Page 184 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Military history is filled with weather lore. The Revolutionary Army’s suc-
cessful retreat from Long Island in August 1776 was said to have been enabled
by night fog and favorable tides; five months later, General George Washington
crossed the Delaware River by boat in a driving snowstorm and surprised the
Hessian troops in New Jersey; and the ambush of General Nicholas Herkimer’s
volunteers in upstate New York in August 1777 was interrupted by the onset of a
violent thunderstorm. Napoleon’s attack on Russia, like those of generals before
and after him, was thwarted by winter weather, while his battle plan at Waterloo
was interrupted by heavy rains. In World War I, it was all quiet on the western
front during mud season. In World War II, the miracle at Dunkirk took place
under the cover of heavy fog, the Japanese carrier fleet skirted Pacific storms
to launch its attack on Pearl Harbor, and the outcome of the Battle of Midway
hinged on the ability of American dive-bombers to shield their approach behind
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the clouds. The D-day invasion of Normandy in the unusually stormy month of
June 1944 proceeded on the basis of the most critical set of forecasts in history.
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of course, there are many more examples, with the winning side often consider-
ing a favorable outcome as an act of Providence.

Science and the military

A mutually supportive relationship has long existed among science, engineer-
ing, and the military. According to engineering legend, long before the birth
of modern science, Archimedes designed and built a series of machines to keep
the Romans at bay during the siege of Syracuse. Leonardo da Vinci’s Renais-
sance drawings of war engines are also legendary. And in 1638, Galileo’s two
new sciences were astronomy and the strength of materials as applied to mili-
tary engineering. 5
In later centuries, scientists often “hitched a ride” with army and navy
exploring expeditions; scientists utilized military scope, organization, and dis-
cipline to collect data during field campaigns; and military institutions forged
their identities in part around scientific and engineering agendas, leadership,
and training. As the prestige of scientists grew, linked as it was to their power
over nature, whether actual or perceived, military planners took note and
became major patrons. Scientists gained state funding, approbation, and politi-
cal power through governmental channels with direct links to the military. The
French Academy had long supported scientific research for national interests,
and the Russian Academy, founded in 1724, served the interests of the tsars
and, after 1917, the technical needs of the Communist Party. The National

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