Tuesday 12 January 2010

The Bishop and Wartime O.R.

Earlier this year, Bishop Graham Leonard died. He had been Bishop of Truro (next door to Devon) and then a very distinguished Bishop of London. In his obituary in the "Church Times" there was a one-sentence reference to the fact that during 1944-1945 he had been seconded to the Army O.R. group. No further explanation, and I wondered how many of the readers of the paper would know what O.R. was. A further search led to a national newspaper recording that he had worked on fuses. That led to yet another search using the keywords "Operational Research" and "fuses" which didn't turn up any more about the late bishop.

However, the search turned up a reference that in 1944-45 the Army O.R. group had been working on fuses used against the V2 "flying bombs". And that reference was also fascinating, as Dorothy Hughes one of the first four lady "Chelsea Pensioners" had been involved with that section.

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