Robin Higham

Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941 (review)

tems can be modified by rewriting the software. Aided by the availability of surplus Apollo guidance and control computers, Burke’s group decided to go digital. A major issue—and the key to commercial applications—was reliability: eliminating mechanical backups would maximize the benefits of electronic control, but would demand unprecedented reliability. The answer was found in the pioneering work of John von Neumann, voting circuits that compared the output of multiple parallel systems and rejected anomalous signals. The test vehicle was an F-8 supersonic fighter with flight-control computers filling the empty gun bays (three digital systems and a triple analog backup), a fortuitous choice in that the broad flight envelope permitted ample scope for experimentation and added credibility to the results. By the final flight in December 1985, Burke’s team had made their point: properly designed digital fly-by-wire was incredibly flexible and reliable. Even though the program was cost efficient—the total cost was only

Secret Weapon: U. S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic

12 million—all was not smooth sailing; software proved to be the critical node, writing it more an art than a science, and debugging a tedious process. Still, the program was a remarkable example of successful high-tech innovation, an outcome perhaps attributable to the youth of the key participants, mostly in their twenties and thirties and participating in their first major project. Tomayko, a software engineering professor, knows his technology and writes with panache, telling a fascinating human story and elucidating technical points with exemplary clarity. Well illustrated, remarkably complete, and beautifully produced, this is a model of the history of technology as it should be written.

Buying aircraft : matériel procurement for the Army Air Forces

The war against U-boats in the Atlantic was won in part by a high-frequency direction finder -- called Huff Duff or HF/DF for short -- that could pinpoint the location of radio transmitters. The story of HF/DFs development and operation in combat by the U.S. Navy is told here for the first time in revealing detail.