If the First World War saw great advances in science, then the Second witnessed even more dramatic progress. The war would be fought as much by the scientists – or ‘boffins’ as they were often affectionately known – as by soldiers, sailors, and airmen. And Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave them much support in what he called the ‘Wizard War’. Science would help to crack the codes that made it possible to listen in to top level enemy communications and would help to guide shells towards aircraft in the skies.
Entirely new ways of problem-solving – in a science known as ‘Operational Research’ – were applied to the challenges facing the RAF, the Army, and the Navy. A tiny device only a few centimetres long and invented at Birmingham University, the cavity magnetron, opened up revolutionary new possibilities for short-wave radar. And, of course, harnessing the power of the atom in the Manhattan Project became literally a war-winning invention. One leading scientist said that, during the period, ‘there is hardly a phase of the national life with which scientists are not associated’ and that you could ‘hardly walk in any direction in this war without tumbling over a scientist’. Churchill was keen that science should provide his generals, admirals, and airmen with every possible advantage over the enemy.
The great irony was that Churchill himself, as he would have been the first to admit, had only the shakiest grasp of science. It was his failure to understand even the most basic mathematics that nearly scuppered his chances of joining the Army when, aged 20, he tried to get into Sandhurst Military Academy. He twice failed the entrance examination because of his appalling maths, only scraping in on the third attempt after a period of cramming.
Excavating Kent