he said to a Radio 4 audience in January 2016, ‘that it was hard to imagine life without them,’ and they held ‘the key to the future of humanity and its ability to continue to thrive on the planet.’
As it is with the challenges of today, so it was in the punishing cauldron of the Second World War. We enjoy our present liberties thanks in large part to those scientists and engineers who helped bring about victory by inventing, designing, developing, and producing vital new systems, machines, structures, and weapons.
Many more engineers were in the armed forces, fighting valiantly alongside their non-technical colleagues and using the new equipment to maximum effect.
Britain’s leaders, according to Sir Max Hastings, ‘harnessed civilian brains and scientific genius to dazzling effect’ during that conflict. ‘Churchill’s nation far surpassed Germany in the application of science and technology. Mobilisation of the best civilian brains, and their integration into the war effort at the highest levels, was an outstanding British success story.’
Definition of an Engineer
Scientists undertake basic research while engineers develop the results of such research into practical applications, which when built are generally maintained – and often operated – by craftsmen. Together these are often referred to as technologists.
In this book Engineers are the scientists, engineers and other technologists in both the fighting and civilian services who:
• Undertook basic research
• Conceived, designed, or developed new systems, machines, and weapons
• Manufactured or maintained such equipment
• Served in the technical units of the armed forces
More information about the various groups of military and civilian personnel involved and some associated details are contained in Appendix 1.
Lord Bowden went even further by claiming that ‘All the courage of Fighter Command and the skill of the Few would have been wasted, had it not been for the timely installation of the primitive radar system which saved us in 1940.’
David Edgerton stated the following: ‘The build-up of this empire of machines made Britain an exceptionally mobilized society where millions of people were making and using modern armaments on a huge scale. This warfare state was run by a wartime British government full of experts, of scientists and economists and businessmen.’
Winston Churchill, while First Lord of the Admiralty in February 1940, offered this encomium in Parliament: ‘I wish this afternoon to pay my tribute to the Engineering Branch [of the Royal Navy] … the man around the engine without whom nothing could be done, who does not see the excitements of the action and does not ask how things are going, but who runs a very big chance of going down with the ship should disaster come.’
Britain established the most effective interaction between technologists and its military of any country that fought the war. The seeds of this success were sown during the rearmament programme of the pre-war years, when the Royal Society and other professional bodies identified key technical activities which in the event of conflict should become reserved occupations, freeing those engaged in them from serving in the armed forces.
They also prepared a register of scientists and engineers whose work could be of particular benefit which by 1939 contained some 5,000 names. In addition, state bursaries were awarded to over 50,000 young people (including the author) to enable them to study a technological subject before entering the fighting services or going into industry.
The Impact of Churchill
The technical input into the war effort was transformed when Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. He not only actively supported technology and innovation but ‘brought to the pursuit of science the same boundless energy with which he prosecuted every other aspect of the war.’
He appointed his friend and confidante, Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell) FRS, a former head of Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory, as his special scientific advisor. Scientific American has described him as ‘the most powerful scientist ever’. The two met almost daily, and Lindemann attended meetings of the War Cabinet.
Murderous Thoughts
Although Lindemann’s activities were almost entirely beneficial to the war effort, he pursued a number of impracticable ideas and his appointment was intensely disliked by a number of the other leading scientists who believed he had a Rasputin-like influence on Churchill.
Lord (Solly) Zuckerman, the naturalist turned operational research expert, remarked that Lindeman was ‘the only person . . . whom I have ardently wished to murder’!
Cherwell, Lord PC CH FRS (1886–1957)
Although born in Germany, Frederick Lindemann was a British national because his father, a German émigré, had acquired British nationality; his mother was American. Educated in Scotland and Germany, he inherited wealth and was a teetotal non-smoker, an accomplished pianist, and an international-standard tennis player. Working in Berlin as a physicist just before the First World War, he managed to return to Britain and having learned to fly with the RFC, he worked out how an aeroplane could be taken out of a spin.
After the First World War he became head of Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory, which he transformed from a ‘museum piece’ into an acclaimed research body. He became a close friend of Winston Churchill in 1921 and 11 years later the two went on a road trip to Germany, where they were dismayed with what they saw. When Churchill was out of office Lindemann advised him on scientific matters; Churchill arranged for Lindemann to become a member of the Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence (whose chairman was Henry Tizard). However, Lindemann’s contributions were disruptive and the Committee disbanded and then reformed without him.
When Churchill became Prime Minister, Lindemann was appointed as the Government’s senior scientific advisor. Known as ‘The Prof’, he attended meetings of the War Cabinet, met Churchill on a daily basis, and accompanied him on his overseas journeys. In addition to being closely associated with the specialist department MD1, Lindemann established a distinct statistical branch known as ‘S-Branch’.
A number of other leading scientists were highly critical of his appointment and of the influence he had on Churchill. In 1951–52 he served in Churchill’s post-war administration. He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1953 and elevated to the peerage in 1972 when he assumed the title of Lord Cherwell. He died peacefully a year later.
Churchill and Lidemann witness the testing of a new weapon, IWM
‘Churchill was a great enthusiast for science and machines,’ David Edgerton wrote, ‘particularly in relation to war, in a country where the elite, and especially the old aristocratic elite from which Churchill came, were thought to be either above such matters or sunk in rural idiocy.’
He went on to quote Oliver Lyttleton, the Minister of Production in the Cabinet: ‘One of Churchill’s most important qualities as war leader was his eager readiness to listen to new, sometimes fantastic, ideas thrown up by scientists, engineers
