Sir Henry Tizard

The story starts with a man named, Sir Henry Tizard, one of Churchill's most trusted scientific advisors. At the start of the First World War, Tizard signed up to the Royal Garrison Artillery before becoming experimental equipment officer to the Royal Flying Corps. Then the Ministry of Munitions from 1918 to 1919. When the war finished he was made Reader in Chemical Thermodynamics at Oxford where he pioneered the concept of, “Octane Numbers.” Then back to the government and a job as assistant secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which in turn <among other things> lead to Director of Scientific Research to the Air Force and finally as the Rector of Imperial College, London, (1929-1942.)

1933 saw Tizzard appointed as Chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee a post which he occupied for most of the Second World War. In the run up to the war Tizard was heavily involved in pioneering radar, then in 1940 after a top secret conference with Churchill in which he had been overruled on an objection to Reginald Victor Jones's view that the Germans had established a system of radio-beam bombing aids over the UK, he commenced on, “The Tizard Mission.” On this mission he introduced British radar developments to the United States and other interested parties. 1948 and a return to the MOD as Chief Scientific Advisor (1948-1952).

It was while Tizard was in this post that he flexed the muscle of Chief Scientific Advisor and stated that, “UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study.” It was due almost exclusively to Tizzards insistence that a small Directorate of Scientific Intelligence/Joint Technical Intelligence Committee (DSI/JTIC) working party was to be set up to further investigate the phenomenon.