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October 2012 www.sname.org/sname/mt for seakeeping or wave drag will find Practical Ship Hydrodynamics useful. Viscous methods and grid gen- eration are only mentioned briefly, as are empirical and statistical methods. The author specifically points the reader to other references for these subjects. ere is cer- tainly some overlap with other good resources (MIT open courseware comes to mind), but the material on bound- ary element methods is the best I have encountered. MT Douglas Read teaches ship hydrodynamics at Maine Maritime Academy. He is a member of SNAME and serves on the executive committee of the New England section. The Tizard Mission: The Top-Secret Operation that Changed the Course of World War II By Stephen Phelps PUBLISHED BY WESTHOLME PUBLISHING LLC REVIEWED BY RICHARD J. BURKE As prologue to the story so skillfully told by Stephen Phelps in his book e Tizard Mission , I was reminded of an incident involving an earlier British technical mission to the United States. Americas first sustained defense procure- ment program was the development of means to manufacture small arms with interchange- able parts, an effort successfully completed during the rst half of the 19th century. By 1850, the British army clearly saw the advantages of such industrial capabilities, and urged that the so-called American system of manufacture be studied and adopted. A British parliamen- tary commission duly traveled to the United States, and upon arrival at the U.S. Armory at Springeld, Massachusetts, they were treated to a demonstration by the commanding ocer. On a table he arranged ten muskets, each pro- duced during a dierent year from 1841 to 1850. He then disassembled the ten weapons, and mixed the parts together before inviting the members of the commission to come forward and re-assemble the weapons. e commis- sioners were able to do it without diculty. e story Phelps tells is about another British technical mission, almost 90 years later, when Sir Henry Tizard led a group of British scientists and military ocers to the U.S. dur- ing the desperate days of the summer of 1940, believing that Britain would be overrun by the Nazis before he could return. e objective of the mission was to give away Britains most precious military technology in the hope that the U.S., with its vast resources, would be able to develop and manufacture what both nations would use to win the war. Life mirrored art in that they traveled with their pre- cious technological cargo in a black box. e special prize in their black box was the cavity magnetron, the device that would enable the design and production of tactically eective microwave radar. Although other technologies were con- veyed by the mission, most of the story told by Phelps relates directly to the development of radar. For that reason alone, this book will interest marine professionals; but this tale also is worth reading for other reasons. e author is both a good storyteller and a careful historian; the history of radar is the story of how the Battle of the Atlantic was decided. Phelps weaves the historical chronology by highlighting the inter- actions of parallel events, such as how the discovery of an American embassy spy in service to the Nazis fed British concerns about U.S. Navy security, and how bureaucratic bumbling created political diculties for Roosevelt in com- plying with Churchills plea for fty old four-stack destroyers. e enrichment of his narrative comes with details like the fact that Sir Henry Tizard paid o on a ve pound bet because the Nazis had not invaded while he was leading the mission in the U.S. If one is a history bu, this book is a good read; however, if one is concerned with managing technological develop- ment it is a case study chockablock with object lessons. It becomes clear from the story that not everyone who works hard or eectively is thereby rewarded, that astute and well- educated scientists and engineers can easily be wrong about which technologies will prove eective, and that human foi- bles aect both the great and the humble. e author clearly portrays tactical requirements, operational constraints, and technological potential as a paradoxical trinity that cannot be neglected. So what has this to do with ten muskets on a table in Springeld, Massachusetts? roughout the 19th century, the government deliberately transferred the manufacturing technology developed at armories and arsenals to the private sector, spurring the economy to manufacture clocks, sewing machines, bicycles, and even the legendary Ford Model T. In a parallel and compelling manner, Phelps account of the Tizard mission ties the transfer of the British cavity magne- tron to the immediate founding of the Radiation Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the development within ve years of a billion-dollar U.S. electronics manufac- turing infrastructure, and to the establishment of an enduring academic-industrial-government alliance to pursue new technology development. Take a look at a smart phone: Its technological ancestors came to America stowed in a black box on a ship. MTRichard Burke is an alumnus of the Maritime C ollege, State University of New York, where he is a senior professor and department chairman.