… although it must seem to your people that we get the fun at the end, I
would like to assure you that we always link your people with ours in
referring to this common effort…
Such praise it was hoped would galvanize the newcomers and the ‘slackers’ at
Wembley to become more dedicated to their work. And dedication to the
national cause was certainly needed because on Christmas Day 1941, iconic
Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese.
1942 began with more depressing news from the Far East. By March,
Manila, Burma, Singapore and Java had all fallen, but to make matters worse,
at home soap was now added to the rationed list! Neither was the war going
too well in the European theatre with heavy and unexpected losses for RAF
bombers which some attributed to German radar stations along the French
coast. The exact nature and purpose of the equipment at these stations
however was a mystery but pressure eventually led to an airborne raid on one
at Bruneval in northern France in late February 1942 bringing back elements
of the equipment for examination at GEC. Paterson’s Diary of 17 March
describes little of technical interest in one of the German receiving valves
recovered from Bruneval, but subsequent work identified the equipment as
‘Würzburg radar’, the principal gun-laying radar used by both the Luftwaffe
and the German army. Deconstruction work eventually established that the
radar was robustly impervious to ‘jamming’ by conventional methods which
in turn led to the deployment of the new British ‘chaffing’ countermeasure
system, ‘Window’, which ‘blinded’ enemy radar. However, at the time
Paterson once again seemed concerned with ‘slacking’ at the laboratories, the
entry of March 17th also declaring;
We are organizing a campaign against slacking in the Labs – wasting time
and the like. There are a lot of new people who have no tradition and who
don’t do a full day’s work. We must get this mended …
Exactly who ‘we’ were is not clear, but by 23 March every member of the
Laboratory received the memo, ‘WASTING TIME’, a move Paterson later
justified in an entry of 02 April because ‘a number of … younger people (and
some older) have not learnt the way to work hard.’
45 (Plate 17.8).
Whatever the outcome of ‘WASTING TIME’, late March saw the start of
the Laboratories’ engagement with H2S, a difficult problem that Paterson was
keen for his staff to ‘get their teeth into’. Late April saw Robert present yet
more accounts to Paterson who, in recognition of a life in science, was elected
F.R.S in early May. At the same time, night fighter interception techniques
426
D. Sheppard
would like to assure you that we always link your people with ours in
referring to this common effort…
Such praise it was hoped would galvanize the newcomers and the ‘slackers’ at
Wembley to become more dedicated to their work. And dedication to the
national cause was certainly needed because on Christmas Day 1941, iconic
Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese.
1942 began with more depressing news from the Far East. By March,
Manila, Burma, Singapore and Java had all fallen, but to make matters worse,
at home soap was now added to the rationed list! Neither was the war going
too well in the European theatre with heavy and unexpected losses for RAF
bombers which some attributed to German radar stations along the French
coast. The exact nature and purpose of the equipment at these stations
however was a mystery but pressure eventually led to an airborne raid on one
at Bruneval in northern France in late February 1942 bringing back elements
of the equipment for examination at GEC. Paterson’s Diary of 17 March
describes little of technical interest in one of the German receiving valves
recovered from Bruneval, but subsequent work identified the equipment as
‘Würzburg radar’, the principal gun-laying radar used by both the Luftwaffe
and the German army. Deconstruction work eventually established that the
radar was robustly impervious to ‘jamming’ by conventional methods which
in turn led to the deployment of the new British ‘chaffing’ countermeasure
system, ‘Window’, which ‘blinded’ enemy radar. However, at the time
Paterson once again seemed concerned with ‘slacking’ at the laboratories, the
entry of March 17th also declaring;
We are organizing a campaign against slacking in the Labs – wasting time
and the like. There are a lot of new people who have no tradition and who
don’t do a full day’s work. We must get this mended …
Exactly who ‘we’ were is not clear, but by 23 March every member of the
Laboratory received the memo, ‘WASTING TIME’, a move Paterson later
justified in an entry of 02 April because ‘a number of … younger people (and
some older) have not learnt the way to work hard.’
45 (Plate 17.8).
Whatever the outcome of ‘WASTING TIME’, late March saw the start of
the Laboratories’ engagement with H2S, a difficult problem that Paterson was
keen for his staff to ‘get their teeth into’. Late April saw Robert present yet
more accounts to Paterson who, in recognition of a life in science, was elected
F.R.S in early May. At the same time, night fighter interception techniques
426
D. Sheppard