WEBVTT - WW2: How Britain Ignored the Mother of All Secrets 0:00:15.410 --> 0:00:28.690 Pushkin. November nineteen thirty nine. It's been two months since 0:00:28.850 --> 0:00:33.450 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and one month since Poland surrendered. 0:00:34.290 --> 0:00:38.450 France and Britain have declared war, but there's not much fighting. 0:00:39.330 --> 0:00:44.050 An uneasy quiet has descended over Western Europe, with neither 0:00:44.130 --> 0:00:48.690 side keen to take major risks. It's obvious that the 0:00:48.770 --> 0:00:54.450 choet won't last, and a German executive named Hans Ferdinand 0:00:54.530 --> 0:00:59.650 Meyer has picked a side. Maya is visiting Oslo on 0:00:59.690 --> 0:01:03.770 a business trip. He doesn't look much, a neat middle 0:01:03.810 --> 0:01:06.490 aged fellow in a suit who works in some sort 0:01:06.530 --> 0:01:10.690 of corporate research lab back in Germany. Nobody bats an 0:01:10.690 --> 0:01:13.610 eyelid when he descends from his room to the lobby 0:01:13.650 --> 0:01:18.690 of Oslo's elegant Hotel Bristol and asks the head porter. 0:01:19.250 --> 0:01:21.810 Would it be possible please to borrow a typewriter. 0:01:23.330 --> 0:01:27.770 Maya takes the typewriter back upstairs to his room. He 0:01:27.850 --> 0:01:32.650 closes and carefully locks the door, pulls on a pair 0:01:32.690 --> 0:01:36.810 of gloves to obscure his fingerprints. What He's about to 0:01:36.810 --> 0:01:42.810 do is dangerous, very dangerous. If the Gestapo ever find 0:01:42.850 --> 0:01:48.730 out he's a dead man, then Maya's gloved fingers begin 0:01:48.850 --> 0:01:54.250 to type perhaps the most spectacular intelligence leak in history. 0:01:55.090 --> 0:01:59.090 In a terse but wide ranging pair of reports, he 0:01:59.170 --> 0:02:06.210 describes Nazi Germany's most sensitive military technologies, their bomber production, 0:02:06.970 --> 0:02:11.490 the aircraft carrier being built in Keel Harbor, the remote 0:02:11.530 --> 0:02:18.090 controlled gliders fitted with large explosive charges. Maya deftly outlines 0:02:18.170 --> 0:02:22.210 the Nazi autopilot system, which is under development and which 0:02:22.250 --> 0:02:26.130 will allow them to take down barrage balloon defenses using 0:02:26.250 --> 0:02:33.090 unmanned planes. He keeps typing, describing the ballistic missiles that 0:02:33.170 --> 0:02:36.170 the German Army are developing and the name of the 0:02:36.210 --> 0:02:41.090 research center. He provides the location just north of Berlin 0:02:41.970 --> 0:02:45.570 of the R and D laboratories of the German Air Force, 0:02:45.650 --> 0:02:48.010 the Luftwaffer, and suggests that. 0:02:48.010 --> 0:02:51.050 It would be a rewarding target. 0:02:56.330 --> 0:03:00.330 How did Mayer learn all this? Some of its gossip, 0:03:01.130 --> 0:03:04.570 some of it's wrong, but much of what he writes 0:03:04.890 --> 0:03:11.770 is specific, technically rigorous and ab solutely accurate. And this 0:03:11.890 --> 0:03:15.490 he knows because he's the director of the Seamen's research 0:03:15.610 --> 0:03:19.770 laboratory in Berlin, and the scientists working for him have 0:03:19.890 --> 0:03:27.330 increasingly been producing cutting edge electronics for military purposes. Shortly 0:03:27.490 --> 0:03:31.370 after Maya borrows the typewriter. He arranges to have his 0:03:31.530 --> 0:03:37.050 two letters delivered to Oslo's British embassy for the embassy staff. 0:03:37.570 --> 0:03:43.250 They're mysterious, sensational baffling. It seems to be some of 0:03:43.410 --> 0:03:47.330 Nazi Germany's most closely guarded secrets, signed only with the 0:03:47.490 --> 0:03:53.530 curious name Martin who sent them? Can they be believed? 0:03:55.130 --> 0:03:59.770 Maya must be convinced that some deep evil lurks at 0:03:59.770 --> 0:04:03.130 the heart of the Nazi regime because he's willing to 0:04:03.290 --> 0:04:07.170 risk his life to warn the British about what the 0:04:07.250 --> 0:04:12.730 Nazi military is capable of. But will the British listen? 0:04:14.090 --> 0:04:43.970 I'm Tim Harford and this is cautionary tales. Ostriches do not, 0:04:44.170 --> 0:04:47.130 in fact bury their heads in the sand when trouble 0:04:47.210 --> 0:04:53.890 is approaching, but sometimes people do. That's what this cautionary 0:04:53.930 --> 0:04:57.530 tale is all about. Why do we manage to ignore 0:04:57.610 --> 0:04:58.410 the obvious? 0:04:59.050 --> 0:04:59.690 It should have. 0:04:59.650 --> 0:05:03.530 Been clear that Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, which became known 0:05:03.930 --> 0:05:09.690 as the Oslo Report, were worth taking seriously. Yes, this 0:05:09.890 --> 0:05:14.450 mysterious Martil fellow might have been a crank, or the 0:05:14.570 --> 0:05:17.970 letters could have been fakes, a double bluff planted by 0:05:18.010 --> 0:05:21.730 the Nazis. To deceive the British about their real capabilities, 0:05:22.770 --> 0:05:27.290 But the Oslo report included several paragraphs that could hardly 0:05:27.370 --> 0:05:32.130 be a Nazi bluff. They gave a detailed and authoritative 0:05:32.170 --> 0:05:37.730 description of German radio wave technology. At the time, the 0:05:37.770 --> 0:05:42.570 British tended to be rather sniffy about German engineering. Yes, 0:05:42.650 --> 0:05:45.690 the Germans could do things cheaply, but they were hardly 0:05:45.690 --> 0:05:52.090 at the cutting edge. Meyer's report suggested otherwise. He explained 0:05:52.090 --> 0:05:56.570 that the Luftwruffer was developing guidance systems using radio beams 0:05:56.610 --> 0:06:00.170 to help bombers drop their deadly payload at exactly the 0:06:00.250 --> 0:06:06.090 right spot, the equivalent of satellite navigation. Before satellites existed, 0:06:07.330 --> 0:06:11.730 Germany would be able to bomb British targets even at night. 0:06:13.290 --> 0:06:20.490 Meyer also described Germany's defensive radar technology, short wave radio transmitters, 0:06:20.650 --> 0:06:25.850 which bounced signals off incoming aircraft and used the reflections 0:06:25.890 --> 0:06:30.370 as an early warning system. If the British sent bombers 0:06:30.410 --> 0:06:34.530 over Germany, the radar stations would see them coming and 0:06:34.650 --> 0:06:39.170 Germany's fighter groups would have easy pickings. He gave the 0:06:39.210 --> 0:06:44.490 details the wavelengths being used, even the mathematical formulas involved. 0:06:45.370 --> 0:06:48.730 This couldn't be a bluff. At the very least, it 0:06:48.890 --> 0:06:53.130 proved that someone in Germany knew all about radar, which 0:06:53.170 --> 0:06:58.970 the British had assumed was their closely guarded secret. Radar 0:06:59.130 --> 0:07:03.970 technology would be pivotal in the Second World War, as 0:07:04.170 --> 0:07:08.650 vividly described in Tom Whipple's book The Battle of the Beams, 0:07:09.770 --> 0:07:15.250 and Hans Ferdinand Meyer's brave decision to expose the secrets 0:07:15.250 --> 0:07:20.690 of German radar could be pivotal too, if the British 0:07:20.730 --> 0:07:33.410 took it seriously. If in the early nineteen thirties a 0:07:33.450 --> 0:07:37.850 senior British politician stood up in Parliament to explain the 0:07:38.130 --> 0:07:40.410 likely course of a future war. 0:07:42.090 --> 0:07:44.290 It is well also for the man in the street 0:07:44.610 --> 0:07:47.210 to realize that there is no power on earth that 0:07:47.250 --> 0:07:51.290 can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, 0:07:51.570 --> 0:07:53.810 the bomber will always get through. 0:07:55.170 --> 0:07:59.050 That seemed all too true at the time. There was 0:07:59.090 --> 0:08:02.290 no defense against the new bombers that were being developed. 0:08:02.810 --> 0:08:06.450 They flew too high to be easily intercepted, and would 0:08:06.490 --> 0:08:11.810 attack without warning. In nineteen thirty seven, the Luftwaffir seemed 0:08:11.850 --> 0:08:15.770 to prove the point by laying waste to the Spanish 0:08:15.810 --> 0:08:19.450 market town of Gernica with one of the first major 0:08:19.490 --> 0:08:24.410 bombings of a civilian population. But when Gernica was attacked, 0:08:24.650 --> 0:08:27.690 the British had already been working on a secret defense 0:08:27.770 --> 0:08:31.490 for a couple of years, and by nineteen thirty nine 0:08:31.650 --> 0:08:36.250 that defense was fully prepared. An invisible network of radar 0:08:36.330 --> 0:08:41.130 stations blanketed the country in places with reliable electricity supplies, 0:08:41.330 --> 0:08:44.610 good visibility out over the sea, and that would not 0:08:45.250 --> 0:08:50.410 gravely interfere with grouse shooting. This was Britain, after all. 0:08:50.930 --> 0:08:54.570 If the grouse shooting was disrupted, then the Nazis had 0:08:54.610 --> 0:09:01.410 already won. These radar stations would send out pulses of 0:09:01.570 --> 0:09:05.810 invisible light radio waves and detect the reflection of those 0:09:05.850 --> 0:09:11.130 pulses from incoming objects. The Royal Air Force would get 0:09:11.650 --> 0:09:15.730 advanced notice of approaching bombers and could send fighters up 0:09:15.770 --> 0:09:20.290 to intercept them. Guided by radar, the outnumbered fighters of 0:09:20.330 --> 0:09:23.530 the Royal Air Force could be mustered and focused where 0:09:23.530 --> 0:09:28.610 they were most needed. The heroic few could stand up 0:09:28.770 --> 0:09:36.970 to the mighty looftbuffer. So when Hans Ferdinand Meyer was 0:09:37.050 --> 0:09:42.890 typing his secret Oslo report early in November nineteen thirty nine, 0:09:43.050 --> 0:09:47.210 radar was old news to the British What was new 0:09:47.930 --> 0:09:51.130 and should have been a dramatic revelation, was the fact 0:09:51.170 --> 0:09:56.290 that the Germans had radar too. Meyer's brave act of 0:09:56.530 --> 0:10:02.010 espionage could save many British lives if they paid attention 0:10:02.370 --> 0:10:06.290 to the Oslo report. If not, they'd have to find 0:10:06.330 --> 0:10:14.250 out about German radar the hard way. On December the eighteenth, 0:10:14.490 --> 0:10:18.650 nineteen thirty nine, a few weeks after Meyer had typed 0:10:18.650 --> 0:10:22.690 his report, it was a cold, bright day over the 0:10:22.730 --> 0:10:27.370 northwest coast of Germany and the naval base of Wilhelmshaven. 0:10:28.330 --> 0:10:30.690 To the Royal Air Force, it was a lovely day 0:10:30.770 --> 0:10:34.770 for the precision bombing of the German fleet. Not a 0:10:34.810 --> 0:10:38.010 bomb would be wasted, not a civilian would be harmed. 0:10:38.410 --> 0:10:43.650 The conditions were ideal that all assumed the bombers would 0:10:43.690 --> 0:10:48.690 attack without warning if the defenders knew they were coming. However, 0:10:49.370 --> 0:10:52.450 the clear conditions would be a double edged sword. 0:10:53.650 --> 0:10:55.450 Splendid weather for fighters. 0:10:56.170 --> 0:11:00.650 A Pine's a luftwaffer fighter commander. He's not really expecting 0:11:00.690 --> 0:11:05.690 a British attack, merely hoping for one. His assistant shakes 0:11:05.730 --> 0:11:06.850 his head regretfully. 0:11:07.850 --> 0:11:10.850 The Tommies are not such fools. They won't come today. 0:11:12.330 --> 0:11:17.210 On the tiny German island of hellegeraland less than half 0:11:17.250 --> 0:11:22.450 a square mile in size, electronic eyes have been installed. 0:11:23.610 --> 0:11:27.930 German radar there and elsewhere will give plenty of warning 0:11:28.170 --> 0:11:33.810 of any incoming bombers. But the British, despite Maya's warning, 0:11:34.210 --> 0:11:37.210 are convinced that only they and not the Germans, have 0:11:37.370 --> 0:11:41.690 cracked the secrets of radar. The pilots of the twenty 0:11:41.730 --> 0:11:46.690 two bombers heading towards Wilhelmshaven have every reason to believe 0:11:46.770 --> 0:11:52.530 they will catch the defenders completely unawares. When the radar 0:11:52.610 --> 0:11:57.610 operators on Hellegaland notify their superiors of the incoming bombers, 0:11:58.690 --> 0:12:00.370 they're met with disbelief. 0:12:00.930 --> 0:12:02.450 You are plotting seagulls. 0:12:03.290 --> 0:12:07.570 With the winter sun low in the southern sky, the 0:12:07.610 --> 0:12:12.290 defensive LUFTWAFFEFI would have plenty of cover for their counter attack. 0:12:13.330 --> 0:12:16.770 Could the British really be so foolish as to try 0:12:16.810 --> 0:12:22.890 something they would? The images on the radar scope aren't seagulls, 0:12:23.610 --> 0:12:28.330 their twenty two sitting ducks. Were the German fighters given 0:12:28.410 --> 0:12:32.650 so much warning by the radar system, the incoming British 0:12:32.690 --> 0:12:37.250 bombers don't stand a chance. More than half of them 0:12:37.250 --> 0:12:41.370 are shot down as the rest flee to safety. Having 0:12:41.410 --> 0:12:47.210 barely made attempt in Germany's fleet, the utter route of 0:12:47.250 --> 0:12:51.410 the bomber force did prompt to rethink in future the 0:12:51.490 --> 0:12:56.330 Royal Air Force would attack at night. Of course, radar 0:12:56.650 --> 0:13:00.130 also works perfectly well at night, but the idea that 0:13:00.170 --> 0:13:04.210 the Germans had radar had yet to penetrate the skulls 0:13:04.290 --> 0:13:09.090 of the British elite. Cautionary tales will be back after 0:13:09.170 --> 0:13:12.930 the break, and just a warning there will be a 0:13:12.970 --> 0:13:34.330 brief mention of suicide. Two years earlier, in nineteen thirty seven, 0:13:35.010 --> 0:13:38.730 relations between the German Luffaffer and the British Royal Air 0:13:38.770 --> 0:13:44.090 Force had been cautious, at cordial. Officers from each side 0:13:44.130 --> 0:13:48.450 would visit the other, chatting diplomatically about the friendship between 0:13:48.490 --> 0:13:53.170 the two great nations. One visiting German officer took a 0:13:53.290 --> 0:13:56.570 surprisingly frank line of questioning. 0:13:56.410 --> 0:13:58.930 How are you getting on with your experiments in the 0:13:59.010 --> 0:14:02.250 detection by radio of aircraft approaching your shores? 0:14:03.090 --> 0:14:05.330 He asked his astonished hosts. 0:14:06.010 --> 0:14:09.370 He added, cheerfully, we have known for some time that 0:14:09.410 --> 0:14:12.290 you were developing a system of radio detections, and so 0:14:12.450 --> 0:14:15.450 are we, and we think we are ahead of you. 0:14:17.010 --> 0:14:20.610 The British didn't need Meyer to warn them about German radar. 0:14:21.090 --> 0:14:24.810 A Loftbraffer officer had done the same two years before 0:14:24.890 --> 0:14:31.090 war broke out. Somehow the lesson didn't stick. So why 0:14:31.130 --> 0:14:36.010 do we sometimes deny the obvious? One answer is that 0:14:36.170 --> 0:14:40.570 maybe what seems obvious with hindsight wasn't obvious at the time. 0:14:41.410 --> 0:14:46.690 The Oslo report, coupled with the indiscreet visiting officer, should 0:14:46.690 --> 0:14:50.370 have been evidence enough. But that's easy to say. With hindsight. 0:14:50.930 --> 0:14:54.090 There would have been dozens of informants, hundreds of reports, 0:14:54.450 --> 0:14:58.450 countless rumors. Different people in the British military will have 0:14:58.490 --> 0:15:02.530 heard different things, and not every piece of information would 0:15:02.530 --> 0:15:05.730 have reached the right person. Some reports will have been 0:15:05.770 --> 0:15:09.330 dismissed as junk, Some will have been too sensitive to 0:15:09.370 --> 0:15:13.730 share widely. A conversation with a visiting German and an 0:15:13.770 --> 0:15:18.410 officer's mess in nineteen thirty seven might have been reported somewhere, 0:15:19.210 --> 0:15:23.490 filed and forgotten, or not reported at all. We have 0:15:24.250 --> 0:15:27.770 amidst all the noise, it can be difficult to pick 0:15:27.810 --> 0:15:34.610 out the signal we are. In their book Predictable Surprises, 0:15:35.250 --> 0:15:40.450 Max Beseman and Michael Watkins call this an integration failure. 0:15:41.490 --> 0:15:44.770 An organization may have all the information it needs, but 0:15:44.930 --> 0:15:49.890 sifting out what really matters and assembling those disparate clues 0:15:49.930 --> 0:15:53.810 into the true picture can be a near impossible task. 0:15:54.770 --> 0:15:58.770 The British weren't the only ones to suffer integration failures. 0:15:59.850 --> 0:16:03.890 The Germans, for example, regarded their radar system as the 0:16:03.970 --> 0:16:09.530 mother of all secrets, yet they also published publicity folksographs 0:16:09.810 --> 0:16:13.890 showing radar aerials clearly visible. This was because the radar 0:16:13.970 --> 0:16:19.250 system was so secret that the German censors weren't told 0:16:19.410 --> 0:16:23.370 that it was a secret, Nor were the Americans immune. 0:16:24.250 --> 0:16:27.690 In fact, the most famous intelligence failure of the war 0:16:28.370 --> 0:16:33.570 was arguably an integration failure. The Japanese attack on Pearl 0:16:33.650 --> 0:16:37.290 Harbor came as a complete surprise to the US forces. 0:16:37.330 --> 0:16:41.850 There shouldn't the Americans have seen the Japanese coming. The 0:16:41.890 --> 0:16:46.730 clues were there. Several American and British strategists had warned 0:16:46.970 --> 0:16:49.930 that Pearl Harbour would be a tempting target for a 0:16:50.010 --> 0:16:55.330 Japanese attack. US Japanese relations were extremely tense, and war 0:16:55.770 --> 0:17:01.690 seemed a distinct threat. An American codebreaker, Genevieve Grojan, had 0:17:01.770 --> 0:17:06.290 cracked a Japanese diplomatic code six weeks before the attack, 0:17:06.970 --> 0:17:09.890 she exposed a message between the Tokyo government and the 0:17:09.970 --> 0:17:14.930 Japanese embassy in Washington, noting there is more reason than 0:17:14.970 --> 0:17:18.930 ever before for us to arm ourselves to the teeth 0:17:19.170 --> 0:17:23.130 for all out war. Just a week before the attack, 0:17:23.770 --> 0:17:28.570 another message was deciphered. The Japanese ambassador in Berlin was 0:17:28.610 --> 0:17:33.970 instructed by Tokyo to warn Adolf Hitler that war may 0:17:34.170 --> 0:17:38.530 suddenly break out between the Anglo Saxon nations and Japan. 0:17:39.570 --> 0:17:46.850 This war may come quicker than anyone dreams. With hindsight, 0:17:47.090 --> 0:17:50.970 this all seems very obvious, so obvious, in fact, that 0:17:51.090 --> 0:17:54.290 some people believe in a conspiracy theory that the US 0:17:54.450 --> 0:17:58.170 or the UK deliberately ignored the warnings in the hope 0:17:58.250 --> 0:18:01.810 that Japan would attack and American voters would support the 0:18:01.930 --> 0:18:07.010 US entering the war. The truth is more prosaic. There 0:18:07.010 --> 0:18:10.330 were lots of hints of trouble, but lots of noise 0:18:10.370 --> 0:18:15.170 and false alarms too. Different decision makers had different clues, 0:18:15.810 --> 0:18:18.770 and these clues didn't reach the right people at the 0:18:18.850 --> 0:18:23.530 right time. In her influential book about Pearl Harbor, the 0:18:23.690 --> 0:18:28.170 historian ROBERTA. Wohlstetter wrote, it is only to be expected 0:18:28.330 --> 0:18:32.450 that the relevant signals so clearly audible after an event, 0:18:32.850 --> 0:18:37.130 will be partially obscured before the event by surrounding noise. 0:18:39.770 --> 0:18:43.210 Perhaps the British failed to understand that the Germans had 0:18:43.290 --> 0:18:48.570 radar because they were simply suffering an integration failure. If so, 0:18:49.210 --> 0:18:53.370 they were about to get another very clear signal amidst 0:18:53.370 --> 0:18:58.650 the noise. In December nineteen thirty nine, the same month 0:18:58.690 --> 0:19:03.330 as the disastrous raid on Wilhelmshaven and six weeks after 0:19:03.570 --> 0:19:08.930 Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, another German named Hans would present 0:19:09.170 --> 0:19:13.010 the British with another opportunity to learn what they faced. 0:19:13.690 --> 0:19:18.330 This fellow is Hans Langsdorf, captain of the Graf Spey, 0:19:19.010 --> 0:19:24.170 a mighty German battleship. The graf Spey had been prowling 0:19:24.210 --> 0:19:29.210 around the South Atlantic, sinking merchant ships after first allowing 0:19:29.210 --> 0:19:34.410 their civilian cruise to disembark. Captain Langsdorf regarded naval warfare 0:19:34.610 --> 0:19:38.810 as a matter of honor. After all, Still, he was 0:19:38.850 --> 0:19:42.330 avoiding a real fight, since German naval doctrine at the 0:19:42.370 --> 0:19:47.210 time was to attack only civilian ships, causing maximum trouble 0:19:47.650 --> 0:19:52.370 for minimum risk. Captain Langsdorf and the Graf Spey were 0:19:52.410 --> 0:19:55.650 causing a lot of damage to the Allied war effort, 0:19:55.890 --> 0:19:59.170 and the Royal Navy resolved to hunt them down near 0:19:59.250 --> 0:20:04.370 the huge River Plate estuary where Argentina, Uruguay and the 0:20:04.410 --> 0:20:10.290 Atlantic Ocean meet. Just after dawn on the thirteenth of December, 0:20:10.810 --> 0:20:15.610 three British cruisers spotted the Graf Spay's smoking funnel on 0:20:15.650 --> 0:20:20.210 the horizon and gave chase. That was a brave move, 0:20:20.890 --> 0:20:24.250 even with three against one. The Graf Spey was a larger, 0:20:24.570 --> 0:20:29.770 better armed and armored ship, a formidable opponent. Graf Spey 0:20:30.050 --> 0:20:33.730 concentrated its fire on one ship, the Exeter, and within 0:20:33.810 --> 0:20:38.410 minutes Exeter had lost the torpedo crews, communication systems, an 0:20:38.570 --> 0:20:41.050 entire gun turret, with most of the men on the bridge. 0:20:41.770 --> 0:20:46.170 Exeter's captain was lucky to survive, wounded in both legs 0:20:46.610 --> 0:20:51.610 and both eyes. The British pulled back to assess the situation. 0:20:52.810 --> 0:20:55.930 Graf Spey had been hit more than twenty times that 0:20:56.010 --> 0:21:00.730 the damage seemed superficial. The British didn't know that they'd 0:21:00.770 --> 0:21:05.610 been lucky. One of Exeter's shells had shattered Graf Spey's 0:21:05.770 --> 0:21:09.850 fuel filtering plant. The German battleship would run out of 0:21:09.930 --> 0:21:17.730 fuel within hours. Graft Spey dashed towards Montevideo, the nearest port, 0:21:18.210 --> 0:21:23.330 which was in neutral Uruguay. Once there, Captain Langsdorf frantically 0:21:23.450 --> 0:21:27.250 tried to repair his battleship while the British scrambled to 0:21:27.290 --> 0:21:32.290 assemble reinforcements. Langsdorf was alarmed when he was informed that 0:21:32.370 --> 0:21:37.290 a British communication had just been intercepted. The British ambassador 0:21:37.330 --> 0:21:41.490 to Uruguay had ordered fuel in order to supply the 0:21:41.610 --> 0:21:47.250 new British battleships that were arriving. Langsdorf's crew were starting 0:21:47.290 --> 0:21:52.530 to panic. One officer was convinced that, gazing out from Montevideo, 0:21:53.050 --> 0:21:56.570 he had seen lurking on the horizon not only a 0:21:56.610 --> 0:22:02.410 British battleship, but an aircraft carrier and three destroyers. What 0:22:02.770 --> 0:22:06.130 none of them knew was that the ambassador's fuel order 0:22:06.770 --> 0:22:11.890 was a bluff. Knowing his communications would be intercepted, he 0:22:11.930 --> 0:22:17.730 had paid for fuel for ships that didn't exist. Langsdorf 0:22:18.170 --> 0:22:24.410 felfret and bowed to what seemed inevitable. He limped the 0:22:24.450 --> 0:22:29.370 graft spay out to the river Plate estuary planted explosives 0:22:29.370 --> 0:22:32.530 on her hull. And sent her to the bottom of 0:22:32.530 --> 0:22:38.930 the sea. Sadly, for Captain Langsdorf, the bottom of the 0:22:38.970 --> 0:22:43.650 sea was only twelve yards down. Most of the ship 0:22:43.810 --> 0:22:47.850 remained above the surface, and photographs of the burning wreck 0:22:48.170 --> 0:22:51.970 went around the world, gleefully exploited by the British for 0:22:52.050 --> 0:22:58.490 propaganda purposes. For Captain Langsdorf, an honorable man, it was 0:22:58.530 --> 0:23:04.130 a final humiliation. From a hotel room in nearby Buenos Aidre's, 0:23:04.850 --> 0:23:08.250 he wrote a letter to his wife and another to 0:23:08.330 --> 0:23:13.450 his parents. The third letter was addressed to the German government. 0:23:14.490 --> 0:23:17.610 For a captain with a sense of honor, it goes 0:23:17.610 --> 0:23:21.290 without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from 0:23:21.290 --> 0:23:22.170 that of his ship. 0:23:22.730 --> 0:23:27.010 He explained, having written the three letters, he spread the 0:23:27.050 --> 0:23:30.930 Graf Spey's ensign flag out on the floor, lay on 0:23:30.970 --> 0:23:40.450 top of it, and shot himself out across the river 0:23:40.570 --> 0:23:45.530 plate estuary. The smoke from the Graf Spey began to clear. 0:23:46.650 --> 0:23:50.890 As it did, a sharp eyed observer in British intelligence 0:23:51.050 --> 0:23:56.330 noticed something curious in the latest photographs. What was that 0:23:56.650 --> 0:24:02.530 mysterious network of criss crossing wires on Graf Spay's forward tower. 0:24:03.970 --> 0:24:08.130 It was now January nineteen forty let me introduce you 0:24:08.250 --> 0:24:13.930 to a British radar scientist named Labouchere Hilliard Bainbridge Bell. 0:24:14.610 --> 0:24:16.690 I hope you'll forgive me if I just call him 0:24:16.810 --> 0:24:20.770 Bainbridge Bell. He thought the array on the graf Spey 0:24:21.130 --> 0:24:25.770 looked suspiciously like a radar system. He flew to Uruguay 0:24:26.090 --> 0:24:30.730 to find out more. When Bainbridge Bell arrived in Montevideo, 0:24:31.650 --> 0:24:35.530 his James Bond style cover story was that he was 0:24:35.570 --> 0:24:40.690 a scrap metal dealer. British intelligence had already purchased the 0:24:40.810 --> 0:24:45.370 salvage rights, and Bainbridge Bell rode out to graft Spey 0:24:45.690 --> 0:24:49.890 to examine his property. Although the ship had already been 0:24:49.970 --> 0:24:53.970 picked over by scavengers and gutted by fire, he was 0:24:54.010 --> 0:24:58.410 relieved to discover that the radar tower still contained many 0:24:58.490 --> 0:25:04.890 clues for radar tower it undoubtedly was. As he stood 0:25:04.890 --> 0:25:08.850 on the sloping deck amidst the wreckage, Bainbridge Bell g 0:25:09.090 --> 0:25:13.290 around at the fragments of a cathode ray display and 0:25:13.410 --> 0:25:17.010 sifted through the gears and the electronics that lay scattered around. 0:25:18.050 --> 0:25:21.730 His report back to the British government was unambiguous. 0:25:22.650 --> 0:25:26.130 The writer's personal opinion is that the installation was a 0:25:26.210 --> 0:25:31.810 sixty centimeter RDF radar. It seems strange that no one 0:25:31.930 --> 0:25:36.170 was curious before January nineteen forty about the aerial on 0:25:36.290 --> 0:25:37.210 the control tar. 0:25:38.570 --> 0:25:43.650 Strange indeed, but as Tom Whipple explains in the Battle 0:25:43.690 --> 0:25:48.690 of the Beams, the lack of curiosity would continue. The 0:25:48.770 --> 0:25:54.890 report was filed and then forgotten. Not only had Hans 0:25:54.970 --> 0:25:59.010 Ferdinand Meyer warned the British that the Germans had radar, 0:25:59.770 --> 0:26:03.330 but Bainbridge Bell had seen the radar with his own eyes. 0:26:04.170 --> 0:26:08.010 The official position of the Royal Air Force, however, did 0:26:08.090 --> 0:26:14.530 not change Britain, and Britain alone commanded the miracle technology 0:26:14.810 --> 0:26:20.250 of radar. Cautionary tales will be back after the break. 0:26:31.290 --> 0:26:35.650 By February nineteen forty. It should have been brutally obvious 0:26:35.690 --> 0:26:39.610 that the Germans had radar, but the British refused to 0:26:39.650 --> 0:26:45.210 believe it. The delay was costly. Just ask the surviving 0:26:45.530 --> 0:26:51.170 crew of HMS Delight. This British destroyer ventured out of 0:26:51.170 --> 0:26:53.410 a harbor on the south coast of England in the 0:26:53.450 --> 0:26:57.490 summer of nineteen forty, and within a few miles was 0:26:57.570 --> 0:27:04.330 sunk by German dive pommers. Six sailors died. How unlucky 0:27:05.090 --> 0:27:10.650 thought the British, but it wasn't bad luck good German radar. 0:27:12.130 --> 0:27:14.570 The same story could be told by the crews of 0:27:14.610 --> 0:27:18.770 British bombers in nineteen forty. The British weren't in a 0:27:18.810 --> 0:27:22.210 position to bomb the Germans very often, but when they did, 0:27:22.650 --> 0:27:29.250 the losses were unexpectedly grievous, how unlucky. If the British 0:27:29.250 --> 0:27:31.890 had woken up to the obvious, the true source of 0:27:31.930 --> 0:27:34.690 these losses would have been recognized, and some of them 0:27:34.770 --> 0:27:38.170 could have been prevented. If you understand that an enemy 0:27:38.210 --> 0:27:42.770 has radar, you can start to take precautions, flying decoy 0:27:42.810 --> 0:27:48.530 missions or flying informations that overwhelm the radar operators, or 0:27:48.570 --> 0:27:52.530 trying to jam the radar electronically or fill the sky 0:27:52.690 --> 0:27:57.650 with false signals. Later in the war, both sides became 0:27:57.810 --> 0:28:02.090 masters of such tricks, but at the start, the Nazis 0:28:02.210 --> 0:28:06.130 were racing to develop countermeasures to British radar, and the 0:28:06.130 --> 0:28:08.810 British didn't even know there was a race at all. 0:28:11.770 --> 0:28:14.770 So why did it take the British so long? Was 0:28:14.810 --> 0:28:18.410 it just an integration failure? Were different parts of the 0:28:18.410 --> 0:28:22.730 British military receiving different signals and were they unable to 0:28:22.770 --> 0:28:25.850 put them all together and spot the pattern amidst the noise. 0:28:26.890 --> 0:28:30.130 I discussed this question with Tom Whipple, the author of 0:28:30.330 --> 0:28:33.330 the Battle of the Beams. He pointed out that there 0:28:33.450 --> 0:28:37.850 was one British intelligence analyst who didn't have any trouble 0:28:37.890 --> 0:28:44.010 at all piecing together the pattern. His name was R. V. Jones. 0:28:44.850 --> 0:28:47.330 If you've heard our series on the V two rocket, 0:28:47.850 --> 0:28:50.930 R V. Jones was the man who rightly warned Winston 0:28:51.050 --> 0:28:55.250 Churchill that Germany was developing the V two ballistic missile 0:28:55.810 --> 0:28:59.410 at pain and Munder. Jones was just as sharp on 0:28:59.490 --> 0:29:03.810 the question of German radar. He didn't miss much. In 0:29:03.850 --> 0:29:07.450 May nineteen forty he informed his colleagues that it was 0:29:07.810 --> 0:29:13.210 almost certain that Germany had radar. In July nineteen forty 0:29:13.450 --> 0:29:18.050 he wrote another short report summarizing the evidence. A prisoner 0:29:18.130 --> 0:29:21.370 of war had admitted that the German Navy had range 0:29:21.410 --> 0:29:25.250 finding radar. German planes had been spotted with what seemed 0:29:25.290 --> 0:29:29.850 to be radar systems. Eavesdropping on German radio revealed that 0:29:29.970 --> 0:29:33.690 pilots were celebrating the use of a code name system 0:29:33.730 --> 0:29:38.010 to successfully intercept British planes. And of course, there was 0:29:38.050 --> 0:29:41.970 the Oslo Report and the discovery of a fragmentary radar 0:29:42.050 --> 0:29:46.890 system on the graft spay. R V Jones declared it. 0:29:46.930 --> 0:29:51.490 Is safe to conclude that the Germans have an RDF system. 0:29:52.250 --> 0:29:57.690 They had radar. Jones pulled together much of the relevant evidence, 0:29:58.330 --> 0:30:03.210 drew the obvious conclusion in plain language, and circulated his 0:30:03.290 --> 0:30:08.290 analysis to Winston Churchill's chief scientific adviser and several other 0:30:08.530 --> 0:30:13.610 senior p This wasn't a Pearl Harbor situation. It wasn't 0:30:13.650 --> 0:30:17.490 an integration failure. The men who needed to know the 0:30:17.570 --> 0:30:27.770 truth were told it, and they refused to believe. Early 0:30:27.770 --> 0:30:33.210 in nineteen forty one, a mysterious figure was seen standing 0:30:33.290 --> 0:30:37.570 on the south coast of England pointing a mysterious array 0:30:37.690 --> 0:30:43.330 of aerials out over the sea towards occupied France. The 0:30:43.410 --> 0:30:47.290 locals were alarmed, and this dastardly fellow was soon in 0:30:47.330 --> 0:30:50.890 the custody of the police as a suspected German spy. 0:30:52.010 --> 0:30:57.330 He was, in fact a frustrated British scientist named Derrick Garrard. 0:30:58.450 --> 0:31:02.210 Garrard was waiting to receive permission to join the intelligence 0:31:02.290 --> 0:31:06.890 team of the formidable r V Jones, but his security 0:31:06.930 --> 0:31:11.090 clearance had been slow to arrive, and Deck Garrard was 0:31:11.130 --> 0:31:13.530 in a hurry. There was a war on after all. 0:31:14.290 --> 0:31:17.050 He convinced the police to release him and headed straight 0:31:17.170 --> 0:31:20.170 back to the coast to set up his equipment. Again. 0:31:20.730 --> 0:31:24.690 He was listening for the distinctive pulses of a German 0:31:24.770 --> 0:31:29.930 radar system r V. Jones, meanwhile, had been shown a 0:31:29.970 --> 0:31:34.170 pair of aerial photographs with a strange anomaly in them, 0:31:34.250 --> 0:31:41.010 a blur that suggested a rotating object. Jones already suspected 0:31:41.050 --> 0:31:43.930 that the sight in question on the French coast might 0:31:44.090 --> 0:31:48.650 contain a radar station. He requested that a spitfire fighter 0:31:48.690 --> 0:31:52.210 pilot make the dangerous journey over the sea to get 0:31:52.210 --> 0:31:57.810 a close up photograph strange object. The pilot returned and 0:31:57.850 --> 0:32:01.210 complained that all he had found was an anti aircraft gun, 0:32:01.290 --> 0:32:03.810 a gun which could have killed him. But when the 0:32:03.810 --> 0:32:07.810 photographs were examined, they showed not only the gun, but 0:32:08.090 --> 0:32:10.810 off in the background at the edge of the image 0:32:11.610 --> 0:32:17.090 a radar area. Jones had seen the enemy, and Derek 0:32:17.210 --> 0:32:20.890 Garrard had heard it, the very same radar station that 0:32:20.970 --> 0:32:25.850 the spitfire pilot had photographed. As Jones was studying that photograph, 0:32:26.130 --> 0:32:29.690 Garrard burst in breathless with news that his aeriels on 0:32:29.730 --> 0:32:33.370 the south coast had clearly picked up the radar signal. 0:32:34.450 --> 0:32:38.730