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<p>I was deeply moved by Spike's story about the Messerschmitt
engineer. Yes, this is what real moral education is about. <br>
</p>
<p>One should regularly check that one is not working for the bad
guys. Or has become one of them. <br>
</p>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2016-08-17 21:57, spike wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:029201d1f8c9$f7e749a0$e7b5dce0$@att.net"
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
spike [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:spike66@att.net">mailto:spike66@att.net</a>] <br>
<br>
<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">>…</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I am
struggling to tone down the political content of my own
posts, but I am thinking about writing a full
explanation, after which you read, you may understand
why I keep talking about hearing the footsteps…spike<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I
decided to go ahead and explain some things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">When
I was a young controls engineer just starting out my
career, I went to work for a company that did anti-crime
technology, which sounded really cool, but had very
little funding or market, so I was assigned as a TDY
over to support a USNavy effort while they tried to sell
these early 80s remote controlled flying camera drones
(!) We sold zero point zero of the RC cams, and I ended
up working with the Navy full time for the next several
years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I
was in an engineering society in 1985. We had a keynote
speaker who I will never forget. He was introduced as a
retired Boeing engineer who became an engineering
professor at one of the local schools, then retired from
that. But he explained in his crisp German accent, that
wasn’t how he started. He went to work in 1936 just out
of the university for an aircraft company in Augsburg
Germany, as a structural engineer on the team led by
Willy Messerschmitt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The
war came along; he and his colleagues were busy
developing war technology, particularly a plane designed
around the anticipated jet engine. They had no
particular political ideology in general; they were
engineers and scientists, the math geeks of the day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">So
they came up with a plane and had built some prototypes
of the Me262, began testing them with those marvelous
jet engines. Since that plane was the fastest thing in
the air, there was little reason to think anything would
be coming up from behind. So the engineers designed the
262 as a fighter plane, but it could carry bombs aft.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">During
this time, which was already way into the war, they got
orders from Berlin asking them to see what engineering
changes would be needed to use the 262 as a bomber. It
is difficult to retrofit a fighter as a bomber however,
for several reasons. The tactic used by the allies to
fight an ME262 was a head-on guns-ablazin’ joust. The
allies already knew the Kraut had the option of just
shoving the throttles forward and getting out of town;
they couldn’t catch it. So… head-on attacks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The
German engineers anticipated this (as German engineers
do) and had armor up front with a long slopey nose up
there, so that a bullet hitting at an oblique angle
would likely be deflected. They put the guns up there
too, so that if facing a head-on barrage, the guns would
keep firing. It was one hell of a flying weapon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">By
this time, British bombs began falling on London, and
the orders came in to study a bomber version of the
ME262, so they did, but soon found out that the
expendable parts were all forward. Removing them would
make the aircraft so tail-heavy, most of the weight
would need to be replaced with useless ballast. The
existing ballast mount was structurally insufficient for
the amount needed to rebalance, so they (being clever
German engineers) found a way to shorten the tail,
reduce aerodynamic surface area which reduced its
maneuverability, increase the capacity of the bomb bay
which put even more weight aft, and so on, but when they
were finished, the plane had some big problems: the
armor around the pilot was now easily penetrable from
any direction, he had little defense in a head-on
attack. All he could do was run away quickly in an air
battle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The
engineering team made a report that the ME262 couldn’t
be effectively retrofitted as a bomber. “Fortunately,
Herr Hitler was an idiot.” (His words, not mine, hard
to forget after these three decades. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">They
received word that Der Fuhrer was coming to the
factory. They assumed he was coming to give them a pep
talk on their work, but when the haggard Fuhrer showed
up, he gave no speeches, but rather asked to see the jet
fighter, and began asking technical questions,
specifically: how much does that armor around the pilot
weigh, and what do those guns weigh. When they told
him, he ordered that it be removed, that the lowered
weight be replaced with every bomb they could get aboard
the aircraft, even if it had to be carried externally
(which that aircraft was never designed to do and was
poorly suited for the task.) They tried to explain the
notion of balance and how removing a thousand kg of
armor might only allow a hundred kg of extra bombs. But
he did come there to listen, he came there to issue
orders. He wanted to make a 1940s version of a stealth
bomber, which would take off from a forward base in
France, fly across the channel all alone, unarmored and
unarmed except for the bombs, drop the ordnance over
London and fly back. Everything about that plane was
wrong for that mission.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Hitler
was accustomed to hearing Ja vol, heil Hitler, and guys
jumping to it. He didn’t ask for anyone to point out
the insanity of the plan. But the young engineers
realized that if der Fuhrer was issuing crazy
nonsensical orders to his premier aircraft designers and
not listening to their logical objections, he was doing
likewise up, down and across the entire military. He
and at least three others concluded that Hitler was
crazy, stupid, completely blinded by having arbitrary
power, or perhaps all of these, and that the war was
lost. This was in 1943. He decided to try to escape.
He and one other guy somehow made it to Switzerland
where they waited out the war, and later he ended up in
the USA, working on passenger airliners for Boeing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">During
his talk, one of the most memorable things was the
emotion in this man’s voice. He spoke of waking up and
realizing to his horror that he was working for the bad
guys. So overwhelming was this feeling that he chose to
leave his family, his childhood friends, colleagues,
everything he had grown to know and love, take a huge
risk of getting killed; to not work for the bad guys.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Any
American who works in, with or for the military knows
what an awesome force is at our disposal, and why it is
that military discipline is taken so very seriously. We
know that power corrupts, and the military wields
astonishing power. It isn’t a game. I am not even
talking about the nukes; I have very little firsthand
knowledge of that world, never worked in it. I mean the
appalling destructive power of the conventional
military. If the US military decides to destroy
something, it can make that happen, and it will stay
destroyed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I
have been out of that world for several years now, but…
I am getting that dreaded feeling right now. I woke up
one day in the spring of this year realizing that
regardless of which of the major political parties
prevails in November, we will be led by the bad guys.
We are a nation of astonishing, appalling military
might, and we are about to choose between leaders who we
do not trust with all that power. Even followers of
either of the two majors will sheepishly admit they are
not big fans of their party’s leader, but the other one
is worse. Still, plenty of us will openly admit that
these are both very bad choices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">If
you read that story, you understand better where I am,
and why I am getting the dreaded feeling described by my
German colleague, of having worked for the bad guys.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">spike<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
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