by Andrew Brown
The Bruneval Raid was a small but spectacular success, made even more notable by the losses that the Allies were experiencing in more far-flung places. In the first few months of Mountbatten’s period in charge, the staff at COHQ grew from two dozen to over 350 and they seemed immune from the penny-pinching controls that restricted other Whitehall departments. After recruiting Bernal and Zuckerman, Mountbatten sent a memorandum introducing them to his military planning staff, saying that they should be involved in operational planning from the very beginning so that ‘when their scientific knowledge is required, they may be completely in the picture’.13 Both Scientific Liaison Officers reported to a retired naval captain, Tom Hussey, who was called CXD – Coordinator of Experiments and Development – Mountbatten had a passion for crisp, meaningless, initials. He also managed to field together the first, true, inter-services force, which shed traditional loyalties completely and developed its own style of combat. A junior Army officer seconded to Combined Operations found Mountbatten’s headquarters ‘bursting with young soldiers, sailors and airmen who had not only been elaborately trained in the technique of combined operations but had both planned them and carried them out in person… They all talked learnedly about tides and wind and moon and weather, of navigation by sea and air, of beach gradients and landing craft… To join this fish–flesh–fowl company was to find oneself almost literally at sea or up in the air; one felt oneself hopelessly earthbound, a clumsy and ignorant landlubber.’14
Zuckerman’s first task was to calculate the number of nights per month that the weather, the moon and tides would be suitable for small commando raids across the Channel: his conclusion was that there would never be such a night. Zuckerman was also asked to make an assessment of the aerial attack that would be necessary to silence the gun batteries on the Channel Island of Alderney so that it could be captured by commandos. He found that the military officers he spoke to could not articulate the objective in a meaningful way. Zuckerman produced a grid map of the island and superimposed actual bomb plots from German bombing of British towns, calculating that at least one in five of the bombs dropped would miss the island altogether. Churchill was impatient for some small territorial victory, but the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, on 6th May, rejected any attack on Alderney
Despite his written instructions, Mountbatten, to his disappointment, found the Combined Operations military staff were reluctant to take the scientists into their confidence and tried to use them as purely technical advisers. This state of affairs lasted until one young naval officer asked Bernal about the problem of making a portable echo-sounder to measure shallow depths accurately. Sage asked why he wanted to be able to sound depths in this way, and the officer refused to tell him, saying the matter was too secret, and more or less ordered Bernal to provide an answer. Bernal refused, saying that Mountbatten had given clear instructions that he was to be to given full details so that he could decide whether the correct question was being asked. The officer rather reluctantly divulged that it was his idea for measuring the gradients of beaches on which assaults might be mounted, work which was very much within Bernal’s sphere of interest at COHQ. Bernal said ‘You’ve asked the wrong question, you should have said “How do we measure the beach gradients and runnels, without the Germans knowing?”.’15 Sage’s solution was to take aerial photographs of the beach at different stages of the tide and to include wide stretches of territory on either side so that attention was not drawn by frequent flights just over the beach in question. The uniformed staff soon came to realize that Sage would not help unless he was brought fully into the picture, and when he was, the solutions he put forward were completely novel.
The beach in question was at Dieppe, and the first plans for a major amphibious landing at the port were made in April.16 Zuckerman recalled that he and Bernal shared an office for a short period at COHQ until Bernal became much busier than he, and was given his own room. Zuckerman also said that he and Bernal did not work on the same projects and often he ‘did not know where [Bernal] was or what he was doing’.17 This may explain Zuckerman’s statement that neither ‘Bernal nor I took part in the planning of the big raid on Dieppe’ for Bernal’s own cryptic notes for 1942 include ‘Plans for raids, including Dieppe raid’.18 Dieppe was not going to be another smash-and-grab raid like Bruneval, but an opposed landing of a division of troops at a heavily defended port. The original plans involved a preliminary aerial bombardment, flanking attacks to neutralize gun emplacements covering the beach, and a frontal assault by troops and tanks under supporting naval artillery fire. The beach at Dieppe is shingle, and there was no experience with landing tanks on such a surface. According to Goronwy Rees who had been seconded to Combined Operations, COHQ at this time ‘lived in an atmosphere of continuous improvisation, of meetings and conferences hurriedly called and as hurriedly cancelled, of brilliant and unorthodox ideas adopted with enthusiasm and abandoned when found to be impracticable’.19
Although the military staff at COHQ came to accept Bernal and Zuckerman quite quickly, working with Pyke remained an unequal contest. Pyke was not really interested in anybody else’s ideas because he was overflowing with his own. Mountbatten was fascinated by these ‘pykeries’, as he called them, and was always ready to listen to him. The COHQ officers, collectively referred to as the ‘numbskullery’ by Pyke, became so frustrated with the time that Pyke would spend in the CCO’s office that they disabled a magnetic lock that Mountbatten had installed so that he would not be disturbed when closeted with a visitor. Pyke’s leading idea in the spring of 1942 was that a small marauding force could be landed in Norway and travel around with unprecedented speed by using a novel type of snow tractor that would be propelled by Archimedean screws. The presence of this force would mean that the Germans would have to commit a far larger army to Norway to protect the power stations and communications links. Pyke was incapable of summarizing any of his ideas because new details would constantly intrude, and Bernal was charged with writing a one-page proposal that Mountbatten could take to Churchill. It was presented at Chequers, on 11th April, at a meeting that had been arranged to examine the ongoing question of a Second Front. Harry Hopkins was at Chequers representing Roosevelt and had General Marshall with him. Churchill, who had been hankering for action in northern Norway ever since the failed campaign of 1940 was favourably impressed and noted in his minutes, ‘Never in the history of human conflict will so few immobilize so many.’20 He suggested that Pyke, with one or two assistants, should fly to the United States and try to build the revolutionary snow vehicles. Churchill’s suggestion was enthusiastically supported by the officers at Combined Operations, and Pyke was in the USA by the end of the month.
Within a matter of two weeks, Pyke’s mission was in disarray. He felt as though the Americans were not taking his requests seriously; the Americans for their part found Pyke to be irksome. He also managed to fall out with the Army officer from CO nominally in charge of the visit, and found himself excluded from most discussions and site visits. He therefore submitted his resignation to London, which produced a cable from Mountbatten to the CO Liaison Officer in Washington urging him to smooth things out and as ‘I hope to visit you personally within a month please ask Pyke to carry on… until I arrive.’21 Another cable arrived for Pyke at the same time from Sage. It read: ‘Don’t be a bloody fool. Your resignation disastrous not only to scheme but to whole of scientific collaboration in war effort. Will be possible to clear up difficulties if you reconsider resignation and discuss matter with CCO. I can help on scientific side if you let me know what problems are. Writing.’22
Vice-Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten occupied a unique position in the British realm in 1942. He brought youthful vigour to Combined Operations. The promise of their irregular operations, involving derring-do and the use of lethal technical gadgets, was the only bright spot that Churchill could discern against the dark background of defensive struggles and military setbacks. Lord Mountbatten
’s royal charm had disarmed Roosevelt in Washington the previous year, and he was the British officer that Americans in London most wanted to meet. Indeed, although Mountbatten had only just had time to be fitted for his new ceremonial uniform, with its broad rings of gold braid at the cuffs, it seemed as though he was in line for even greater advancement. General Eisenhower visiting London that summer suggested to Sir Alan Brooke that Mountbatten might be put in command of the major cross-Channel invasion that the Americans expected to take place in 1943. Eisenhower had not previously met Mountbatten, and was basing his recommendation on what he had heard about the CCO in America. Brooke responded calmly, but he and his fellow chiefs of staff retained a deep scepticism about Mountbatten’s lack of strategic experience and the way he had been thrust into their company. Mountbatten would enhance his standing with all these powerful figures if Combined Operations could deliver some successful raids.
The proposed raid on Alderney was cancelled in early May, and Zuckerman had predicted that opportunities for cross-Channel raids would be extremely sparse. Better then to throw all Combined Operations resources into one spectacular major raid on Dieppe. The planning for operation Rutter, as it became known, was headed by a naval captain at Combined Operations, John Hughes-Hallett. It was decided that the bulk of the invasion force would comprise the 2nd Canadian Division, and that their inexperienced commanders would be advised by General Montgomery. It quickly became apparent that the logistics for such a large-scale assault were prodigiously difficult, and any chance of success would depend on surprise, precise timing and the flawless coordination of forces. In retrospect, there was an obvious contradiction in the planning: the element of surprise was incompatible with a heavy preliminary bombardment, yet without effective destruction of defensive machine-gun positions, a frontal assault would be doomed.
A full-scale training exercise was carried out in the West Bay area of the Dorset coast on 11th June. Mountbatten arrived back from a high-level diplomatic trip to Washington two days earlier. Churchill had sent him to douse the Americans’ enthusiasm for an early Second Front and to promote the alternative of guerilla activity in northern Norway, which meant that Mountbatten had to reinvigorate the Pyke mission during his short visit. Zuckerman and Bernal both attended the practice landing in Dorset, and what they saw was a shambles. Far from split-second timing, the landing craft had trouble with the currents and poor visibility, so that hundreds of soldiers were delivered to the wrong beaches at sporadic intervals. A second exercise, ten days later, was successful enough that Montgomery judged that the attack could go forward in early July with a good chance of success given ‘a) favourable weather, b) average luck, c) that the Navy put us ashore roughly in the right places, and at the right time.’23 But the weather was not favourable, and the Luftwaffe spotted the armada of landing craft near the Isle of Wight and bombed them. Operation Rutter was called off on 7th July 1942.
Montgomery, concerned by the security risks, recommended that Rutter should be cancelled ‘for all time’,24 yet within two weeks Hughes-Hallett and Mountbatten were colluding on an emergency operation ‘to be carried out during August to fill the gap caused by the cancellation of Rutter’.25 Knowledge of the replacement operation, known as Jubilee, was to be restricted to the Rutter Force Commanders, the Canadian General McNaughton and CO intelligence chief, the Marquis de Casa Maury. Mountbatten received no written authority from the Chiefs of Staff to remount a raid on Dieppe, and it seems that he neglected to tell Churchill about it. Despite the surreptitious and flawed planning, the Dieppe raid was launched in the pre-dawn hours of 19th August. Mountbatten, ever mindful of image and the power of publicity, had arranged for members of the press to sail with the troops. Zuckerman and Bernal asked to go as observers in one of the naval support ships, but Mountbatten refused them and was unmoved by Bernal’s comment that it was ‘surprising that room could be found for war correspondents, but not for his two scientific advisers’.26
There was no preliminary bombing of the port, a portion of the attacking armada was disrupted by a passing German convoy, and the initial attempts to capture the gun positions flanking the beach were unsuccessful. The consequence was that the Canadian troops put onto the beach were cut down by raking machine-gun fire, and the slow-moving Churchill tanks were easily destroyed by anti-tank guns. Despite the fearful events on the beach, some Canadian soldiers managed to fight their way into the town. When the order to withdraw was given in mid-morning, about two thousand of them were left stranded on the beach. Armed only with rifles and Tommy guns they fought tenaciously and attacked the flanking German batteries with fixed bayonets. They surrendered only when their ammunition ran out.27 About four thousand young Canadian soldiers went ashore at Dieppe: about one thousand were killed that morning and nearly two thousand taken prisoner, many with terrible wounds. It was obvious to those on the ships sailing back to England that operation Jubilee had been a disaster. Mountbatten attempted to maintain his air of breezy optimism, but Zuckerman and Bernal were immediately dispatched to Newhaven to attempt some accounting of the human casualties, and the damage to naval ships and landing craft. After seeing and interviewing the exhausted, demoralized infantry, Sage was moved to anger for perhaps the only time in his life. He said to Kathleen Watkins, his personal assistant at Princes Risborough, ‘The planning of that Operation was appalling – I would have planned a fortnight’s holiday with more care.’28
Within two weeks, a summary document was circulated which contained important points for future planners of amphibious landings: ‘The chief lesson learned is that although vertical air photos supply the great bulk of knowledge, they are incomplete. Final details must be supplied by low oblique photos or preferably good ground sources, otherwise many defences are not seen.’29 Reliance on aerial photos taken from high above Dieppe meant that the planners had missed the machine guns placed in caves in the high cliffs. They had also not seen anti-tank guns that were kept in houses during the day and wheeled out at night. Troops were told that the gradient of the beach was 1-in-20, but few realized how steep this was. Eye-witnesses saw that the tanks had great difficulty moving up the shingle beach and then were unable to mount the promenade. The overall impression was that the British ‘had not taken into consideration the character of the land and the defence positions of the Germans on the coast, either from lack of knowledge or for tactical reasons’.30 Sage kept a list of work priorities in his diary, and the analysis of what went wrong at Dieppe appeared as one of the most consistent items during the next few months. John Cockroft, now Chief Superintendent of the Air Defence Research and Development Establishment at Malvern investigated what might have been learned from radar surveillance of shipping movements in the Channel and sent Bernal a report later in December 1942, which Bernal failed to acknowledge,31 but all these errors of omission were indelibly stamped into his memory so that they would not be repeated, if he had any say in the matter.
At the Tots and Quots dinner in October,32 the subject for discussion was the application of science to naval problems. Sage repeated a favourite idea of his that in all war research the crucial factor was speed in the application of science to problems as they arose and speed in implementation, once the solutions had been found. Blackett, the ex-navy lieutenant now in charge of operational research (OR) at the Admiralty, was pessimistic about the potential impact of science on the navy because all naval officers are imbued with naval history – an enormous obstacle to fresh thinking.
During his June visit to North America, Mountbatten was extremely conciliatory towards the querulous Pyke, introducing him to Eisenhower and recommending him warmly to Roosevelt. Just before Mountbatten flew back to England, Pyke mentioned that he was working on a new and bigger scheme with an eminent scientist at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, ‘in whom Professor Bernal had full confidence’.33 He would not disclose any details to Mountbatten until the professor in Brooklyn had completed some preliminary experimental research, but wanted Mountba
tten to promise to read the proposal that he would soon submit. The mystery professor was Hermann Mark, Perutz’s old chemistry professor from Vienna, who was now at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute working alongside Fankuchen. Mark had come to New York via Montreal, where he had spent two years reorganizing the research department of the Canadian International Pulp and Paper Company, concentrating on new uses for wood pulp.34 Bernal had contacted him to say that Pyke was on a military mission in Washington and asked him to visit Pyke when he could.
At their first meeting, Pyke was preoccupied with the U-boat threat to North Atlantic convoys and told Mark what was urgently needed: more landing strips for planes between Newfoundland and Northern Europe so that planes could hunt and destroy the U-boats. Steel was in critically short supply so that building aircraft carriers was not a solution. Pyke though had a characteristically original answer: to use flat icebergs as ‘unsinkable landing fields’ for allied planes.35 The main drawback was that ice is brittle and Pyke had realized that a bomb hitting such an ice landing strip would cause it to shatter. He asked Mark if the brittleness of ice could be substantially reduced. Mark instantly supplied an idea based on his recent work in Canada – the addition of a few per cent of wood pulp should greatly increase the strength of a layer of ice. As soon as he returned to New York, Mark began to investigate the question in more detail. He and his group quickly confirmed that the addition of a small amount of sawdust or wood pulp increased the tensile strength of a sheet of ice and its impact strength, so that it would no longer shatter. The wood pulp also made the mix much more resistant to melting than pure ice.
