Tizard Mission - Objectives

Objectives

The objective of the mission was to cooperate in science and technology with the U.S., which was neutral and, in many quarters, unwilling to become involved in the war. The U.S. had greater resources for development and production which Britain desperately wanted to use. The information provided by the British delegation was subject to carefully vetted security procedures, and contained some of the greatest scientific advances made during the war: Radar (in particular the greatly improved cavity magnetron and design for the VT fuse), details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum, which described the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives.

Although Britain was interested in the Norden bombsight, when President Roosevelt apologised and said that it was not available to Britain unless it could be shown that the Germans had something similar (Tizard was not unduly dismayed as he thought there were other US technologies more useful to Britain than the bombsight), Tizard asked if he could have the external dimensions of the unit, so that British bombers could be modified to take it, if it became available at some future date. The American Congress had many proponents of neutrality for the USA and so there were further barriers to co-operation. Tizard decided that the most productive approach would be simply to give the information and use America's productive capacity. Neither Winston Churchill nor the radar pioneer, Robert Watson-Watt, were initially in agreement with these tactics for the mission. Nevertheless, Tizard first arranged for Archibald Hill, another scientific member of the committee, to go to Washington to explore the possibilities. Hill's report to Tizard was optimistic.