History Pawle, Gerald: The Secret War,v1, 06 Feb 2008

[mrmikel]

"This is the story of a group of naval scientists, the story of a department in the Admiralty which had no exact counterpart in the whole complex Allied machine which waged the Second World War against Germany and her confederates the story of the Wheezers and Dodgers.

The Wizard War, as Sir Winston Churchill has termed the ceaseless struggle for mastery between the Allied and enemy scientists, involved moves and counter-moves often 'unintelligible to ordinary folk.' And for long after the war was over a detailed description of some of those moves, which would have made them intelligible to the layman, was inadvisable on security grounds."

This author, full name Shafto Gerald Strachan Pawle died in 1991, so his work is in copyright in most of the world. But this work published in the United States in 1957 did not have its copyright renewed in the US. So here it is for those in the US.

Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors and his role in these activities provides a rich background to novels such as Most Secret.