The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

him to ask him some points of detail, RV replied, ‘Would it help, sir, if I
told you the story right from the start?’
‘Well, yes it would!’ the Prime Minister answered after a moment’s
hesitation.
RV spoke for some twenty minutes. Every man there was both older
than and vastly superior in rank to him, but he keenly felt that the threat of
Knickebein was so serious that the facts needed to be properly grasped.
Certainly, when he finished no-one was left in any doubt as to the serious
danger posed by an enemy system that enabled bombers to accurately target
their bombs. Churchill wanted to know what could be done. First, they
needed to prove the existence of the beams, RV told him, then he planned to
try to create some counter-measures. ‘Churchill,’ noted RV, ‘added all his
weight to these suggestions.’
There were still doubters, however, as he discovered at his meeting later
that day with Air Commodore Nutting, the Director of Signals. RV was
having doubts himself; he had begun to wonder whether perhaps he had
fallen for a massive German hoax and had just wasted an hour of the Prime
Minister’s time when Britain was about to be invaded. However, in his
heart of hearts, he felt sure his conclusions had been right. A hunch now
made him suggest that the next investigative flight should assume the
director beam was on Derby, the location of the Rolls-Royce works where
Merlin engines were built.
‘And what do we do if we find the beams?’ Air Commodore Nutting
asked.
‘Go out and get tight!’ RV whispered to the man sitting next to him.
RV’s hunch proved right. On the next flight, on the night of 21/22 June,
the beams were found, and they intercepted over Derby on a 400- to 500-
yard-wide point. It was a stunning breakthrough with potentially farreaching
consequences for Britain’s ability to withstand a future German
bombing offensive. When RV returned to Nutting’s office with the results
of the flight, there was widespread jubilation; the Director of Signals even
began skipping round the room with joy. ‘All doubts were now removed,’
noted RV, ‘and plans for counter-measures could go urgently ahead.’ That
was the key – and in developing those counter-measures, there was not a
moment to lose.