Michael Mcneil wrote:
I just missed the article on the OU about a mathematician called
Lanchester, whose work on statistics was used in the study of
meteorology early in the 20th century. The tail end of it seemed quite
interesting though.

Anyone here got any pointers?

Two lines of pointers could start by searching the words:
"Lanchester-Prandtl theory" - that is about aerodynamics
"stochastic Lanchester equations" - that is about war theory.
Please determine by your tail end, which line you want to follow.

Best regards,
Elena