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Speaker 1: Pushkin. November nineteen thirty nine. It's been two months since

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Speaker 1: Nazi Germany invaded Poland and one month since Poland surrendered.

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Speaker 1: France and Britain have declared war, but there's not much fighting.

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Speaker 1: An uneasy quiet has descended over Western Europe, with neither

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Speaker 1: side keen to take major risks. It's obvious that the

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Speaker 1: choet won't last, and a German executive named Hans Ferdinand

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Speaker 1: Meyer has picked a side. Maya is visiting Oslo on

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Speaker 1: a business trip. He doesn't look much, a neat middle

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Speaker 1: aged fellow in a suit who works in some sort

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Speaker 1: of corporate research lab back in Germany. Nobody bats an

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Speaker 1: eyelid when he descends from his room to the lobby

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Speaker 1: of Oslo's elegant Hotel Bristol and asks the head porter.

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Speaker 2: Would it be possible please to borrow a typewriter.

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Speaker 1: Maya takes the typewriter back upstairs to his room. He

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Speaker 1: closes and carefully locks the door, pulls on a pair

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Speaker 1: of gloves to obscure his fingerprints. What He's about to

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Speaker 1: do is dangerous, very dangerous. If the Gestapo ever find

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Speaker 1: out he's a dead man, then Maya's gloved fingers begin

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Speaker 1: to type perhaps the most spectacular intelligence leak in history.

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Speaker 1: In a terse but wide ranging pair of reports, he

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Speaker 1: describes Nazi Germany's most sensitive military technologies, their bomber production,

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Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier being built in Keel Harbor, the remote

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Speaker 1: controlled gliders fitted with large explosive charges. Maya deftly outlines

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Speaker 1: the Nazi autopilot system, which is under development and which

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Speaker 1: will allow them to take down barrage balloon defenses using

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Speaker 1: unmanned planes. He keeps typing, describing the ballistic missiles that

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Speaker 1: the German Army are developing and the name of the

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Speaker 1: research center. He provides the location just north of Berlin

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Speaker 1: of the R and D laboratories of the German Air Force,

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Speaker 1: the Luftwaffer, and suggests that.

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Speaker 2: It would be a rewarding target.

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Speaker 1: How did Mayer learn all this? Some of its gossip,

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Speaker 1: some of it's wrong, but much of what he writes

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Speaker 1: is specific, technically rigorous and ab solutely accurate. And this

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Speaker 1: he knows because he's the director of the Seamen's research

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Speaker 1: laboratory in Berlin, and the scientists working for him have

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Speaker 1: increasingly been producing cutting edge electronics for military purposes. Shortly

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Speaker 1: after Maya borrows the typewriter. He arranges to have his

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Speaker 1: two letters delivered to Oslo's British embassy for the embassy staff.

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Speaker 1: They're mysterious, sensational baffling. It seems to be some of

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Speaker 1: Nazi Germany's most closely guarded secrets, signed only with the

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Speaker 1: curious name Martin who sent them? Can they be believed?

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Speaker 1: Maya must be convinced that some deep evil lurks at

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Speaker 1: the heart of the Nazi regime because he's willing to

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Speaker 1: risk his life to warn the British about what the

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Speaker 1: Nazi military is capable of. But will the British listen?

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Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and this is cautionary tales. Ostriches do not,

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Speaker 1: in fact bury their heads in the sand when trouble

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Speaker 1: is approaching, but sometimes people do. That's what this cautionary

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Speaker 1: tale is all about. Why do we manage to ignore

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Speaker 1: the obvious?

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Speaker 3: It should have.

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Speaker 1: Been clear that Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, which became known

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Speaker 1: as the Oslo Report, were worth taking seriously. Yes, this

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Speaker 1: mysterious Martil fellow might have been a crank, or the

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Speaker 1: letters could have been fakes, a double bluff planted by

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Speaker 1: the Nazis. To deceive the British about their real capabilities,

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Speaker 1: But the Oslo report included several paragraphs that could hardly

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Speaker 1: be a Nazi bluff. They gave a detailed and authoritative

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Speaker 1: description of German radio wave technology. At the time, the

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Speaker 1: British tended to be rather sniffy about German engineering. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the Germans could do things cheaply, but they were hardly

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Speaker 1: at the cutting edge. Meyer's report suggested otherwise. He explained

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Speaker 1: that the Luftwruffer was developing guidance systems using radio beams

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Speaker 1: to help bombers drop their deadly payload at exactly the

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Speaker 1: right spot, the equivalent of satellite navigation. Before satellites existed,

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Speaker 1: Germany would be able to bomb British targets even at night.

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Speaker 1: Meyer also described Germany's defensive radar technology, short wave radio transmitters,

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Speaker 1: which bounced signals off incoming aircraft and used the reflections

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Speaker 1: as an early warning system. If the British sent bombers

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Speaker 1: over Germany, the radar stations would see them coming and

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Speaker 1: Germany's fighter groups would have easy pickings. He gave the

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Speaker 1: details the wavelengths being used, even the mathematical formulas involved.

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Speaker 1: This couldn't be a bluff. At the very least, it

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Speaker 1: proved that someone in Germany knew all about radar, which

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Speaker 1: the British had assumed was their closely guarded secret. Radar

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Speaker 1: technology would be pivotal in the Second World War, as

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Speaker 1: vividly described in Tom Whipple's book The Battle of the Beams,

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Speaker 1: and Hans Ferdinand Meyer's brave decision to expose the secrets

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Speaker 1: of German radar could be pivotal too, if the British

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Speaker 1: took it seriously. If in the early nineteen thirties a

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Speaker 1: senior British politician stood up in Parliament to explain the

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Speaker 1: likely course of a future war.

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Speaker 4: It is well also for the man in the street

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Speaker 4: to realize that there is no power on earth that

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Speaker 4: can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him,

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Speaker 4: the bomber will always get through.

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Speaker 1: That seemed all too true at the time. There was

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Speaker 1: no defense against the new bombers that were being developed.

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Speaker 1: They flew too high to be easily intercepted, and would

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Speaker 1: attack without warning. In nineteen thirty seven, the Luftwaffir seemed

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Speaker 1: to prove the point by laying waste to the Spanish

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Speaker 1: market town of Gernica with one of the first major

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Speaker 1: bombings of a civilian population. But when Gernica was attacked,

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Speaker 1: the British had already been working on a secret defense

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Speaker 1: for a couple of years, and by nineteen thirty nine

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Speaker 1: that defense was fully prepared. An invisible network of radar

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Speaker 1: stations blanketed the country in places with reliable electricity supplies,

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Speaker 1: good visibility out over the sea, and that would not

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Speaker 1: gravely interfere with grouse shooting. This was Britain, after all.

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Speaker 1: If the grouse shooting was disrupted, then the Nazis had

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Speaker 1: already won. These radar stations would send out pulses of

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Speaker 1: invisible light radio waves and detect the reflection of those

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Speaker 1: pulses from incoming objects. The Royal Air Force would get

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Speaker 1: advanced notice of approaching bombers and could send fighters up

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Speaker 1: to intercept them. Guided by radar, the outnumbered fighters of

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Speaker 1: the Royal Air Force could be mustered and focused where

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Speaker 1: they were most needed. The heroic few could stand up

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Speaker 1: to the mighty looftbuffer. So when Hans Ferdinand Meyer was

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Speaker 1: typing his secret Oslo report early in November nineteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 1: radar was old news to the British What was new

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Speaker 1: and should have been a dramatic revelation, was the fact

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Speaker 1: that the Germans had radar too. Meyer's brave act of

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Speaker 1: espionage could save many British lives if they paid attention

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Speaker 1: to the Oslo report. If not, they'd have to find

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Speaker 1: out about German radar the hard way. On December the eighteenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, a few weeks after Meyer had typed

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Speaker 1: his report, it was a cold, bright day over the

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Speaker 1: northwest coast of Germany and the naval base of Wilhelmshaven.

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Speaker 1: To the Royal Air Force, it was a lovely day

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Speaker 1: for the precision bombing of the German fleet. Not a

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Speaker 1: bomb would be wasted, not a civilian would be harmed.

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Speaker 1: The conditions were ideal that all assumed the bombers would

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Speaker 1: attack without warning if the defenders knew they were coming. However,

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Speaker 1: the clear conditions would be a double edged sword.

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Speaker 5: Splendid weather for fighters.

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Speaker 1: A Pine's a luftwaffer fighter commander. He's not really expecting

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Speaker 1: a British attack, merely hoping for one. His assistant shakes

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Speaker 1: his head regretfully.

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Speaker 2: The Tommies are not such fools. They won't come today.

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Speaker 1: On the tiny German island of hellegeraland less than half

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Speaker 1: a square mile in size, electronic eyes have been installed.

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Speaker 1: German radar there and elsewhere will give plenty of warning

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Speaker 1: of any incoming bombers. But the British, despite Maya's warning,

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Speaker 1: are convinced that only they and not the Germans, have

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Speaker 1: cracked the secrets of radar. The pilots of the twenty

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Speaker 1: two bombers heading towards Wilhelmshaven have every reason to believe

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Speaker 1: they will catch the defenders completely unawares. When the radar

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Speaker 1: operators on Hellegaland notify their superiors of the incoming bombers,

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Speaker 1: they're met with disbelief.

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Speaker 2: You are plotting seagulls.

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Speaker 1: With the winter sun low in the southern sky, the

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Speaker 1: defensive LUFTWAFFEFI would have plenty of cover for their counter attack.

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Speaker 1: Could the British really be so foolish as to try

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Speaker 1: something they would? The images on the radar scope aren't seagulls,

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Speaker 1: their twenty two sitting ducks. Were the German fighters given

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Speaker 1: so much warning by the radar system, the incoming British

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Speaker 1: bombers don't stand a chance. More than half of them

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Speaker 1: are shot down as the rest flee to safety. Having

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Speaker 1: barely made attempt in Germany's fleet, the utter route of

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Speaker 1: the bomber force did prompt to rethink in future the

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Speaker 1: Royal Air Force would attack at night. Of course, radar

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Speaker 1: also works perfectly well at night, but the idea that

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Speaker 1: the Germans had radar had yet to penetrate the skulls

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Speaker 1: of the British elite. Cautionary tales will be back after

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Speaker 1: the break, and just a warning there will be a

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Speaker 1: brief mention of suicide. Two years earlier, in nineteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: relations between the German Luffaffer and the British Royal Air

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Speaker 1: Force had been cautious, at cordial. Officers from each side

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Speaker 1: would visit the other, chatting diplomatically about the friendship between

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Speaker 1: the two great nations. One visiting German officer took a

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Speaker 1: surprisingly frank line of questioning.

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Speaker 3: How are you getting on with your experiments in the

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Speaker 3: detection by radio of aircraft approaching your shores?

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Speaker 1: He asked his astonished hosts.

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Speaker 3: He added, cheerfully, we have known for some time that

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Speaker 3: you were developing a system of radio detections, and so

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Speaker 3: are we, and we think we are ahead of you.

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Speaker 1: The British didn't need Meyer to warn them about German radar.

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Speaker 1: A Loftbraffer officer had done the same two years before

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Speaker 1: war broke out. Somehow the lesson didn't stick. So why

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Speaker 1: do we sometimes deny the obvious? One answer is that

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Speaker 1: maybe what seems obvious with hindsight wasn't obvious at the time.

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Speaker 1: The Oslo report, coupled with the indiscreet visiting officer, should

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Speaker 1: have been evidence enough. But that's easy to say. With hindsight.

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Speaker 1: There would have been dozens of informants, hundreds of reports,

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Speaker 1: countless rumors. Different people in the British military will have

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Speaker 1: heard different things, and not every piece of information would

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Speaker 1: have reached the right person. Some reports will have been

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Speaker 1: dismissed as junk, Some will have been too sensitive to

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Speaker 1: share widely. A conversation with a visiting German and an

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Speaker 1: officer's mess in nineteen thirty seven might have been reported somewhere,

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Speaker 1: filed and forgotten, or not reported at all. We have

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Speaker 1: amidst all the noise, it can be difficult to pick

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Speaker 1: out the signal we are. In their book Predictable Surprises,

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Speaker 1: Max Beseman and Michael Watkins call this an integration failure.

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Speaker 1: An organization may have all the information it needs, but

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Speaker 1: sifting out what really matters and assembling those disparate clues

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Speaker 1: into the true picture can be a near impossible task.

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Speaker 1: The British weren't the only ones to suffer integration failures.

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Speaker 1: The Germans, for example, regarded their radar system as the

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Speaker 1: mother of all secrets, yet they also published publicity folksographs

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Speaker 1: showing radar aerials clearly visible. This was because the radar

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Speaker 1: system was so secret that the German censors weren't told

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Speaker 1: that it was a secret, Nor were the Americans immune.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the most famous intelligence failure of the war

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Speaker 1: was arguably an integration failure. The Japanese attack on Pearl

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Speaker 1: Harbor came as a complete surprise to the US forces.

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Speaker 1: There shouldn't the Americans have seen the Japanese coming. The

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Speaker 1: clues were there. Several American and British strategists had warned

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Speaker 1: that Pearl Harbour would be a tempting target for a

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Speaker 1: Japanese attack. US Japanese relations were extremely tense, and war

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Speaker 1: seemed a distinct threat. An American codebreaker, Genevieve Grojan, had

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Speaker 1: cracked a Japanese diplomatic code six weeks before the attack,

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Speaker 1: she exposed a message between the Tokyo government and the

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Speaker 1: Japanese embassy in Washington, noting there is more reason than

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Speaker 1: ever before for us to arm ourselves to the teeth

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Speaker 1: for all out war. Just a week before the attack,

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Speaker 1: another message was deciphered. The Japanese ambassador in Berlin was

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Speaker 1: instructed by Tokyo to warn Adolf Hitler that war may

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Speaker 1: suddenly break out between the Anglo Saxon nations and Japan.

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Speaker 1: This war may come quicker than anyone dreams. With hindsight,

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Speaker 1: this all seems very obvious, so obvious, in fact, that

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Speaker 1: some people believe in a conspiracy theory that the US

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Speaker 1: or the UK deliberately ignored the warnings in the hope

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Speaker 1: that Japan would attack and American voters would support the

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Speaker 1: US entering the war. The truth is more prosaic. There

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Speaker 1: were lots of hints of trouble, but lots of noise

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Speaker 1: and false alarms too. Different decision makers had different clues,

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Speaker 1: and these clues didn't reach the right people at the

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Speaker 1: right time. In her influential book about Pearl Harbor, the

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Speaker 1: historian ROBERTA. Wohlstetter wrote, it is only to be expected

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Speaker 1: that the relevant signals so clearly audible after an event,

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Speaker 1: will be partially obscured before the event by surrounding noise.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps the British failed to understand that the Germans had

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Speaker 1: radar because they were simply suffering an integration failure. If so,

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Speaker 1: they were about to get another very clear signal amidst

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Speaker 1: the noise. In December nineteen thirty nine, the same month

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Speaker 1: as the disastrous raid on Wilhelmshaven and six weeks after

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Speaker 1: Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, another German named Hans would present

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Speaker 1: the British with another opportunity to learn what they faced.

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Speaker 1: This fellow is Hans Langsdorf, captain of the Graf Spey,

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Speaker 1: a mighty German battleship. The graf Spey had been prowling

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Speaker 1: around the South Atlantic, sinking merchant ships after first allowing

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Speaker 1: their civilian cruise to disembark. Captain Langsdorf regarded naval warfare

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Speaker 1: as a matter of honor. After all, Still, he was

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Speaker 1: avoiding a real fight, since German naval doctrine at the

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Speaker 1: time was to attack only civilian ships, causing maximum trouble

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Speaker 1: for minimum risk. Captain Langsdorf and the Graf Spey were

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Speaker 1: causing a lot of damage to the Allied war effort,

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Speaker 1: and the Royal Navy resolved to hunt them down near

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Speaker 1: the huge River Plate estuary where Argentina, Uruguay and the

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Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean meet. Just after dawn on the thirteenth of December,

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Speaker 1: three British cruisers spotted the Graf Spay's smoking funnel on

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Speaker 1: the horizon and gave chase. That was a brave move,

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Speaker 1: even with three against one. The Graf Spey was a larger,

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Speaker 1: better armed and armored ship, a formidable opponent. Graf Spey

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Speaker 1: concentrated its fire on one ship, the Exeter, and within

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Speaker 1: minutes Exeter had lost the torpedo crews, communication systems, an

250
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Speaker 1: entire gun turret, with most of the men on the bridge.

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Speaker 1: Exeter's captain was lucky to survive, wounded in both legs

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Speaker 1: and both eyes. The British pulled back to assess the situation.

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Speaker 1: Graf Spey had been hit more than twenty times that

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Speaker 1: the damage seemed superficial. The British didn't know that they'd

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Speaker 1: been lucky. One of Exeter's shells had shattered Graf Spey's

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00:21:05,770 --> 00:21:09,850
Speaker 1: fuel filtering plant. The German battleship would run out of

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Speaker 1: fuel within hours. Graft Spey dashed towards Montevideo, the nearest port,

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Speaker 1: which was in neutral Uruguay. Once there, Captain Langsdorf frantically

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00:21:23,450 --> 00:21:27,250
Speaker 1: tried to repair his battleship while the British scrambled to

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Speaker 1: assemble reinforcements. Langsdorf was alarmed when he was informed that

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Speaker 1: a British communication had just been intercepted. The British ambassador

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00:21:37,330 --> 00:21:41,490
Speaker 1: to Uruguay had ordered fuel in order to supply the

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Speaker 1: new British battleships that were arriving. Langsdorf's crew were starting

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Speaker 1: to panic. One officer was convinced that, gazing out from Montevideo,

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Speaker 1: he had seen lurking on the horizon not only a

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Speaker 1: British battleship, but an aircraft carrier and three destroyers. What

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00:22:02,770 --> 00:22:06,130
Speaker 1: none of them knew was that the ambassador's fuel order

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00:22:06,770 --> 00:22:11,890
Speaker 1: was a bluff. Knowing his communications would be intercepted, he

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Speaker 1: had paid for fuel for ships that didn't exist. Langsdorf

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00:22:18,170 --> 00:22:24,410
Speaker 1: felfret and bowed to what seemed inevitable. He limped the

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00:22:24,450 --> 00:22:29,370
Speaker 1: graft spay out to the river Plate estuary planted explosives

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Speaker 1: on her hull. And sent her to the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the sea. Sadly, for Captain Langsdorf, the bottom of the

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00:22:38,970 --> 00:22:43,650
Speaker 1: sea was only twelve yards down. Most of the ship

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00:22:43,810 --> 00:22:47,850
Speaker 1: remained above the surface, and photographs of the burning wreck

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00:22:48,170 --> 00:22:51,970
Speaker 1: went around the world, gleefully exploited by the British for

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Speaker 1: propaganda purposes. For Captain Langsdorf, an honorable man, it was

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00:22:58,530 --> 00:23:04,130
Speaker 1: a final humiliation. From a hotel room in nearby Buenos Aidre's,

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Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to his wife and another to

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Speaker 1: his parents. The third letter was addressed to the German government.

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Speaker 2: For a captain with a sense of honor, it goes

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Speaker 2: without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from

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00:23:21,290 --> 00:23:22,170
Speaker 2: that of his ship.

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Speaker 1: He explained, having written the three letters, he spread the

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Speaker 1: Graf Spey's ensign flag out on the floor, lay on

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00:23:30,970 --> 00:23:40,450
Speaker 1: top of it, and shot himself out across the river

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Speaker 1: plate estuary. The smoke from the Graf Spey began to clear.

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Speaker 1: As it did, a sharp eyed observer in British intelligence

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00:23:51,050 --> 00:23:56,330
Speaker 1: noticed something curious in the latest photographs. What was that

290
00:23:56,650 --> 00:24:02,530
Speaker 1: mysterious network of criss crossing wires on Graf Spay's forward tower.

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00:24:03,970 --> 00:24:08,130
Speaker 1: It was now January nineteen forty let me introduce you

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Speaker 1: to a British radar scientist named Labouchere Hilliard Bainbridge Bell.

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll forgive me if I just call him

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Speaker 1: Bainbridge Bell. He thought the array on the graf Spey

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00:24:21,130 --> 00:24:25,770
Speaker 1: looked suspiciously like a radar system. He flew to Uruguay

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00:24:26,090 --> 00:24:30,730
Speaker 1: to find out more. When Bainbridge Bell arrived in Montevideo,

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00:24:31,650 --> 00:24:35,530
Speaker 1: his James Bond style cover story was that he was

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00:24:35,570 --> 00:24:40,690
Speaker 1: a scrap metal dealer. British intelligence had already purchased the

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00:24:40,810 --> 00:24:45,370
Speaker 1: salvage rights, and Bainbridge Bell rode out to graft Spey

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00:24:45,690 --> 00:24:49,890
Speaker 1: to examine his property. Although the ship had already been

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00:24:49,970 --> 00:24:53,970
Speaker 1: picked over by scavengers and gutted by fire, he was

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00:24:54,010 --> 00:24:58,410
Speaker 1: relieved to discover that the radar tower still contained many

303
00:24:58,490 --> 00:25:04,890
Speaker 1: clues for radar tower it undoubtedly was. As he stood

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00:25:04,890 --> 00:25:08,850
Speaker 1: on the sloping deck amidst the wreckage, Bainbridge Bell g

305
00:25:09,090 --> 00:25:13,290
Speaker 1: around at the fragments of a cathode ray display and

306
00:25:13,410 --> 00:25:17,010
Speaker 1: sifted through the gears and the electronics that lay scattered around.

307
00:25:18,050 --> 00:25:21,730
Speaker 1: His report back to the British government was unambiguous.

308
00:25:22,650 --> 00:25:26,130
Speaker 5: The writer's personal opinion is that the installation was a

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00:25:26,210 --> 00:25:31,810
Speaker 5: sixty centimeter RDF radar. It seems strange that no one

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00:25:31,930 --> 00:25:36,170
Speaker 5: was curious before January nineteen forty about the aerial on

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Speaker 5: the control tar.

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00:25:38,570 --> 00:25:43,650
Speaker 1: Strange indeed, but as Tom Whipple explains in the Battle

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00:25:43,690 --> 00:25:48,690
Speaker 1: of the Beams, the lack of curiosity would continue. The

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00:25:48,770 --> 00:25:54,890
Speaker 1: report was filed and then forgotten. Not only had Hans

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00:25:54,970 --> 00:25:59,010
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Meyer warned the British that the Germans had radar,

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00:25:59,770 --> 00:26:03,330
Speaker 1: but Bainbridge Bell had seen the radar with his own eyes.

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00:26:04,170 --> 00:26:08,010
Speaker 1: The official position of the Royal Air Force, however, did

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00:26:08,090 --> 00:26:14,530
Speaker 1: not change Britain, and Britain alone commanded the miracle technology

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00:26:14,810 --> 00:26:20,250
Speaker 1: of radar. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.

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00:26:31,290 --> 00:26:35,650
Speaker 1: By February nineteen forty. It should have been brutally obvious

321
00:26:35,690 --> 00:26:39,610
Speaker 1: that the Germans had radar, but the British refused to

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00:26:39,650 --> 00:26:45,210
Speaker 1: believe it. The delay was costly. Just ask the surviving

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00:26:45,530 --> 00:26:51,170
Speaker 1: crew of HMS Delight. This British destroyer ventured out of

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00:26:51,170 --> 00:26:53,410
Speaker 1: a harbor on the south coast of England in the

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00:26:53,450 --> 00:26:57,490
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen forty, and within a few miles was

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00:26:57,570 --> 00:27:04,330
Speaker 1: sunk by German dive pommers. Six sailors died. How unlucky

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00:27:05,090 --> 00:27:10,650
Speaker 1: thought the British, but it wasn't bad luck good German radar.

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00:27:12,130 --> 00:27:14,570
Speaker 1: The same story could be told by the crews of

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00:27:14,610 --> 00:27:18,770
Speaker 1: British bombers in nineteen forty. The British weren't in a

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00:27:18,810 --> 00:27:22,210
Speaker 1: position to bomb the Germans very often, but when they did,

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00:27:22,650 --> 00:27:29,250
Speaker 1: the losses were unexpectedly grievous, how unlucky. If the British

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00:27:29,250 --> 00:27:31,890
Speaker 1: had woken up to the obvious, the true source of

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00:27:31,930 --> 00:27:34,690
Speaker 1: these losses would have been recognized, and some of them

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00:27:34,770 --> 00:27:38,170
Speaker 1: could have been prevented. If you understand that an enemy

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00:27:38,210 --> 00:27:42,770
Speaker 1: has radar, you can start to take precautions, flying decoy

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00:27:42,810 --> 00:27:48,530
Speaker 1: missions or flying informations that overwhelm the radar operators, or

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00:27:48,570 --> 00:27:52,530
Speaker 1: trying to jam the radar electronically or fill the sky

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00:27:52,690 --> 00:27:57,650
Speaker 1: with false signals. Later in the war, both sides became

339
00:27:57,810 --> 00:28:02,090
Speaker 1: masters of such tricks, but at the start, the Nazis

340
00:28:02,210 --> 00:28:06,130
Speaker 1: were racing to develop countermeasures to British radar, and the

341
00:28:06,130 --> 00:28:08,810
Speaker 1: British didn't even know there was a race at all.

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00:28:11,770 --> 00:28:14,770
Speaker 1: So why did it take the British so long? Was

343
00:28:14,810 --> 00:28:18,410
Speaker 1: it just an integration failure? Were different parts of the

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00:28:18,410 --> 00:28:22,730
Speaker 1: British military receiving different signals and were they unable to

345
00:28:22,770 --> 00:28:25,850
Speaker 1: put them all together and spot the pattern amidst the noise.

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00:28:26,890 --> 00:28:30,130
Speaker 1: I discussed this question with Tom Whipple, the author of

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00:28:30,330 --> 00:28:33,330
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Beams. He pointed out that there

348
00:28:33,450 --> 00:28:37,850
Speaker 1: was one British intelligence analyst who didn't have any trouble

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00:28:37,890 --> 00:28:44,010
Speaker 1: at all piecing together the pattern. His name was R. V. Jones.

350
00:28:44,850 --> 00:28:47,330
Speaker 1: If you've heard our series on the V two rocket,

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00:28:47,850 --> 00:28:50,930
Speaker 1: R V. Jones was the man who rightly warned Winston

352
00:28:51,050 --> 00:28:55,250
Speaker 1: Churchill that Germany was developing the V two ballistic missile

353
00:28:55,810 --> 00:28:59,410
Speaker 1: at pain and Munder. Jones was just as sharp on

354
00:28:59,490 --> 00:29:03,810
Speaker 1: the question of German radar. He didn't miss much. In

355
00:29:03,850 --> 00:29:07,450
Speaker 1: May nineteen forty he informed his colleagues that it was

356
00:29:07,810 --> 00:29:13,210
Speaker 1: almost certain that Germany had radar. In July nineteen forty

357
00:29:13,450 --> 00:29:18,050
Speaker 1: he wrote another short report summarizing the evidence. A prisoner

358
00:29:18,130 --> 00:29:21,370
Speaker 1: of war had admitted that the German Navy had range

359
00:29:21,410 --> 00:29:25,250
Speaker 1: finding radar. German planes had been spotted with what seemed

360
00:29:25,290 --> 00:29:29,850
Speaker 1: to be radar systems. Eavesdropping on German radio revealed that

361
00:29:29,970 --> 00:29:33,690
Speaker 1: pilots were celebrating the use of a code name system

362
00:29:33,730 --> 00:29:38,010
Speaker 1: to successfully intercept British planes. And of course, there was

363
00:29:38,050 --> 00:29:41,970
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report and the discovery of a fragmentary radar

364
00:29:42,050 --> 00:29:46,890
Speaker 1: system on the graft spay. R V Jones declared it.

365
00:29:46,930 --> 00:29:51,490
Speaker 2: Is safe to conclude that the Germans have an RDF system.

366
00:29:52,250 --> 00:29:57,690
Speaker 1: They had radar. Jones pulled together much of the relevant evidence,

367
00:29:58,330 --> 00:30:03,210
Speaker 1: drew the obvious conclusion in plain language, and circulated his

368
00:30:03,290 --> 00:30:08,290
Speaker 1: analysis to Winston Churchill's chief scientific adviser and several other

369
00:30:08,530 --> 00:30:13,610
Speaker 1: senior p This wasn't a Pearl Harbor situation. It wasn't

370
00:30:13,650 --> 00:30:17,490
Speaker 1: an integration failure. The men who needed to know the

371
00:30:17,570 --> 00:30:27,770
Speaker 1: truth were told it, and they refused to believe. Early

372
00:30:27,770 --> 00:30:33,210
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one, a mysterious figure was seen standing

373
00:30:33,290 --> 00:30:37,570
Speaker 1: on the south coast of England pointing a mysterious array

374
00:30:37,690 --> 00:30:43,330
Speaker 1: of aerials out over the sea towards occupied France. The

375
00:30:43,410 --> 00:30:47,290
Speaker 1: locals were alarmed, and this dastardly fellow was soon in

376
00:30:47,330 --> 00:30:50,890
Speaker 1: the custody of the police as a suspected German spy.

377
00:30:52,010 --> 00:30:57,330
Speaker 1: He was, in fact a frustrated British scientist named Derrick Garrard.

378
00:30:58,450 --> 00:31:02,210
Speaker 1: Garrard was waiting to receive permission to join the intelligence

379
00:31:02,290 --> 00:31:06,890
Speaker 1: team of the formidable r V Jones, but his security

380
00:31:06,930 --> 00:31:11,090
Speaker 1: clearance had been slow to arrive, and Deck Garrard was

381
00:31:11,130 --> 00:31:13,530
Speaker 1: in a hurry. There was a war on after all.

382
00:31:14,290 --> 00:31:17,050
Speaker 1: He convinced the police to release him and headed straight

383
00:31:17,170 --> 00:31:20,170
Speaker 1: back to the coast to set up his equipment. Again.

384
00:31:20,730 --> 00:31:24,690
Speaker 1: He was listening for the distinctive pulses of a German

385
00:31:24,770 --> 00:31:29,930
Speaker 1: radar system r V. Jones, meanwhile, had been shown a

386
00:31:29,970 --> 00:31:34,170
Speaker 1: pair of aerial photographs with a strange anomaly in them,

387
00:31:34,250 --> 00:31:41,010
Speaker 1: a blur that suggested a rotating object. Jones already suspected

388
00:31:41,050 --> 00:31:43,930
Speaker 1: that the sight in question on the French coast might

389
00:31:44,090 --> 00:31:48,650
Speaker 1: contain a radar station. He requested that a spitfire fighter

390
00:31:48,690 --> 00:31:52,210
Speaker 1: pilot make the dangerous journey over the sea to get

391
00:31:52,210 --> 00:31:57,810
Speaker 1: a close up photograph strange object. The pilot returned and

392
00:31:57,850 --> 00:32:01,210
Speaker 1: complained that all he had found was an anti aircraft gun,

393
00:32:01,290 --> 00:32:03,810
Speaker 1: a gun which could have killed him. But when the

394
00:32:03,810 --> 00:32:07,810
Speaker 1: photographs were examined, they showed not only the gun, but

395
00:32:08,090 --> 00:32:10,810
Speaker 1: off in the background at the edge of the image

396
00:32:11,610 --> 00:32:17,090
Speaker 1: a radar area. Jones had seen the enemy, and Derek

397
00:32:17,210 --> 00:32:20,890
Speaker 1: Garrard had heard it, the very same radar station that

398
00:32:20,970 --> 00:32:25,850
Speaker 1: the spitfire pilot had photographed. As Jones was studying that photograph,

399
00:32:26,130 --> 00:32:29,690
Speaker 1: Garrard burst in breathless with news that his aeriels on

400
00:32:29,730 --> 00:32:33,370
Speaker 1: the south coast had clearly picked up the radar signal.

401
00:32:34,450 --> 00:32:38,730
Speaker 1: This might come in Handy Jones was due at a

402
00:32:38,770 --> 00:32:42,410
Speaker 1: meeting later that day called by the Royal Air Forces

403
00:32:42,570 --> 00:32:46,290
Speaker 1: Head of Radar and Signals. The agenda for the meeting.

404
00:32:47,010 --> 00:32:51,050
Speaker 1: Did the Germans have radar? At the beginning of the discussion,

405
00:32:51,610 --> 00:32:56,210
Speaker 1: that was still an open question. When r V. Jones

406
00:32:56,490 --> 00:33:00,170
Speaker 1: strolled in with Garrard's report of listening to the radar

407
00:33:00,290 --> 00:33:03,850
Speaker 1: in one hand and the spitfire pilot's photograph of it

408
00:33:03,970 --> 00:33:08,810
Speaker 1: in the other, the question had finally been answered. It

409
00:33:08,890 --> 00:33:15,290
Speaker 1: was February nineteen forty one, fifteen months after Hans Ferdinand

410
00:33:15,410 --> 00:33:19,930
Speaker 1: Meyer had borrowed a typewriter and risked his life to

411
00:33:20,050 --> 00:33:24,210
Speaker 1: warn the British that the Germans had radar.

412
00:33:29,810 --> 00:33:30,010
Speaker 5: R V.

413
00:33:30,210 --> 00:33:34,290
Speaker 1: Jones didn't suffer fools gladly, but he was diplomatic enough

414
00:33:34,850 --> 00:33:38,850
Speaker 1: not to name the fools. Shortly after the war, he

415
00:33:39,010 --> 00:33:41,530
Speaker 1: dryly wrote.

416
00:33:40,730 --> 00:33:44,210
Speaker 2: The evidence and rough performance of German radar had already

417
00:33:44,250 --> 00:33:49,130
Speaker 2: been deduced in summer nineteen forty Despite this evidence, there

418
00:33:49,210 --> 00:33:53,610
Speaker 2: still remained some expert prejudice against believing that the Germans

419
00:33:53,610 --> 00:33:54,210
Speaker 2: had radar.

420
00:33:55,890 --> 00:33:59,130
Speaker 1: Prejudice is the right word. Too. Many of the people

421
00:33:59,170 --> 00:34:02,410
Speaker 1: who mattered had already made up their minds that the

422
00:34:02,450 --> 00:34:07,890
Speaker 1: Germans couldn't have radar. The original sins here were pride

423
00:34:08,170 --> 00:34:13,450
Speaker 1: and wishful things. Pride in British ingenuity meant that British

424
00:34:13,490 --> 00:34:18,250
Speaker 1: scientists and officers were reluctant to admit that German technology

425
00:34:18,370 --> 00:34:21,330
Speaker 1: might be just as good as theirs, and wish for

426
00:34:21,450 --> 00:34:25,890
Speaker 1: thinking the hope that the fearsome German war machine had

427
00:34:25,890 --> 00:34:30,010
Speaker 1: a weak spot their lack of radar. And because the

428
00:34:30,050 --> 00:34:34,170
Speaker 1: British were so determined to disbelieve in German radar, they

429
00:34:34,210 --> 00:34:38,450
Speaker 1: found fault with every piece of contrary evidence that crossed

430
00:34:38,450 --> 00:34:43,090
Speaker 1: their desks. Those bulges on German planes weren't radar, they

431
00:34:43,090 --> 00:34:47,130
Speaker 1: were just bulges. The Oslo report was clearly unreliable, and

432
00:34:47,250 --> 00:34:54,090
Speaker 1: Nazi bluff evidence from interrogated prisoners couldn't be trusted. Psychologists

433
00:34:54,170 --> 00:35:00,010
Speaker 1: call this biased assimilation of information. Claims that support your

434
00:35:00,090 --> 00:35:05,570
Speaker 1: views are seized upon without question. Contrary evidence is dismissed

435
00:35:05,890 --> 00:35:14,010
Speaker 1: or explained away. This is a sadly familiar story to

436
00:35:14,210 --> 00:35:19,810
Speaker 1: connoisseurs of cautionary tales. We all have fond beliefs and

437
00:35:19,810 --> 00:35:24,450
Speaker 1: we're at risk of mental contortions to protect those fond beliefs.

438
00:35:25,130 --> 00:35:28,050
Speaker 1: Even as the British started to wander if the Germans

439
00:35:28,130 --> 00:35:31,530
Speaker 1: really did have radar, their pride wouldn't let them admit

440
00:35:31,810 --> 00:35:35,290
Speaker 1: that the Germans might have figured it out all by themselves.

441
00:35:36,610 --> 00:35:41,370
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill asked the Air Ministry to check that no

442
00:35:41,530 --> 00:35:45,170
Speaker 1: British radar had been captured during the fall of France.

443
00:35:45,490 --> 00:35:48,730
Speaker 3: I understand there were two or three British radar sets.

444
00:35:49,130 --> 00:35:53,530
Speaker 3: Can I be assured they were effectively destroyed before evacuation?

445
00:35:54,810 --> 00:35:58,530
Speaker 1: He was right to ask. The Germans had indeed managed

446
00:35:58,570 --> 00:36:02,010
Speaker 1: to seize a British radar while sweeping across Belgium and

447
00:36:02,050 --> 00:36:06,090
Speaker 1: France in May and June of nineteen forty. German radar

448
00:36:06,210 --> 00:36:10,530
Speaker 1: engineers had taken it apart and examined it closely before

449
00:36:10,530 --> 00:36:15,610
Speaker 1: concluding that the British technology was so crude that they

450
00:36:15,610 --> 00:36:24,010
Speaker 1: had nothing to learn. After the war, R. V. Jones

451
00:36:24,130 --> 00:36:27,890
Speaker 1: tried again and again to figure out who had written

452
00:36:28,050 --> 00:36:33,090
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report. In the end, he gave up, assuming

453
00:36:33,170 --> 00:36:35,850
Speaker 1: that the anonymous author had been killed in the war,

454
00:36:36,650 --> 00:36:43,210
Speaker 1: or perhaps executed as a traitor. Hans Ferdinand Meyer had

455
00:36:43,250 --> 00:36:47,250
Speaker 1: been arrested by the Gestapo in nineteen forty three, but

456
00:36:47,530 --> 00:36:52,410
Speaker 1: not because of the Oslo Report. His crime was listening

457
00:36:52,450 --> 00:36:57,210
Speaker 1: to broadcasts from the BBC. A neighbour's maid overheard him

458
00:36:57,250 --> 00:37:00,730
Speaker 1: repeating something critical of the Nazi regime from one of

459
00:37:00,730 --> 00:37:06,530
Speaker 1: those broadcasts, and that was Maya's undoing. Maya was sent

460
00:37:06,690 --> 00:37:10,650
Speaker 1: to Dakau, a concentration camp, where he was put to

461
00:37:10,690 --> 00:37:16,810
Speaker 1: work trying to develop counter intelligence in a radio research laboratory.

462
00:37:17,570 --> 00:37:21,290
Speaker 1: He kept his head down as the regime began to

463
00:37:21,410 --> 00:37:24,570
Speaker 1: fall apart. At the end of the war, Hans Ferdinand

464
00:37:24,610 --> 00:37:28,810
Speaker 1: Meyer simply walked out of a prison camp and into

465
00:37:28,850 --> 00:37:33,770
Speaker 1: the safety of a nearby wood. Maya knew that some

466
00:37:34,050 --> 00:37:37,050
Speaker 1: people would view him as a hero and others as

467
00:37:37,090 --> 00:37:41,370
Speaker 1: a traitor, so he preferred to keep his authorship of

468
00:37:41,410 --> 00:37:46,410
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report a closely guarded secret. But through an

469
00:37:46,450 --> 00:37:51,250
Speaker 1: extraordinary set of coincidences, R. V. Jones finally learned his

470
00:37:51,330 --> 00:37:55,730
Speaker 1: identity and tracked him down. In nineteen fifty five, he

471
00:37:55,770 --> 00:37:59,250
Speaker 1: was living in Munich and once again running a research

472
00:37:59,330 --> 00:38:05,690
Speaker 1: lab for Siemens. One evening, over quiet conversation in Meyer's

473
00:38:05,730 --> 00:38:10,050
Speaker 1: apartment in Munich, Jones asked him why he had done

474
00:38:10,090 --> 00:38:14,930
Speaker 1: what he had done. Why had he taken such extraordinary risks?

475
00:38:16,130 --> 00:38:20,050
Speaker 1: There's a political answer and a more personal one. The

476
00:38:20,090 --> 00:38:24,370
Speaker 1: political answer is simply that Maya was a staunch anti Nazi.

477
00:38:25,730 --> 00:38:29,010
Speaker 1: The personal answer is that Maya had a friend in Britain,

478
00:38:29,450 --> 00:38:34,930
Speaker 1: another electronics expert named Henry Cobden Turner. When the Nazis

479
00:38:35,010 --> 00:38:39,490
Speaker 1: rose to power, Maya and Cobden Turner worked together to

480
00:38:39,610 --> 00:38:45,490
Speaker 1: rescue a half Jewish girl named Claudier Martyl Carvik, whose

481
00:38:45,570 --> 00:38:49,090
Speaker 1: Jewish mother had been expelled from Germany and whose Nazi

482
00:38:49,170 --> 00:38:54,810
Speaker 1: father had disowned her. At Mayer's request, Cobden Turner managed

483
00:38:54,810 --> 00:38:57,250
Speaker 1: to get a visa and a British passport for her,

484
00:38:57,770 --> 00:39:01,130
Speaker 1: and she was saved, eventually moving to New York and

485
00:39:01,210 --> 00:39:06,010
Speaker 1: living a long and happy life in America. Maya and

486
00:39:06,090 --> 00:39:10,770
Speaker 1: Cobden Turner became the most loyal of France. Cobden Turner

487
00:39:10,930 --> 00:39:14,930
Speaker 1: was godfather to Maya's son. Cobden Turner urged Maya to

488
00:39:15,050 --> 00:39:19,170
Speaker 1: leak German secrets to help bring down the Nazis, but

489
00:39:19,330 --> 00:39:23,130
Speaker 1: Maya refused. It wouldn't be right, he insisted unless the

490
00:39:23,170 --> 00:39:27,850
Speaker 1: countries were actually at war, and once war came, it

491
00:39:27,930 --> 00:39:32,690
Speaker 1: was impossible for him to reach Cobden Turner directly, hence

492
00:39:32,770 --> 00:39:37,170
Speaker 1: the pretext to visit Oslo, the borrowed typewriter, and the

493
00:39:37,210 --> 00:39:42,410
Speaker 1: mysterious letters to the Oslo embassy. Maya always hoped they

494
00:39:42,490 --> 00:39:45,810
Speaker 1: might get into Cobden Turner's hands, since he was a

495
00:39:45,890 --> 00:39:50,090
Speaker 1: radio expert himself. That was why the letters were simply

496
00:39:50,170 --> 00:39:53,730
Speaker 1: signed Martyl, the middle name of the girl they had

497
00:39:53,770 --> 00:39:58,330
Speaker 1: saved together. Cobden Turner was the only man alive who

498
00:39:58,370 --> 00:40:03,650
Speaker 1: would understand the reference. R V Jones listened to all this,

499
00:40:04,650 --> 00:40:09,050
Speaker 1: and then he kept Maya's secret for decades until both

500
00:40:09,090 --> 00:40:13,530
Speaker 1: if Mayer and Meyer's wife were dead. The Oslo report,

501
00:40:13,610 --> 00:40:14,410
Speaker 1: he said.

502
00:40:14,890 --> 00:40:18,890
Speaker 2: Was probably the best single report received from any source

503
00:40:19,330 --> 00:40:20,010
Speaker 2: during the war.

504
00:40:21,170 --> 00:40:25,730
Speaker 1: But that quiet evening in Munich did R V. Jones

505
00:40:25,890 --> 00:40:29,890
Speaker 1: tell Mayer that the British simply hadn't believed the Oslo

506
00:40:29,970 --> 00:40:33,730
Speaker 1: report and that the Royal Air Force was still debating

507
00:40:33,810 --> 00:40:37,050
Speaker 1: the existence of German radar more than a year later.

508
00:40:38,370 --> 00:40:45,330
Speaker 1: I hope not. Mayer had risked everything to warn the British.

509
00:40:45,450 --> 00:40:48,130
Speaker 1: It would have been cruel to tell him that the

510
00:40:48,130 --> 00:41:08,450
Speaker 1: British simply hadn't listened. This cautionary tale is based with

511
00:41:08,530 --> 00:41:12,450
Speaker 1: permission on Tom Whipple's book The Battle of the Beams.

512
00:41:12,690 --> 00:41:15,930
Speaker 1: It's a vivid and surprising history, and there's a lot

513
00:41:15,970 --> 00:41:19,210
Speaker 1: more to it than the argument about German radar. Pick

514
00:41:19,330 --> 00:41:22,170
Speaker 1: up a copy if you can. For a full list

515
00:41:22,170 --> 00:41:25,170
Speaker 1: of our sources, as always, see the show notes at

516
00:41:25,250 --> 00:41:36,290
Speaker 1: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim

517
00:41:36,370 --> 00:41:39,730
Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines with

518
00:41:39,890 --> 00:41:43,650
Speaker 1: support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music

519
00:41:43,890 --> 00:41:48,130
Speaker 1: is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts.

520
00:41:48,810 --> 00:41:52,090
Speaker 1: It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge,

521
00:41:52,210 --> 00:41:56,730
Speaker 1: Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also

522
00:41:56,890 --> 00:41:59,930
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,

523
00:42:00,130 --> 00:42:05,410
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohne, Vital Mollard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler,

524
00:42:05,690 --> 00:42:10,490
Speaker 1: Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Tales is a production of

525
00:42:10,610 --> 00:42:15,450
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by

526
00:42:15,490 --> 00:42:19,850
Speaker 1: Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share,

527
00:42:20,330 --> 00:42:23,730
Speaker 1: rate and review, tell your friends, and if you want

528
00:42:23,770 --> 00:42:26,610
Speaker 1: to hear the show ad free, sign up for Pushkin

529
00:42:26,690 --> 00:42:30,130
Speaker 1: Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts, or at

530
00:42:30,170 --> 00:42:43,210
Speaker 1: pushkin dot Fm, slash plus,