Engineering the F-4 Phantom II: Parts into Systems by Glenn E. Bugos

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1017 Since it is never possible to comment on all papers in an anthology only one other paper will be mentioned here. It is unclear to me why the editor chose to include his essay on “The Wives of the Engi­ neers” in the book, since, as he notes, little is known about many, if not most, of the women mentioned and rarely did they influence their husbands’ work. Apparently England has had no engineer’s wife to match Emily Warren Roebling, the wife of Washington Au­ gustus Roebling, who became in effect the project engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge project after her husband was disabled by a case of the bends in the middle of the project. Indeed, the American Society of Civil Engineers missed a grand opportunity to show itself to be aware of the times when it neglected to posthumously elect Mrs. Roebling an honorary member of the society during the Brooklyn Bridge Cententennial celebrations in 1983. While few individuals will wish to add this collection of essays to their personal libraries, the reviewer would like to see it on the shelves of university and public libraries. Mark Levinson Dr. Levinson retired in 1990 from the University of Maine, where he had been A. O. Willey Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the founding director of the Technology and Society Project. He occasionally teaches a course on Topics in Aero­ space History at the University of Washington in Seattle. Engineering the F-4 Phantom II: Parts into Systems. By Glenn E. Bugos. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. Pp. 258; illustrations, fig­ ures, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth). The F-4 Phantom II, a fighter-bomber built by the McDonnell Aircraft Company of St. Louis from 1954 to 1979, has had a long life: from birth in a chicken-wire cubicle known as the advanceddesign cage in 1953, to brash youth over the testing deserts in the late 1950s, middle age full ofdemanding work in the war in Vietnam, and finally an old age farmed out in the service of foreign air forces during the 1980s. Over these decades it underwent many transforma­ tions. In these changes of configuration, suggests Glenn E. Bugos, are inscribed its relationship with the modern American militaryindustrial complex. Written as a case study, Engineering theF-4 Phan­ tom //focuses on the various types of relationships—technical as well as social—between the parts of the weapon system and the manage­ rial strategy that created and modified it. The lessons to be learned from Bugos’ forceful and invigorating study are not just about the F-4 Phantom but about military technology and the context of its development. In the tradition of historians Thomas P. Hughes and Alfred Chandler as well as organizational sociologists James March and Herbert Simon, Bugos situates the story of the F-4 in the milieu of the military-industrial complex, providing insights into engi­ 1018 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE neering management as it grappled earnestly with the complexities involved in piecing parts into systems. Drawing on extensive research, particularly interviews with the key players, Bugos makes a major contribution to the burgeoning body ofliterature on technology management. In nine chapters he shows how McDonnell Aircraft worked through the problems of technical integration that plagued defense engineering in the 1960s and 1970s and that led to programs full of “complexity.” It is as much a study of how aircraft manufacturers and military officers went about their business as it is a life-and-times history of an important aircraft. It is also an effort to cast the history of the American military-industrial complex as a history of engineering management. In giving a voice to those engineering managers who built the military-industrial complex, the author relies primarily on three types of literature to enhance his understanding of the engineering rules that govern how parts become systems. From the works of Hughes, Bugos takes the insight that those who constructed the tech­ nological system, defined as broadly as possible, constituted its rele­ vant social context. From Alfred Chandler he draws the vocabulary ofbusiness historians to highlight program management and matrix organization, two ideas that formed...