sound interdependent effort. 



