> being an engineer in an actual “wartime mode” is like. Think about, e.g., working in the lab trying to improve radar to be able to stop the daily bombing raids.

This is slightly OT, but I believe wartime in the UK and US forced a number of cultural changes towards egalitarianism and what would nowadays be called "diversity" because things had to actually work. Being upper class in the UK would not save you from German bombers. The normally exclusionary system had to let a gay man break codes and a woman design Spitfire engines because those were the best people actually available and the outcome mattered more than saving face. This also got us the postwar settlement of universal healthcare and education.