Tizard Mission
Encyclopedia
The Tizard Mission officially the British Technical and Scientific Mission was a British
delegation that visited the United States
during the Second World War
in order to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development (R&D) work completed by the UK up to the beginning of World War II, but that Britain herself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war related production. It received its popular name from the program's instigator: Henry Tizard
. Tizard was a British scientist and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee
which had propelled the development of radar
.
The mission travelled to the United States in late September 1940 during the Battle of Britain
. They intended to convey a number of technical innovations to the U.S. in order to secure assistance in maintaining the war effort.
(in particular the greatly improved cavity magnetron
), details of Frank Whittle
's jet engine
and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum
, which described the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights
, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosive
s.
Although Britain was interested in the Norden bombsight
, when President Roosevelt apologised and said that it was not available to Britain unless it could be shown that the Germans had something similar (Tizard was not unduly dismayed as he thought there were other US technologies more useful to Britain than the bombsight), Tizard asked if he could have the external dimensions of the unit, so that British bombers could be modified to take it, if it became available at some future date. The American Congress
had many proponents of neutrality for the USA and so there were further barriers to co-operation. Tizard decided that the most productive approach would be simply to give the information and use America's productive capacity. Neither Winston Churchill
nor the radar pioneer, Robert Watson-Watt
, were initially in agreement with these tactics for the mission. Nevertheless, Tizard first arranged for Archibald Hill, another scientific member of the committee, to go to Washington to explore the possibilities. Hill's report to Tizard was optimistic.
All the documents were gathered in a small trunk: a metal deed box. Bowen was allowed to take 'Magnetron Number 12' with him. After spending the night under Bowen's hotel bed, the case was strapped to the roof of a taxi to the station. An over-eager railway porter whisked it from Bowen at Euston Station
to take it to the train to Liverpool
and Bowen almost lost sight of it. Inconsistently, in Liverpool the magnetron was given a full Army escort. According to James Phinney Baxter III, Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development
: "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought one to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores". The British magnetron was a thousand times more powerful than the best American transmitter at the time and produced accurate pulses. The team arrived in Halifax
in Canada on 6 September and went on to Washington a few days later. The team of six assembled in Washington on 12 September 1940.
the chairman of National Defense Research Committee
on 31 August 1940, and arranged a series of meetings with each division of the NDRC. When the American and British teams met, there was initially some cautious probing by each side to avoid giving away too much without getting anything back in exchange. At a meeting hosted by NDRC's two-month-old "Microwave Committee" chairman Dr Alfred Loomis
at the Wardman Park Hotel on 19 September 1940 the British disclosed the technical details of the Chain Home
early warning radar stations. The British thought the Americans did not have anything like this, but found it was virtually identical to the US Navy's longwave CXAM radar
. The Americans then described their microwave research done by Loomis and Karl Compton earlier in 1940. The British realised that Bell Telephone Laboratories and General Electric
both could contribute a lot to receiver technology. The Americans had shown a Navy experimental shortwave 10-centimetre wavelength radar but had to admit that it had not enough transmitter power and they were at a dead-end. Bowen and Cockcroft then revealed the cavity magnetron, with an amazing power output of about ten kilowatts at 10 centimetres. This disclosure dispelled any tension left between the delegations and things then went smoothly. The magnetron would enable the production radar units small enough to be installed in night-fighters, allow aircraft to locate U-boat
s and would provide great navigational assistance to bombers. It is considered to be a significant factor in the Allied victory in the Second World War.
Bowen stayed in America and a few days later at the General Electric labs in New Jersey, he showed to the incredulous Americans that the magnetron worked. The Bell Telephone Company was given the job of making magnetrons, producing the first thirty in October 1940, and over a million by the end of the war. The Tizard mission caused the foundation of the MIT Radiation Lab
, which became one of the largest wartime projects, employing nearly 4,000 people at its peak.
The Tizard delegation also visited Enrico Fermi
at Columbia University
and told Fermi of the Frisch-Peierls concept
for an atomic bomb. Fermi was highly sceptical, mainly because his research was geared towards using nuclear power to produce steam, not atomic bombs. In Ottawa
, the delegation also met a Canadian, George Laurence
, who had secretly built his own slow neutron experiment -Laurence had anticipated Fermi's work by several months.
When they returned in November 1940, the delegation reported that the slow neutron researches being conducted by French exiles in Cambridge, Columbia (by Fermi) and Canada (by Laurence), were probably irrelevant to the war effort. But since nuclear boilers could have some post-war value, they arranged for some financial support for the Canadian fission experiments. George Laurence later became involved in the secret exchanges of nuclear information between the British and the Americans. James Chadwick
did not realise the atomic bomb was a serious possibility until Franz Simon
reported to the MAUD Committee
that it was feasible to separate the isotope
uranium-235
.
Tizard met with both Vannevar Bush and George W. Lewis
and told them about jet propulsion, but he revealed very little except the seriousness of British efforts. Bush later recalled: "The interesting parts of the subject, namely the explicit way in which the investigation was being carried out, were apparently not known to Tizard, and at least he did not give me any indication that he knew such details".
Later Bush realised that the development of the Whittle engine was far ahead of the NACA
project. In July 1941 he wrote to General Henry Arnold
"It becomes evident that the Whittle engine is a satisfactory development and that it is approaching production, although we yet do not know just how satisfactory it is. Certainly if it is now in such state that the British plans call for large production in five months, it is extraordinarily advanced and no time should be lost on the matter".
Bush recommended that arrangements should be made to produce the British engine in the United States by finding a suitable company.
Although the German bombing of the UK
was largely over by the time that the new radar systems were in production, the technology such as aircraft radar and LORAN
navigation greatly helped the Allied war effort in Europe and the Pacific, for example almost eliminating the threat from German submarines.
The main success of the mission had been the transfer of radar technology, but the mission also opened up channels of communication for jet engine and atomic-bomb development and is seen as one of the key events in forging the Anglo-American alliance. However, the UK was in a desperate situation and was compelled to release technology that had immense commercial value after the war.
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...
delegation that visited the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in order to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development (R&D) work completed by the UK up to the beginning of World War II, but that Britain herself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war related production. It received its popular name from the program's instigator: Henry Tizard
Henry Tizard
Sir Henry Thomas Tizard FRS was an English chemist and inventor and past Rector of Imperial College....
. Tizard was a British scientist and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee
Aeronautical Research Committee
The Aeronautical Research Committee was a UK government committee established in 1919 in order to coordinate aeronautical research and education following World War I...
which had propelled the development of radar
History of radar
The history of radar starts with experiments by Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century that showed that radio waves were reflected by metallic objects. This possibility was suggested in James Clerk Maxwell's seminal work on electromagnetism...
.
The mission travelled to the United States in late September 1940 during the Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
. They intended to convey a number of technical innovations to the U.S. in order to secure assistance in maintaining the war effort.
Objectives
The objective of the mission was to cooperate in science and technology with the U.S., which was neutral and, in many quarters, unwilling to become involved in the war. The U.S. had greater resources for development and production which Britain desperately wanted to use. The information provided by the British delegation was subject to carefully vetted security procedures, and contained some of the greatest scientific advances made during the war: RadarRadar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
(in particular the greatly improved cavity magnetron
Cavity magnetron
The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field. The 'resonant' cavity magnetron variant of the earlier magnetron tube was invented by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940 at the University of...
), details of Frank Whittle
Frank Whittle
Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS was a British Royal Air Force engineer officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air...
's jet engine
Jet engine
A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...
and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum
Frisch-Peierls memorandum
The Frisch–Peierls memorandum was written by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls while they were both working at the University of Birmingham, England. The memorandum contained new calculations about the size of the critical mass needed for an atomic bomb, and helped accelerate British and U.S...
, which described the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights
Gyro gunsight
A gyro gunsight is a modification of the non-magnifying reflector sight in which target lead and bullet drop are allowed for automatically, the sight incorporating a gyroscopic mechanism that computes the necessary deflections required to ensure a hit on the target...
, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosive
Plastic explosive
Plastic explosive is a specialised form of explosive material. It is a soft and hand moldable solid material. Plastic explosives are properly known as putty explosives within the field of explosives engineering....
s.
Although Britain was interested in the Norden bombsight
Norden bombsight
The Norden bombsight was a tachometric bombsight used by the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars to aid the crew of bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately...
, when President Roosevelt apologised and said that it was not available to Britain unless it could be shown that the Germans had something similar (Tizard was not unduly dismayed as he thought there were other US technologies more useful to Britain than the bombsight), Tizard asked if he could have the external dimensions of the unit, so that British bombers could be modified to take it, if it became available at some future date. The American Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
had many proponents of neutrality for the USA and so there were further barriers to co-operation. Tizard decided that the most productive approach would be simply to give the information and use America's productive capacity. Neither Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
nor the radar pioneer, Robert Watson-Watt
Robert Watson-Watt
Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, KCB, FRS, FRAeS is considered by many to be the "inventor of radar". Development of radar, initially nameless, was first started elsewhere but greatly expanded on 1 September 1936 when Watson-Watt became...
, were initially in agreement with these tactics for the mission. Nevertheless, Tizard first arranged for Archibald Hill, another scientific member of the committee, to go to Washington to explore the possibilities. Hill's report to Tizard was optimistic.
Moving the secrets
After Churchill's approval for the project, the team began gathering all technical secrets which might have military use. At the end of August, Tizard went to the U.S. by air to make preliminary arrangements. The rest of the mission would follow by ship. They were:- Brigadier F.C. Wallace MCMilitary CrossThe Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....
(British ArmyBritish ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
) - Captain H.W. Faulkner (Royal NavyRoyal NavyThe Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
) - Group CaptainGroup CaptainGroup captain is a senior commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many other Commonwealth countries. It ranks above wing commander and immediately below air commodore...
F.L. Pearce (Royal Air ForceRoyal Air ForceThe 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...
) - Professor John CockcroftJohn CockcroftSir John Douglas Cockcroft OM KCB CBE FRS was a British physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atomic nucleus with Ernest Walton, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power....
(Army Research) - nuclear physicist and Assistant Director of Scientific Research at the Ministry of SupplyMinistry of SupplyThe Ministry of Supply was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production and the Admiralty retained... - Dr Edward George 'Taffy' BowenEdward George BowenEdward George 'Taffy' Bowen, CBE, FRS was a British physicist who made a major contribution to the development of radar, and so helped win both the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic...
(radar) - Arthur Edgar Woodward-Nutt, an Air MinistryAir MinistryThe 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...
official (secretary)
All the documents were gathered in a small trunk: a metal deed box. Bowen was allowed to take 'Magnetron Number 12' with him. After spending the night under Bowen's hotel bed, the case was strapped to the roof of a taxi to the station. An over-eager railway porter whisked it from Bowen at Euston Station
Euston station
Euston station may refer to one of the following stations in London, United Kingdom:*Euston railway station, a major terminus for trains to the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and part of Scotland...
to take it to the train to Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and Bowen almost lost sight of it. Inconsistently, in Liverpool the magnetron was given a full Army escort. According to James Phinney Baxter III, Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development
Office of Scientific Research and Development
The Office of Scientific Research and Development was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by on June 28, 1941...
: "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought one to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores". The British magnetron was a thousand times more powerful than the best American transmitter at the time and produced accurate pulses. The team arrived in Halifax
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
in Canada on 6 September and went on to Washington a few days later. The team of six assembled in Washington on 12 September 1940.
Meetings
Tizard had met Vannevar BushVannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
the chairman of National Defense Research Committee
National Defense Research Committee
The National Defense Research Committee was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the United States from June 27, 1940 until June 28, 1941...
on 31 August 1940, and arranged a series of meetings with each division of the NDRC. When the American and British teams met, there was initially some cautious probing by each side to avoid giving away too much without getting anything back in exchange. At a meeting hosted by NDRC's two-month-old "Microwave Committee" chairman Dr Alfred Loomis
Alfred Lee Loomis
Alfred Lee Loomis was an American attorney, investment banker, philanthropist, scientist/physicist, pioneer in military radar usages, inventor of the LORAN or Long Range Navigation System, and lifelong patron of scientific research...
at the Wardman Park Hotel on 19 September 1940 the British disclosed the technical details of the Chain Home
Chain Home
Chain Home was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the British before and during the Second World War. The system otherwise known as AMES Type 1 consisted of radar fixed on top of a radio tower mast, called a 'station' to provide long-range detection of...
early warning radar stations. The British thought the Americans did not have anything like this, but found it was virtually identical to the US Navy's longwave CXAM radar
CXAM radar
The CXAM radar system was the first production radar system deployed on United States Navy ships. It followed several earlier prototype systems, such as the NRL radar installed in April 1937 on the destroyer ; its successor, the XAF, installed in December 1938 on the battleship ; and the first...
. The Americans then described their microwave research done by Loomis and Karl Compton earlier in 1940. The British realised that Bell Telephone Laboratories and General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
both could contribute a lot to receiver technology. The Americans had shown a Navy experimental shortwave 10-centimetre wavelength radar but had to admit that it had not enough transmitter power and they were at a dead-end. Bowen and Cockcroft then revealed the cavity magnetron, with an amazing power output of about ten kilowatts at 10 centimetres. This disclosure dispelled any tension left between the delegations and things then went smoothly. The magnetron would enable the production radar units small enough to be installed in night-fighters, allow aircraft to locate U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s and would provide great navigational assistance to bombers. It is considered to be a significant factor in the Allied victory in the Second World War.
Bowen stayed in America and a few days later at the General Electric labs in New Jersey, he showed to the incredulous Americans that the magnetron worked. The Bell Telephone Company was given the job of making magnetrons, producing the first thirty in October 1940, and over a million by the end of the war. The Tizard mission caused the foundation of the MIT Radiation Lab
Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and functioned from October 1940 until December 31, 1945...
, which became one of the largest wartime projects, employing nearly 4,000 people at its peak.
The Tizard delegation also visited Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and told Fermi of the Frisch-Peierls concept
Frisch-Peierls memorandum
The Frisch–Peierls memorandum was written by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls while they were both working at the University of Birmingham, England. The memorandum contained new calculations about the size of the critical mass needed for an atomic bomb, and helped accelerate British and U.S...
for an atomic bomb. Fermi was highly sceptical, mainly because his research was geared towards using nuclear power to produce steam, not atomic bombs. In Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, the delegation also met a Canadian, George Laurence
George Laurence
George Craig Laurence was a Canadian nuclear physicist. He was educated at Dalhousie University, and at Cambridge University under Ernest Rutherford....
, who had secretly built his own slow neutron experiment -Laurence had anticipated Fermi's work by several months.
When they returned in November 1940, the delegation reported that the slow neutron researches being conducted by French exiles in Cambridge, Columbia (by Fermi) and Canada (by Laurence), were probably irrelevant to the war effort. But since nuclear boilers could have some post-war value, they arranged for some financial support for the Canadian fission experiments. George Laurence later became involved in the secret exchanges of nuclear information between the British and the Americans. James Chadwick
James Chadwick
Sir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron....
did not realise the atomic bomb was a serious possibility until Franz Simon
Francis Simon
Sir Francis Simon, born Franz Eugen Simon , was a German and later British physical chemist and physicist who devised the method, and confirmed its feasibility, of separating the isotope Uranium-235 and thus made a major contribution to the creation of the atomic bomb.-Early life:He was born to a...
reported to the MAUD Committee
MAUD Committee
The MAUD Committee was the beginning of the British atomic bomb project, before the United Kingdom joined forces with the United States in the Manhattan Project.-Frisch & Peierls:...
that it was feasible to separate the isotope
Isotope
Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...
uranium-235
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
.
Tizard met with both Vannevar Bush and George W. Lewis
George W. Lewis
George William Lewis was the Director of Aeronautical Research at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics until he retired in 1947...
and told them about jet propulsion, but he revealed very little except the seriousness of British efforts. Bush later recalled: "The interesting parts of the subject, namely the explicit way in which the investigation was being carried out, were apparently not known to Tizard, and at least he did not give me any indication that he knew such details".
Later Bush realised that the development of the Whittle engine was far ahead of the NACA
NACA
- Organizations :* National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of the U.S. federal agency NASA* National Association for Campus Activities, an organization for programmers of university and college activities...
project. In July 1941 he wrote to General Henry Arnold
Henry H. Arnold
Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold was an American general officer holding the grades of General of the Army and later General of the Air Force. Arnold was an aviation pioneer, Chief of the Air Corps , Commanding General of the U.S...
"It becomes evident that the Whittle engine is a satisfactory development and that it is approaching production, although we yet do not know just how satisfactory it is. Certainly if it is now in such state that the British plans call for large production in five months, it is extraordinarily advanced and no time should be lost on the matter".
Bush recommended that arrangements should be made to produce the British engine in the United States by finding a suitable company.
Outcome
Although the Tizard mission was hailed as a success, especially in radar, it is possibly significant that on his return to London on the 8 October 1940, Tizard found that his job no longer existed.Although the German bombing of the UK
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
was largely over by the time that the new radar systems were in production, the technology such as aircraft radar and LORAN
LORAN
LORAN is a terrestrial radio navigation system using low frequency radio transmitters in multiple deployment to determine the location and speed of the receiver....
navigation greatly helped the Allied war effort in Europe and the Pacific, for example almost eliminating the threat from German submarines.
The main success of the mission had been the transfer of radar technology, but the mission also opened up channels of communication for jet engine and atomic-bomb development and is seen as one of the key events in forging the Anglo-American alliance. However, the UK was in a desperate situation and was compelled to release technology that had immense commercial value after the war.