Abstract

As the Battle of Britain loomed early in World War II, in a converted English manor along Suffolk’s southeastern coast overlooking the North Sea, a new profession was being invented. The phrase to define these new multi-disciplinary teams supporting Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding and his Royal Air Force Fighter Command with the integration and use of newly invented radar was, of course, “Operational Research” (OR) (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963). The fate of Western Civilization was indeed at stake in those early war years. Prime Minister Winston Churchill would later describe this period after the fall of France as Britain’s “Darkest Hour” (Fisher, 2005).