[evgen]

The wrinkle in this story is that both conclusions were eventually discovered by others as well, acted upon, and eventually became the dominant paradigms by the end of the war (Dyson was doing operations research for RAF Bomber Command and claims to have made the suggestion in regards to cutting weight on Lancasters.) Some of the most successful planes in the war embodied this philosophy before Dyson even enlisted. The most successful light bomber in the war was the De Haviland Mosquito, which was made primarily of wood, usually carried no machine guns, and could outrun every other plane in the sky until the arrival of jet engines.