made inventions that had been used during the war; 359 applications were considered.
Military personnel and civil servants who developed such equipment as part of their duties were excluded unless the inventions were ‘of such exceptional brilliance and utility that some award might nevertheless be justified’.
Among the cases which were deemed to be so exceptional were those of Sir Robert Watson-Watt who was awarded £50,000 for his invention of radar (a number of his colleagues were also recognised); Sir Donald Bailey, who was awarded £12,000 for his invention of the Bailey Bridge; and Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, who received £100,000 for his invention of the jet propulsion engine. To many this latter award seems a trifle odd as, brilliant and ultimately beneficial though the invention was, it came about too late to play a significant role before the end of hostilities. It was however explained by the Commission in a footnote: ‘Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle was not in fact a claimant. The commission investigated the case at the special request of the Ministry of Supply in agreement with the Air Commodore and the Treasury.’
The fact that an applicant did not receive an award often meant that it did not comply with the guidelines, rather than it was not worthy of an award (a number of the engineers involved in designing the Mulberry harbours had their applications rejected).
In the first year of the war, when he was still attached to HMS Vernon and before DMWD had actually been established, Goodeve had conceived and developed the means of countering the magnetic mines that caused the loss of so many ships in the early months of the war (see Chapter 3).
The department was disbanded shortly after the end of the war, but a reunion dinner was held at Simpson’s in the Strand in May 1953. It was chaired by Goodeve, who by then had been knighted for his wartime services. The value and extent of their contribution to the war effort is reflected in the fact that Goodeve and four other members all received monetary awards from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors.
Details of some of the Department’s inventions are given in Appendix 4.
Some Other Strange Beasts
‘Winston Churchill’s Toyshop’ and the ‘Wheezers and Dodgers’ weren’t the only unorthodox departments to marshal the country’s brightest brains.
S-Branch was a small statistical organisation established at Marlow by Lindemann which reported directly to Churchill. It scrutinised the performance of the regular ministries and, having analysed data from a variety of sources, produced easily-understood reports and charts thereby enabling key aspects of the war’s progress and the nation’s resources to be readily evaluated.
The importance and significance of these presentations are highlighted by the charts now on display in the Cabinet War Rooms. Inter alia these show the tonnage of shipping lost each month compared with new construction and the weight of bombs dropped by Germany on the UK compared with that dropped on Germany.
Although S-Branch often caused tensions between government departments it enabled the War Cabinet to make quick decisions based on accurate data and was undoubtedly an important component of the organisation behind the successful prosecution of the war.
The Allied Central (Photographic) Interpretation Unit (ACIU) was based at Medmenham, Buckinghamshire. Originally the RAF Photographic Interpretation Unit, it became the Anglo-American Allied Central Interpretation Unit after the entry of the Americans into the war.
During 1942 and 1943 the unit gradually expanded and was involved not only in the planning stages of practically every operation of the war but in every aspect of intelligence. In 1945, the daily intake of material averaged 25,000 negatives and 60,000 prints. By VE Day it employed 1,700 personnel, a large number of whom were women, and the print library, which documented and stored worldwide cover, held 5,000,000 prints from which 40,000 reports had been produced.
Combined Operations Headquarters was a department of the War Office established in July 1940 to harass the Germans on the European continent by means of amphibious raids carried out by commandos. Its first director was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, who had won distinction in the First World War for leading a raid on the Dutch port of Zeebrugge. (He was succeeded in October 1941 by Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten followed by Major General Robert Laycock in October 1943.)
Bizarrely, the organisation became the godfather to a scheme named Project Habakkuk, which envisaged the manufacture of reinforced icebergs for use as floating aircraft carriers. It was conceived by the eccentric inventor Geoffrey Pyke, an advisor to Mountbatten, and it was named after the minor Hebrew prophet whose eponymous book in the Bible includes a phrase reflecting the project’s ambitious goal: ‘Be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.’ (Hab. 1:5 New International Version).
A news correspondent in Germany at the start of the First World War, Pyke had been interned but had managed to escape – a feat which earned him a measure of notoriety. Between the wars he had invested heavily in the stock market, founded a school, and become bankrupt. Following the German invasion of Norway he conceived a novel method for transporting troops across snow fields using screw-propelled vehicles called Ploughs. The idea was taken to Mountbatten who thought it worthy of further investigation. He took Pyke on to his staff, both for his original ideas and because he prompted other staff members to think less conservatively. The concept was then actively pursued by the Americans and Canadians but was eventually superseded by the Canadian Weasel and the American M29 tracked personnel carriers.
In mid-1942 Pyke was asked to investigate problems concerned with the icing of ships in Arctic waters. This prompted his lateral-thinking brain to consider related matters, in particular whether artificial icebergs could be used as aircraft carriers that could help close the mid-Atlantic air gap or support an amphibious landing on a coastline, such as the Bordeaux region of France – then beyond the reach of land-based aircraft.
To do this he conceived the manufacture of a new material made from wood, pulp, and frozen water which became known as Pykrete and was extremely hard and slow-melting. Examples were given to Mountbatten, and by him to Churchill. Both of them actively supported the idea, which was considered by the combined chiefs of staff at their meeting in Ottawa in August 1943.
An Anglo-American-Canadian committee was established to investigate further, though by the end of the year the need for such a project had been nullified both by Allied successes in the Battle of the Atlantic and by the decision to invade France through Normandy, which was within reach of UK land-based aircraft.
Sunday Soviets
Britain organised collaboration between the military, scientists, and industry supremely well – discussions between the respective participants were open and frank with the objective of finding not the perfect solution, but one which worked and could be applied effectively and quickly in as many applications as possible.
This willingness to discuss ideas and problems was well illustrated by the ‘Sunday Soviets’ who met on Sunday mornings at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern. Originating with discussions between senior RAF officers and Robert Watson-Watt and Jimmy Rowe (the scientists who developed radar), they developed into regular meetings of an informal nature and were attended by senior officers from all three services. Here the operations of a whole command could be discussed, and junior personnel who had a useful contribution to make, whether technical or military, were invited to attend and encouraged to speak.
It has not
