Free A Summer Bright and Terrible by David E. Fisher Page A

out to be
electromagnetic radiation invisible to the human eye. Since then, X-rays and
radioactivity, with its alpha, beta, and gamma rays (the last of which can
penetrate human skin and concrete walls), had sprung out of nowhere within the
lifetimes of most people, and so it was easy to imagine even deadlier forms of
radiation as yet undetected and even more powerful. Of course, it was all
nonsense, although it is amusing to recollect that an unnoticed paper by
Einstein had already shown the realities of laser technology, which could lead
to a real sort of death ray. But at the time it was all smoke and mirrors.
    At which Grindell Matthews was an expert.
    In 1924, he claimed to have developed an
electromagnetic beam that could “kill vermin at a distance of 64 feet, explode
dynamite, and stop internal combustion engines.” The press descended on him for
proof and came away with a bit less; a reporter from the London Daily Mail asked the inventor whether he could verify the claims. “Matthews smiled, and I
found confirmation in that,” he wrote. Apparently, a knowing smile was enough,
and the subsequent Daily Mail story was reprinted around the world, each
reprint adding something new, until the War Office was forced to ask for a
demonstration.
    There being neither vermin nor dynamite in
Matthews’s laboratory on the specified day, he announced that he would put out
an electric light with his deadly ray And indeed he did: He switched on the
ray, and the light died out. But when he turned to discuss the matter with the
attendees, one of them quickly darted in the path of the supposed death-ray
beam and stood there, unharmed and grinning ferociously
    The death ray was a hoax, but neither Matthews
nor the press gave up, and for the next twenty years, there was a succession of
such devices loudly heralded in the papers. As Dowding took up the post of Air
Member for Research, he was forced to evaluate a number of—shall we say,
creative—proposals: a device to firm up clouds for use as floating aerodromes,
liquid nitrogen to freeze the waters of the Channel to trap an invading armada,
and, of course, death rays of every conceivable and inconceivable type. They
all had to be carefully looked into, for no one was forgetting the history of
the tank, which had been submitted to the War Office in 1914 and dismissed with
the scribbled comment: “The man’s mad!”
    The War Office, hounded by the press, offered a
reward of one thousand pounds—double what the average man earned in a year—for
a real death ray, one that could be shown to kill a sheep at a distance of a
mile. This, of course, brought out every nut case and con man in the kingdom,
each of whom had to be honestly evaluated. Dowding was kept busy working nights
and weekends without respite, for with Germany rearming, the pressure was
building to do something, anything that would provide some hope. The death ray,
as it turned out, offered none.
    Nor did anything else. Although Trenchard tried
to reassure Parliament that his bomber force would deter any attack, it was
becoming clear that England was particularly susceptible to this new kind of
warfare. In reply to Trenchard, one parliamentarian pointed out the simple
observation that the Thames River provided a beacon for bombers, shining in the
dark by moonlight and leading them directly from the Channel into the heart of
London. Another member of Parliament focused on the incendiary bombs that had
been developed since the last war, and described data indicating that even a
small force of bombers could turn Britain’s cities into raging infernos.
    When Trenchard replied that it was within
England’s power to visit the same destruction on any enemy who dared to attack,
both Parliament and the general population winced. It was England alone that
had all its population crammed into a small island with no place of escape.
London epitomized the problem. The capital was the centre of England’s
political, shipping,