Most Secret War

by R. V. Jones

  The general interpretation, however, was that these were long-range flying bombs being flown by the Russians over Sweden as an act of intimidation. This interpretation was accepted by officers in our own Air Technical Intelligence, who worked out the performance of the bombs from the reported sightings in one of the incidents, where the object appeared to have dashed about at random over the whole of southern Sweden at speeds up to 2000 m.p.h. What the officers concerned failed to notice was that every observer, wherever he was, reported the object as well to the east. By far the most likely explanation was that it was a meteor, perhaps as far east as Finland, and the fantastic speeds that were reported were merely due to the fact that all observers had seen it more or less simultaneously, but that they had varying errors in their watches, so that any attempt to draw a track by linking up observations in a time sequence was unsound.

  By this time I had been promoted to being Director of Intelligence, and the Technical Intelligence officers were now, at least nominally, part of my staff. They believed in the reality of the Russian flying bombs, as did Field Marshal Smuts, who became sufficiently convinced to warn the British public in a broadcast talk. For myself, I simply asked two questions. First, what conceivable purpose could it serve the Russians, if they indeed had a controllable flying bomb, to fly it in great numbers over Sweden, without doing any more harm than to alert the West to the fact that they had such an impressive weapon? My second question followed from the first: how had the Russians succeeded in making a flying bomb of such fantastic reliability? The Germans had achieved no better than 90 per cent reliability in their flying bomb trials of 1944, at very much shorter range. Even if the Russians had achieved a reliability as high as 99 per cent over their much longer ranges, this still meant that I per cent of all sorties should have resulted in a bomb crashing on Swedish territory. Since there had been allegedly hundreds of sorties, there ought to be at least several crashed bombs already in Sweden, and yet nobody had ever picked up a fragment. I therefore said that I would not accept the theory that the apparitions were flying bombs from Russia until someone brought a piece into my office.

  My challenge had a diverting result. The other Director of Intelligence, Air Commodore Vintras, telephoned me to say that the Swedes now had several pieces of a bomb. When I asked whether it had actually crashed, the answer was that it had not, but that various pieces had fallen off it, and these were being given to one of his officers to bring across to show me. They duly arrived in my office, and turned out to be an odd assortment of four or five irregularly shaped solid lumps, none of which looked as if it had ever been associated with a mechanical device. To satisfy the curiosity of the believers, I sent the pieces to the Chemical Analysis Section at Farnborough for their verdict. Among the specimens was a lump two to three inches across that was hard, shiny, grey, and porous. Charles Frank and I immediately realized what it was but we sent it with the rest to Farnborough for analysis.

  Instead of the Farnborough report coming straight back to me, it happened to go to Vintras who telephoned me excitedly as soon as he had read it and said, ‘There, what did I tell you! Farnborough has analysed the stuff that you sent, and one of the lumps consists of more than 98 per cent of an unknown element!’ I was amazed. But he turned out to be right, in that the Farnborough report gave the analysis of this particular lump as consisting of fractional percentages of several elements like iron, nickel and copper, but all these traces added up to less than 2 per cent. The chemists had been unable to identify the remaining 98 per cent. Excitement on the Air Staff was mounting—not only had the Russians a flying bomb of fantastic performance, but they were driving it with a fuel made from an element that was new to the world of chemistry.

  I telephoned the head of chemistry at Farnborough, and asked him whether he really believed his own analysis, or whether he was playing a joke on the Air Staff, on the principle that silly questions deserve silly answers. He replied that his report had been perfectly serious, and that his Section was indeed baffled by the other 98 per cent. I then asked him whether he had taken a good look at the lump, and whether it had not struck him as being remarkably like an ordinary piece of coke. There was a gasp from the other end of the telephone as the penny dropped. No one had stopped to look at the material, in an effort to get the analysis made quickly, and they had failed to test for carbon. The other lumps had similarly innocent explanations.

  Our flying bomb enthusiasts were somewhat dampened by this experience, but it was not long before they were excited again. The new excitement was brought to my notice by a signal to the Air Staff from the Senior British Air Officer on General MacArthur’s Staff in Tokyo. The signal asked for the latest Intelligence concerning Russian flying bombs, and for confirmation of a story that a Russian flying bomb had fallen in England within the last few days. Vintras telephoned me to ask how we should frame the reply to Tokyo. I told him that we should simply say that there was nothing in the story that a bomb had fallen in England, and that we much doubted whether there was anything to the story of Russian flying bombs over Sweden. He replied that this was all very well, but did I not think that it might tie up with the ‘Westerham Incident’. I asked him what the devil he was talking about. He then replied, ‘Oh, I forgot that I was told not to tell you about that!’ and added that since he had let the cat out of the bag he had better tell me the whole story.

  It appeared that on the previous Saturday the Technical Intelligence Staff had been telephoned by an irate caller who said that his name was Gunyon and that he wanted the Air Ministry to come immediately to remove one of these ‘darned contraptions’ which had fallen from the sky on to his farm. The Intelligence Officers had asked where they should go, and he gave them instructions to drive out from Croydon towards Westerham, and that when they reached a public house called the ‘White Dog’ they should turn up the lane, and they would find his farm at the end. Knowing my disbelief, the Technical Intelligence Officers had jumped at the opportunity of surprising me. So, in great haste and equally great security, they drove in two staff cars to the area indicated by farmer Gunyon. Their doubts began to arise when they could find no public-house called the ‘White Dog’. However, being good Intelligence Officers, they realized that they might have misunderstood Gunyon’s message, and so they made enquiries about other public-houses to see whether there was one which had a name which they might have mis-heard over the telephone. Indeed there was one—the ‘White Hart’, and to this they duly went. They asked the publican whether he knew of anyone named Gunyon in the neighbourhood, but he did not. Then, repeating their technique, they asked him whether he knew of anyone who might have sounded like Gunyon. He did: there was a farmer named Bunyan two or three miles away over the hill, and so they set off again. They descended on an astonished Mr. Bunyan who finally convinced them that he had never telephoned the Air Ministry.

  As they drove sadly back to London, having wasted their Saturday afternoon leisure, they began to theorize about the incident. They concluded that farmer Gunyon was none other than their own Director, myself. They knew that I had played various practical jokes before the war, and had sometimes hoaxed the Germans, and they concluded that I had determined to make fools of them because they believed in flying bombs, while I did not. It is always flattering when you are credited with an excellent joke that you have not yourself played; but this particular joke would have broken one of my own rules, which was that one ought never to take advantage of one’s juniors in this way—or at least, only under the most extreme provocation.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Exeunt

  FOLLOWING THE acceptance of Blackett’s recommendations for the future of Scientific Intelligence, I was uncertain about what I should now do. I warned Inglis, who was still Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Intelligence), that it would probably result in my leaving, but he asked me to stay for a year to see the organization through its transition. He offered me a full Directorship, with responsibility for both Scientific and Techn
ical Intelligence—although this offer at once reintroduced an asymmetry between the three Services, since the other two would not have corresponding Directorates.

  Then, on I2th November 1945, Edward Wright wrote to me from Aberdeen, to which he had returned as Professor of Mathematics in the preceding April. An incidental sentence in his letter ran:

  I gather from Norman that things are being very troublesome for you. If they are too bad, why not apply for our vacant Chair of Natural Philosophy?

  The suggestion astonished me. I had had my own idea of professorial standards before the war, and had never thought of myself as measuring up to them. True, my ideas had sometimes been jolted during the war by the incompetence of various professorial experts, but I had thought that my academic boats had been thoroughly burnt when I forsook pure research for infra-red detection of aircraft in 1935, for little of my work in the subsequent years could be published. In a way, though, the very trouble that I had had from professors was a challenge to meet them on their home ground. I therefore wrote to Wright to ask him whether his question had been a serious one. When he replied positively, I thought about the prospect and decided to apply. Two testimonials were necessary, and three referees. Portal and Cherwell wrote warm testimonials, and I asked Tizard, Appleton, and Medhurst to act as referees. On hearing of my application, Archie Sinclair characteristically offered to be a referee.

  Edward Wright remarked that there was one referee who might well be decisive. This was Sir George Thomson who, as G. P. Thomson, had held the same Chair from 1922 to 1930 and who won the Nobel Prize for his work at Aberdeen in demonstrating the wavelike properties of the electron. The fact that such work could be done at Aberdeen, coupled with the fact that I already had a friend there in Wright, were two of the attractions about this particular Chair. However, I viewed the suggestion of Thomson with some misgiving, because he and I had been in conflict from the time to time when he was Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry, and our terms of reference therefore tended to overlap whenever it came to a consideration of what the Germans were doing in the application of science to air warfare. I therefore wrote him a very tentative letter, saying that I should be grateful if he would agree to act as referee, but in view of the differences we had during the war he might well prefer either not to support me or to support another candidate. To my surprise, I received an enthusiastic telephone call, saying that he had at once written to ‘Butchart’—a name which meant nothing to me, but in fact belonged to Colonel H. J. Butchart, the Secretary to the University, and one of G.P.’s best friends. I was deeply grateful for G.P.’s support—he evidently recognized, as I did, that in our wartime differences there had been substance to each of our points of view and that we were both trying to do our jobs according to our terms of reference.

  Overlapping terms of reference are to some extent inevitable, especially in a changing organization; but they are to be avoided wherever possible. It is not merely that they can lead to personal friction, especially if one of the parties is ambitious: nor is it only that unnecessary duplication can occur and effort be wasted. The worst danger is that in a time of crisis each party may think that he can leave the problem to the other, with the result that neither tackles it—just as in doubles tennis a ball between the partners may be missed because each leaves it to the other.

  I was asked to Aberdeen for an interview on 30th April 1946. I arrived the previous day, which I spent alone. I wondered if I would ever like Aberdeen. The houses were grey, the streets were grey, the sky was grey and, when I walked to the beach, the sea was grey, too. Halfway along the beach between the Rivers Dee and Don there was a notice which stated that bathing to the south of that point was permitted only from Corporation bathing huts, which could be hired for a suitable fee. Ominously the notice concluded, ‘Bathing to the north of this point is dangerous’.

  As a professorial candidate I had some worthy opposition, including two applicants who were already professors in other universities; but after the interviews, I was offered the Chair. The Principal, Sir William Hamilton Fyfe, then said to me—I thought a little ruefully—’A friend of yours was here last week’. When I asked who it was he replied, ‘Winston Churchill!’ On returning south, I visited Oxford for the weekend, and told T. C. Keeley that I had accepted the Chair, and that Churchill had been there a few days before. Keeley told me that Cherwell had asked him to put in a word for me, and had enquired on his return (Churchill had himself been receiving an Honorary Degree at Aberdeen) whether he had remembered to mention me. Churchill’s reply was, ‘I spoke of nothing else!’

  When I visited Aberdeen with Vera some weeks later, the Fyfes invited us to lunch, and the story of Winston’s visit came up. When I told Hamilton Fyfe what Winston had said he replied that it was absolutely true; and many years later, in 1971, Lady Hamilton Fyfe wrote to me giving her personal account:

  I have lately been re-reading the very long letter I wrote to our family overseas the day after Mr. Churchill was in Aberdeen to receive his Laureation from Tom Taylor, the Promoter in Law, and my husband, the Vice-Chancellor (27th April 1946).

  As we walked home, W.H.F. said to me that every time he encountered Mr. Churchill during the day, Churchill began again that the University MUST appoint R. V. Jones to the advertised Chair of Physics—the man who ‘Broke the Bloody Beam’. And I see in my letter that at the final hurried tea party in the Lord Provost’s parlour ‘Mr. Churchill again pressed his candidate, and you will all be glad to hear the University Court today appointed him’.

  Churchill always remembered his visit to Aberdeen. He afterwards told me that Tom Taylor’s speech was the finest in his honour that he had ever heard, ‘You know, he said the things about me that ought only to have been said after I am dead!’

  Another sidelight I heard many years later came from Chief Superintendent Halcrow of the Aberdeen City Police who, as a sergeant, was in charge of security at the railway station as the train awaited Winston after a celebratory dinner. Nobody was supposed to be on the platform but Halcrow noticed a figure lurking in the shadows, whom he recognized as Patsy Gallagher, a newsvendor who was something of an Aberdonian Figaro. Patsy delighted in giving an imitation of Winston, who was his hero, and shortly before closing time in one or other of the Aberdeen bars Patsy’s grinning head would appear around the door, giving Winston’s ‘V’ for Victory sign. Halcrow decided that Patsy meant no ill, and left him in the shadows on the platform until Winston himself came padding down the platform alone. Just as he was getting into the coach he spotted the figure standing some ten yeards away in silent worship, and advanced from the coach towards him. At the same time, Patsy moved forward and the two men met halfway, shook hands silently, and Winston returned to the coach.

  On returning from the interview at Aberdeen, my immediate step, of course, was to inform the Air Staff of my resignation. I wrote a formal minute to the Chief of the Air Staff, Lord Tedder, who had succeeded Portal:

  … The implementation of the J.I.C. proposals is now taking place, and is one of the main reasons for my resignation.… A single Head in Intelligence is far better than a Committee, however excellent the individual members of the Committee may be. A Committee wastes too much time in arguing, and every action it undertakes merely goes as far as common agreement and compromise will allow. Common agreement and compromise, as every Commander knows, generally do not go far enough. The Head of an Intelligence organization is really in the position of a commander planning a perpetual attack on the security of foreign powers, and he must be allowed all the privileges of a commander.… The J.S.I.C. regime is the main reason for my resignation; but there are others. The first is to some extent another consequence of the J.I.C. control of Intelligence, and concerns the arrangement made for Atomic Energy Intelligence. Here the J.I.C. acquiesced in an irregular arrangement made with the Americans by Sir John Anderson, whereby another authority, ‘The Anglo-American Combined T.A. Intelligence Organization’ has been set up in parallel with th
e J.S.I.C. Moreover, to this organization in the shape of its British Head has been accorded the privilege of simultaneous membership of the S.I.S., the very privilege that is being removed from my own section.… In resigning, I criticise the arrangements made in this country for Intelligence.… The reason probably lies in the facts that Intelligence is rather despised in the Services, that the individual members of the J. I. C. change rapidly and are therefore on the average inexperienced in the basic principles of Intelligence, and that they feel bound to put the interests of their particular Services, on which their promotion depends, before the interests of Intelligence as a Cause.… I regret leaving Intelligence more than anything else I have ever done, because I believe it to be most important for this country that it should have a strong Intelligence service, and I was prepared to spend my life in building it up, had I been allowed to do so in my own way. I have already enunciated many of the principles and I am reasonably confident that whatever arrangements the J.I.C. or any other body may make, the crises of a future war will show that something on the lines of my own ideas will have to be set up again; I hope that the demonstration will not come too late.