T HIS EVENING I want to add a chapter to the early history of military operations research by discussing an outstanding example of the successful application of operations research during World War II. This example is concerned with offensive Naval sea mining and involves operations research at all levels from determination of operational effectiveness of individual weapons to the study of tactics and strategy of minefield deployment. This operations-research effort made possible a very successful starvation campaign against the Japanese homeland in the last year of the War. It is surprising that this work has never previously been discussed before this SociETY, since other wartime operations research has been discussed in considerable detail. British and Canadian World-War-II operations research has been described in a number of papers in our JOURNAL. ['-41 LEROY BROTHERS has described in detail the "Operations Analysis in the United States Air Force."15] The banquet speech a year ago, given by PHIL MORSE, was a discussion of the work of the U.S. Naval Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group. But there was another group in the Navy, concerned with undersea mining, that accomplished very significant operations research that has received only the briefest mention in the literature. [6 7] Let me first exercise the prerogative of an old-timer to reminisce a bit about my own introduction to operations-research activities. My wartime experiences still remain vivid because they represented my first