Listen now | Noah Smith & Brad DeLong's 30:00 < [Length of Weekly Podcast] < 60:00, with Special Guest Matt Suandi: Early promotion to a job with more responsibility and scope—at least in the WWII-era USN—shapes your life to a remarkable degree by giving you scope to develop and exercise your talents. If the WWII-era USN is typical, we waste huge amounts of human potential by not giving people workplace opportunities to show what they can learn to do. Equality isn’t just about money: it is about scope for action, about developing and exercising talents, and about receiving external validation. A good society would give people much more opportunity to discover how big a deal they are and can become, and remind them of this at every opportunity.
Fascinating bit of military history. One of the families that I grew up with in the 1950s lacked a father who died on one of those two submarines that was struck by its own torpedo, circling back. I guess the other subs learned to dive after firing, based on the lessons of the first two. We all knew that this was a problem that persisted far longer than it should have, but not why. Providing a natural experiment is not much of a compensation.
Also just remembered when listening to the section where jobs were assigned like they were in Greek Athenian society. It reminded me of the book on the Israeli Kibutzum. In it the devolution of the equalitarian organization back to a more hierarchical system is presented.
Just remembered! My late father in law served in the navy in WW2 on various positions as well as remaining in the naval reserve till retirement. He kept all his official papers of that service. His grand son requested these papers. I am scanning these 4 folders so there will be an electronic record that might just last till the death of the sun.
My FIL served on the USS Monterey during the disastrous typhoon off the Philippines.
He was an officer responsible for assigning pilots to fly strikes. He flew some of the strikes though not his job.
The same ship that Gerald Ford served on.
He told me that the Caine Mutiny was based on the Monterey.
Also back in my younger days when racing small sailboats, 12ft long, across from Sausalito to SF city front and back, the first mark was the Ft Mason outer degaussing buoy. The system was removed so we used the Blackaller buoy off the St Francis yacht club. Also remember there was a movie about the torpedo problem.
I'm not sure when (or if) I'll find time to listen to this - a drawback of the podcast format. So maybe you mentioned this on the pod; if so I apologize.
Anyway, the German navy also had problems with their magnetic detonator at the outset of the war, and that was also due to lack of testing! Their torpedoes supported contact detonators as an alternative, which U-boat captains were directed to use when the defects of the magnetic detonator were made manifest, but it didn't work either! The Germans fixed theirs faster than the USN though.
When Commander Chris Wreford-Brown was directed to sink the Belgrano, he chose a WWII vintage unguided Mk 8 for the job, in preference to the then-modern Tigerfish acoustic homing torpedo. When interviewed in the aftermath, he stated that this choice was made to match the Belgrano's WWII-vintage armour. But in fact, the two weapons had warheads of similar size; the true reason, which he discreetly concealed without lying outright, was that he knew the Tigerfish didn't work.
Fascinating bit of military history. One of the families that I grew up with in the 1950s lacked a father who died on one of those two submarines that was struck by its own torpedo, circling back. I guess the other subs learned to dive after firing, based on the lessons of the first two. We all knew that this was a problem that persisted far longer than it should have, but not why. Providing a natural experiment is not much of a compensation.
Also just remembered when listening to the section where jobs were assigned like they were in Greek Athenian society. It reminded me of the book on the Israeli Kibutzum. In it the devolution of the equalitarian organization back to a more hierarchical system is presented.
Just remembered! My late father in law served in the navy in WW2 on various positions as well as remaining in the naval reserve till retirement. He kept all his official papers of that service. His grand son requested these papers. I am scanning these 4 folders so there will be an electronic record that might just last till the death of the sun.
My FIL served on the USS Monterey during the disastrous typhoon off the Philippines.
He was an officer responsible for assigning pilots to fly strikes. He flew some of the strikes though not his job.
The same ship that Gerald Ford served on.
He told me that the Caine Mutiny was based on the Monterey.
Had to go a wikiing!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
Also back in my younger days when racing small sailboats, 12ft long, across from Sausalito to SF city front and back, the first mark was the Ft Mason outer degaussing buoy. The system was removed so we used the Blackaller buoy off the St Francis yacht club. Also remember there was a movie about the torpedo problem.
I'm not sure when (or if) I'll find time to listen to this - a drawback of the podcast format. So maybe you mentioned this on the pod; if so I apologize.
Anyway, the German navy also had problems with their magnetic detonator at the outset of the war, and that was also due to lack of testing! Their torpedoes supported contact detonators as an alternative, which U-boat captains were directed to use when the defects of the magnetic detonator were made manifest, but it didn't work either! The Germans fixed theirs faster than the USN though.
When Commander Chris Wreford-Brown was directed to sink the Belgrano, he chose a WWII vintage unguided Mk 8 for the job, in preference to the then-modern Tigerfish acoustic homing torpedo. When interviewed in the aftermath, he stated that this choice was made to match the Belgrano's WWII-vintage armour. But in fact, the two weapons had warheads of similar size; the true reason, which he discreetly concealed without lying outright, was that he knew the Tigerfish didn't work.