Page 145 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

In 1926 Humphreys estimated that it would require the combustion of 6,600
gallons of oil (or 35 tons of coal) an hour to clear a layer of fog about 150 feet
thick from a typical airfield—a cost that he deemed far too large. David Brunt,
Shaw’s successor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, revisited the
issue in 1939. He estimated that clearing a layer of fog about 300 feet thick would
require an average temperature increase of 3.5°C (6°F) (twice this at the ground)
and suggested that smokeless burners supplied by an oil pipeline along an airfield
could be designed to do the job. Brunt’s ideas were field-tested in the winter of
1938/1939, but the results were not promising. 39
As World War II escalated, fog became an obstacle to successful bombing
raids. With more raids scheduled, a surging accident rate, and the large num-
ber of flying hours lost to fog, the problem became one of “extreme urgency.”
In 1942 Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed his scientific adviser,
Lord Cherwell, to address the matter and issued the following statement: “It
is of great importance to find means to disperse fog at aerodromes so that air-
craft can land safely. Let full experiments to this end be put in hand by the
Petroleum Warfare Department with all expedition. They should be given
every support.” 40
Under the leadership of Britain’s minister of fuel and power, Sir Geoffrey
Lloyd, and Major-General Sir Donald Banks, the scientific research establish-
ment and industry joined forces to tackle the problem. The Petroleum Warfare
Department (PWD), an agency created in 1940 to consider “the possibilities
inherent in the use of burning oil as an offensive and defensive weapon in war-
fare,” was charged with developing a reliable, if expensive, brute-force method
of clearing fogs over airfields, a system it called Fog Investigation and Dispersal
operation. FIDo was one of the most spectacular but least publicized secret
weapons of the war. According to Banks, “We had been making vast preparations
to cook the Germans. We would see whether we could cook the atmosphere!” 41
It was a massive undertaking. The FIDo project brought together pilots,
engineers, fuel scientists, industrialists, government bureaucrats, and meteo-
rologists. Given the urgency of the situation, normal research and develop-
ment plans were shelved in favor of an all-out attack by research teams from
the National Physical Laboratory, Imperial College of Science and Technology,
Royal Aircraft Establishment, Armament Research Department, and such
industries as the Anglo-Iranian oil Company, Gas Light and Coke Company,
General Electric, Imperial Chemical Industries, London Midland and Scottish
Railway, and the Metropolitan Water Board. According to Lloyd, the project
director, “each was told to get on with the job with the fullest support and free-
dom of action.” 42

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