Читать книгу Engineering Hitler's Downfall - Gwilym Roberts - Страница 22

‘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.