at one level, what your dad claimed is true ... OTOH, it’s very unlikely the allies would have won the war without the inventions of the cavity magnetron, the proximity fuze, whole ship degaussing, decrypting Enigma and Lorenz/Tuny, Home Chain, computer-directed naval fire, and a whole slew of other inventions and mechanisms that required high-level education to invent and produce ...
His point was more that the experts weren’t running the war. Whereas JFK-Nixon, they had their hands all over the Vietnam War.