How Allies Used Math Against German Tanks 330
Pepebuho writes "This an article about how the allies were able to estimate the number of German tanks produced in World War 2 based on the serial numbers of the tanks. Neat! Godwin does not apply."
Don't start counting at 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Same method used for Soviet Bombers (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing very new in this - Verdun (Score:5, Interesting)
Spycatcher (Score:1, Interesting)
Meanwhile in "Spy Catcher", Peter Wright explains how they put numbers 1, 3, 7, 8, etc. onto their bugging wires in an embassy, just for the psychological effect on anyone who found them all and would tear the building apart looking for the missing numbered wires
Houses too (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is, the German tanks had bigger guns and longer ranges - significantly longer. There was apparently a speed advantage to the British tank (I'm going by what I was told, again I'm not a WWII-buff by any means) though, so what they used to do was lure the German tank into a village, then drive round back of them. The German guns were so big they couldn't turn them in in a normal street with buildings on either side whereas the smaller British tank certainly could. Not sure this was by design, but they took any advantage they could of course and I'm told that this trick was used by my dad a number of times.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Note for world domination: encrypt serial no.'s (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Note for world domination: encrypt serial no.'s (Score:2, Interesting)
I am implementing this at my factory. In fact, tanks c4ca4238a0b923820dcc509a6f75849b, c81e728d9d4c2f636f067f89cc14862c, eccbc87e4b5ce2fe28308fd9f2a7baf3, a87ff679a2f3e71d9181a67b7542122c, and e4da3b7fbbce2345d7772b0674a318d5 just rolled off of the the assembly line.
You should at least use some salt if you just use md5 on those serial numbers... I could decode your serial numbers just by using publicly available reverse md5 lookup table...
Meth (Score:5, Interesting)
I read the title as 'Meth':
For once a misreading made perfect sense in the summary title's context: use of amphetamines throughout World War II on land and air personnel is well-documented. There's a phrase one hears infrequently that amphetamines 'won the Battle of Britain' - fending off constant attack from the Luftwaffe made necessary the use of stimulants as hiring and training a new pilot took too long. Whether it really did tip the scales in that battle we'll never know. As one would expect abuse orose within both Allied and Axis forces, and the spike in use persisted after the war. The Vietnam conflict saw American troops use methamphetamine very widely, and today the drug is popular amongst the poor as a relatively inexpensive stimulant.
If there's anything that isn't widely known by the public and merits publicizing it's history of drugs such as this in the context of 20th century events like warfare. What laid ground for a forerunner to the modern drugs situation to me represents a phenomena of greater gravity than the serial numbers of tanks which one would expect would be used simply through using good old oxymoronic common sense.
Presently there's a drug by the name of 'Modafinil' which mimics amphetamine but removes almost entirely the euphoric element and much of the crash that accompanies sudden cessation. It has been around for a number of years, and sees much use in modern conflicts. It also has much off-label use, and has even been used by astronauts to cope with heavy exercise regimens.
Re:Off By One Error and Power of Two (Score:3, Interesting)
What was the number of the first tank? zero, or one?
Re:Who's to say (Score:3, Interesting)
How about a small integer k times the real serial number plus a uniformly distributed random integer from 0 to k-1?
--
Mein Herr,
Your application for Grammar Fuhrer is rejected. You are otherwise highly qualified, but the post is occupied.
Re:Houses too (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a WWII buff.
If your dad drove a tank that was faster than German tanks, it probably wasn't a Churchill. Could it have been a Cromwell? Those also showed up in Normandy, were still in service at the end of the war, and were pretty fast.
The tactic you describe was used against the bigger German tanks, as the ones the size of most Allied tanks didn't have especially long guns. He probably used it the most in the Normandy fighting, as that's when the Germans concentrated heavily against the British and Canadian armies.
Re:Note for world domination: encrypt serial no.'s (Score:5, Interesting)
That's exactly why the Soviet Navy gave their ships non-sequential pennant (hull) numbers, and frequently re-assigned them. They would also sometimes paint one number on one side of the bow, and different on the other.
Security is a difficult business.
Intelligence can also be a weird business... I once read an account of how the CIA broke into a warehouse rented by the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in order to examine (very closeup and very clandestinely) a high fidelity mock-up/prototype of a satellite the Soviets had on tour. The idea was to gather information on any real cable, connectors, or other hardware on the bird - as well as to collect any serial numbers, drawing numbers, etc.. that they could find. (It's not uncommon for such to contain 'real' items that have been discarded from production or operational use.)
You'd be surprised what a trained and knowledgeable analyst can derive from just a few seemingly unconnected bits of information.
Re:Can US win a future war like it did in WW II? (Score:4, Interesting)
If North Korea decides to invade South Korea, that's the sort of war we can fight. One with a clear goal and somebody who has the kind of authority needed to stop hostilities once you negotiate a peace (even if it's unconditional surrender). You can't do that with insurgencies, because there is nobody in charge and they're run more like criminal gangs than actual armies.
Re:Who's to say (Score:3, Interesting)
You may consider them morons but they didn't have the benefit of your knowledge.
If you look at the VIN number of your car, it still has plenty of information in it. Lets pick on a relativity recent Chevrolet [ehow.com]for instance. The information can tell you where it was made, what options was installed from the factory, what motor came with it, what year is was produced and so on. Unlike a serial number in a database, on material items it's important to carry some of this information in order to track down problems with a specific portion of the assembly or whatever. In the situation with a tank, if the main guns jam on a regular basis, it might be that the boring tool for the breach is undersized slightly so correcting it would require a recall and retrofit of all tanks produced in that plant with that bore tool.
The benefits of knowing is way more important then someone possibly finding information out, especially if the information is obfuscated in some way with a code. Unfortunately, this changes when there is a war and the equipment is used in that effort. If that code was ever broken, then you can learn a plethora of information like if it's a new plant making a certain part or the entire tank, if it's a plant that has a large production capability (making it a prime target for industrial bombing), and so on. And just like the information buried within a VIN number, most people aren't aware of how to decode it making it appear as some random number sequence. It's really a lot like communicating war plans in code, you don't think it's compromised until you realize someone is acting on the information within the code.
And yes, since the serial numbers were for long term tracking, it's not like a database at all where a random number can be used more then once as long as the sessions aren't still active. It needs to be a unique number dedicated to the piece of equipment and regardless of how you randomize it or attempt to obfuscate and information, a pattern will ultimately develop that can be somewhat useful to an opponent. You have to remember, this is before computers and humans needed to be able to track the assets by hand, often from far, far away.
Quantity over Quality (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been telling people for years that WWII really came down to a battle of quantity over quality. Technologically, Germany was 10 years ahead of everyone else. Furthermore, their weapons were amazingly well-engineered. But they didn't have the facilities and infrastructure to produce in large quantities.
And that's what the USA had -- tons of natural resources, lots of factories, lots of fairly untouchable infrastructure with which to crank out a lot of weapons. Never mind the weapons were of inferior quality (i.e. The Sherman) we just had so many, we overwhelmed the Germans with the sheer number.
And what WWII American doughboy didn't desire a Luger pistol off any captured German soldier? That shows the quality of the German war machine, everybody wanted their stuff.
Witness how the American Forces and the Soviets were both racing to capture as much German technology as they could once it was clear the Nazis had lost the war. Both sides knew that the Germans were still, even as their empire fell, producing designs and weapons that were far in advance of what the allies could dream up.
Re:Note for world domination: encrypt serial no.'s (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a simply ploy on misdirection. It's been around in one form or another for years. Back in grade school, we had word problems that played on this where we had to select the proper information to solve a math problem.
It can be done/demonstrated easier with coins and not harming any animals. Assemble 3 coins (US currency) a penny, a nickle, and a quarter.
Now tell them that Johny's mom had three kids. Point to the penny and say the name Penny, point to the nickle and say the name Nicolas, then point to the Quarter and ask what the third one's name is. Most people will spend a considerable time attempting to work quarter or some variation of it into a name even after repeating that Johny's mom had three kids. Eventually they give up.
(in case anyone is wondering, the third one's name if Johny- as in Johny's mom). It's a little easier then how far can a dog run into the woods.
Re:Look at the board (Score:3, Interesting)
You were probably joking when you posted, but there is a chess variant that looks interesting:
http://www.chessvariants.org/incinf.dir/kriegspiel.html [chessvariants.org]
Re:Quantity over Quality (Score:3, Interesting)
Your analysis is a little bit of an overstatement.
First, there were probably only a few technologies where the Germans were really that far ahead. Rocketry was one of them. However, while the V2 was great technology, without a more potent warhead (i.e. nuclear or chemical) and/or significantly better guidance it was nothing more than a tactically/strategically insignificant terror weapon.
The U.S. and Britain were pretty far along on jet technology. However, a full-scale roll-out of a jet fighter would have probably been the hardest to counter technological threat that the Germans could have come up with. Good thing they starved the program until it was too late.
The M1 Garand was THE superior rifle on all WWII fronts until the Germans rolled out the Sturmgewehr 44. However, the Garand was later developed into the M14. In the face of a broad roll-out of the Sturmgewehr, the U.S. could have easily accelerated a program to convert the Garand into a fully-automatic, box-magazine fed weapon. Would have been a much more expensive program than the M14 ended up being, but no technological leap would have been required.
The Sherman tank represents a trade-off between firepower, armor and transportability. Remember, it had to be shipped into theater from the U.S., and the planning was that they would often need to do so using improvised port facilities. In retrospect they probably should have made a trade that resulted in a lot more firepower, little more armor and was harder to transport, but it really wasn't a technology problem.
Aside from jet technology, by the middle of the war the U.S. had caught up in air power and had the best planes in all categories -- fighters, escorts and bombers.
The Luger is not really a fantastic weapon compared to the American M1911. The reason it was so popular with GIs was because it was such a distinctive souvenir, not because they wanted it for combat.