The RAF Ignored A PERSONNEL Officer — Then His Searchlight Drove Hitler's U-Boats Into DAYLIGHT!

Bay of Biscay, June 1942. An Italian submarine is crossing on the surface in the dark, as every boat leaving the Biscay bases did, because from the air, at night, a surfaced submarine was close to invisible. Everyone knew that. Then a light came straight at her out of the night. It was a searchlight, and the man who thought of it was not a scientist and not an engineer. He was a personnel officer. In 1941 Britain was losing the war slowly, out of sight, under the surface of the Atlantic. That year the Allies lost some 4 million tons of merchant shipping, about half of it to the U-boats, and Winston Churchill later admitted that this was the one danger that truly frightened him. Coastal Command's new ASV radar could pick up a surfaced U-boat 12 to 15 miles away, but inside about a mile the echoes from the sea swallowed it. The number of U-boats sunk in the dark: zero. Humphrey de Verd Leigh ran personnel matters for Coastal Command. His answer was a 24-inch naval searchlight of 22 million candelas in a retractable cylinder under a Wellington, built by Jack Savage's small firm in Watford, Savage and Parsons, with no contract and from spare parts. The Air Ministry backed William Helmore's Turbinlite instead: a 2.7-billion-candela lamp in the nose of a Douglas Havoc. When Leigh's prototype flew in March 1941, the Ministry handed it to Helmore, and the new head of Coastal Command, Philip Joubert de la Ferté, sent Leigh back to personnel duties, in the same season Leigh was awarded the Air Force Cross for the searchlight. Then the Turbinlite was found "unsuited for anti-submarine work", and Joubert changed his tack. 172 Squadron formed at Chivenor on April 4, 1942. On the night of June 3, Squadron Leader Jeaffreson Greswell's Wellington caught the Luigi Torelli in its beam; Lieutenant Commander Augusto Migliorini, sure the light was friendly, had fired the recognition signals. On July 5, Pilot Officer Wiley B. Howell's crew sank U-502 with all 52 men aboard, the first confirmed U-boat sinking by a Leigh Light aircraft. From August 1942 the U-boats were ordered to cross the Bay of Biscay in daylight. This is the story of an institution working hard to bury a good idea, and of one obstinate officer who refused to let it stay buried. CHAPTERS 00:00 Bay of Biscay, June 3, 1942 04:02 The Night Belonged to the U-boats 11:05 The Man at the Personnel Desk 15:20 Two Searchlights 20:47 Punished for Being Right 25:04 Lights On 29:37 The Night Changes Sides 35:29 The Final Account If someone in your family flew Leigh Light patrols with 172, 179 or 304 Squadron, or kept their Wellingtons flying, tell their story in the comments. Those stories are part of this record. SOURCES AND CREDITS Archival photographs and film, all in the public domain: Imperial War Museums (British official photographs of the Air Ministry, the Admiralty and the Ministry of Information, including work by Cecil Beaton; Crown copyright expired), Royal Air Force (Air Publication 3003, HMSO), Australian War Memorial, U.S. National Archives (U.S. Navy photographs, series 80-G; U.S. Navy films 80-MN-3382 "Aircraft Searchlight" and series 428-NPC), Library of Congress, Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (Poland), and an Italian postcard of the submarine Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons. Thumbnail: Winston Churchill, 1940, photograph by Cecil Beaton (Ministry of Information; Imperial War Museums MH 26392); a Leigh Light switched on at St Eval, 1943 (Australian War Memorial SUK13250). Technical drawings and animation: Design Under Fire. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. #WW2 #BattleOfTheAtlantic #Documentary