Engineering Hitler's Downfall. Gwilym Roberts

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 and academic figures.’

      Churchill was a competent inventor himself. Commander Sir Charles Goodeve FRS RNVR, the Admiralty’s senior scientist, said he was ‘an inventor of no mean repute’. When First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, Churchill was the ‘key figure behind the invention of the tank’, which was originally called a ‘landship’.

      When holding that appointment again at the start of the Second World War, he developed and promoted Nellie, a giant trench-digging excavator which would enable troops to advance on enemy positions while protected so as to provide a means of ‘breaking a deadlock on the French front without repetition of the slaughter of the previous war’. He also promoted the development of floating mines for dropping into German rivers.

      The conception, research, and development of new weapons and machines were undertaken by the research establishments of the three military ministries; by academia and industry; and by two small specialist departments enthusiastically supported by Churchill. These were the Ministry of Defence 1 (MD1), known colloquially as ‘Winston Churchill’s Toyshop’, and the Admiralty Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD), otherwise known as ‘the Wheezers and Dodgers’. These two departments developed some 50 significant inventions including limpet mines, the Navy’s Hedgehog depth charge launcher, and the infantry’s PIAT anti-tank mortar.

      Inside the Toyshop

      Shortly before the outbreak of war the War Office had established a new department under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major-General) Joe Holland RE. This was called Military Intelligence (Research) (MIR) and was intended to work closely with the Foreign Office on military intelligence matters. Assisting Holland were Major (later Major-General Sir) Millis Jefferis RE and Stuart (later Colonel Stuart) Macrae, the then editor of the magazine Armchair Science.

      The organisation became known to Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, when he came up with his idea for creating floating mines – a task which its boffins successfully achieved and demonstrated to various British and French VIPs. After he became Prime Minister he continued to take a close interest in the department’s activities, and he overrode senior officials who wanted it incorporated into the Ministry of Supply. He ruled in November 1940 that it should become the first subsidiary department of the Ministry of Defence – hence MD1. It was then effectively under the direct control of Churchill and Lindemann, who made weekly visits to the department.

      The department’s unofficial history, written by Macrae’s son and entitled Winston Churchill’s