Just because you failed doesn't mean you weren't right
- Reference: 1658133011
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/18/who_me/
- Source link:
Our story takes us back many decades, when laser-guided ordnance was new and our hero, who we will call "Herman", was working with both a well-known military organization and an equally well-known German manufacturer.
For the uninitiated, "this sort of weapon follows a laser beam projected by an airborne or less commonly ground source laser onto the target," said Herman.
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In those days the technology was in its infancy, and a demonstration was needed to show that it would work as expected. The demonstration would involve six of Germany's finest military pilots, a large and empty Italian test range, a tower housing the German team and their laser projector (aimed precisely into the middle of the test range), and a calibration tower with a precision theodolite, run by the Italian range team, to ensure the trajectory and targeting was as accurate as advertised.
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There was also a very senior Luftwaffe officer, issuing orders to pilots over a communications link.
Herman recalled: "In flies the first aircraft, releases [dummy] bomb, lands in a satisfactory cloud of dust... But from the Italians in the observation tower came the unwanted word: 'Missed!'"
[4]
The officer was not happy. Again and again the pilots tried, and again and again came the response from the Italians in the observation tower: "Missed!"
With every dummy bit of ordnance now used, the project was clearly at risk of failure and rethinking would be needed. Grim-faced, the Germans retreated to their production facilities with the remains of the dummy ordnance and the projector which had so singularly failed to impress. Six very expensive months passed during which time the hardware and software was redesigned and rebuilt.
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"Finally the flying circus was back," said Herman, "with the same officer in charge for the same setup."
Again the first aircraft went in. Again the first dummy bomb was dropped. And again came the word over the radio: "Missed!"
Rather than burn through more runs, the officer instructed his pilots to circle and await further instructions. He stomped over to the calibration tower, climbed the ladder to the shack on top, and went in to check on the Italian team.
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He emerged seconds later, "jumping up and down in rage, shaking his fists in the air."
"What he found was this. Two Italian calibration officers; a table pushed against an open window, on which were a heap of comics, propping up at one end a broomstick into which a nail had been driven at each end, and which constituted the 'precision sighting device'."
We imagine there was some form of German exclamation uttered before the officer asked: "Where is your theodolite?"
"A shrug of Italian shoulders was the response. 'It broke three years ago. We sent [it] to Milano, but it never came back...'"
There are few languages that can hold a candle to German when it comes to angry shouting, but have you ever struggled to understand why validation was failing, only to realize the problem was in the test and not in your carefully crafted code? Tell us your tale with an email [10]Who, Me? ®
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Re: Wow!!
The calibration officers (and the bombing range) were both in Italy, according to the story.
Re: Wow!!
Which used to be Germany until ca 43... SCNR - Not that the Duce's lakeys were any better than the Totekopfs...
Re: Wow!!
I realised that I made a location error after the editing window closed. However the sentiment still stands :-D
Re: Wow!!
Given the option, getting shot might have been better/less painfull. (disclaimer: German wife, and therefore german MIL)
Re: Wow!!
Brilliant!!! This comment brightened up my Monday morning a LOT :-D
A miss is pretty obvious, no matter the apparatus
Just because the Italians had a make shift test rig does not mean the German system actually worked.
My guess is that a nail on a broomstick could be quite adequate to tell whether a bomb hit its target or not.
Re: A miss is pretty obvious, no matter the apparatus
You can have pass/fail OR how close the bomb was because the shock wave could do quite a bit of damage.
Re: A miss is pretty obvious, no matter the apparatus
During the War (don't mention the war!), my father was an His Majesty's Inspector at a large armaments company based on the north side of Clapham Common. Their Research Department was tasked with developing a sighting mechanism that would enable Barnes Wallis's Bouncing Bomb to be dropped accurately over the German dams. It ended up as three pieces of plywood and a length of broomstick, with four nails driven into the plywood to indicate the correct drop point when used to sight on the towers on the dams. In retaliation, Gerry came over and bombed the shit out of Clapham, so production was moved to a satellite factory near Barnet.
Basic QC
As someone who spent most of my career in quality assurance (mostly in more traditional engineering, not IT, I hasten to add), the first step after a failed inspection is to verify the calibration status of the test equipment. That’s when, of course, you hadn’t checked calibration status *before* the inspection (which should have been the default).
Most times, when called in to investigate an unexpected inspection fail (i.e. something that all previous checks indicated no problems and, for me to be called in, something that was going to be expensive to fix), my checks on the test gear found the culprit. I won’t say that heads rolled, but expensive lessons were learned :)
Catastrophe
a large and empty Italian test range, a tower housing the German team and their laser projector (aimed precisely into the middle of the test range),
Let me guess, a clowder of cats, that suddenly came out of nowhere, tried to attack the target the laser was pointing at and at the same time as the test pilot fired the missiles.
The fur was displaced at around 1 mile radius and locals started talking about the "cat-astrophe" (from Greek astro-(stro)phe, the act of turning to the stars)
And hence why the word Catastrophe was born.
Re: Catastrophe
Surely, a catastrophe is a prize given to the cat with the nicest ass?
Same with coding as well.
I've had trainees who were told to produce a bit of code and then test it to make sure it worked. Cue a few hours spent with the trainee running their test, it failing, and them going back to the code to tweak it and try again. Eventually they asked for help, and it turned out that their initial code was fine. All the tweaks they'd added to it had changed how it worked, but not affected the (correct) outcome. They'd just omitted something critical in their test and hadn't thought to check that .
Spelling error
s/missed/Mist/g
Re: Spelling error
German Mist or English mist?
Understanding the instructions.
My father used to teach in the Royal Navy. He would get a classroom full of people from the Commonwealth Navies and teach them. At the end of the first class, he asked if everyone understood. Most people nodded, and a few shook their heads. The people who nodded were allowed to go.
My father did the whole lesson again - much slower. At the end, he said "do you understand" and the class shook their heads.
Ever patient, my father prepared to do the course again, when one person said "We understand perfectly, when you ask use we all said yes".
In their country nodding means no - and shaking the head means yes!
As well as this little confusion they did not like to say no. The answer to a question "are you on target and ready to fire" was always yes. They did a lot of damage by hitting things outside of the target area.
Another problem was caused someone not using his right eye to line up the back sight and the fore sight, but using his left eye and only the fore sight, and shutting his right eye! This makes a big difference over a couple of miles.
I don't understand.
There was a specific target location with dummy shells that didn't go Boom!
So wouldn't there be a large pile of debris on the target site?
Or is this meant to be cm precision?
Wow!!
In certain countries those "calibration" officers would be walked around the corner and summarily shot - including the country they were in had it been 1945 or earlier!! So they should think themselves lucky to be in modern day Germany where you just get shouted at.