When the Second World War began, British scientists were investigating a number of new technologies

that could potentially change the course of the war.

But when Britain was left to fight the Germans alone, British industry was stretched to the limit just to keep up.

What was the solution?

How about turning to the nation that was a world leader in mass production?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 337, the Tissard Mission

All the way back in episode 3004, 37, the Tissard Mission.

All the way back in episode 301, I told you about the German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, who were the first to split the uranium nucleus in 1938, and the physicist

Lisa Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, who published a paper in January

1939, giving the theoretical explanation for Hans and Strassmann's results.

In Britain, physicists set a number of British universities, including Cambridge, Liverpool, and

Birmingham, studied uranium fission. They tried to replicate the result, work out the theoretical

basis for uranium fission, and consider two questions. First, might it be possible to use uranium fission chain reactions

to build a facility that could produce usable power?

Generate electricity, perhaps.

And with war brewing in Europe,

the second question would be hard to avoid asking.

Could uranium fission be used to produce an atomic bomb?

In 1939, the tentative answers most physicists were willing to offer to these questions were,

possibly yes, and probably no. Yes to power generation, but the atomic bomb seemed wildly

impractical. We've already met Sir Henry Tissard, the English scientist who, before the war,

led a committee created to investigate the problem of air defense. It was Tissard's committee that

...