Blackett's War
The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare
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A Washington Post Notable Book
In March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an intensely private, bohemian physicist named Patrick Blackett to turn the tide of the naval campaign. Though he is little remembered today, Blackett did as much as anyone to defeat Nazi Germany, by revolutionizing the Allied anti-submarine effort through the disciplined, systematic implementation of simple mathematics and probability theory. This is the story of how British and American civilian intellectuals helped change the nature of twentieth-century warfare, by convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the new field of operational research.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and journalist Budiansky's newest (after Perilous Fight) is the little known history of a linchpin in the Allies' victory over the Nazis: Patrick Blackett. At the outset of WWI, the submarine was a marginalized resource, yet it would soon prove a harbinger of the unprecedented technological developments that would characterize the efficient lethality of modern warfare. Budiansky demonstrates that at the time, the Royal Navy was less a training center for elite combatants than it was "a vocation for the sons of gentleman." Yet Blackett, who got his first taste of battle as a teen in 1916, was the exception among the navy's well-heeled students. Between the World Wars, he studied at Cambridge, where he developed into a brilliant physicist and became enduringly committed to left-wing politics. During WWII, he applied pragmatism and scientific acumen to the relatively new field of "operational research," which favored data (e.g., radar) and improvisation over "tradition, prejudice, or gut feeling." Described by a contemporary as "straightforward, leftish, Bohemian and unconventional," Blackett had his fair share of old guard naysayers, yet in the struggle against German U-boats, the efficacy of his tactics spoke for themselves. For military history and science fans alike.
