[HN Gopher] WW2 Meteorology
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       WW2 Meteorology
        
       Author : binarymax
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2023-07-13 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rafmetman.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rafmetman.wordpress.com)
        
       | falsenapkin wrote:
       | This is very interesting but, and I'm afraid this might be off
       | topic and pedantic, I had to stop reading because Words, maybe
       | only Nouns, were frequently Cased and _Bolded_ (does bold
       | formatting exist on HN?) which made it very hard for Me to Read
       | and Parse as I kept thinking Things were Proper Names or Titles.
       | Is there a Reason for this Style that I am ignorant of?
        
         | 7373737373 wrote:
         | I found this very annoying too, and thought these were links at
         | first. It can be fixed with:                 Array.from(documen
         | t.getElementsByTagName("strong")).forEach(strong =>
         | strong.style = "font-weight: normal;")
         | 
         | in the developer console
        
           | 867-5309 wrote:
           | ..when consuming from a desktop browser
        
             | mksybr wrote:
             | paste it with a prepended JavaScript: into the URL bar.
        
               | lukasb wrote:
               | Had no idea it was that easy to run arbitrary JavaScript
               | on a mobile web browser. Thanks.
        
       | mig39 wrote:
       | The German side was also starved for weather data. And since
       | weather tends to flow West to East over the Atlantic, they were
       | even more disadvantaged.
       | 
       | Interesting solution was un-manned, automated weather stations
       | like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt
       | -- installed secretly by U-Boat on Labrador's north coast. It was
       | re-discovered in 1977!
        
       | mighmi wrote:
       | Himmler et al. were believers in the World Ice Theory, championed
       | by Scultetus in the SS. His popularity oscilated but at various
       | points they were trying to use his ideas to predict the weather.
       | 
       | The basic idea of the World Ice Theory is that a star filled with
       | water crashed into our sun, exploding and spewing out water,
       | hydrogen and such, which froze and coalesced into planets. Many
       | of these planets impacted the Earth, leading to different types
       | of rock formations (because rocks are made of ice, explosions
       | changed the soil composition like during periods of greater
       | volcanic activity or or or... subtheories abounded.) Noah's flood
       | was caused by such an ice planet turning into hail in the
       | atmosphere.
       | 
       | Tangentially, the Nazis also sent a few meteorological and
       | astronomical teams hoping to see the other side of the Earth
       | according to the hollow Earth theory.
        
       | avar wrote:
       | I've rarely seen it referred to as "WW2", as opposed to "WWII",
       | but apparently it's been in relatively rare but consistent use in
       | English [1] for a long time.
       | 
       | Tweaking the query reveals that it's relatively more common in
       | British English than English overall, although "WWII" is more
       | common there overall as well.
       | 
       | 1.
       | https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=WWII%2CWW2%2CW...
       | 
       | 2.
       | https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=WWII%2CWW2%2CW...
        
       | chrisdhoover wrote:
       | God damn it all to hell and back I miss my old man. He joined the
       | Army Air Corps and was stationed in Brazil. He flew in B25s on
       | weather missions across the Atlantic to North Africa.
       | 
       | After the war he worked for the weather service which morphed
       | into NOAA.
       | 
       | He had satellite images transmitted on Alden fax machines of the
       | naval buildup around Cuba during the missile crises. The FBI
       | interviewed him- ur uh threatened him on national security
       | grounds.
       | 
       | He met my mom at Homestead air base in south FLA. my maternal
       | side. all fought in WW2 as well.
       | 
       | It seemed everyone contributed a little. It was clear who was
       | right and who was wrong. Those distinctions are less clear these
       | days
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | > It was clear who was right and who was wrong
         | 
         | I think depended on which side you were on, as it wasn't always
         | simple. I'm sure many of those on the wrong side didn't see it
         | how you do.
         | 
         | Follow Russia's course through the war, or France (keeping in
         | mind that the Vichy existed). There were factions all over the
         | place and simplifying it down to right/wrong is too simplistic.
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | My grandfather was a meteorologist stationed in the Pacific
       | during WWII. He claimed that he was asked for a weather report
       | for Hiroshima for the day the first bomb was dropped. He didn't
       | know why they wanted the weather report. He also claimed he saw
       | either the Enola Gay or a decoy on his island before the bomb was
       | dropped. I never knew him to lie about anything else, so maybe he
       | was telling the truth.
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | The flights had secondary targets e.g. Kokura was saved by the
         | weather (leading to the bombing of Nagasaki)
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | I wonder if this was the inspiration for the UK side story about
       | "Qwghlm" in Cryptonomicon
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-13 23:00 UTC)