Reginald Victor Jones
Encyclopedia
Reginald Victor Jones, CH
CB
CBE
FRS
, (29 September 1911–17 December 1997) was a British
physicist
and scientific military intelligence
expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in
, South London
, Jones was educated at Alleyn's School
, Dulwich
and Wadham College, Oxford
where he studied Natural Sciences. In 1932 he graduated with First Class honours in physics and then, working in the Clarendon Laboratory
, completed his DPhil
in 1934. Subsequently he took up a Senior Studentship in Astronomy at Balliol College, Oxford
.
, Farnborough
, a part of the Air Ministry
. Here he worked on the problems associated with defending Britain from an air attack.
In September 1939, the British decided to assign a scientist to the Intelligence section of the Air Ministry. No scientist had previously worked for an intelligence service so this was unusual at the time. Jones was chosen and quickly rose to become Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) there. During the course of the Second World War he was closely involved with the scientific assessment of enemy technology, and the development of offensive and counter-measures technology. He solved a number of tough Scientific and Technical Intelligence problems during World War II and is generally known today as the "father of S&T Intelligence".
He was briefly based at Bletchley Park
in September 1939, but returned to London in November. He decided that the Oslo report
received in 1939 was genuine, though the three Service Ministries regarded it as a "plant" and discarded their copies: "... in the few dull moments of the War, I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next."
and enabled an aircraft to fly along a chosen heading with useful accuracy.
At Jones's urging, Winston Churchill ordered up an RAF
search aircraft on the night of 21 June 1940, and the aircraft found the Knickebein radio signals in the frequency range which Jones had predicted. With this knowledge, the British were able to build jammers whose effect was to "bend" the Knickebein beams so that German bombers spent months scattering their bomb loads over the British countryside. Thus began the famous "Battle of the Beams
" which lasted throughout much of World War II, with the Germans developing new radio navigation systems and the British developing countermeasures to them. Jones frequently had to battle against entrenched interests in the armed forces, but, in addition to enjoying Churchill's confidence, had strong support from, among others, Churchill's scientific advisor F. D. Lindemann and the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal.
, were later instrumental in the deployment of "Window"; strips of metal foil dropped in bundles from aircraft which then appeared on enemy radar screens as "false bombers". This technology is now known as chaff
and contrary to the popular belief, was also known to the Germans at the time. Both parties were reluctant to use it out of fear that their enemy would do the same: this delayed its deployment for almost two years.
Jones also served as a V-2 rocket
expert on the Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) and headed a German long range weapons
targeting deception under the Double Cross System
.
, which he held until his retirement in 1981. He did not want to stay in Intelligence under the proposed postwar reorganisation. During his time at Aberdeen, much of his attention was devoted to improving the sensitivity of scientific instruments such as seismometer
s, capacitance micrometers, microbarographs and optical levers. His book, Instruments and Experiences, details much of his later work in some depth, and can act as a reference work on fine mechanism design.
Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1942, for the planning of a raid on Bruneval to capture German radar equipment (Churchill had proposed that Jones should be appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) but the head of the Civil Service Sir Horace Wilson threatened to resign as Jones was only a lowly Scientific Officer, and the CBE was a compromise); he was subsequently appointed CB in 1946; and Companion of Honour (CH) in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours
. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1965, and received an honorary DSc from the University of Aberdeen in 1996.
Jones married Vera Cain in 1940 - they had two daughters and a son. He is buried in Corgarff
Cemetery, Strathdon
, Aberdeenshire
.
His autobiography, Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945, formed the basis, pre-publication, of the BBC One
TV documentary series "The Secret War", first aired on 5 January 1977 and narrated by William Woollard
, in which Jones was the principal interviewee. The historian A. J. P. Taylor
described Most Secret War as "the most fascinating book on the Second World War that I have ever read" and, more generally, it has acquired almost classic status.
In 1993 he was the first recipient of the R. V. Jones Intelligence Award
, which the CIA created in his honour.
R. V. Jones's papers are held by Churchill College, Cambridge
.
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
CB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
CBE
CBE
CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...
FRS
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, (29 September 1911–17 December 1997) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and scientific military intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in
Education
Born in Herne HillHerne Hill
Herne Hill is located in the London Borough of Lambeth and the London Borough of Southwark in Greater London. There is a road of the same name which continues the A215 north of Norwood Road and was called Herne Hill Road.-History:...
, South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
, Jones was educated at Alleyn's School
Alleyn's School
Alleyn's School is an independent, fee-paying co-educational day school situated in Dulwich, south London, England. It is a registered charity and was originally part of the historic Alleyn's College of God's Gift charitable foundation, which also included James Allen's Girls' School , Dulwich...
, Dulwich
Dulwich
Dulwich is an area of South London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth...
and Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
where he studied Natural Sciences. In 1932 he graduated with First Class honours in physics and then, working in the Clarendon Laboratory
Clarendon Laboratory
The Clarendon Laboratory, located on Parks Road with the Science Area in Oxford, England , is part of the Physics Department at Oxford University...
, completed his DPhil
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in 1934. Subsequently he took up a Senior Studentship in Astronomy at Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
.
Royal Signals and Radar Establishment
In 1936 Jones took up the post at the Royal Aircraft EstablishmentRoyal Aircraft Establishment
The Royal Aircraft Establishment , was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence , before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions.The first site was at Farnborough...
, Farnborough
Farnborough, Hampshire
-History:Name changes: Ferneberga ; Farnburghe, Farenberg ; Farnborowe, Fremborough, Fameborough .Tower Hill, Cove: There is substantial evidence...
, a part of the Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...
. Here he worked on the problems associated with defending Britain from an air attack.
In September 1939, the British decided to assign a scientist to the Intelligence section of the Air Ministry. No scientist had previously worked for an intelligence service so this was unusual at the time. Jones was chosen and quickly rose to become Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) there. During the course of the Second World War he was closely involved with the scientific assessment of enemy technology, and the development of offensive and counter-measures technology. He solved a number of tough Scientific and Technical Intelligence problems during World War II and is generally known today as the "father of S&T Intelligence".
He was briefly based at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
in September 1939, but returned to London in November. He decided that the Oslo report
Oslo report
The Oslo Report was one of the most spectacular leaks in the history of military intelligence. Written by German mathematician and physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer on November 1 and 2, 1939 during a business trip to Oslo, Norway, it described several German weapons systems, current and future.Mayer...
received in 1939 was genuine, though the three Service Ministries regarded it as a "plant" and discarded their copies: "... in the few dull moments of the War, I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next."
Beam guidance
Jones's first job was to study "new German weapons", real or potential. The first of these was a radio navigation system which the Germans called Knickebein. This, as Jones soon determined, was a development of the Lorenz blind landing systemLorenz beam
The Lorenz beam blind landing system was an air radio navigation system in use from the late 1930s. The name refers to the company that produced the system; Lorenz referred to it simply as the Ultrakurzwellen-Landefunkfeuer, German for "ultra-short-wave landing radio beacon", or LFF...
and enabled an aircraft to fly along a chosen heading with useful accuracy.
At Jones's urging, Winston Churchill ordered up an RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
search aircraft on the night of 21 June 1940, and the aircraft found the Knickebein radio signals in the frequency range which Jones had predicted. With this knowledge, the British were able to build jammers whose effect was to "bend" the Knickebein beams so that German bombers spent months scattering their bomb loads over the British countryside. Thus began the famous "Battle of the Beams
Battle of the beams
The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing. British "scientific intelligence" at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of increasingly effective...
" which lasted throughout much of World War II, with the Germans developing new radio navigation systems and the British developing countermeasures to them. Jones frequently had to battle against entrenched interests in the armed forces, but, in addition to enjoying Churchill's confidence, had strong support from, among others, Churchill's scientific advisor F. D. Lindemann and the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal.
Window
As far back as 1937, R. V. Jones had suggested that a piece of metal foil falling through the air might create radar echoes. He, and Joan CurranJoan Curran
Lady Joan Strothers Curran was a Welsh scientist. She and her husband, Sir Samuel Curran, played important roles in the defense of the allied forces of World War II.-Biography:...
, were later instrumental in the deployment of "Window"; strips of metal foil dropped in bundles from aircraft which then appeared on enemy radar screens as "false bombers". This technology is now known as chaff
Chaff (radar countermeasure)
Chaff, originally called Window by the British, and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe , is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary...
and contrary to the popular belief, was also known to the Germans at the time. Both parties were reluctant to use it out of fear that their enemy would do the same: this delayed its deployment for almost two years.
Jones also served as a V-2 rocket
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...
expert on the Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) and headed a German long range weapons
Vergeltungswaffe
V-weapons also, known in the original German as Vergeltungswaffen , were a particular set of long range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly terror bombing and/or aerial bombing of cities. They comprised the V-1 flying bomb, the V-2 rocket and the V-3...
targeting deception under the Double Cross System
Double Cross System
The Double Cross System, or XX System, was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British military intelligence arm, MI5. Nazi agents in Britain - real and false - were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast...
.
Postwar and awards
In 1946 Jones was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of AberdeenUniversity of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
, which he held until his retirement in 1981. He did not want to stay in Intelligence under the proposed postwar reorganisation. During his time at Aberdeen, much of his attention was devoted to improving the sensitivity of scientific instruments such as seismometer
Seismometer
Seismometers are instruments that measure motions of the ground, including those of seismic waves generated by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other seismic sources...
s, capacitance micrometers, microbarographs and optical levers. His book, Instruments and Experiences, details much of his later work in some depth, and can act as a reference work on fine mechanism design.
Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1942, for the planning of a raid on Bruneval to capture German radar equipment (Churchill had proposed that Jones should be appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) but the head of the Civil Service Sir Horace Wilson threatened to resign as Jones was only a lowly Scientific Officer, and the CBE was a compromise); he was subsequently appointed CB in 1946; and Companion of Honour (CH) in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours
Queen's Birthday Honours
The Queen's Birthday Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the celebration of the Queen's Official Birthday in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen...
. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1965, and received an honorary DSc from the University of Aberdeen in 1996.
Jones married Vera Cain in 1940 - they had two daughters and a son. He is buried in Corgarff
Corgarff
Corgarff is a hamlet in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in the Grampian Mountains. The nearby Corgarff Castle was used as a military barracks in the 18th century. The hamlet's primary school closed in 1998.-Footnotes:...
Cemetery, Strathdon
Strathdon
Strathdon is an area in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is situated in the strath of the River Don, 45 miles west of Aberdeen in the Highlands...
, Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 unitary council areas in Scotland and a lieutenancy area.The present day Aberdeenshire council area does not include the City of Aberdeen, now a separate council area, from which its name derives. Together, the modern council area and the city formed historic...
.
His autobiography, Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945, formed the basis, pre-publication, of the BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
TV documentary series "The Secret War", first aired on 5 January 1977 and narrated by William Woollard
William Woollard
William Woollard is a British television producer and presenter.-Biography:Educated at a state grammar school in London and at the University of Oxford, he trained as a fighter pilot with the RAF. He worked with an oil company in Borneo and Oman...
, in which Jones was the principal interviewee. The historian A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
described Most Secret War as "the most fascinating book on the Second World War that I have ever read" and, more generally, it has acquired almost classic status.
In 1993 he was the first recipient of the R. V. Jones Intelligence Award
R. V. Jones Intelligence Award
The R. V. Jones Intelligence Award was created by the CIA in 1993 to honour those whose accomplishments mirror in substance and style those of R. V. Jones, to wit: "Scientific acumen applied with art in the cause of freedom". Jones thus became the first recipient.-Recipients of the R. V. Jones...
, which the CIA created in his honour.
R. V. Jones's papers are held by Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.In 1958, a Trust was established with Sir Winston Churchill as its Chairman of Trustees, to build and endow a college for 60 fellows and 540 Students as a national and Commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill; its...
.
Books by R. V. Jones
- Jones, R. V., 1978, Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945, London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0 241 89746 7 (Published in the USA as The Wizard War with the same subtitle.)
- Jones, R. V., 1988, Instruments and Experiences, London: John Wiley and Sons.
- Jones, R. V., 1989, Reflections on Intelligence, London: Heinemann.
External links
- Studies in Intelligence. Enduring principles. Some Lessons in Intelligence - a declassified report by R. V. Jones from the Central Intelligence AgencyCentral Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
- Obituary in The Independent
- Obituary in The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 19 Dec 1997, Retrieved 1 Sep 2010.