Engineer Memoirs by E. L. Rouny

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 263 were set for 25 feet. But there was no low-level bombsight, the B-24s bomb bay doors were fitted with elastic safety latches that would not allow the bombs to be dropped unless the doors were fully opened, the bomb-release gear frequently malfunctioned, and even if all went well the charges might not explode after they entered the wa­ ter. On top of this, the special cameras also failed to function on occasion so that damage assessment had to be based on eye-witness reports. In the great hunting season ofJuly and August 1943, when U-boats stayed on the surface to fight, aircraft began to be lost. More followed when Luftwaffe patrols roamed the Bay of Biscay. The Lib­ erator was well enough armed that it could beat a singleJu-88 or a single FW-200, but usually not more than one. As Max Schoenfeld, earlier a student of Winston Churchill, re­ lates, this was an offensive war against submarines which neither the army nor the navy understood until, in the fall of 1943, they switched viewpoints. The army saw antisubmarine warfare as an offensive op­ eration in which mobile squadrons would be shifted from one place to another as opportunity dictated. The practical problem was that support personnel were not so easily trained and transferred. More­ over, the army convinced itself that the real place to attack U-boats was in the construction yards as part of the grand strategic offensive. The navy, on the other hand, could only see close escort of convoys and not hunter-killer groups and long-range patrols, a stance dic­ tated by available resources. Schoenfeld has made sound use of British and American archives to tell his story, detailing each combat, and assessing the results of this technological segment of the war. Robin Higham Dr. Higham was editor of Aerospace Historian from 1970 through 1988 and is cur­ rently writing a book on the Royal Air Force and preparation for war, 1931-1941. Engineer Memoirs. By E. L. Rouny. Alexandria, Va.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1995. Pp xvi+214; glossary, index. No price given. This paperback memoir consists of edited selections from a series of tape-recorded interviews conducted by Dr. Barry W. Fowle of the Engineer School. General Rouny had a fascinating and varied career, which merits close study. His father, a Polish farmer, came to the United States in 1912; that he studied in night school for 14 years may be a significant clue to the capabilities which led this immigrant’s son to become a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, an ambassador, and an adviser to presidents. After obtaining a de­ gree in civil engineering atJohns Hopkins, Rouny breezed through the U.S. Military Academy, where he became a protégé of Professor 264 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Abe Lincoln and thus a member of the “Lincoln Brigade” of out­ standing officers, which virtually assured him a fast track to promo­ tion. For this review in Technology and Culture, I shall address Rouny’s role in relation to military technology and leave his services as an arms control negotiator and ambassador to other more appropriate journals. This volume is filled with insights on the practical problems of leadership that alone would make it well worth reading, but so does its account ofhow one imaginative individual helped to exploit available material effectively. For example, Rouny describes the at­ tempts to eliminate minefields by various technical means that he made while serving with an engineer battalion in the 92nd Division in Italy as a young officer, such as explosive snakes of primacord or rotating flails attached to tanks, only to return to the old reliable method: an engineer soldier probing the ground with a bayonet. After VE day Rouny, already recognized as an imaginative thinker, was ordered back to Washington to OPD, the Operations Division, where he joined the dream team charged with preparing for future wars with “mind-boggling and mind-stretching ideas.” To generate them he “worked hard at preparing for these dream sessions, read­ ing history, being briefed by scientists, and talking to global strate...