Video Excerpt

IRV
What did you do in the Pentagon?

GEORGE
During World War II, I was in charge of the Combat Analysis Branch of the Statistical Control Division of the United States Airforces. My office collected data about sorties flown, bombs dropped, aircraft lost... I also helped other divisions of the Air Staff prepare plans called "programs".

IRV
What kind of planning were they doing by hand at that time?

GEORGE
If you want to know the war effort was an enormous effort taking place in a period of about four years. At the end of the war, it was essentially doing the same thing as planning a whole country. Done on an enormous scale. We developed all kinds of special techniques for doing it by hand.

IRV
So, the Air Staff was doing the planning of different operations pertaining to the deployment of the combat forces, the detailed logistics of supply and the training of personnel?

GEORGE
Yes, everything was planned in greatest detail: all the nuts and bolts, the procurement of airplanes, the detailed manufacture of everything. There were hundreds of thousands of different kinds of material goods and perhaps fifty thousand specialties of people. My office collected data about the air combat such as the number of sorties flown, the tons of bombs dropped, attrition rates. I also became a skilled expert on doing planning by hand techniques.

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