Secret weapons of world.., p.22
Secret Weapons of World War II, page 22
15
THE MANTLE OF ELIJAH
ALTHOUGH, as befitted a naval research organization, D.M.W.D.’s chief preoccupation lay with the war at sea, several interesting projects unconnected with naval warfare were now being developed by Goodeve’s team. Among these was an apparatus known in the department as “Hajile.”
For security purposes every project launched by the Wheezers and Dodgers was given a code name. A complete cover plan was also drawn up, and where several different firms were providing parts for a weapon or device each would be given a plausible but entirely different idea as to the real function of the object they were manufacturing.
Ironically enough, the only occasion when this procedure was jeopardized followed a visit to Goodeve by a representative of the Naval Intelligence Department. Announcing his identity, he asked to see the MOST SECRET list of projects, and jotted down the names of all the contractors then carrying out work for D.M.W.D.
Three days later Goodeve was surprised to receive a phone call from him.
“I’m speaking from Ipswich,” he boomed. “I say, you know the job this firm here are supposed to be doing? Well, they don’t know anything about it. I’ve asked them for particulars, and it may surprise you to know that they’re doing no work at all on the thing you mentioned to me.”
Goodeve was so startled that he almost dropped the receiver. “Of course they don’t,” he shouted; “you, of all people, ought to have realized that.”
The whole security of that particular project had been compromised by a member of the very Admiralty department responsible for preventing leakages of secret information, and the existing cover plan had to be scrapped there and then.
Happily, blunders like this were rare, and D.M.W.D.’s own security precautions worked well. Some of the code names they chose for their more unorthodox ventures must have puzzled the Intelligence experts (who had to vet them) as much as any enemy agent, and Hajile was a case in point.
The project originated with a request from the Army, who wanted to find a way of dropping heavy objects — vehicles, guns, and stores — from the air, and they stressed that a high speed of fall was essential; lessening the danger of drift, it allowed the load to be dropped more accurately, and it also cut down the risk of damage from ground fire.
Realizing that any contrivance depending on parachutes would be unsuitable for this purpose, D.M.W.D. tackled the problem from another angle, searching for a method of slowing up the falling load at the last minute, and eventually they hit on the idea of using the blast of a nest of rockets to cushion the impact of the loaded platform on the ground. The object to be dropped was fitted into a sort of harness, girdled by a huge ‘candelabra’ of rockets, and the plan envisaged this falling free through the air until it was a few feet off the ground. At this moment all the rockets would fire at once, decelerating the speed of the platform so powerfully that, in theory at least, it would touch down quite gently.
To the observers of its trials it was a highly spectacular affair. In the last crucial seconds of its flight to earth the whole apparatus was enshrouded in a pillar of smoke and flame, and Jock Davies, with the sailor’s traditional store of Biblical quotations at his fingertips, instantly suggested its code name from the Second Book of Kings.
“Look at it!” he remarked as he watched one of the earliest trials . . . “It’s Elijah in reverse.”
Guggenheim did the early mathematical calculations, and the task of developing Hajile was given to Duncan Bruce and “Paul” Roberson, a young research chemist who joined the department in September 1942. Others assisting in the trials of the apparatus included Rivers-Bowerman, an Irishman who helped to overcome many of the snags which cropped up with the switch-gear and the crash pans on which the loads were dropped, and Louis Klemantaski, renowned in the motor-racing world before the war as a high-speed photographer. Both were characters. Rivers-Bowerman had the typical Irishman’s dislike of being hurried. He liked time to think things out, and whenever he felt anybody was trying to rush him over some problem he would pick up a newspaper, or any document lying to hand, and begin reading it slowly and ostentatiously, as if to say, “I’ll do the job for you … but only in my own time.”
Klemantaski had joined the department by the same route as Menhinick. He began the war in the Army, as an instructor in the R.A.O.C., but when the desert fighting had been in progress for some time he found himself detached to work at a factory in the Midlands producing filters for Army vehicles. The Army had found that engines were rapidly disintegrating in North Africa through sand wear, and photographic study of oil and air deposits was urgently needed. To carry this out they sought the services of a well-known photographer of fish and flies, but this specialist was occupied elsewhere, and the job fell to Klemantaski. He was much relieved when a summons from the Admiralty freed him for more eventful pursuits.
The first aim of Bruce and Roberson was to devise a means of setting off the rockets of Hajile at the right height above the ground. The obvious answer seemed to be some form of plummet which would dangle below the apparatus and fire the rockets as soon as it hit the earth. The problem was not as simple as this, however, for any type of plummet used would have to be heavy enough to run out ahead of the falling load, competing with a fierce upward wind, and yet be sensitive enough to react immediately it landed on any yielding surface like grass, shrubs, or heather.
To experiment with this unusual type of switch-gear they had to find a place where they could rig up wires and slide the plummet down them. Bruce thought of the lift shaft at Hampstead Tube Station, but this proved to be 30 feet short of the depth they needed to achieve the required velocity. Some one then suggested the great hangar at Cardington, and there Roberson spent most of November 1942 clambering precariously about on the catwalk high in the roof, and sliding plummets of different shapes, weights, and sizes down a long wire. A naval stoker had been detailed to assist him, but he proved unable to face heights, and after Roberson had had to rescue him from his first climbing attempt, when the stoker became paralysed with fright half-way up an 80-foot fire-escape, it seemed less trouble to carry on with the experiments unaided. In time Roberson got quite used to crawling about on the narrow girders, but he was glad when the trials ended. Perpetually shrouded in a dense, clammy fog, Cardington was a depressing place, and the only really contented mortal there that chill November was the resident observer, who used to ascend to 2000 feet every morning in a balloon, and spend the day sitting happily with a book in the autumn sunshine.
The initial tests completed, the Wheezers and Dodgers aimed for a higher velocity — which meant a greater vertical drop. Bruce took the plummet and its accessories to an airfield on Salisbury Plain where a fellow-scientist was busily engaged in dropping blood-plasma bottles from a captive balloon on to the concrete apron of the runway. The height there was all right for the plummet tests, as Bruce found with a sickening certainty when he went up in the swaying basket, but there was no variety in the surface of the ground below to give the fuse a proper test. It would have worked deceptively well on the hard concrete. So they loaded all the gear into a truck and drove to Birnbeck.
When Hajile had been adapted to fire over water they began full-scale trials, dropping the contraption, loaded with a large block of concrete, into the sea from a Lancaster bomber. On his early runs the pilot deposited it too far from the end of the pier for Klemantaski to film the descent, so he was asked to aim as close to Birnbeck as possible. This request proved ill-advised, for the pilot was now on his mettle. Taking off again, he made a couple of dummy runs, and then released the huge concrete block and its girdle of rockets from 2000 feet with alarming accuracy.
As it came screaming through the air the watchers on the pier gazed open-mouthed. Then, suddenly realizing that it was going to score a direct hit, every one started running for dear life down the long plank roadway. The concrete ‘bomb’ landed squarely on the roof of D.M.W.D.’s engineering shop. It sheared through a massive steel joist, and then demolished the covered way leading to the steamer jetty. Happily there were no casualties, though the Wren cooks preparing lunch a few feet from the wrecked shelter thought the end of the world had come.
After that the bomb-aimer was requested to temper accuracy with discretion, and the trials proceeded uneventfully. At first, with four rockets fitted round the concrete slab, the load hit the sea fairly heavily. They tried with eight rockets, and Hajile fulfilled all expectations. Hurtling towards the water, the slab was checked just above the waves, and then it slid gently below the surface.
These tests over the sea showed that there was nothing wrong with the general theory, but the gear now had to be adapted for land trials. By March 1943 the Hajile team had perfected the switch unit, and they offered to demonstrate this to Richardson from a tree in Hyde Park. For security purposes they took the gear to an enclosed Ack-Ack site, and the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter, serving there as an A.T.S. officer, was greatly surprised to find Roberson, in his naval uniform, wrestling with a tangled mass of wire in the top-most branches of a tall dm.
When the plummet passed its test successfully D.M.W.D. had to find some practical task for Hajile to carry out. They knew from experience that the speed of getting any device into service depended not a little on rousing the interest of people in high places. A successful practical demonstration of what Hajile could do would hasten its progress, and Duncan Bruce recalled a remark made to him by Sir Denistoun Burney in the early stages of the Hajile experiments. Burney, inventor of the minesweeping paravane, had been concerned with the project from the start, and often attended D.M.W.D. progress meetings on Hajile, for he was interested in developing a special type of rocket. He had the grand manner of the elder statesman, and after one meeting he awed Bruce by observing, “Young man . . . you’ll never get anywhere without Cabinet support” — somewhat depressing advice for a junior R.N.V.R. officer who had never even set eyes on a Cabinet Minister!
As a start it seemed a good idea to drop a jeep from an aircraft, but jeeps were hard to procure — especially by people who wanted to throw them out of aeroplanes at 2000 feet and Roberson had little success until he called on the American Navy in Grosvenor Square.
To a Commander on the supply staff he explained rather nervously why he wanted two jeeps, but he had hardly finished speaking when his new-found ally grabbed the telephone. “Say, Jake,” he said urgently, “come on up. There’s a guy here who wants two jeeps — and, boy, he’s going to beat the living daylights out of them!”
So Roberson got his jeeps, and dropping trials began in earnest. The first of these was a singularly unsuccessful affair, held on a bitterly cold winter’s day. First the aircraft refused to start. Then snow fell heavily, damping the rocket fuses, and when, finally, they dropped the jeep the Hajile equipment failed to function at all. Falling at 40 feet per second on the small pilot parachute alone, Jeep Number One went straight into the ground with a shattering crash. A fortnight later they tried again, adding a lot more rockets. This time the jeep survived the drop relatively undamaged, but when the smoke cleared away they found the vehicle was upside down.
They designed a special crash-pan to take the initial shock of the impact, and altered the setting of the rockets, but still the load continued to somersault on landing. Hajile, in fact, was in a thoroughly obstinate mood, and the thrust of the rockets varied in such an unpredictable way that the Wheezers and Dodgers never knew what to expect. Only one rocket had to fail for the whole decelerating apparatus to be thrown out of gear, and sometimes when the plummet struck the ground the whole cargo on the crashpan would be hurled violently skyward, falling back with a tremendous, earth-shaking crump which tore all the fittings apart. Close to the ground the gear was surrounded by so much smoke and flame that it was difficult to ascertain precisely what happened at the moment of firing.
After one sequence of fairly successful drops a demonstration was staged for representatives of all three Services on Newbury Downs, using large blocks of concrete again, for by this time jeeps were becoming a rather expensive item. It was a lovely still summer day, but the rockets were on their very worst behaviour. When Hajile was launched from the aircraft some of the rockets failed to fire at all, and others which did set alight to the pilot parachutes. The concrete block consequently hit the ground with terrific force, and buried itself — as Bruce succinctly remarked afterwards — “right up to the maker’s name.”
Much discouraged, the Hajile team realized that they would have to start almost from the beginning again, carrying out exhaustive tests with both the plummet and the rockets. For this purpose aircraft drops were not altogether satisfactory; when Hajile was released from a great height it was impossible to tell exactly where it would land, and the observers could not therefore get close enough to detect the precise sequence of events when things went wrong. Roberson still thought that the continued capsizing of the cargo might be due to the drift of Hajile in the wind, but another of the Wheezers and Dodgers, who had got near enough on one occasion to peer through the smoke, swore that he saw the crash-pan turn on end appreciably after it touched down.
Richardson decided to transfer the trials to Shoeburyness, and try suspending the whole apparatus from a giant crane. Roberson was therefore ordered to ring up “the Superintendent, Chatham Dockyard,” and arrange for the necessary facilities.
Little versed in the organization of the Navy’s shore establishments, he followed his instructions to the letter, and when he got through to Chatham he demanded to speak to the Superintendent of the Dockyard in person. After some delay a voice asked what he wanted, and Roberson began issuing a stream of orders about the crane, the storing of the gear, and the assistance he would need.
“I’m not in the habit of dealing with minor matters of this kind,” came an irate response. “Do you know who you are talking to, young man?”
“No,” said Roberson, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“This is Admiral — here.”
“Oh, is it?” said Roberson, much alarmed. “Do you know who this is at this end?”
“No, I don’t,” boomed the voice.
“Thank God for that!” remarked Roberson, quickly replacing the receiver.
The D.M.W.D. team had not been long at Shoeburyness when they solved the capsizing mystery. With Hajile suspended from the crane they could now get much closer to it with safety, and Rivers-Bowerman thought of an ingenious way of dispelling the rocket smoke so that every detail of the touchdown could be plainly seen. From some undisclosed source he obtained an old Skua aircraft, and this was placed end-on on to the crane. Whenever Hajile was to be dropped the Skua’s engine was started up, and the slipstream blew the smoke sideways, enabling Klemantaski to film the landing in slow motion.
They then discovered that as the girdle of rockets fired the colossal jet of cordite which beat down on the ground was digging a cup-shaped pit in the soil. This, acting as a reflector, focused a fierce jet of air on to the underside of the crash-pan as it came to rest, and overturned it.
To counter this further research was needed, and by the time all Hajile’s teething troubles had been cured there was no chance to test the apparatus in action. It was, in fact, D-Day when the last memorable incident in its long development story occurred — and Hajile itself could not be blamed for what happened on that occasion.
Roberson, Rivers-Bowerman, and Klemantaski were all at Shoeburyness that historic morning, and before trials began they stood beneath the crane, discussing the news which had filtered through about the invasion. Hajile lay on the ground alongside them, the framework of iron girders which normally held the concrete block resting on a raised platform of railway sleepers.
Not realizing that the switches were closed, an electrician making some routine test of his own connected up the firing circuit. To his astonishment, all the rockets fired at once, and the great mass of ironwork rose straight into the air.
Rivers-Bowerman was felled by a blow on the jaw, and Robertson, who was actually standing in the middle of the circle of rockets, had a miraculous escape, for he was completely engulfed in flames as the contraption took off.
Forty feet above the ground Hajile lurched sideways. It crashed back to earth almost on top of Klemantaski, who was staggering about, blinded by a blast of sand which had caught him full in the face. He did not recover his sight for several days.
To the Wheezers and Dodgers Hajile involved a seemingly endless programme of research which brought more than the normal share of frustrations and disappointments. But its importance amply justified the effort expended on it. Roberson — condemned to spend the whole of his naval career on this one laborious task — occasionally gave vent to uncomplimentary opinions about deceleration in all its forms. But when the war was over it was a thesis on Hajile and its problems which gained for him a prized degree.
16
THE TOYSHOP
So numerous and varied were the projects launched from the office in Lower Regent Street that changes in D.M.W.D.’s staff proved constantly necessary. But the department never became unwieldy. Goodeve had no intention of allowing it to get bogged down by weight of numbers. He wanted the Wheezers and Dodgers to preserve a constant sense of initiative.
He chose his officers with great care. And he instilled in them all the tradition of never accepting defeat . . . never accepting without question the opinion of recognized authorities on any matter. Although junior in status the officers chosen for D.M.W.D. were often men of great experience and technical ability, and they found themselves bearing responsibilities out of all proportion to their actual rank. From Jock Davies and Goodeve they got all the backing they wanted, however, and the Wheezers and Dodgers were a happy team.
Goodeve himself had one curious trait. Even in the most critical times he rarely came into the office much before noon. Then he would slip gradually into gear, working with ever-increasing intensity until midnight or later. During the daytime at least 50 per cent, of his energy was spent in getting to know people, in making and refreshing contacts. His best brainwork was done at night.
THE MANTLE OF ELIJAH
ALTHOUGH, as befitted a naval research organization, D.M.W.D.’s chief preoccupation lay with the war at sea, several interesting projects unconnected with naval warfare were now being developed by Goodeve’s team. Among these was an apparatus known in the department as “Hajile.”
For security purposes every project launched by the Wheezers and Dodgers was given a code name. A complete cover plan was also drawn up, and where several different firms were providing parts for a weapon or device each would be given a plausible but entirely different idea as to the real function of the object they were manufacturing.
Ironically enough, the only occasion when this procedure was jeopardized followed a visit to Goodeve by a representative of the Naval Intelligence Department. Announcing his identity, he asked to see the MOST SECRET list of projects, and jotted down the names of all the contractors then carrying out work for D.M.W.D.
Three days later Goodeve was surprised to receive a phone call from him.
“I’m speaking from Ipswich,” he boomed. “I say, you know the job this firm here are supposed to be doing? Well, they don’t know anything about it. I’ve asked them for particulars, and it may surprise you to know that they’re doing no work at all on the thing you mentioned to me.”
Goodeve was so startled that he almost dropped the receiver. “Of course they don’t,” he shouted; “you, of all people, ought to have realized that.”
The whole security of that particular project had been compromised by a member of the very Admiralty department responsible for preventing leakages of secret information, and the existing cover plan had to be scrapped there and then.
Happily, blunders like this were rare, and D.M.W.D.’s own security precautions worked well. Some of the code names they chose for their more unorthodox ventures must have puzzled the Intelligence experts (who had to vet them) as much as any enemy agent, and Hajile was a case in point.
The project originated with a request from the Army, who wanted to find a way of dropping heavy objects — vehicles, guns, and stores — from the air, and they stressed that a high speed of fall was essential; lessening the danger of drift, it allowed the load to be dropped more accurately, and it also cut down the risk of damage from ground fire.
Realizing that any contrivance depending on parachutes would be unsuitable for this purpose, D.M.W.D. tackled the problem from another angle, searching for a method of slowing up the falling load at the last minute, and eventually they hit on the idea of using the blast of a nest of rockets to cushion the impact of the loaded platform on the ground. The object to be dropped was fitted into a sort of harness, girdled by a huge ‘candelabra’ of rockets, and the plan envisaged this falling free through the air until it was a few feet off the ground. At this moment all the rockets would fire at once, decelerating the speed of the platform so powerfully that, in theory at least, it would touch down quite gently.
To the observers of its trials it was a highly spectacular affair. In the last crucial seconds of its flight to earth the whole apparatus was enshrouded in a pillar of smoke and flame, and Jock Davies, with the sailor’s traditional store of Biblical quotations at his fingertips, instantly suggested its code name from the Second Book of Kings.
“Look at it!” he remarked as he watched one of the earliest trials . . . “It’s Elijah in reverse.”
Guggenheim did the early mathematical calculations, and the task of developing Hajile was given to Duncan Bruce and “Paul” Roberson, a young research chemist who joined the department in September 1942. Others assisting in the trials of the apparatus included Rivers-Bowerman, an Irishman who helped to overcome many of the snags which cropped up with the switch-gear and the crash pans on which the loads were dropped, and Louis Klemantaski, renowned in the motor-racing world before the war as a high-speed photographer. Both were characters. Rivers-Bowerman had the typical Irishman’s dislike of being hurried. He liked time to think things out, and whenever he felt anybody was trying to rush him over some problem he would pick up a newspaper, or any document lying to hand, and begin reading it slowly and ostentatiously, as if to say, “I’ll do the job for you … but only in my own time.”
Klemantaski had joined the department by the same route as Menhinick. He began the war in the Army, as an instructor in the R.A.O.C., but when the desert fighting had been in progress for some time he found himself detached to work at a factory in the Midlands producing filters for Army vehicles. The Army had found that engines were rapidly disintegrating in North Africa through sand wear, and photographic study of oil and air deposits was urgently needed. To carry this out they sought the services of a well-known photographer of fish and flies, but this specialist was occupied elsewhere, and the job fell to Klemantaski. He was much relieved when a summons from the Admiralty freed him for more eventful pursuits.
The first aim of Bruce and Roberson was to devise a means of setting off the rockets of Hajile at the right height above the ground. The obvious answer seemed to be some form of plummet which would dangle below the apparatus and fire the rockets as soon as it hit the earth. The problem was not as simple as this, however, for any type of plummet used would have to be heavy enough to run out ahead of the falling load, competing with a fierce upward wind, and yet be sensitive enough to react immediately it landed on any yielding surface like grass, shrubs, or heather.
To experiment with this unusual type of switch-gear they had to find a place where they could rig up wires and slide the plummet down them. Bruce thought of the lift shaft at Hampstead Tube Station, but this proved to be 30 feet short of the depth they needed to achieve the required velocity. Some one then suggested the great hangar at Cardington, and there Roberson spent most of November 1942 clambering precariously about on the catwalk high in the roof, and sliding plummets of different shapes, weights, and sizes down a long wire. A naval stoker had been detailed to assist him, but he proved unable to face heights, and after Roberson had had to rescue him from his first climbing attempt, when the stoker became paralysed with fright half-way up an 80-foot fire-escape, it seemed less trouble to carry on with the experiments unaided. In time Roberson got quite used to crawling about on the narrow girders, but he was glad when the trials ended. Perpetually shrouded in a dense, clammy fog, Cardington was a depressing place, and the only really contented mortal there that chill November was the resident observer, who used to ascend to 2000 feet every morning in a balloon, and spend the day sitting happily with a book in the autumn sunshine.
The initial tests completed, the Wheezers and Dodgers aimed for a higher velocity — which meant a greater vertical drop. Bruce took the plummet and its accessories to an airfield on Salisbury Plain where a fellow-scientist was busily engaged in dropping blood-plasma bottles from a captive balloon on to the concrete apron of the runway. The height there was all right for the plummet tests, as Bruce found with a sickening certainty when he went up in the swaying basket, but there was no variety in the surface of the ground below to give the fuse a proper test. It would have worked deceptively well on the hard concrete. So they loaded all the gear into a truck and drove to Birnbeck.
When Hajile had been adapted to fire over water they began full-scale trials, dropping the contraption, loaded with a large block of concrete, into the sea from a Lancaster bomber. On his early runs the pilot deposited it too far from the end of the pier for Klemantaski to film the descent, so he was asked to aim as close to Birnbeck as possible. This request proved ill-advised, for the pilot was now on his mettle. Taking off again, he made a couple of dummy runs, and then released the huge concrete block and its girdle of rockets from 2000 feet with alarming accuracy.
As it came screaming through the air the watchers on the pier gazed open-mouthed. Then, suddenly realizing that it was going to score a direct hit, every one started running for dear life down the long plank roadway. The concrete ‘bomb’ landed squarely on the roof of D.M.W.D.’s engineering shop. It sheared through a massive steel joist, and then demolished the covered way leading to the steamer jetty. Happily there were no casualties, though the Wren cooks preparing lunch a few feet from the wrecked shelter thought the end of the world had come.
After that the bomb-aimer was requested to temper accuracy with discretion, and the trials proceeded uneventfully. At first, with four rockets fitted round the concrete slab, the load hit the sea fairly heavily. They tried with eight rockets, and Hajile fulfilled all expectations. Hurtling towards the water, the slab was checked just above the waves, and then it slid gently below the surface.
These tests over the sea showed that there was nothing wrong with the general theory, but the gear now had to be adapted for land trials. By March 1943 the Hajile team had perfected the switch unit, and they offered to demonstrate this to Richardson from a tree in Hyde Park. For security purposes they took the gear to an enclosed Ack-Ack site, and the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter, serving there as an A.T.S. officer, was greatly surprised to find Roberson, in his naval uniform, wrestling with a tangled mass of wire in the top-most branches of a tall dm.
When the plummet passed its test successfully D.M.W.D. had to find some practical task for Hajile to carry out. They knew from experience that the speed of getting any device into service depended not a little on rousing the interest of people in high places. A successful practical demonstration of what Hajile could do would hasten its progress, and Duncan Bruce recalled a remark made to him by Sir Denistoun Burney in the early stages of the Hajile experiments. Burney, inventor of the minesweeping paravane, had been concerned with the project from the start, and often attended D.M.W.D. progress meetings on Hajile, for he was interested in developing a special type of rocket. He had the grand manner of the elder statesman, and after one meeting he awed Bruce by observing, “Young man . . . you’ll never get anywhere without Cabinet support” — somewhat depressing advice for a junior R.N.V.R. officer who had never even set eyes on a Cabinet Minister!
As a start it seemed a good idea to drop a jeep from an aircraft, but jeeps were hard to procure — especially by people who wanted to throw them out of aeroplanes at 2000 feet and Roberson had little success until he called on the American Navy in Grosvenor Square.
To a Commander on the supply staff he explained rather nervously why he wanted two jeeps, but he had hardly finished speaking when his new-found ally grabbed the telephone. “Say, Jake,” he said urgently, “come on up. There’s a guy here who wants two jeeps — and, boy, he’s going to beat the living daylights out of them!”
So Roberson got his jeeps, and dropping trials began in earnest. The first of these was a singularly unsuccessful affair, held on a bitterly cold winter’s day. First the aircraft refused to start. Then snow fell heavily, damping the rocket fuses, and when, finally, they dropped the jeep the Hajile equipment failed to function at all. Falling at 40 feet per second on the small pilot parachute alone, Jeep Number One went straight into the ground with a shattering crash. A fortnight later they tried again, adding a lot more rockets. This time the jeep survived the drop relatively undamaged, but when the smoke cleared away they found the vehicle was upside down.
They designed a special crash-pan to take the initial shock of the impact, and altered the setting of the rockets, but still the load continued to somersault on landing. Hajile, in fact, was in a thoroughly obstinate mood, and the thrust of the rockets varied in such an unpredictable way that the Wheezers and Dodgers never knew what to expect. Only one rocket had to fail for the whole decelerating apparatus to be thrown out of gear, and sometimes when the plummet struck the ground the whole cargo on the crashpan would be hurled violently skyward, falling back with a tremendous, earth-shaking crump which tore all the fittings apart. Close to the ground the gear was surrounded by so much smoke and flame that it was difficult to ascertain precisely what happened at the moment of firing.
After one sequence of fairly successful drops a demonstration was staged for representatives of all three Services on Newbury Downs, using large blocks of concrete again, for by this time jeeps were becoming a rather expensive item. It was a lovely still summer day, but the rockets were on their very worst behaviour. When Hajile was launched from the aircraft some of the rockets failed to fire at all, and others which did set alight to the pilot parachutes. The concrete block consequently hit the ground with terrific force, and buried itself — as Bruce succinctly remarked afterwards — “right up to the maker’s name.”
Much discouraged, the Hajile team realized that they would have to start almost from the beginning again, carrying out exhaustive tests with both the plummet and the rockets. For this purpose aircraft drops were not altogether satisfactory; when Hajile was released from a great height it was impossible to tell exactly where it would land, and the observers could not therefore get close enough to detect the precise sequence of events when things went wrong. Roberson still thought that the continued capsizing of the cargo might be due to the drift of Hajile in the wind, but another of the Wheezers and Dodgers, who had got near enough on one occasion to peer through the smoke, swore that he saw the crash-pan turn on end appreciably after it touched down.
Richardson decided to transfer the trials to Shoeburyness, and try suspending the whole apparatus from a giant crane. Roberson was therefore ordered to ring up “the Superintendent, Chatham Dockyard,” and arrange for the necessary facilities.
Little versed in the organization of the Navy’s shore establishments, he followed his instructions to the letter, and when he got through to Chatham he demanded to speak to the Superintendent of the Dockyard in person. After some delay a voice asked what he wanted, and Roberson began issuing a stream of orders about the crane, the storing of the gear, and the assistance he would need.
“I’m not in the habit of dealing with minor matters of this kind,” came an irate response. “Do you know who you are talking to, young man?”
“No,” said Roberson, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“This is Admiral — here.”
“Oh, is it?” said Roberson, much alarmed. “Do you know who this is at this end?”
“No, I don’t,” boomed the voice.
“Thank God for that!” remarked Roberson, quickly replacing the receiver.
The D.M.W.D. team had not been long at Shoeburyness when they solved the capsizing mystery. With Hajile suspended from the crane they could now get much closer to it with safety, and Rivers-Bowerman thought of an ingenious way of dispelling the rocket smoke so that every detail of the touchdown could be plainly seen. From some undisclosed source he obtained an old Skua aircraft, and this was placed end-on on to the crane. Whenever Hajile was to be dropped the Skua’s engine was started up, and the slipstream blew the smoke sideways, enabling Klemantaski to film the landing in slow motion.
They then discovered that as the girdle of rockets fired the colossal jet of cordite which beat down on the ground was digging a cup-shaped pit in the soil. This, acting as a reflector, focused a fierce jet of air on to the underside of the crash-pan as it came to rest, and overturned it.
To counter this further research was needed, and by the time all Hajile’s teething troubles had been cured there was no chance to test the apparatus in action. It was, in fact, D-Day when the last memorable incident in its long development story occurred — and Hajile itself could not be blamed for what happened on that occasion.
Roberson, Rivers-Bowerman, and Klemantaski were all at Shoeburyness that historic morning, and before trials began they stood beneath the crane, discussing the news which had filtered through about the invasion. Hajile lay on the ground alongside them, the framework of iron girders which normally held the concrete block resting on a raised platform of railway sleepers.
Not realizing that the switches were closed, an electrician making some routine test of his own connected up the firing circuit. To his astonishment, all the rockets fired at once, and the great mass of ironwork rose straight into the air.
Rivers-Bowerman was felled by a blow on the jaw, and Robertson, who was actually standing in the middle of the circle of rockets, had a miraculous escape, for he was completely engulfed in flames as the contraption took off.
Forty feet above the ground Hajile lurched sideways. It crashed back to earth almost on top of Klemantaski, who was staggering about, blinded by a blast of sand which had caught him full in the face. He did not recover his sight for several days.
To the Wheezers and Dodgers Hajile involved a seemingly endless programme of research which brought more than the normal share of frustrations and disappointments. But its importance amply justified the effort expended on it. Roberson — condemned to spend the whole of his naval career on this one laborious task — occasionally gave vent to uncomplimentary opinions about deceleration in all its forms. But when the war was over it was a thesis on Hajile and its problems which gained for him a prized degree.
16
THE TOYSHOP
So numerous and varied were the projects launched from the office in Lower Regent Street that changes in D.M.W.D.’s staff proved constantly necessary. But the department never became unwieldy. Goodeve had no intention of allowing it to get bogged down by weight of numbers. He wanted the Wheezers and Dodgers to preserve a constant sense of initiative.
He chose his officers with great care. And he instilled in them all the tradition of never accepting defeat . . . never accepting without question the opinion of recognized authorities on any matter. Although junior in status the officers chosen for D.M.W.D. were often men of great experience and technical ability, and they found themselves bearing responsibilities out of all proportion to their actual rank. From Jock Davies and Goodeve they got all the backing they wanted, however, and the Wheezers and Dodgers were a happy team.
Goodeve himself had one curious trait. Even in the most critical times he rarely came into the office much before noon. Then he would slip gradually into gear, working with ever-increasing intensity until midnight or later. During the daytime at least 50 per cent, of his energy was spent in getting to know people, in making and refreshing contacts. His best brainwork was done at night.
