With developments of this sort, the

With developments of this sort, the work of the Economics Division of R&A entered a new phase. As the Allied advance across the Mediterranean opened up the field of intelligence gathering, the "ideal essences, poetic or logical terms which thought may define and play with" became increasingly soiled with engine lubricants, tire treads, unexploded artillery shells, and other "terrible irruptive things."24 Simultaneously, the economists began to win ground in their own campaign to be heard by the Joint Chiefs under whose nominal jurisdiction they labored. "Little regard was at first paid to the OSS estimates by these professional military men, who looked with mingled skepticism, contempt, and jealousy on the amateur authors, the method, and results,"25 but their own persistence and the testimony of events slowly won for them a clientele. Nor were the economists' reports merely read and added to the general store of background intelligence on enemy capabilities. A major escalation in the program of economic warfare occurred when, back in Washington, Alexander's group was able to show that only two manufacturers were involved in the production of German tank engines and that gear boxes were assembled in only two specified plants. With this information the new science of serial-number analysis left the laboratory and ushered the Economic Division into the real world of target selection in the air war over Europe. Accordingly, the focus of its activities began to shift from Washington to the small squadron of economists that had been gathering in the R&A Outpost in London.