It's a fact that in the early years of World War Two many allied bombs
were essentially wasted, and many aircraft lost, in Allied efforts to
kill Adolph Hitler when he was giving speeches over the radio.
The Allies had absolutely no conception of the capabilities of magnetic
recording, and whenever they heard Hitler's voice they made the
assumption that it was a live broadcast and they sent fleets of bombers
to destroy the facilities where they believed he was.
The fact of the matter is that he was usually many, many miles away
from where his voice was being played via magnetic recording, and all
the bombing succeeded in doing was to damage the transmitter facilities
of the radio station which was playing the recording.
It's difficult, in this age, to think that someone could be so stupid,
but there's a time for all things, and that was the time for magnetic
recordings.
Of course, a corollary could be made in the case of RADAR. (Oops,
I spelled that backwards. Oh well, probably no one will know the
difference!)
Hal Davis
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