Читать книгу Engineering Hitler's Downfall - Gwilym Roberts - Страница 27

He was educated at Westminster and Oxford and, as a physical chemist, was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1911. In the First World War he joined the RFC, where he undertook aerodynamic observations, worked on bombsights, and, having learned to fly, became his own test pilot.

Upon returning to Oxford in 1919 he was appointed a reader in chemical thermodynamics; working on the performance of petrol engines and, he developed octane numbers for rating fuel. In 1919 he was made a member of the Aeronautical Research Committee and the following year he became assistant secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which was responsible for co-ordinating the scientific work of the defence and civil departments. In 1933 he was appointed chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee and two years later chairman of the new Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence. These were the bodies that first discussed Robert Watson-Watt's idea for detecting the presence of aircraft by radio beams. The following year he and others resigned from the latter committee as a result of Lindemann's manoeuvres but he continued to take an active part in the development of radar. He encouraged work at the University of Birmingham that led to the invention by John Randall and Harry Boot of the cavity magnetron. This provided the basis for, among other things, centimetric radar, thereby making airborne radar interception possible. In September 1940, with the Battle of Britain at its height, he led a mission to share with the Americans Britain’s scientific and military secrets which proved to be one of the key events in forging the Anglo-American technical alliance in the Second World War. He later played a key part in winning support for Frank Whittle's jet engine. In 1929–42 he was rector of Imperial College London, prior to becoming president of Magdalen College, Oxford, for the following five years.

Leaving Oxford in 1947, he returned to Whitehall as chairman of the Defence Research Policy Committee and a member of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy. He retired from government service in 1952 when he became pro-chancellor of the University of Southampton. He died in Hampshire in 1959.

Tizard’s package was described by an American as ‘the most valuable cargo ever to reach our shores’, while to a Briton ‘the decision to (disclose) all the UK’s secrets, showed great wisdom and boldness’. On their safe arrival in Canada, the two scientists who conveyed the hardware across the Atlantic, John Cockcroft and Taffy Bowen, were shown a pistol by the ship’s captain who told them that he had been instructed, had mishap befallen the ship, to ensure by any means at his disposal that they were not to be taken alive by the enemy.