Speaker 1: Pushkin. November nineteen thirty nine. It's been two months since
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany invaded Poland and one month since Poland surrendered.
Speaker 1: France and Britain have declared war, but there's not much fighting.
Speaker 1: An uneasy quiet has descended over Western Europe, with neither
Speaker 1: side keen to take major risks. It's obvious that the
Speaker 1: choet won't last, and a German executive named Hans Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Meyer has picked a side. Maya is visiting Oslo on
Speaker 1: a business trip. He doesn't look much, a neat middle
Speaker 1: aged fellow in a suit who works in some sort
Speaker 1: of corporate research lab back in Germany. Nobody bats an
Speaker 1: eyelid when he descends from his room to the lobby
Speaker 1: of Oslo's elegant Hotel Bristol and asks the head porter.
Speaker 2: Would it be possible please to borrow a typewriter.
Speaker 1: Maya takes the typewriter back upstairs to his room. He
Speaker 1: closes and carefully locks the door, pulls on a pair
Speaker 1: of gloves to obscure his fingerprints. What He's about to
Speaker 1: do is dangerous, very dangerous. If the Gestapo ever find
Speaker 1: out he's a dead man, then Maya's gloved fingers begin
Speaker 1: to type perhaps the most spectacular intelligence leak in history.
Speaker 1: In a terse but wide ranging pair of reports, he
Speaker 1: describes Nazi Germany's most sensitive military technologies, their bomber production,
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier being built in Keel Harbor, the remote
Speaker 1: controlled gliders fitted with large explosive charges. Maya deftly outlines
Speaker 1: the Nazi autopilot system, which is under development and which
Speaker 1: will allow them to take down barrage balloon defenses using
Speaker 1: unmanned planes. He keeps typing, describing the ballistic missiles that
Speaker 1: the German Army are developing and the name of the
Speaker 1: research center. He provides the location just north of Berlin
Speaker 1: of the R and D laboratories of the German Air Force,
Speaker 1: the Luftwaffer, and suggests that.
Speaker 2: It would be a rewarding target.
Speaker 1: How did Mayer learn all this? Some of its gossip,
Speaker 1: some of it's wrong, but much of what he writes
Speaker 1: is specific, technically rigorous and ab solutely accurate. And this
Speaker 1: he knows because he's the director of the Seamen's research
Speaker 1: laboratory in Berlin, and the scientists working for him have
Speaker 1: increasingly been producing cutting edge electronics for military purposes. Shortly
Speaker 1: after Maya borrows the typewriter. He arranges to have his
Speaker 1: two letters delivered to Oslo's British embassy for the embassy staff.
Speaker 1: They're mysterious, sensational baffling. It seems to be some of
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany's most closely guarded secrets, signed only with the
Speaker 1: curious name Martin who sent them? Can they be believed?
Speaker 1: Maya must be convinced that some deep evil lurks at
Speaker 1: the heart of the Nazi regime because he's willing to
Speaker 1: risk his life to warn the British about what the
Speaker 1: Nazi military is capable of. But will the British listen?
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and this is cautionary tales. Ostriches do not,
Speaker 1: in fact bury their heads in the sand when trouble
Speaker 1: is approaching, but sometimes people do. That's what this cautionary
Speaker 1: tale is all about. Why do we manage to ignore
Speaker 1: the obvious?
Speaker 3: It should have.
Speaker 1: Been clear that Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, which became known
Speaker 1: as the Oslo Report, were worth taking seriously. Yes, this
Speaker 1: mysterious Martil fellow might have been a crank, or the
Speaker 1: letters could have been fakes, a double bluff planted by
Speaker 1: the Nazis. To deceive the British about their real capabilities,
Speaker 1: But the Oslo report included several paragraphs that could hardly
Speaker 1: be a Nazi bluff. They gave a detailed and authoritative
Speaker 1: description of German radio wave technology. At the time, the
Speaker 1: British tended to be rather sniffy about German engineering. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Germans could do things cheaply, but they were hardly
Speaker 1: at the cutting edge. Meyer's report suggested otherwise. He explained
Speaker 1: that the Luftwruffer was developing guidance systems using radio beams
Speaker 1: to help bombers drop their deadly payload at exactly the
Speaker 1: right spot, the equivalent of satellite navigation. Before satellites existed,
Speaker 1: Germany would be able to bomb British targets even at night.
Speaker 1: Meyer also described Germany's defensive radar technology, short wave radio transmitters,
Speaker 1: which bounced signals off incoming aircraft and used the reflections
Speaker 1: as an early warning system. If the British sent bombers
Speaker 1: over Germany, the radar stations would see them coming and
Speaker 1: Germany's fighter groups would have easy pickings. He gave the
Speaker 1: details the wavelengths being used, even the mathematical formulas involved.
Speaker 1: This couldn't be a bluff. At the very least, it
Speaker 1: proved that someone in Germany knew all about radar, which
Speaker 1: the British had assumed was their closely guarded secret. Radar
Speaker 1: technology would be pivotal in the Second World War, as
Speaker 1: vividly described in Tom Whipple's book The Battle of the Beams,
Speaker 1: and Hans Ferdinand Meyer's brave decision to expose the secrets
Speaker 1: of German radar could be pivotal too, if the British
Speaker 1: took it seriously. If in the early nineteen thirties a
Speaker 1: senior British politician stood up in Parliament to explain the
Speaker 1: likely course of a future war.
Speaker 4: It is well also for the man in the street
Speaker 4: to realize that there is no power on earth that
Speaker 4: can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him,
Speaker 4: the bomber will always get through.
Speaker 1: That seemed all too true at the time. There was
Speaker 1: no defense against the new bombers that were being developed.
Speaker 1: They flew too high to be easily intercepted, and would
Speaker 1: attack without warning. In nineteen thirty seven, the Luftwaffir seemed
Speaker 1: to prove the point by laying waste to the Spanish
Speaker 1: market town of Gernica with one of the first major
Speaker 1: bombings of a civilian population. But when Gernica was attacked,
Speaker 1: the British had already been working on a secret defense
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, and by nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: that defense was fully prepared. An invisible network of radar
Speaker 1: stations blanketed the country in places with reliable electricity supplies,
Speaker 1: good visibility out over the sea, and that would not
Speaker 1: gravely interfere with grouse shooting. This was Britain, after all.
Speaker 1: If the grouse shooting was disrupted, then the Nazis had
Speaker 1: already won. These radar stations would send out pulses of
Speaker 1: invisible light radio waves and detect the reflection of those
Speaker 1: pulses from incoming objects. The Royal Air Force would get
Speaker 1: advanced notice of approaching bombers and could send fighters up
Speaker 1: to intercept them. Guided by radar, the outnumbered fighters of
Speaker 1: the Royal Air Force could be mustered and focused where
Speaker 1: they were most needed. The heroic few could stand up
Speaker 1: to the mighty looftbuffer. So when Hans Ferdinand Meyer was
Speaker 1: typing his secret Oslo report early in November nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: radar was old news to the British What was new
Speaker 1: and should have been a dramatic revelation, was the fact
Speaker 1: that the Germans had radar too. Meyer's brave act of
Speaker 1: espionage could save many British lives if they paid attention
Speaker 1: to the Oslo report. If not, they'd have to find
Speaker 1: out about German radar the hard way. On December the eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, a few weeks after Meyer had typed
Speaker 1: his report, it was a cold, bright day over the
Speaker 1: northwest coast of Germany and the naval base of Wilhelmshaven.
Speaker 1: To the Royal Air Force, it was a lovely day
Speaker 1: for the precision bombing of the German fleet. Not a
Speaker 1: bomb would be wasted, not a civilian would be harmed.
Speaker 1: The conditions were ideal that all assumed the bombers would
Speaker 1: attack without warning if the defenders knew they were coming. However,
Speaker 1: the clear conditions would be a double edged sword.
Speaker 5: Splendid weather for fighters.
Speaker 1: A Pine's a luftwaffer fighter commander. He's not really expecting
Speaker 1: a British attack, merely hoping for one. His assistant shakes
Speaker 1: his head regretfully.
Speaker 2: The Tommies are not such fools. They won't come today.
Speaker 1: On the tiny German island of hellegeraland less than half
Speaker 1: a square mile in size, electronic eyes have been installed.
Speaker 1: German radar there and elsewhere will give plenty of warning
Speaker 1: of any incoming bombers. But the British, despite Maya's warning,
Speaker 1: are convinced that only they and not the Germans, have
Speaker 1: cracked the secrets of radar. The pilots of the twenty
Speaker 1: two bombers heading towards Wilhelmshaven have every reason to believe
Speaker 1: they will catch the defenders completely unawares. When the radar
Speaker 1: operators on Hellegaland notify their superiors of the incoming bombers,
Speaker 1: they're met with disbelief.
Speaker 2: You are plotting seagulls.
Speaker 1: With the winter sun low in the southern sky, the
Speaker 1: defensive LUFTWAFFEFI would have plenty of cover for their counter attack.
Speaker 1: Could the British really be so foolish as to try
Speaker 1: something they would? The images on the radar scope aren't seagulls,
Speaker 1: their twenty two sitting ducks. Were the German fighters given
Speaker 1: so much warning by the radar system, the incoming British
Speaker 1: bombers don't stand a chance. More than half of them
Speaker 1: are shot down as the rest flee to safety. Having
Speaker 1: barely made attempt in Germany's fleet, the utter route of
Speaker 1: the bomber force did prompt to rethink in future the
Speaker 1: Royal Air Force would attack at night. Of course, radar
Speaker 1: also works perfectly well at night, but the idea that
Speaker 1: the Germans had radar had yet to penetrate the skulls
Speaker 1: of the British elite. Cautionary tales will be back after
Speaker 1: the break, and just a warning there will be a
Speaker 1: brief mention of suicide. Two years earlier, in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: relations between the German Luffaffer and the British Royal Air
Speaker 1: Force had been cautious, at cordial. Officers from each side
Speaker 1: would visit the other, chatting diplomatically about the friendship between
Speaker 1: the two great nations. One visiting German officer took a
Speaker 1: surprisingly frank line of questioning.
Speaker 3: How are you getting on with your experiments in the
Speaker 3: detection by radio of aircraft approaching your shores?
Speaker 1: He asked his astonished hosts.
Speaker 3: He added, cheerfully, we have known for some time that
Speaker 3: you were developing a system of radio detections, and so
Speaker 3: are we, and we think we are ahead of you.
Speaker 1: The British didn't need Meyer to warn them about German radar.
Speaker 1: A Loftbraffer officer had done the same two years before
Speaker 1: war broke out. Somehow the lesson didn't stick. So why
Speaker 1: do we sometimes deny the obvious? One answer is that
Speaker 1: maybe what seems obvious with hindsight wasn't obvious at the time.
Speaker 1: The Oslo report, coupled with the indiscreet visiting officer, should
Speaker 1: have been evidence enough. But that's easy to say. With hindsight.
Speaker 1: There would have been dozens of informants, hundreds of reports,
Speaker 1: countless rumors. Different people in the British military will have
Speaker 1: heard different things, and not every piece of information would
Speaker 1: have reached the right person. Some reports will have been
Speaker 1: dismissed as junk, Some will have been too sensitive to
Speaker 1: share widely. A conversation with a visiting German and an
Speaker 1: officer's mess in nineteen thirty seven might have been reported somewhere,
Speaker 1: filed and forgotten, or not reported at all. We have
Speaker 1: amidst all the noise, it can be difficult to pick
Speaker 1: out the signal we are. In their book Predictable Surprises,
Speaker 1: Max Beseman and Michael Watkins call this an integration failure.
Speaker 1: An organization may have all the information it needs, but
Speaker 1: sifting out what really matters and assembling those disparate clues
Speaker 1: into the true picture can be a near impossible task.
Speaker 1: The British weren't the only ones to suffer integration failures.
Speaker 1: The Germans, for example, regarded their radar system as the
Speaker 1: mother of all secrets, yet they also published publicity folksographs
Speaker 1: showing radar aerials clearly visible. This was because the radar
Speaker 1: system was so secret that the German censors weren't told
Speaker 1: that it was a secret, Nor were the Americans immune.
Speaker 1: In fact, the most famous intelligence failure of the war
Speaker 1: was arguably an integration failure. The Japanese attack on Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor came as a complete surprise to the US forces.
Speaker 1: There shouldn't the Americans have seen the Japanese coming. The
Speaker 1: clues were there. Several American and British strategists had warned
Speaker 1: that Pearl Harbour would be a tempting target for a
Speaker 1: Japanese attack. US Japanese relations were extremely tense, and war
Speaker 1: seemed a distinct threat. An American codebreaker, Genevieve Grojan, had
Speaker 1: cracked a Japanese diplomatic code six weeks before the attack,
Speaker 1: she exposed a message between the Tokyo government and the
Speaker 1: Japanese embassy in Washington, noting there is more reason than
Speaker 1: ever before for us to arm ourselves to the teeth
Speaker 1: for all out war. Just a week before the attack,
Speaker 1: another message was deciphered. The Japanese ambassador in Berlin was
Speaker 1: instructed by Tokyo to warn Adolf Hitler that war may
Speaker 1: suddenly break out between the Anglo Saxon nations and Japan.
Speaker 1: This war may come quicker than anyone dreams. With hindsight,
Speaker 1: this all seems very obvious, so obvious, in fact, that
Speaker 1: some people believe in a conspiracy theory that the US
Speaker 1: or the UK deliberately ignored the warnings in the hope
Speaker 1: that Japan would attack and American voters would support the
Speaker 1: US entering the war. The truth is more prosaic. There
Speaker 1: were lots of hints of trouble, but lots of noise
Speaker 1: and false alarms too. Different decision makers had different clues,
Speaker 1: and these clues didn't reach the right people at the
Speaker 1: right time. In her influential book about Pearl Harbor, the
Speaker 1: historian ROBERTA. Wohlstetter wrote, it is only to be expected
Speaker 1: that the relevant signals so clearly audible after an event,
Speaker 1: will be partially obscured before the event by surrounding noise.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the British failed to understand that the Germans had
Speaker 1: radar because they were simply suffering an integration failure. If so,
Speaker 1: they were about to get another very clear signal amidst
Speaker 1: the noise. In December nineteen thirty nine, the same month
Speaker 1: as the disastrous raid on Wilhelmshaven and six weeks after
Speaker 1: Hans Ferdinand Meyer's letters, another German named Hans would present
Speaker 1: the British with another opportunity to learn what they faced.
Speaker 1: This fellow is Hans Langsdorf, captain of the Graf Spey,
Speaker 1: a mighty German battleship. The graf Spey had been prowling
Speaker 1: around the South Atlantic, sinking merchant ships after first allowing
Speaker 1: their civilian cruise to disembark. Captain Langsdorf regarded naval warfare
Speaker 1: as a matter of honor. After all, Still, he was
Speaker 1: avoiding a real fight, since German naval doctrine at the
Speaker 1: time was to attack only civilian ships, causing maximum trouble
Speaker 1: for minimum risk. Captain Langsdorf and the Graf Spey were
Speaker 1: causing a lot of damage to the Allied war effort,
Speaker 1: and the Royal Navy resolved to hunt them down near
Speaker 1: the huge River Plate estuary where Argentina, Uruguay and the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean meet. Just after dawn on the thirteenth of December,
Speaker 1: three British cruisers spotted the Graf Spay's smoking funnel on
Speaker 1: the horizon and gave chase. That was a brave move,
Speaker 1: even with three against one. The Graf Spey was a larger,
Speaker 1: better armed and armored ship, a formidable opponent. Graf Spey
Speaker 1: concentrated its fire on one ship, the Exeter, and within
Speaker 1: minutes Exeter had lost the torpedo crews, communication systems, an
Speaker 1: entire gun turret, with most of the men on the bridge.
Speaker 1: Exeter's captain was lucky to survive, wounded in both legs
Speaker 1: and both eyes. The British pulled back to assess the situation.
Speaker 1: Graf Spey had been hit more than twenty times that
Speaker 1: the damage seemed superficial. The British didn't know that they'd
Speaker 1: been lucky. One of Exeter's shells had shattered Graf Spey's
Speaker 1: fuel filtering plant. The German battleship would run out of
Speaker 1: fuel within hours. Graft Spey dashed towards Montevideo, the nearest port,
Speaker 1: which was in neutral Uruguay. Once there, Captain Langsdorf frantically
Speaker 1: tried to repair his battleship while the British scrambled to
Speaker 1: assemble reinforcements. Langsdorf was alarmed when he was informed that
Speaker 1: a British communication had just been intercepted. The British ambassador
Speaker 1: to Uruguay had ordered fuel in order to supply the
Speaker 1: new British battleships that were arriving. Langsdorf's crew were starting
Speaker 1: to panic. One officer was convinced that, gazing out from Montevideo,
Speaker 1: he had seen lurking on the horizon not only a
Speaker 1: British battleship, but an aircraft carrier and three destroyers. What
Speaker 1: none of them knew was that the ambassador's fuel order
Speaker 1: was a bluff. Knowing his communications would be intercepted, he
Speaker 1: had paid for fuel for ships that didn't exist. Langsdorf
Speaker 1: felfret and bowed to what seemed inevitable. He limped the
Speaker 1: graft spay out to the river Plate estuary planted explosives
Speaker 1: on her hull. And sent her to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea. Sadly, for Captain Langsdorf, the bottom of the
Speaker 1: sea was only twelve yards down. Most of the ship
Speaker 1: remained above the surface, and photographs of the burning wreck
Speaker 1: went around the world, gleefully exploited by the British for
Speaker 1: propaganda purposes. For Captain Langsdorf, an honorable man, it was
Speaker 1: a final humiliation. From a hotel room in nearby Buenos Aidre's,
Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to his wife and another to
Speaker 1: his parents. The third letter was addressed to the German government.
Speaker 2: For a captain with a sense of honor, it goes
Speaker 2: without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from
Speaker 2: that of his ship.
Speaker 1: He explained, having written the three letters, he spread the
Speaker 1: Graf Spey's ensign flag out on the floor, lay on
Speaker 1: top of it, and shot himself out across the river
Speaker 1: plate estuary. The smoke from the Graf Spey began to clear.
Speaker 1: As it did, a sharp eyed observer in British intelligence
Speaker 1: noticed something curious in the latest photographs. What was that
Speaker 1: mysterious network of criss crossing wires on Graf Spay's forward tower.
Speaker 1: It was now January nineteen forty let me introduce you
Speaker 1: to a British radar scientist named Labouchere Hilliard Bainbridge Bell.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll forgive me if I just call him
Speaker 1: Bainbridge Bell. He thought the array on the graf Spey
Speaker 1: looked suspiciously like a radar system. He flew to Uruguay
Speaker 1: to find out more. When Bainbridge Bell arrived in Montevideo,
Speaker 1: his James Bond style cover story was that he was
Speaker 1: a scrap metal dealer. British intelligence had already purchased the
Speaker 1: salvage rights, and Bainbridge Bell rode out to graft Spey
Speaker 1: to examine his property. Although the ship had already been
Speaker 1: picked over by scavengers and gutted by fire, he was
Speaker 1: relieved to discover that the radar tower still contained many
Speaker 1: clues for radar tower it undoubtedly was. As he stood
Speaker 1: on the sloping deck amidst the wreckage, Bainbridge Bell g
Speaker 1: around at the fragments of a cathode ray display and
Speaker 1: sifted through the gears and the electronics that lay scattered around.
Speaker 1: His report back to the British government was unambiguous.
Speaker 5: The writer's personal opinion is that the installation was a
Speaker 5: sixty centimeter RDF radar. It seems strange that no one
Speaker 5: was curious before January nineteen forty about the aerial on
Speaker 5: the control tar.
Speaker 1: Strange indeed, but as Tom Whipple explains in the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Beams, the lack of curiosity would continue. The
Speaker 1: report was filed and then forgotten. Not only had Hans
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Meyer warned the British that the Germans had radar,
Speaker 1: but Bainbridge Bell had seen the radar with his own eyes.
Speaker 1: The official position of the Royal Air Force, however, did
Speaker 1: not change Britain, and Britain alone commanded the miracle technology
Speaker 1: of radar. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
Speaker 1: By February nineteen forty. It should have been brutally obvious
Speaker 1: that the Germans had radar, but the British refused to
Speaker 1: believe it. The delay was costly. Just ask the surviving
Speaker 1: crew of HMS Delight. This British destroyer ventured out of
Speaker 1: a harbor on the south coast of England in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen forty, and within a few miles was
Speaker 1: sunk by German dive pommers. Six sailors died. How unlucky
Speaker 1: thought the British, but it wasn't bad luck good German radar.
Speaker 1: The same story could be told by the crews of
Speaker 1: British bombers in nineteen forty. The British weren't in a
Speaker 1: position to bomb the Germans very often, but when they did,
Speaker 1: the losses were unexpectedly grievous, how unlucky. If the British
Speaker 1: had woken up to the obvious, the true source of
Speaker 1: these losses would have been recognized, and some of them
Speaker 1: could have been prevented. If you understand that an enemy
Speaker 1: has radar, you can start to take precautions, flying decoy
Speaker 1: missions or flying informations that overwhelm the radar operators, or
Speaker 1: trying to jam the radar electronically or fill the sky
Speaker 1: with false signals. Later in the war, both sides became
Speaker 1: masters of such tricks, but at the start, the Nazis
Speaker 1: were racing to develop countermeasures to British radar, and the
Speaker 1: British didn't even know there was a race at all.
Speaker 1: So why did it take the British so long? Was
Speaker 1: it just an integration failure? Were different parts of the
Speaker 1: British military receiving different signals and were they unable to
Speaker 1: put them all together and spot the pattern amidst the noise.
Speaker 1: I discussed this question with Tom Whipple, the author of
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Beams. He pointed out that there
Speaker 1: was one British intelligence analyst who didn't have any trouble
Speaker 1: at all piecing together the pattern. His name was R. V. Jones.
Speaker 1: If you've heard our series on the V two rocket,
Speaker 1: R V. Jones was the man who rightly warned Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill that Germany was developing the V two ballistic missile
Speaker 1: at pain and Munder. Jones was just as sharp on
Speaker 1: the question of German radar. He didn't miss much. In
Speaker 1: May nineteen forty he informed his colleagues that it was
Speaker 1: almost certain that Germany had radar. In July nineteen forty
Speaker 1: he wrote another short report summarizing the evidence. A prisoner
Speaker 1: of war had admitted that the German Navy had range
Speaker 1: finding radar. German planes had been spotted with what seemed
Speaker 1: to be radar systems. Eavesdropping on German radio revealed that
Speaker 1: pilots were celebrating the use of a code name system
Speaker 1: to successfully intercept British planes. And of course, there was
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report and the discovery of a fragmentary radar
Speaker 1: system on the graft spay. R V Jones declared it.
Speaker 2: Is safe to conclude that the Germans have an RDF system.
Speaker 1: They had radar. Jones pulled together much of the relevant evidence,
Speaker 1: drew the obvious conclusion in plain language, and circulated his
Speaker 1: analysis to Winston Churchill's chief scientific adviser and several other
Speaker 1: senior p This wasn't a Pearl Harbor situation. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an integration failure. The men who needed to know the
Speaker 1: truth were told it, and they refused to believe. Early
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one, a mysterious figure was seen standing
Speaker 1: on the south coast of England pointing a mysterious array
Speaker 1: of aerials out over the sea towards occupied France. The
Speaker 1: locals were alarmed, and this dastardly fellow was soon in
Speaker 1: the custody of the police as a suspected German spy.
Speaker 1: He was, in fact a frustrated British scientist named Derrick Garrard.
Speaker 1: Garrard was waiting to receive permission to join the intelligence
Speaker 1: team of the formidable r V Jones, but his security
Speaker 1: clearance had been slow to arrive, and Deck Garrard was
Speaker 1: in a hurry. There was a war on after all.
Speaker 1: He convinced the police to release him and headed straight
Speaker 1: back to the coast to set up his equipment. Again.
Speaker 1: He was listening for the distinctive pulses of a German
Speaker 1: radar system r V. Jones, meanwhile, had been shown a
Speaker 1: pair of aerial photographs with a strange anomaly in them,
Speaker 1: a blur that suggested a rotating object. Jones already suspected
Speaker 1: that the sight in question on the French coast might
Speaker 1: contain a radar station. He requested that a spitfire fighter
Speaker 1: pilot make the dangerous journey over the sea to get
Speaker 1: a close up photograph strange object. The pilot returned and
Speaker 1: complained that all he had found was an anti aircraft gun,
Speaker 1: a gun which could have killed him. But when the
Speaker 1: photographs were examined, they showed not only the gun, but
Speaker 1: off in the background at the edge of the image
Speaker 1: a radar area. Jones had seen the enemy, and Derek
Speaker 1: Garrard had heard it, the very same radar station that
Speaker 1: the spitfire pilot had photographed. As Jones was studying that photograph,
Speaker 1: Garrard burst in breathless with news that his aeriels on
Speaker 1: the south coast had clearly picked up the radar signal.
Speaker 1: This might come in Handy Jones was due at a
Speaker 1: meeting later that day called by the Royal Air Forces
Speaker 1: Head of Radar and Signals. The agenda for the meeting.
Speaker 1: Did the Germans have radar? At the beginning of the discussion,
Speaker 1: that was still an open question. When r V. Jones
Speaker 1: strolled in with Garrard's report of listening to the radar
Speaker 1: in one hand and the spitfire pilot's photograph of it
Speaker 1: in the other, the question had finally been answered. It
Speaker 1: was February nineteen forty one, fifteen months after Hans Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Meyer had borrowed a typewriter and risked his life to
Speaker 1: warn the British that the Germans had radar.
Speaker 5: R V.
Speaker 1: Jones didn't suffer fools gladly, but he was diplomatic enough
Speaker 1: not to name the fools. Shortly after the war, he
Speaker 1: dryly wrote.
Speaker 2: The evidence and rough performance of German radar had already
Speaker 2: been deduced in summer nineteen forty Despite this evidence, there
Speaker 2: still remained some expert prejudice against believing that the Germans
Speaker 2: had radar.
Speaker 1: Prejudice is the right word. Too. Many of the people
Speaker 1: who mattered had already made up their minds that the
Speaker 1: Germans couldn't have radar. The original sins here were pride
Speaker 1: and wishful things. Pride in British ingenuity meant that British
Speaker 1: scientists and officers were reluctant to admit that German technology
Speaker 1: might be just as good as theirs, and wish for
Speaker 1: thinking the hope that the fearsome German war machine had
Speaker 1: a weak spot their lack of radar. And because the
Speaker 1: British were so determined to disbelieve in German radar, they
Speaker 1: found fault with every piece of contrary evidence that crossed
Speaker 1: their desks. Those bulges on German planes weren't radar, they
Speaker 1: were just bulges. The Oslo report was clearly unreliable, and
Speaker 1: Nazi bluff evidence from interrogated prisoners couldn't be trusted. Psychologists
Speaker 1: call this biased assimilation of information. Claims that support your
Speaker 1: views are seized upon without question. Contrary evidence is dismissed
Speaker 1: or explained away. This is a sadly familiar story to
Speaker 1: connoisseurs of cautionary tales. We all have fond beliefs and
Speaker 1: we're at risk of mental contortions to protect those fond beliefs.
Speaker 1: Even as the British started to wander if the Germans
Speaker 1: really did have radar, their pride wouldn't let them admit
Speaker 1: that the Germans might have figured it out all by themselves.
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill asked the Air Ministry to check that no
Speaker 1: British radar had been captured during the fall of France.
Speaker 3: I understand there were two or three British radar sets.
Speaker 3: Can I be assured they were effectively destroyed before evacuation?
Speaker 1: He was right to ask. The Germans had indeed managed
Speaker 1: to seize a British radar while sweeping across Belgium and
Speaker 1: France in May and June of nineteen forty. German radar
Speaker 1: engineers had taken it apart and examined it closely before
Speaker 1: concluding that the British technology was so crude that they
Speaker 1: had nothing to learn. After the war, R. V. Jones
Speaker 1: tried again and again to figure out who had written
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report. In the end, he gave up, assuming
Speaker 1: that the anonymous author had been killed in the war,
Speaker 1: or perhaps executed as a traitor. Hans Ferdinand Meyer had
Speaker 1: been arrested by the Gestapo in nineteen forty three, but
Speaker 1: not because of the Oslo Report. His crime was listening
Speaker 1: to broadcasts from the BBC. A neighbour's maid overheard him
Speaker 1: repeating something critical of the Nazi regime from one of
Speaker 1: those broadcasts, and that was Maya's undoing. Maya was sent
Speaker 1: to Dakau, a concentration camp, where he was put to
Speaker 1: work trying to develop counter intelligence in a radio research laboratory.
Speaker 1: He kept his head down as the regime began to
Speaker 1: fall apart. At the end of the war, Hans Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Meyer simply walked out of a prison camp and into
Speaker 1: the safety of a nearby wood. Maya knew that some
Speaker 1: people would view him as a hero and others as
Speaker 1: a traitor, so he preferred to keep his authorship of
Speaker 1: the Oslo Report a closely guarded secret. But through an
Speaker 1: extraordinary set of coincidences, R. V. Jones finally learned his
Speaker 1: identity and tracked him down. In nineteen fifty five, he
Speaker 1: was living in Munich and once again running a research
Speaker 1: lab for Siemens. One evening, over quiet conversation in Meyer's
Speaker 1: apartment in Munich, Jones asked him why he had done
Speaker 1: what he had done. Why had he taken such extraordinary risks?
Speaker 1: There's a political answer and a more personal one. The
Speaker 1: political answer is simply that Maya was a staunch anti Nazi.
Speaker 1: The personal answer is that Maya had a friend in Britain,
Speaker 1: another electronics expert named Henry Cobden Turner. When the Nazis
Speaker 1: rose to power, Maya and Cobden Turner worked together to
Speaker 1: rescue a half Jewish girl named Claudier Martyl Carvik, whose
Speaker 1: Jewish mother had been expelled from Germany and whose Nazi
Speaker 1: father had disowned her. At Mayer's request, Cobden Turner managed
Speaker 1: to get a visa and a British passport for her,
Speaker 1: and she was saved, eventually moving to New York and
Speaker 1: living a long and happy life in America. Maya and
Speaker 1: Cobden Turner became the most loyal of France. Cobden Turner
Speaker 1: was godfather to Maya's son. Cobden Turner urged Maya to
Speaker 1: leak German secrets to help bring down the Nazis, but
Speaker 1: Maya refused. It wouldn't be right, he insisted unless the
Speaker 1: countries were actually at war, and once war came, it
Speaker 1: was impossible for him to reach Cobden Turner directly, hence
Speaker 1: the pretext to visit Oslo, the borrowed typewriter, and the
Speaker 1: mysterious letters to the Oslo embassy. Maya always hoped they
Speaker 1: might get into Cobden Turner's hands, since he was a
Speaker 1: radio expert himself. That was why the letters were simply
Speaker 1: signed Martyl, the middle name of the girl they had
Speaker 1: saved together. Cobden Turner was the only man alive who
Speaker 1: would understand the reference. R V Jones listened to all this,
Speaker 1: and then he kept Maya's secret for decades until both
Speaker 1: if Mayer and Meyer's wife were dead. The Oslo report,
Speaker 1: he said.
Speaker 2: Was probably the best single report received from any source
Speaker 2: during the war.
Speaker 1: But that quiet evening in Munich did R V. Jones
Speaker 1: tell Mayer that the British simply hadn't believed the Oslo
Speaker 1: report and that the Royal Air Force was still debating
Speaker 1: the existence of German radar more than a year later.
Speaker 1: I hope not. Mayer had risked everything to warn the British.
Speaker 1: It would have been cruel to tell him that the
Speaker 1: British simply hadn't listened. This cautionary tale is based with
Speaker 1: permission on Tom Whipple's book The Battle of the Beams.
Speaker 1: It's a vivid and surprising history, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to it than the argument about German radar. Pick
Speaker 1: up a copy if you can. For a full list
Speaker 1: of our sources, as always, see the show notes at
Speaker 1: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim
Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines with
Speaker 1: support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music
Speaker 1: is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts.
Speaker 1: It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge,
Speaker 1: Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohne, Vital Mollard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler,
Speaker 1: Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Tales is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by
Speaker 1: Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share,
Speaker 1: rate and review, tell your friends, and if you want
Speaker 1: to hear the show ad free, sign up for Pushkin
Speaker 1: Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts, or at
Speaker 1: pushkin dot Fm, slash plus,