Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Drugs in War
Message-ID: <12595@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 27 Dec 89 03:40:34 GMT
References: <12531@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Lines: 34
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)

In article <12531@cbnews.ATT.COM>, mmm@cup.portal.com writes:
> 
> 
> From: mmm@cup.portal.com
> I'd heard that vitamin A (actual vitamin A, not a code name for amphetamine)
> was given to WW2 bomber personnel to improve their night vision.  I'd heard
> this in an article I read about the discovery that sharks were a prodigous
> source of the raw material.
> 
> Is this true?  Or is the bit about "vitamin A" being fed to bomber crews
> over Germany just a cover story for serious drug use.

A similar story was circulated for a while to explain why RAF night bomber
raids were hitting the target area more often...rather than open up about
various navigation and targeting aids such as radar, as well as better
night-fighter scores.

The story goes that some Luftwaffe types didn't exactly believe it, but
they did try large doses of vitamin A on some of their night-fighter
crews to see if it *really* did have such an effect.  (They had radar,
too, so the real explanantion seemed pretty straightforward to at least
some of them.)

------------

"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."

		Plato, _Phaedrus_ 275d