by Andrew Brown
Pyke sent a typed memorandum that was 232 pages of foolscap in a diplomatic bag to Mountbatten in London. He implored the COC to ‘read only the first 33 pages. If you find it no good, so be it. Chuck it away.’36 He pleaded with Mountbatten to navigate the shoals of officialdom so that this grand project might be realized and told him it should be known as HABBAKUK. There is some mystery about this title – whether it referred to the Old Testament Book of Habakkuk (‘I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe though it be told to you’) or a character in Voltaire’s Candide who was, like Mountbatten, capable of anything. Mountbatten passed the weighty parcel to his Chief of Staff, Brigadier Wildman-Lushington, (referred to in Pyke’s covering note as ‘that damned fool Lushington’). The Brigadier called for Bernal and asked him to prepare a one-page summary of the document. Pyke’s writings were wondrous and included every conceivable application of ice warfare, no matter how fantastic. Sage at first thought he would not be able to reduce them to one page, but on reflection the essential idea was very simple and the summary easily written.
Bernal’s list of priorities for October 1942 was as follows:
New ops.
Habbakuk
block ships
landing support
synoptic picture of bombing and bombing policy
Dieppe analysis
army–air force cooperation.37
Mountbatten’s priorities that autumn were rather different: they were headed by the need to protect his own reputation after the catastrophe of Dieppe. He was attacked by General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, at a dinner party given by Churchill, and Admiral Ramsay rebuked him for the poor discipline and incompetence of his organization.38 Mountbatten realized the best method of disarming his critics, and especially of avoiding the wrath of Churchill, was to involve his cousin, King George VI, in his affairs as much as possible. One of the ways to do this was to entertain the King with stories of the eccentrics he had surrounded himself with at COHQ. The two favourites were a long-haired Irishman and a bearded Jew; indeed so familiar did these characters become that the King would refer to them by gesture – either sweeping his hand through his hair or stroking an imaginary beard – as his cousin regaled him with their latest madcap activities.39 On the 28th September 1942, the King paid a visit to COHQ. Sage, typically, was not present when he should have been, and Mountbatten was worried that he might have gone to get his hair cut for the occasion. Zuckerman recalled that Sage eventually turned up ‘with his hair in its pristine state, and the King, who had been told what to expect, was not disappointed’.40 The culmination of months of self-promotion took place two weeks later at Buckingham Palace with the premier of Noel Coward’s film, In Which We Serve, in which the hero was based on Mountbatten, the dashing naval officer.
Max Perutz had been released from internment in Canada and returned to Cambridge at the beginning of 1941; since he did not seem to be required for war work, he quietly took up his researches on haemoglobin again, with the enthusiastic support of Lawrence Bragg. In October 1942, he was summoned to London by Pyke who told him ‘with the air of one great man confiding in another, that he needed [his] help for the most important project of the war’.41 Perutz left the meeting excited but not much wiser about what he was supposed to do; a few days later he heard from Bernal that he ‘should find ways of making ice stronger and freezing it faster, never mind what for’.42 Neither Pyke nor Bernal thought to mention to Perutz that Hermann Mark had already made considerable inroads into this question, and Perutz wasted the next week or so trying to find non-existent data in the published literature, while mounting some unsuccessful experiments of his own. As soon as Pyke thought to hand him Mark’s report, which he said he had found hard to understand, Perutz knew what should be done and made recommendations to Pyke and Bernal. As a result, ‘Combined Operations requisitioned a large meat store five floors beneath Smithfield Market’ and with a small team Perutz began to manufacture and test reinforced ice.
We built a big wind tunnel to freeze the mush of wet wood pulp, and sawed the reinforced ice into blocks. Our tests soon confirmed Mark and Hohenstein’s results. Blocks of ice containing as little as four per cent wood pulp were weight for weight as strong as concrete; in honour of the originator of the project, we called the reinforced ice ‘pykrete’. When we fired a rifle bullet into an upright block of pure ice two feet square and one foot thick, the block shattered; in pykrete the bullet made a little crater and was embedded without doing any damage. My stock rose, but no one would tell me what pykrete was needed for, except that it was for Habakkuk [sic].
Lord Mountbatten was an early visitor to the freezing laboratory. According to legend, he took away a piece of Pykrete that he then demonstrated to Churchill, while the latter was in his bath at Chequers. A more formal presentation of the Habbakuk idea was made to the Prime Minister through Lord Cherwell in December and elicited an enthusiastic minute for the Chiefs of Staff Committee.43 After telling them that he attached ‘the greatest importance to the prompt examination of these ideas’, Churchill told the COS that Mountbatten should be given ‘every facility’ and that he would be reporting to him weekly. Churchill’s imagination was captured by the grandeur and originality of the scheme: ‘I do not of course know anything about the physical properties of a lozenge of ice 5,000 feet by 2,000 feet by 100 feet,’ he wrote, ‘or how it resists particular stresses, or what would happen to an iceberg of this size in rough Atlantic weather, or how soon it would melt… The advantages of a floating island or islands, even if only used as refuelling depots for aircraft, are so dazzling that they do not need at the moment to be discussed. There would be no difficulty in finding a place to put such a “stepping-stone” in any of the plans of war now under consideration.’ The beauty of the project in Churchill’s eyes was the promise that Nature would do nearly all the work and he thought the downfall of the scheme would be moving ‘very large numbers of men and a heavy tonnage of steel or concrete to the remote recesses of the Arctic night’.
Churchill could not resist adding his own ideas about how a berg ship might be extracted from the Arctic icefield and then equipped, but the research and development aspects of Habbakuk were Bernal’s responsibility. Sage spent Christmas Day at Fingest with Margaret and Martin, and the next day drew up the following headings:44
A. Materials: mechanical properties re gravity, wave strain and attack.
2. improved properties (best reinforcement).
3. speed of preparation.
B. Study of natural conditions: wind, current etc. N. Atlantic; temperature/ depth relationship.
C. Design problems: Hull/insulation and refrigeration/engines and steering/aircraft storage and runways.
D. Construction problems.
E. Supply and costs.
On New Year’s Eve, Sage circulated some general conclusions, which were of course labelled ‘most secret’. He thought that the tests in America and Perutz’s work had already shown that a vessel could be constructed out of Pykrete and it would be possible for fighter aircraft to take off from it. He also listed what he saw as the outstanding problems and thought they were soluble ‘if they are given sufficient priority’.45 Of paramount importance would be full-scale manufacturing trials, which must be carried out in Canada and needed to start that winter if the project was going to be realized before 1945.
The first meeting of the Habbakuk committee took place under Mount-batten’s chairmanship at COHQ on 7 January 1943. Pyke and Sage were both there, as was Lord Cherwell, who expressed scepticism about the use of natural materials, commenting that everything was known about concrete, very little about ice. Bernal explained how the ice would be reinforced against shearing stress with steel rods as for concrete, but Cherwell was unconvinced and brought up a second problem – how would it be prevented from melting. Bernal tried to reassure him that with the slow melting rate of Pykrete, the refrigeration plant needed would be similar to any Ministry of S
upply Food Store! At this point, the CCO took Cherwell’s side and thought concrete might be better than ice. Sage disagreed flatly and Pyke remained silent. Sage thought that the UK was singularly ill-equipped for the necessary research and development, and that the USA and Russia could offer better facilities. The CCO replied that the PM wished to confine the project to Britain and Canada for security reasons, but he would recommend informing the USA and Russia.
The day after the meeting, Sage wrote a formal note on the practicability of Habbakuk.46 He listed the advantages: costless fabrication of material; gravity placing of ice blocks that could be slid into position and never need to be lifted; self-fielding of 100 ton blocks by letting them stick together with a little water between. The whole construction process would require far less labour and be at least ten times quicker than the building of large conventional vessels, so that Sage believed a vessel should be available in 1944. He also listed two major disadvantages: lack of knowledge as to mechanical strength and reliability; the need for insulation and permanent refrigeration. With the collaboration of Canadian scientists, Sage thought ‘we should know by the summer whether the scheme is technically feasible or not’. He pointed out that ‘we’, meaning COHQ, had no brief for the Habbakuk scheme and that any alternative which could provide fighter cover at an earlier date and at equal or less cost ‘is clearly to be preferred’. Sage thought such an alternative to be not very likely, and it seemed to him that in the emergency of war, it was worth running ‘some quite big risks’ to bring Habbakuk to fruition: ‘Even if the Bergship is not perfectly unbreakable in exceptional storms or to concentrated enemy attack, and one or two are put out of action, this happens to the best of His Majesty’s Ships now.’ The ultimate decision must rest with the Chiefs of Staff, ‘but it seems to us that the main value of this scheme is in its furnishing an early solution, and it is worthwhile pushing forward either full out or not at all’.
Sage spent the next few days preparing a detailed programme of research to be undertaken in Canada, but this was to be his last input into Habbakuk for a couple of months – he and Zuckerman were to go to the Middle East. The lowest subject on Bernal’s list of priorities in September and October, Army– Air Force cooperation, had now risen to top following the battles in the Western Desert of North Africa. Whereas the Germans had employed a devastating combination of dive-bombers in close support of mechanized armies during their Blitzkrieg of so many European countries, the fighting in the Western Desert gave the RAF its first experience as an attack force in concert with ground troops – in this case, Montgomery’s Eighth Army, as they pounded Rommel’s Panzer Divisions. During the fighting, operational research reports were sent back to the War Office in London concerning the relative effectiveness of Hurricane fighters as tank-busters flying at low levels and using their cannons versus the dropping of 250 pound bombs by Boston light bombers.47 After being defeated at El Alamein in early November, Rommel still managed to escape with large numbers of his Afrika Korps, and this raised questions about why the RAF had not been able to cut the retreating columns of men to ribbons.
Tizard, who was still retained as a semi-official adviser by the Ministry of Aircraft Production, had initiated a series of ‘Informal meetings of Independent Scientific Advisers’ in June 1942 to facilitate the exchange of information between those directing operational research for the different services.48 He was concerned that they were working on overlapping problems, but had no forum in which to discuss their efforts. The regular attendees were Bernal, Blackett, Cockcroft, Fowler and Sir Charles Darwin, another Rutherford-trained physicist and grandson of the biologist. Darwin was in charge of OR at the War Office and monitored the reports coming from the Middle East. At the ninth meeting of the informal committee on 15th December, Tizard announced that as Bernal and Zuckerman were likely to go out to the Middle East in the near future those present had an opportunity to request any information they needed.49 The first to respond was Darwin who wanted information on four points:
An estimate of the weight of explosives per square yard (shells or bombs) required to ‘soften’ an area for assault within say half-an-hour of the assault.
What tactical collaboration exists between the Army and the Air Force in the Middle East?
Was the bombing used for direct Army support?
Any information on anti-tank mines.
Sage immediately replied that he thought the second item was beyond his terms of reference because ‘he could not undertake to make an investigation of the efficiency of, for instance, communications’.50 On Tizard’s suggestion, he did agree to make enquiries as to whether a report on communications efficiency was in preparation.
Bernal gave a general outline of what he and Zuckerman hoped to achieve. They would concentrate on major problems such as the tactics of Army–Air Force cooperation, and hoped to make some comparison of the relative efficiency of German and British weapons in causing casualties and damage to towns, docks and ships. Blackett chipped in to mention the apparent indestructibility of the Benghazi fuel store. Sage went on to say that he would also be looking at attacks on aerodromes since it appeared that more aircraft had been destroyed on the ground than in the air. This would be done using photographic records, and he commented that photographs that he had recently seen in the Admiralty Topographical Section were unfortunately all undated. In a similar vein, he was concerned about the scarcity of reliable maps. Bernal summarized the work that Zuckerman would be doing, most importantly a detailed study of the causes of casualties in tanks. Zuckerman was present at the meeting, but apparently did not speak – there was no doubt that Sage was to be in charge of the mission.
At the mid-December meeting, Bernal alluded to ‘administrative difficulties’, which put the Middle East visit in doubt, but by the end of the year, after Tizard’s intervention, these were sorted out. The Vice-Chief of the Air Staff informed RAF Middle East HQ that ‘Professors B. and Z. are leaving by air… early in January.’ They would travel as civilians, but in the event of accident or death would be regarded as Group Captains RAF for benefits purposes. According to the Vice-Chief, ‘they are being sent out to study at first hand the effect of British bombs on various types of targets’.51 The visit was expected to last up to six weeks, and it was requested that they be provided with what facilities they required, especially in areas where recent operations had taken place. The extent of disagreement between the services at the time is underscored in another cable sent by the Under-Secretary of State at the War Office: the up-coming enquiry was described as ‘of the greatest importance since it is meant to discover that information which alone can determine whether direct air support is unprofitable – a view to which the RAF have in the past been attached – or, as the Army believe, essential’.52
The two scientists left Bournemouth on 15th January 1943, ‘tightly packed with two other passengers in a small Catalina flying-boat’.53 Zuckerman was embarking on a tour that would establish his reputation as a military scientist and lead to ever-greater responsibilities in the defence sphere. For Sage it would be an odyssey that touched four continents. A sudden parting of the ways would rupture their friendship. The trip started out very pleasantly – they were marooned by fog on the west coast of Ireland for a week. Zuckerman thought that Bernal was all but overcome with sentiment to be back in his own country; he turned to Zuckerman and said, ‘I feel like taking off my shoes, tying the laces together, slinging them round my neck and just walking off into the mist.’54 They were free from blackout restrictions for the first time in three years; fresh food was plentiful, though Sage did record at one point that there was ‘no more drink at Dunraven Arms’.55 They went for long walks through the countryside, ‘where Bernal was at his very best, discoursing on the differences between the various ruined abbeys… and much else about the history of Ireland’.56 After a week of waiting around, they flew off to Lisbon and then down the west coast of Africa, touching down in the Gambia before reaching Lagos on 24th Janua
ry. It was now Zuckerman’s turn to be flooded by childhood memories of his native Africa. He wrote to his wife from Lagos describing ‘everyone smiling and showing their teeth, women in vast shawls and strange coiffures, poorer women in rags and babies on their backs, and flat breasts. Our own people, almost all in uniform, and very superior.’57
From Lagos they made a long and spectacular flight, mainly over desert, to Khartoum. They spent three days of intensive sightseeing, visiting the Mahdi’s tomb and the museum, where Sage naturally overflowed with enthusiasm and knowledge about the local artifacts. He was especially fascinated by the camel drivers and the spears which they carried. Bernal and Zuckerman made a detour to Omdurman, where less than half-a-century before, thousands of dervishes armed with spears had been massacred by the Maxim guns of the Anglo-Egyptian Army to avenge the Mahdi’s siege of Khartoum. Flying north up the Nile Valley, they landed in Cairo after skimming over the pyramids. It was springtime, and arrangements had been made for the two scientists to stay at the Mena House, a hotel with beautiful patios and gardens next to the great pyramids at Giza. The splendid setting reminded Zuckerman ‘of glorious pre-war luxury [but] where one now eats out of the tinned rations one brings in’.58
They spent four very busy days meeting the local Army and RAF officers and their small, field OR teams. One Squadron Leader, only in his mid-twenties, made a particular impression on Sage. His name was John Kendrew and he had been in Cairo for just over a year. Curly-haired and bespectacled, he was a Cambridge chemistry graduate who had worked on radar development in England, before being posted to the Middle East. The new arrivals absorbed as much information as they could about armaments, bombing tactics, photo-reconnaissance and a host of other subjects. A cable had been sent from the Air Ministry in London to Middle East HQ saying that ‘Professors B. and Z. feel that some sort of uniform should be worn when in operational areas.’59 They were not commissioned and therefore could not wear service uniforms, and it was left to those in Cairo to ‘suggest something suitable’ for them to use when in battle zones. The quasi-military uniform eventually provided in Zuckerman’s view made them look ‘less like airmen than like commissionaires of some seedy back-street hotel’.60 They wore neither unit nor rank badges, but ‘some wit in Cairo had thought it fun to fix a large brass crown’ to their caps.