The English Speaking Union | Queensland Branch



THE 2019 CHURCHILL ADDRESS TOTHE ENGLISH SPEAKING UNION QUEENSLAND7 July 2019 By John Thompson-Gray BSc BEd MEngTITLE: CHURCHILL THE SCIENTIST? John Thompson-Gray 14 November 2018 (Abridged Version)Opening Remarks and DedicationGreeting to dignitaries, visitors and fellow members of the Union.Journalist Sir Evelyn Wrench founded the English Speaking Union in 1918 and I welcome you toan ESUcentenary salute to Sir Winston Churchill. This address is dedicated to Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex, Chevalier des PalmesAcadémiques O.A.M. and the ESU Boardin appreciation of their leadership of the English Speaking Union Queensland, and to the memory of ESU champion Ann GarmsO.A.M.Past speakers include the British High Commissioner, Justice John Logan of the Federal Court, Emeritus Professor Roland Sussex from the University of Queensland,and Stephen Sheaffe, President of theQueensland Historical Society. They gave us insights into Churchill the soldier,author, orator,statesman, First Lord of the Admiralty andPrime Minister. India’s Ambassador to Australia presented Churchill in the context of colonial exploitation. He also said that half India’s population of 1.2 billion spoke English in about 16 dialects, making it the largest English speaking country.This year I will be sharing insights into Churchill the scientist, throughnotable scientists of his time.Enigma Code(1939 - 43)In the case of military science, a new technology is often a gadget like a Dam Buster Bomb ora mobile RADAR station. And Churchill liked gadgets. To bring this into perspective I will refer to factual parts fromfilms you may have seen, starting with The Imitation Gamein whichactor Benedict Cumberbatchplays Alan Turingwho broke the Enigma code. The gadgets in this case were Enigma machines used for sending secret messages to and from the German armed forces.The Polish Cipher Bureau cracked Enigma and passed their know-how to Britain prior to the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939.This enabled the team of highly intelligent women, who were thecryptanalysts at Bletchley Park,to unpack Enigma’s secrets for the German Armyand Air Force but the Navy, the Kriegsmarine, used a more complex and secure machine. When a character was typed on the Navy machine, a sequence of three rotors selected a cipher key to strike the typing paper. Because the ciphered message, as typed on the paper, had to be sent by Morse code the signal could be intercepted, but was useless without the current codebook or other means to decipher it. Codebooks were printed in water-soluble ink enabling quick destruction at sea.Throughout World War 2 (1939 – 45)Enigma machinesissued attack orders, and intercept locations for allied convoys crossing the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. After the British destroyer HMS Bulldog captured an Enigma machine and codebooks from U-110 in May 1941, cryptanalysts at Bletchley cracked the naval messages as well. During Bulldog’s ramming run at U-110 the commander, seeing submariners abandon ship, pulled up alongside, retrieved Enigma, scuttled the submarine and delivered the German survivors to a high security prison in Iceland. The captain of U-110 was expecting his submarine to be rammed amidships, sinking immediately with Enigma on board.When the Nazis changedEnigma codes causinginformation blackouts, convoy losses increased until the new codes were broken. Churchill labelled the code breakers, “The hens who laid golden eggs and never cackled.” Well, it was 1940, even for Churchill.As the U-boat fleet grew to 1,000 submarines, the shortage of kills was frustrating the Kriegsmarine in Berlin. On 1 February 1942, with the United States in the war, an Enigma blackout started that Turing and the cryptanalysts could not break. A fourth rotor had been installed on all Enigma machines rendering current code breaking practices obsolete.NaziU-boats started sinkingallied merchant vessels faster than the arrival of replacement ships. As Britain approached starvation, Turing at Bletchley Park wrote to Churchill that the only way to decode German signals generated by this machine was to build a machine to match it. For Churchill the cost ofTuring failing was nothing compared with the strategic advantage if he succeeded, however unlikely that was. Churchill overruled the naval officer in charge at Bletchley Park and empowered Turing.Turing’s machinewas too slow. When the fields holding the current date and the salute to Hitler were identified and wired into today’s signal, decoding became quicker but still notuseful. All seemed lost until a squadron of Royal Navy destroyers dropped depth charges on U-559, causing serious leaks that forced her to surface while she could.The captain signalled that U-559 was about to sink and this was received at the Kriegsmarine in Berlin. After the crew abandoned ship,the explosives set to scuttle her failed to detonate and no one had dropped the codebooks into water to dissolve the text.The obsessive skipper of British destroyer HMS Petardwas still tracking U-559. Under cover of nightfall, his boarding party formed a chain to pass a four-rotor Enigma machine and codebooks up its conning tower to thePetard lifeboat.One codebook recovered by the Petard was the ‘short weather report codebook’. As soon as Turing wired these fields into his machine out came today’s U-boat locations and targets almost immediately. The head of the Secret Service advised Churchill of this achievement and Churchill responded, “Congratulate your splendid hens.”In the spring of 1943, the Nazis changed the codes again but Turing resolved the matter quickly using the short signal codebook retrieved by the Petard. Some say that Turing’s computerreduced the duration of WW2 by months, some say years, but never forget the Petard, and a salute to Churchill.Dam Busters(1943)About 40% of Nazi industrial output came from Ruhr Valley factories. The Ruhr Valley had two major dams, the M?hne and Eder, each with barriers to block torpedos aimed at the wall. Some of you may have seen the 1955 film The Dam Bustersstarring Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson andMichael Redgrave asaeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis. Wallis was designing a bomb that would bounce across the surface of thesedams,jump overthe torpedo barriers and land at the crease between water and wall. The bomb was a back-spinner rolling down the surface of the wall until, at a depth of 30 feeta hydrostatic gun detonated a high explosive. The blast was magnified by the full weight of dam water behind it, cracking the wall open. Wallisstartedthis work at the naval research laboratories where he modelled and filmed the physics of golf balls skidding across the surface of water in a long test tank.The Ministry of Aircraft Production could not afford lost productionto manufacture Wallis’ new bomb but sent his report to 10 Downing Street. As soon as Churchill sawfootage of golf balls skidding across a swimming pool and little mines breaking little concrete walls, he easily visualised the full-scale weapon and its strategic importance.Flooded factories saved bombing raids.Churchillimmediately ordered the mission for the next full moon on 16 May 1943.The M?hne and Eder were breached and the Ruhr Valley flooded.When Richard Todd was interviewed on American television Americans thought the bouncing bomb was science fiction.Churchill didn’t. ***These examples demonstrate Churchill’s scientific comprehension and his judgement of scientific skill in others. It also leaves one baffled by his sometimeslack of judgement in the case of Frederick Lindemann, which brings us to the Battle of Britain. Battle of Britain (1940)Some of you may have seen the filmThe Battle of Britainwith a star-studded cast including Laurence Olivier. C.P. Snow reports that a foreign diplomat visiting 10 Downing Street in 1942 saw Churchill playing witha mobile RADAR station.We can thank Churchill for the financing of RADAR but it was no thanks to Churchill that RADAR was ready for the Battle of Britain back in 1940. This story unfolds between 1931 and 1940before Churchill came to powerand I will start with the story behind the film.In 1935, the Air Ministry set up a Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence under Sir Henry Tizard and it was not long before everyone called it ‘The Tizard Committee’.Tizard had a very broad scientific comprehension making him an ideal scientific administrator, born for this job. HeappointedphysicistPatrick Blackett and physiologistAlbert Hill, each with a handy military background,as well as a Nobel Prize, toreviewscientific inventionsthat might help Britain’s air defence.Inventor RobertWatson-Wattdemonstrated a primitive gadgetpropagating, receiving and recording radio waves. Heexplained how a radio direction-finding network (RDF) would be far superior to sound detectionthen in use. It could be developed for application in real war within four years. Later, the Americanscalledthis gadget RADAR. By the end of 1935 the Tizard Committee realised that the answer to hostile aircraft over Britain was RADAR, and nothing else.Churchill, as a member of the Swinton Committee, read the whole report, understood its scientific and operational basis, and Tizard hadprompt approval. The fact that the technology was as yet unproven didn’t stop this committee from training RAF officers in RADAR and briefing construction crews on the urgent nature of their work to install RADAR stations. When the time came, its manufacture, installation and commissioningacross England took less than three months, just in time for theBattle of Britain. The story behind this story begins when Frederick Lindemann and Winston Churchill started a lifelong loyal friendship. Lindemann, a personality heavyweight, Professor of Physics at Oxford, despised academics, socialised with the gentry and received invitations from the peerage. Lord Rutherford’s young scientists at Cambridge nicknamed LindemannThe Prof andrated him a scientific amateur.This did not deter Churchill whoappointedLindemannas his permanent scientific advisor.(Lindemann’s brother, Brigadier Charles Lindemann bequeathed the Lindemann Trust Fellowship, which, today, is administered by the English Speaking Union.)On one occasion at dinner, Frederick Lindemann, who did not drink alcohol, remarked on Churchill’s consumption of champagne. To entertain his guests, Churchill asked Lindemann to consider the volume of champagne he had consumed in his lifetime and estimate how much of the room it would fill. Lindemann said, ‘up to the ankles.’ Churchill expected ‘up to the waist’ and promptly led Lindemann into a much smaller room, to check his calculation.Theway Churchill scaled up from ankle-high to waist-high belongs to the same family of mathematics as the wayWallis scaled up from golf balls to bombs.When Churchill was appointed first Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 he insisted thatLindemannjoin the Tizard Committee. Churchill was on a vocal campaign against Nazis and was hounding the progress of all government agencies whose work might oppose Nazis. Lindemann opposed all decisions made by Tizard, blasted the Tizard committee for allocating resources to unproven RADAR, wasting time training personnel prematurely, and insisted on top priority for his own ideas. Lindemann’s disruptions were creating serious delays and the committee had to fold. It reconstituted replacingLindemann with E.V. Appleton, the recognized English expert on the propagation of radio waves, signalling a clear victory for RADAR and Tizard. Churchill’s loyalty to Lindemann was absolute, even when Lindemann was a political embarrassment. As things stood, Churchill was not in power and had no way of replacing Tizard with Lindemann. Had it been otherwise, Britain wouldhave entered theBattle of Britain without RADAR and RADAR was a decisive factor in the British victory.Although Britain won the air battle, invasion was likely, and the USA was not about to repeal its Neutrality Act. Churchill, whose mother was American, agreed with Tizard that Britain had to pass its war secrets to the USA ahead of any Nazi occupation. In October 1940, Churchill appointed Sir Henry Tizard to lead a delegation to America, Tizard’s work at homepassing to others including Lindemann. Tizard’s temperament andgesture of bold trust left the Americans asking Whitehall if Sir Henry Tizard couldstay in the USAon a scientific exchange. One can only imagine the impact this had on Lindemann. Churchill did not approve the exchange.On returning to Britain Tizard walked into Lindemann’s proposal for an eighteen month bombing offensive on working class homes. Churchill asked Tizard tocalculate the expected reduction in Nazi industrial output. Lindemann’s own calculation was eight times greater thenTizard’s and six times greater than Blackett’s. Despite expert advice in operational research, Churchill approved the ruthless bombing offensive because it was Lindemann’s idea and Lindemann (now Lord Cherwell) had calculated the result. Sir Henry Tizard,described by C.P. Snow as‘the best scientific mind that in England has ever applied itself to war’, became president of Magdalen College, Oxford, whileChurchillfinanced Lindemann’s bombing campaign,only to prove that Tizard’s calculation was correct. Frank Whittle’s Turbojet Engine (1928)The turbojet engine was invented independently in Britain (1928)and Germany (1935). The Luftwaffe had the first turbojet aeroplanein August 1939. It was kept secret but, a year later, Italy flew its first jet-propelled aircraft publically. This prompted Churchill to call for the Tizard Committee minutes on Whittle’s turbojet engine. Britain had huge wartime investment in propeller technology. The committee considered a jet engine redundant because a propeller was just as efficient as a jet engine at low altitudes. Establishing the mass-production of turbojet aircraft would have to divert resources essential to home defence.The war most likely would be over before the era of jet aircraft opened.Churchill could not rule out the coming of high speed, high altitude military aircraft before the war ended and ordered the development of a British jet fighter, the Gloster, first test flight May 1941.Nuclear Science (1931 – 52)As a journalist, Churchill published his article “Fifty Years Hence” in the Strand Magazine, December 1931. On the subject of nuclear energy, he wrote the following paragraph, There is no question among scientists that this gigantic source of energy exists. What is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight …scientists are looking for this. The article was based on Churchill’s visit to the Cavendish Institute at Cambridgewhere he learnt about Rutherford’s atomic theory of matter.As it turned out, Churchill’s article in 1931could have been called “Ten Years Hence”. To begin with, the following year, 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron, the key to nuclear fission; and South Australian physicist Mark Oliphant, also at Cavendish in 1932, accidently discovered the basicreaction of a hydrogen bomb. Hetold no one. Churchill was not in power in 1938 whenAlbert Einsteinescaped to the West and warned thata German atomic bomb was work in progress.British scientists took the matter toTizardwho formed a committee to investigate Military Applications of Uranium Detonation, called the MAUD Committee.Here are three of MAUD’s findings:First, this isotope is less than 1% of naturally occurring uranium. Separation could be achieved but the process is slow. Second, Sir Wallace Ackers, from Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd (ICI), reported a means for controlled detonation of an atomic bomb, designed around a metal alloy tube that could withstand the hostility of radioactive material.Third,MAUDwas looking for a politically stable test site. In February 1941, Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia, visited Churchill at 10 Downing Street to sit in Churchill’s war cabinet. Menzieswas briefed on the real risk that Nazi Germany would invade the UK.If occupied and the US remaining neutral, the UK could liberate itself if, somewhere in the British Commonwealth, it had a British Atomic Bomb. Menzies, subject to Australian Government approval, agreed to test-sites. The Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia and Emu Field in South Australia were mooted.With the MAUD Report in July 1941 and intelligence on the progress of a German atomic bomb, Churchill created a Whitehall directorate under the cover name ‘Tube Alloys’to develop an atomic bomb.Churchillforeshadowed this ‘bonfire’ in 1931and, ten years later,MAUD found Churchill’s‘match to set it alight’.By September 1941, South Australia’s defence centre at Salisbury was capable of manufacturing detonators for an atomic bomb. Ackers installed an ordinary looking British tube mill in the Adelaide suburb of Kilburn that hid a capacity to manufacture the tube alloy components for the Bomb.Uranium, discovered at Radium Hill in 1906,was plentiful.South Australia was far from battlegrounds, with a technically competent workforce.***A year later,Churchill agreed to develop the bomb jointly with the USA. By December 1943 hisnuclear scientists were working alongside American colleagues. Chadwick went to Los Alamos headquarters asproject director. Klaus Fuchs went with him.Oliphant went toBerkley. The test-site was now the Alamogordo Bombing Range,New Mexico, not the Montebello Archipelago, Western Australia. The UK elections of July 1945 swept Churchill out of power. The following month, the USA dropped itsUranium Bomb on Hiroshima. Japan did not give in and the next bomb, on Nagasaki, was the higher performance Plutonium Bomb proved in the Trinity test. Japan surrendered.Then, in 1946Mark Oliphantdisclosed his secret of the hydrogen bomb to the Americans,and British scientist Klaus Fuchs passed secrets of the Trinity bomb to the Soviets. Washington was ‘Fuchsed’ and seething, Westminster was‘Fuchsed’with embarrassment, and part of Australia’s Never-Never was about to be ‘Fuchsed’ forever. The British Atomic Bomb (1946 – 52)The USA deported allBritish nuclear scientists. They re-grouped at Harwell under Sir William Penney. The Prime Minister, Clement Attlee said, “No weapon is a weapon until it has been tested,” and Churchill’s understandings with Australia in 1941, were renewed.In October 1951 Sir Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party returned to power and Penney invited Churchill, a former first Lord of the Admiralty, to preside over the first detonation of a British atomic bomb. At 8am (Western Australia time) on 3 October 1952, Winston Churchill ‘triggered’ a test at the Montebello Islands with twice the yield at Hiroshima.Four weeks laterthe USA tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb, the 10Mt Ivy Mikewith 700 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Churchillimmediately scrapped ‘Tube Alloys’ and commissioned the UK Atomic Energy Authority to build a British hydrogen bomb. Churchill later explained, We must maintain and strengthenour position as a world power,so that Her Majesty’s government can exercise a powerful influence, in the counsels of the world.Meanwhile, the UK and Soviet Union weredeveloping nuclear power stations. Nuclear Power Plants (1952 -)By 1952, the UK and Soviet Union were locked in a race for the power plant reactor with largest output of electrical energy. The weapons-grade of the plutonium by-product was ignored until the UK’s Calder Hall Reactorsproduced it in substantial quantity. The next step was to test this plutonium as an atomic bomb. In October 1953 the Totem series tested two bombs at Emu Field, the first tests on the Australian mainland. Each of these tests was just over half the yield at Hiroshima. Three days later, Churchill’s Government applied to the Australian Government for a permanent testing site. A government survey team selected a test-site 150 kilometres north of Maralinga in the Great Victoria Desert.Churchill’s Megaton Bomb (1952 – 58)An atomic bomb (nickname Tom) was the detonator for a hydrogen bomb (nickname Dick). Together they became a thermo-nuclear bomb (H-bomb, nickname Harry). Churchill secured proving grounds in the Pacific for Harriesand the Maralingatest-site for Toms.He negotiated a postponement of the international moratorium on atmospheric testing until July 1958 and made this Penney’s deadline to produce a megaton bomb. On 26 May 1955 Churchill handed over leadership of the conservative government to Sir Anthony Eden.Churchill had ‘sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat’ and the call was, ‘Membership of the Megaton Club’.During the spring of 1956 the Buffalo test series at Maralinga was all about a ‘Tom’ to detonate a megaton ‘Harry’. Even the test called ‘Kite’, where a V-bomber dropped a small atomic bomb at Maralinga, was really testing the bomb casing fora Harry to be dropped at Kintimati, 5,000 km from Australia in the Pacific. Between May and June 1957 Britain conducted threetests in the Pacific, best result ? of a megaton. Penney had failed to achieve a megaton, Tom was blamed, but there was still time.During the spring of 1957 the Antler test series at Maralinga found the Tom that detonated the 3 megaton Grapple Y bomb inApril 1958, confirming the UK as the third member of the Megaton Club after the USA and Soviet Union. At last, ‘Her Majesty’s government could exercise a powerful influence in the counsels of the world,’paid for by Her Majesty’smany subjectswho lost their life orhealth; and by radioactive contamination in the Great Victoria Desert and Pacific Islands. By comparison,Churchill sacrificed a brigade of 3,000 British soldiers at Calais to buy time for the evacuation at Dunkirk. The latter decision helped savethe British Expeditionary Force; the former enabledBritain to independently counter anynuclear threat from the Soviets. Conclusion Just as Churchill took the hard political and military decisions, his scientific intuition, foresight and courage overruled expert opinion to deliver outcomes like the decoding of Enigma, the busting of dams, real war RADAR and a turbojet fighter. His bonfire model of nuclear energy pioneered a British nuclear deterrent and nuclear power generation. On behalf of Sir Winston, I thank you for coming to this centenary salute at the English Speaking Union and to hear one English speaker’s view, of the scientific side of him. End of text.? John Thompson-Gray, 14 November 2018 (Abridged Version)The unabridged version assumes some reader knowledge in cybernetics, dimensional analysis and the theory of models, operational research, fundamental concepts of nuclear physics, fission and fusion reactions, brief history of nuclear weapons including delivery systems, and general knowledge of British and European political and military history from WW1 to the Cold War up to 1958. Ph: 0417 367 610Sources: (1) enge, harald, introduction to nuclear physics, MIT, Addison-Wesley, 1966.(2) Ference Jr. M, Lemon H. & Stephenson R.,Analytical Experimental Physics, University of Chicago Press, 1959.(3) Snow C.P. Science and Government, O.U.P. 1961.(4) Sebag-Montefioe, Hugh, The Battle for the Code, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019(5) Talks with Dr Albert Thomason, formerSurgeon Lieutenant Thomason A.T. RN, Nuclear Submarine Base,Faslane-on-Clyde. (6) Thompson-Gray, J. How Great Thine Aunt, unabridged manuscript, 2018.(7) Yami: The Autobiography of Yami Lester, IAD Press, 1993.Accompanying PowerPoint:Slide 1 TitleSlide 2 Joan ClarkeSlide 3 Alan TuringSlide 4 Barnes Wallis and Guy GibsonSlide 5 Henry Tizard and Robert Watson-WattSlide 6 Frederick Lindemann and Winston ChurchillSlide 7 Sir Henry Tizard Slide 8 Strand Magazine December 1931 and ChurchillSlide 9 James Chadwick and Marcus OliphantSlide 10 LiseMeitnerSlide 11 Mooted Test sites – sketch onlySlide 12 1942 Plans – sketch onlySlide 13 MANHATTAN PROJECT Hiroshima and FuchsSlide 14 Sir William Penny and HurricaneSlide 15 Maralinga Test Site – sketch onlySlide 16 Pacific Test Site Kintimati – sketch onlySlide 17 KiteSlide 18Taranaki look-alikeSlide 19 THE ENDSlide 20 SourcesSlide 21 Winston Churchill 1941 ................
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