#ww2 #worldwar2 #abomb
The Tizard Mission, officially the British Technical and Scientific Mission,[1] was a British delegation that visited the United States during WWII to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development (R&D) work completed by the UK up to the beginning of WWII, but that Britain itself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war-related production. It received its popular name from the programme's instigator, Henry Tizard. Tizard was a British scientist and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee, which had propelled the development of radar.
The mission travelled to the US in September 1940 during the Battle of Britain. They intended to convey a number of technical innovations to the US to secure assistance in maintaining the war effort.
Objectives
The objective of the mission was to cooperate in science and technology with the U.S., which was neutral and, in many quarters, unwilling to become involved in the war. The U.S. had greater resources for development and production, which Britain desperately wanted to use. The information provided by the British delegation was subject to carefully vetted security procedures, and contained some of the greatest scientific advances made during the war. The shared technology included radar (in particular the greatly improved cavity magnetron which the American historian James Phinney Baxter III later called "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"),[2] the design for the proximity VT fuse, details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the Frisch–Peierls memorandum describing the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives.
The American Congress had many proponents of neutrality for the USA and so there were further barriers to co-operation. Tizard decided that the most productive approach would be simply to give the information and use America's productive capacity. Neither Winston Churchill nor the radar pioneer, Robert Watson-Watt, were initially in agreement with these tactics for the mission. Nevertheless, Tizard first arranged for Archibald Hill, another scientific member of the committee, to go to Washington to explore the possibilities. Hill's report to Tizard was optimistic.
Moving the secrets
After Churchill's approval for the project, the team began gathering all technical secrets which might have military use. At the end of August, Tizard went to the U.S. by air to make preliminary arrangements. The rest of the mission would follow by ship. They were:
Brigadier F.C. Wallace MC (British Army)
Captain H.W. Faulkner (Royal Navy)
Group Captain F.L. Pearce (Royal Air Force)
Professor John Cockcroft (Army Research) - nuclear physicist and Assistant Director of Scientific Research at the Ministry of Supply[3]
Edward George Bowen (radar)[4]
Arthur Edgar Woodward-Nutt, an Air Ministry official (secretary)
All the documents were gathered in a small trunk: a lockable metal deed box, used for holding important valuable documents such as property deeds. Bowen was allowed to take 'Magnetron Number 12' with him. After spending the night under Bowen's hotel bed, the case was strapped to the roof of a taxi to the station. An over-eager railway porter whisked it from Bowen at Euston Station to take it to the train to Liverpool and Bowen almost lost sight of it. Inconsistently, in Liverpool, the magnetron was given a full Army escort.
The team arrived in Halifax, Canada, on 6 September on board the CPR Liner Duchess of Richmond (later known as the RMS Empress of Canada), and went on to Washington, D.C., a few days later. The team of six assembled in Washington on 12 September 1940.
Meetings
Tizard had met Vannevar Bush, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, on 31 August 1940, and arranged a series of meetings with each division of the NDRC. When the American and British teams met, there was initially some cautious probing by each side to avoid giving away too much without getting anything back in exchange. At a meeting hosted by NDRC's two-month-old "Microwave Committee" chairman Dr Alfred Loomis[5] at the Wardman Park Hotel on 19 September 1940 the British disclosed the technical details of the Chain Home early warning radar stations. The British thought the Americans did not have anything like this, but found it was virtually identical to the US Navy's longwave CXAM radar.
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