Читать книгу Engineering Hitler's Downfall - Gwilym Roberts - Страница 17

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.