Web article: Robert A. Heinlein: Naval Academy (ca. 1939)

Heinlein had been following the war news from Europe with increasing unease: the lights of democracy were going out all over Europe and Asia (to both fascism and communism, which Heinlein, regarded as equally evil). A year and a half earlier he had written a short-short for a fanzine that tried, unsuccessfully, to waken science fiction fans to the Nazi extermination camps. Now the U.S. was involved in the war, and he immediately applied for active duty, but was rejected for medical reasons — tuberculosis scars on his lungs and myopia (nearsightedness) “beyond the limits allowed even for the staff corps.” But a Navy buddy Albert Scoles was in charge of the Materials Laboratory at the Naval Air Experimental Station at Mustin Field, near Philadelphia. Scoles was the aviator friend Heinlein had “talked in” by radio in 1931 while both were serving on the Lexington. The Materials Lab had begun a steady expansion when war broke out in Europe in September 1939.¹

Notes