19 For a listing of all the military research and development establishments and the numbers of scientists working in each, see Edgerton, Warfare State, p. 120.
20 These included 1270 engineers (of whom half were GPO engineers running the telephone service), 740 chemists and scientific research officers, 460 medical research doctors and 200 technical officers engaged in other sorts of scientific research, see Edgerton, Warfare State, p. Ill; the number of 6500 in the technical and scientific grades compares with 1150 in the administrative grades (the ruling group of permanent and assistant secretaries in the senior civil service) and 4350 in executive grades (the middle management of the civil service).
21 Edgerton, Warfare State, p. 118; equivalent sum calculated on www.measuringworth.com according to the retail price index.
22 It was more than a decade before Frank Whittle’s theoretical design for a gas turbine jet engine could become a practical reality as new metals needed to be developed to sustain the stresses of jet propulsion before an engine could be built; although Whittle later complained of lack of support from the Air Ministry, the record shows that several senior RAF figures continued to provide him and his private company, Power Jets Ltd, with considerable support. See Andrew Nahum, Frank Whittle, pp. 52ff.
23 Clark, The Rise of the Boffins, p. 12.
24 Speaking to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in February 1942. See Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, p. 178.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Official histories:
Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds (General Editor), History of the Great War Based on Official Documents. London: HMSO, 29 volumes, 1923–1949 [also known as the British Official History of the Great War and as Military Operations]
Major T.J. Mitchell and Miss G.M. Smith, History of the Great War: Medical Services – Casualties and Medical Statistics of the Great War. London: HMSO, 1931
Sir Walter A. Raleigh and H.A. Jones, The War in the Air. London: HMSO, 6 volumes, 1922–8
Memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, etc.:
Maurice Baring, Royal Flying Corps Headquarters 1914–1918. London: William Heinemann, 1930
Lord Brabazon of Tara, The Brabazon Story. London: William Heinemann, 1956
Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925. London: Virago, 1978 [originally London: Victor Gollancz, 1933]
John Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 24 volumes, 1915–20
John Charteris, At G.H.Q. London: Cassell & Co., 1931
Winston Churchill, The World Crisis 1911–1918. London: Odhams, 5 volumes, 1923–31; republished in 2 volumes London: Odhams, 1939 (page references in endnotes from the 1939 edition)
Charles Ffoulkes, Arms and the Tower. London: John Murray, 1939
Philip Gibbs, Realities of War. London: William Heinemann, 1920
Harold Gillies, Plastic Surgery of the Face: Based on Selected Cases of War Injuries of the Face Including Burns. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920
Sir Harold Gillies and D. Ralph Millard Jnr, The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery. London: Butterworth & Co., 1957
Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That: An Autobiography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1929
Douglas Haig (eds Gary Sheffield and John Bourne), War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918. London: Phoenix, 2006
Geoffrey de Havilland, Sky Fever: The Autobiography of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961
Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté, The Fated Sky: An Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1952
Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising. London: Peter Davies, 1936. Republished by Greenhill Books, 1993, with a new introduction by the author
Geoffrey Malins, How I Filmed the War: A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man who Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1920. Republished by the Imperial War Museum, London, and The Battery Press, Nashville, 1993, with an Introduction by Nick Hiley
Lucy Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman: A Biography. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1939
Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929
Frederick W. Mott, War Neuroses and Shell Shock. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919
Charles S. Myers, Shell Shock in France 1914r-18: Based on a War Diary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940
Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations during the Great War. London: Dutton, 1924 [republished by Kessinger Publishing, 2010]
Alliott Verdon Roe, The World of Wings and Things. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1939
Bertrand Russell, Autobiography Vol. 2 1914–1944. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968
Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. London: Faber and Faber, 1930
Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress. London: Faber and Faber, 1936
T. Howard Somervell, After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936.
Sir Campbell Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House; The Story of a Famous Campaign. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920
Robert Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory: A Personal Account by Radar’s Greatest Pioneer. London: Odhams, 1957
H.G. Wells, Mr Britling Sees it Through. London: Cassell, 1916
Lewis R. Yealland, Hysterical Disorders of Warfare. London: Macmillan & Co., 1918
Secondary Sources
Holger Afflerbach and David Stevenson (eds), An Improbable War? The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture Before 1914. Oxford: Berghahn
Books, 2007 Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. London, Penguin, 2009
Ralph Barker, The Royal Flying Corps in France: From Mons to the Somme. London: Constable, 1994
Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power. London: Eyre, Methuen, 1972
Patrick Beesly, Room 40: British Naval Intelligence 1914r-18. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982
Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979
Robert Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World: The Story of Radar from War to Peace. London: Little, Brown, 1997 [originally New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996]
Jane Carmichael, First World War Photographers. London: Routledge, 1989
Guy Chapman (ed.), Vain Glory: A Miscellany of the Great War 1914–18 Written by Those Who Fought in it on Each Side and on All Fronts. London: Cassell, 1968
Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill Vol. II: Young Statesman 1901–1914. London: William Heinemann, 1967
Alan Clark, The Donkeys. London: Hutchinson, 1961
Christopher Clark, The Sleep Walkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. London: Allen Lane, 2012
Ronald Clark, The Rise of the Boffins. London: Phoenix House, 1962
Ronald Clark, Tizard. London: Methuen, 1965
George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England 1910–1914. London:
Perigree, 1961 Taylor Downing, Churchill’s War Lab: Code-Breakers, Boffins and Innovators: The Mavericks Churchill Led to Victory. London: Little, Brown, 2010
Taylor Downing, Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during
World War Two. London: Little, Brown, 2011 Taylor Downing, Night Raid: The True Story of the First Victorious Para Raid of WWII. London: Little, Brown, 2013
Hugh Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain, 1903–1914. Woodbridge: The Royal Historical Society & the Boydell Press, 1997
David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation. Basingstoke: Macmillan Academic, 1991
David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: A Biograp
hy. London: Picador, 2005
A.W. Ewing, The Man of Room 40 – The Life of Sir Alfred Ewing. London: Hutchinson, 1939
Patricia Fara, Science: A Four Thousand Year History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009
Terence J. Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War. Stroud: Spellmount/The History Press, 2011
David Fetcher, The British Tanks 1915–19. Marlborough: Crowood Press, 2001
Robert Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005 Adrian Fort, Prof: The Life of Frederick Lindemann. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003
Michael Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys! How Chemistry Changed the First World War. Stroud: Spellmount/The History Press, 2012
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. III 1914–1916. London: William Heinemann, 1971
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (eds), No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Yale: Yale University Press, 1988
Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command. London: John Murray, 1996
Paddy Griffith (ed.), British Fighting Methods in the Great War. London: Frank Cass, 1996
Bryn Hammond, Cambrai 1917: The Myth of the First Great Tank Battle. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008
Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010
Peter Hart, Bloody April: Slaughter in the Skies over Arras, 1917. London: Cassell, 2006
Guy Hartcup, The War of Invention: Scientific Developments, 1914–18. London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988
Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War. London: Allen Lane, 1977
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914r-1991. London: Michael Joseph, 1994
Wendy Holden, Shell Shock: The Psychological Impact of War. London: Macmillan, 1998
Peter Hopkinson, Split Focus. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969
John Home (ed.), A Companion to World War I. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010
Michael Howard, The Lessons of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991
Admiral Sir William James, The Eyes of the Navy: A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall. London: Methuen, 1955
Simon Jones, World War I Gas Warfare: Tactics and Equipment. Oxford: Osprey, 1994
David Kahn, The Code Breakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York: Scribner, 1967
Peter Leese, Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002
Basil Liddell Hart, History of the First World War. London: Cassell, 1970 [originally published as The Real War 1914–18 London: Faber and Faber, 1930]
Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1914–1918. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1950
Andrew Lownie, John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier. London: Constable, 1995
Norman Macmillan, Sir Sefton Brancker. London: William Heinemann, 1935
Arthur Marwick, Women at War, 1914–1918. London: Croom Helm, 1977
Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004
Luke McKernan, Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-Fiction Film in Britain and America 1897–1925. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2013
Peter W. Mead, The Eye in the Air: A History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance in the Army 1785–1945. London: HMSO, 1983
Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme: 1 July 1916. London: Allen Lane, 1971
Andrew Nahum, Frank Whittle: Invention of the Jet. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2004
Roy Conyers Nesbit, Eyes of the RAF: A History of Photo-Reconnaissance. Stroud: Sutton, revised edition 2003
William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme. London: Little, Brown, 2009
Michael M. Postan, British War Production: Official History of the Second World War. London: HMSO, 1952
Reginald Pound, Gillies: Surgeon Extraordinary. London: Michael Joseph, 1964
Douglas Read, The Power of News: The History of Reuters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992
Peter Reese, The Flying Cowboy: Samuel Cody, Britain’s First Airman. Stroud: Tempus, 2006
Nicholas Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War. London: Croom Helm, 1986
Fiona Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914–30. London: Continuum, 2010
Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, Vol 11877–1918. London: Collins, 1970
Michael Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War 1914–18. London: Macmillan, 1982
Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army. London: Aurum Press, 2011
Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994. London: Pimlico, 2002
Edward Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980
Col. Roy Stanley, World War II Photo Intelligence. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1982
John Stevenson, British Society 1914r-1945. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984
Dorothy Stimson, Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the Royal Society. New York: Greenwood Press, 1948
Graham Storey, Reuters’ Century 1851–1951. London: Max Parrish, 1951
Hew Strachan, The First World War: Vol 1 To Arms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001
Hew Strachan, The First World War: A New History. London: Free Press, 2006
Douglas Sutherland, Tried and Valiant: The History of the Border Regiment 1702–1959. London: Leo Cooper, 1972
Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss ‘The German Lawrence’. New York: Longman, Green & Co., 1936
A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965
A.J.P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966
A.J.P. Taylor, War by Timetable: How the First World War Began. London: Macdonald, 1969
A.J.P. Taylor, Beaverbrook. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972
John Terraine, White Heat: The New Warfare 1914–18. London: Leo Cooper, 1992
J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe: Press Baron in Politics, 1865–1922. London: John Murray, 2000
Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram. London: Constable, 1959
Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890–1914. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966
Ian R. Whitehead, Doctors in the Great War. Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1999
Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Twentieth Century Technology c. 1900-c. 1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982
Jonathan Reed Winkler, Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War One. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2008
Denis Winter, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War. London: Allen Lane, 1982
Index
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
acetone, 169–70, 337
Admiralstab, Berlin, 104, 107, 116
Admiralty: acetone and, 169–70
allows reporting from the front, 288
Balfour as First Lord, 118, 201, 294, 296–7
Board of Invention and Research, 154–5
Churchill as First Lord of, 67–9, 72, 104, 117–18, 169, 196–7, 271–2
cinema and, 292, 294, 295–7, 332
code-breaking and, 11, 102–3, 106–14, 117, 118–19, 121–3, 125, 126–7, 128, 138, 339
communications interception, 102, 105–6, 109–14, 116–17, 118–19, 121–3, 138, 163
conservative values of, 36
develop
ment of the tank and, 197, 198–200
Director of Scientific Research at, 354
failures in processing of intelligence, 112–16, 118, 121–2, 123
Hall’s recruitment of women, 127–8
Intelligence Division, 101, 109–11, 324
interception of diplomatic cables, 110, 111, 125, 126–7, 131–2, 138, 139–44, 145–6
Landships Committee, 198–200
propaganda and, 294, 295–7, 316
radio communications and, 104, 105–6, 155, 163
Research Laboratory, Teddington, 354
Room 40 code-breakers, 106, 108–9, 110–12, 117, 118–19, 121–3, 125, 128, 138, 339
Room 40 diplomatic mail readers (Room 45), 126–8, 131–2, 139–44, 145–6
Royal Society and, 7
sacking of Churchill, 117–18, 200, 277
Short brothers and, 62, 67, 72
suspicion of scientists, 155; see also Royal Navy
aerial combat: ‘ace’ fighter pilots, 93–4
‘dog fights’, 91, 93
first examples, 89–90
new aircraft for, 91
tactics, 90
aerial reconnaissance: ballooning, 44, 52–3
Battle of Cambrai and, 206
Battle of Mons and, 81–2
Battle of the Somme and, 93
cameras used for, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92–3, 98
Capper on, 53
Dunne and, 57
fighter escorts for reconnaissance aircraft, 90
first ever flight (19 August 1914), 80–1
French as leaders in photographic field, 84, 97
German counter-measures, 95–6
German spring offensive (1918) and, 96
German techniques, 89
higher altitude flying, 91
hobbyists as pioneers, 65
during Palestine campaign, 97–8
photo interpretation, 85, 92, 93, 97, 98
photo maps, 87–8, 98
photography and, 83–5, 86, 87–9, 91–3, 95–7, 98, 347
poison gas and, 173
RE series aircraft, 73
RFC for Expeditionary Force, 72, 80–3, 87–8
spotting for the artillery, 88, 98
summer manoeuvres (1912), 71