Science and the Second World War (1939-45)

Artzia.com History Wars WWII Science :

A ships mate scans a radar screen Buy this Print at AllPosters.com

The Second World War initiated projects of great importance both to the outcome of the war and to improvement of everyday life afterwards. Innovations directly attributable to the pressures of the war effort include radar, which was begun before 1939 in England and Germany with the British team led by WATSON-WATT; air and sea transport has benefited since and the microwave oven is a side product. Radio astronomy was shaped by radar equipment and methods.

Operations research (a mathematical modelling technique) grew out of the radar programme and protection against submarine warfare. Penicillin, the first antibiotic, discovered by A FLEMING in 1928, was developed for clinical use by 1944 by FLOREY and CHAIN. Penicillin and related antibiotics have dominated the treatment of many infections since.

Close Combat: Invasion Normandy Buy from Amazon

Computers were initially developed in the USA to calculate artillery trajectories, and in the UK by Turing and others for decrypting the German 'Enigma' code messages. This decrypting programme ('Ultra') was notably successful and, by diminishing the effects of the Battle of the Atlantic and the (air) Battle of Britain, was critical in deciding the outcome of the entire war. Thereafter, computerized control has proved central to calculation in business, and developments include home entertainment and the control of space flight.

The German V-2 missile (the first ballistic missile) was developed by VON BRAUN for warfare; he later headed the NASA space probe programme in the USA. Pesticides (notably DDT, due to P H MÜLLER), curbed typhus during and after the war but their later use to control agricultural insect pests caused environmental problems; the work of RACHEL CARSON and others led to limitations in their use.

During the war a new class of poison gases was developed in Germany and made on a large scale. These are the intensely toxic organophosphorus esters ('nerve gases') such as Sarin (the lethal dose for humans is below 1 mg). Although not used in the war (the reasons are unclear) related compounds have been much used since, as insecticides in agriculture.

Turbojet aircraft engines were developed by WHITTLE in England and in Germany by P von Ohain (l911- ), and were first used in British military aircraft in 1941. After the war, jet propulsion largely replaced propellers in powering aircraft.

Atom Bomb Buy This Poster At AllPosters.com Or In Europe at Oneposter.com

The Manhattan Project, which led to the atomic bomb and nuclear power, was work of massive scale and significance. At the time, its financial cost and the scientific and technical effort were vast, as were the military, political, energy-generating and environmental consequences. As those working on the project foresaw, the world was grossly changed after a controlled fission reactor, and later weapons based on both fission (the A-bomb) and fusion (the H-bomb), became practical realities from 1945. If the First World War was a chemist's war, the Second was a physicist's war.

Some novel schemes were only partial successes: for the Allied invasion of France in 1944, PLUTO, a fuel pipeline under the Channel, was partly successful; the huge transportable harbours (e.g. Mulberry) were valuable; the idea of a floating airfield of ice (refrigerated and reinforced with wood pulp), code-named Habakkuk, proved a false trail.

IM