Sir Malcolm Campbell was a very multifaceted personality: while his motorsport achievements in the interwar period are world-famous, his military career is almost unknown, although he contributed a great deal to the British war effort in the Second World War and made the Normandy landings possible in the first place.
He was born in 1885, the son of a Scottish diamond merchant. At the age of 18, he left his parental home to start a business career, which was to provide him with the financial means for his passion for racing. He began his racing career in 1902 when he bought a second-hand motorcycle. By 1906, he had already won a gold medal in a London-Land’s End race. In 1910, he built an airplane of his own design, powered by two motorcycle engines. On the first flight, the plane actually took off, Malcolm Campbell at the controls missed some onlookers by a hair’s breadth and then crashed to the ground. This ended his aeronautical career for the time being. He returned to racing, this time in cars. He achieved several successes on the Brookslands circuit in Surrey. One evening in 1912, he went to see Maeterlinck’s opera “The Blue Bird” in London. He liked the name so much that he painted his car blue the night after the opera and christened it “Bluebird”. The paint was still fresh when he drove a race the next morning. Malcolm Campbell’s racing career came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War and he enlisted in the Royal West Kent Regiment, where he was mostly deployed as a motorcyclist. He later applied to join the Royal Flying Corps, which he was successful in doing. He left the armed forces at the end of the war with the rank of Captain.
Campbell took up racing again. In 1924, he set his first world land speed record of 146 miles per hour. Further world records followed, interrupted by an unsuccessful treasure hunt on Coco Island in the South Seas. As the five-mile-long sandy beach at Pendine was too short for the new speeds he was aiming for, Campbell moved his record attempts to Daytona Beach. Sandy beaches did not seem ideal to the idiosyncratic and eccentric Campbell, who was nonetheless pedantic in his preparation, so he investigated possible terrain formations in Belgium, Portugal, Spain and other countries. He thought he had found suitable terrain in South Africa when he heard about his compatriot Henry Segrave’s new world record in Daytona. In 1930, he developed and built a new Bluebird, with which he set a new world record of 245 miles per hour in Daytona in February 1931. He was awarded a knighthood for this achievement. Malcolm Campbell, now Sir Malcolm, set his sights on 300 miles and rebuilt his Bluebird. The engine now used was a V12 engine from Rolls-Royce, as used in record-breaking aircraft: this engine later became the world-famous Rolls-Royce Merlin, which powered the Spitfire. In 1935, Sir Malcolm reached 276 miles per hour at Daytona. In September of the same year, he broke the 300 mph barrier on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He now shifted the focus of his work (he wrote a few books in between and ran for the House of Commons for the Tories) to the water. Here, too, he set the world record several times higher until he set a world record of 141 miles per hour on Coniston Lake on August 19, 1939, which was not broken until his death on New Year’s Eve 1948 (and not for some time afterwards). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-2GBkp8n9U Sir Malcolm Campbell held a leading position at the British Ford Directorate for a time. This alone would have been a very important role for the British war effort, but it was not enough for the patriotic and daring Campbell. Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, he set up a military police company – mainly equipped with bicycles. He had contacted motor sports friends and had no difficulty in setting up six sections of 15 motorcyclists and a truck driver (who also acted as cook). Together with a four-man company command group, this formed the Provost Company of the 56th (London) Territorial Division. For the sake of simplicity, the troop was also called “The Bluebirds”. After a few months as company commander, Campbell’s failing health forced him to come to terms with the idea that he would probably have to spend the war on the front line, as he was not fit for front-line service (even if he himself saw it completely differently). He was then involved in the “Coats Mission”, the planned secret operation to evacuate the royal family in the event of a German invasion. Campbell was supposed to take over traffic control with some of his company, but this never happened.
Fortunately for him (and Britain), however, he maintained a private workshop and had a number of contacts with the most innovative minds in the British vehicle industry and the British shipyard industry: Peter du Cane, who had worked on the “Bluebird” racing boat, designed the prototype of the successful British MTBs of the Second World War for Vosper. After the British Expeditionary Force in France lost almost all of its vehicle equipment in 1940, replacements had to be found quickly, some of which had to be improvised. Some of the types developed under these conditions never made it past the prototype stage; one vehicle, however, the “Dodge Armored Car”, was used and deployed in small numbers. Its official name was “Car, 4-wheeled, Light Reconnaissance, Dodge”. However, the troops mockingly called it “Malcolm Campbell’s Armored Car”. This was because it had actually been designed by none other than Sir Malcolm Campbell, the nine-time world speed record holder on land and water. His chief mechanic, Leo Villa, was in charge of production at Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd, where 70 of these armored cars were built on Dodge chassis. The 70 armored vehicles were completed by the end of August 1940. The first prototype had been built on a Fordson truck chassis, assembled by Leo Villa himself in Campbell’s private workshop in Surrey. This prototype then went to Briggs, where a pre-production vehicle was built on a Dodge chassis with an armored body made of 1-inch armor plates. The drive formula was 4×2. And with a weight of eight tons, it was certainly not “light”. The armored superstructure was fitted with hatches through which the crew could fire their weapons; sometimes such an armored car was armed with a Bren and a Boys tank gun. There is not much information about the use of these vehicles. They seem to have been used by the Motor Machine Gun Brigades. The1st Brigade (which existed from May to October 1940) had a Valentine tank and a Malcolm Campbell’s Armored Car and some Humber LRCs in each of its three regiments. In February 1941, the 56th Recce Regiment received a total of 15 Malcolm Campbell’s Armored Cars, which had previously belonged to the 131st Infantry Brigade; one was no longer roadworthy and another had just been driven into a ditch by the soldiers of the 131st Infantry Brigade. An armored unit equipped with the “Malcolm Campbell’s Armored Car” equipped three of these vehicles with machine guns from a downed German He 111 bomber. A Home Guard unit in Hampshire also acquired a Malcolm Campbell’s Armored Car in 1942. It was fitted with a 57 mm cannon (which had been part of the armament of a tank in the First World War). The vehicle was given the designation “Tubby Tankbuster”. Tubby Tankbuster initially had an armored superstructure, but this was later partially removed so that the 57 mm gun could be mounted. It could fire forwards and backwards, but not sideways. When this was tried out once during a test firing at Hengistbury Head, the armored car fell on its side.
From 1940 to 1941, the Somerford (Hampshire) Home Guard guarded the Army’s Air Defense Experimental Establishment (ADEE).
The official designation “Car, 4-wheeled, Light Reconnaissance, Dodge” is somewhat misleading. In fact, the Briggs company in Dagenham was a supplier to Ford, which had been operating its largest production plant in Great Britain in Dagenham since 1931. Since the outbreak of war, the number of employees there rose from 12,000 to 35,000. 360,000 military vehicles were manufactured there during the war: Trucks, field canteens, Bren carriers. It also produced 250,000 Ford V8 engines. In addition, 95 percent of British wartime production was agricultural tractors. These ran under the Fordson label (because a Ford supervisory board had once voted against tractor production). Many Ford trucks also bore the Fordson name. Campbell was given the rank of major and was assigned to the Combined Operations staff, which gave the special units the opportunity to draw on Dagenham’s enormous capacities for the development of special equipment without having to go through the lengthy official channels. Campbell developed a miniature torpedo that would enable the Canoeists and Frogmen to sink enemy ships without having to attach explosive charges to the hull themselves. The weapon was tested during a raid against the southern Italian port of Crotone, but the resistance of the Italians during the commando action was so fierce that the effect of the miniature torpedoes could not be observed. Later, in November 1942, a ten-man team from the Special Boat Section (under the command of Major Vere Holden-White and Lieutenant E.J.A. Lunn) used the torpedoes in an attack on Vichy-French ships in the port of Oran (“Operation Reservist”), while other British and American commando units were to occupy the port facilities at the same time. The whole operation went wrong, the combat swimmers were captured (but released a few days later) because the Allied landing operation in North Africa (“Operation Torch”) had succeeded at the other landing sites. The mini torpedoes were a failure, Lunn saw one bobbing peacefully in the harbor basin days later, their range (they were powered by windshield wiper motors) was too short: they ran about 50 meters, but were launched from a greater distance. Another weaponry development was much more successful: the silenced de Lisle Carbine caliber .45 ACP. This weapon was the private development of an engineer from the Air Ministry, William Godfrey de Lisle. He had developed an automatic .22 caliber weapon with an integrated silencer. He came to the attention of higher authorities and was called to Combined Operations in London. Here he was received by Sir Malcolm Campbell. The weapon was immediately tried out on the roof of the building. Campbell was enthusiastic and suggested a version in a large caliber, preferring 9 mm Parabellum. De Lisle not only reworked his weapon, he redesigned it from scratch: the result was a bolt-action rifle with the lock mechanism of the Lee Enfield with a barrel in .45 ACP. All further tests were so convincing that de Lisle was able to demonstrate his weapon to staff officers from Combined Operations on Sir Malcolm Campbell’s estate in the summer.
One of the gentlemen wanted to try out the weapon himself and shot a duck at a distance of 400 meters. This was convincing and de Lisle was ordered from the Air Ministry to the Ford works in Dagenham, where he produced 17 further prototypes in .45 ACP caliber. These were issued to the special units of the Commandos, who used them in raids on the French coast. In August 1944, Sterling Engineering Co. in Dagenham received an order to produce 500 de Lisle Carbines for Combined Operations, but only 130 were actually manufactured, 106 of which were issued to Combined Operations.
In 1942, Campbell became a member of a committee set up by Lord Mountbatten (who was the Commander of Combined Operations) of key military and scientific experts. They met at the Combined Operations Development Center and at one of these meetings Major Campbell referred to a memorandum by a bold young officer, Major H.G. “Blondie” Hasler, who had closely studied Italian operations using small-scale naval warfare. Hasler, who commanded the “Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment”, was given the green light for an audacious operation, the attack on German blockade runners in the port of Bordeaux using canoes. The daredevil commandos became famous as the “Cockleshell Heroes” after the type of boat they used. The entire equipment had to be redeveloped. Malcolm Campbell contributed a special lamp for reading the map and compass. Twelve men set off from a Royal Navy submarine on December 7, 1942, and on December 12, 1942, their explosives detonated in the port of Bordeaux, sinking a cargo ship and damaging others. Six members of the raid were captured and shot in accordance with the infamous command order. However, after a veritable odyssey, Hasler was able to make his way to Great Britain, where he was given the DSO and, together with Malcolm Campbell, set about developing a special boat that could travel above and below water: the curious vessel was called the “Sleeping Beauty”. The plan was for the “Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment” to use such boats to attack German flying boats (Blohm & Voss BV222 Wiking) on the Etang de Biscarosse, but the operation was canceled. Instead, 15 Sleeping Beauties went to the Far East, where they were to be used in “Operation Rimau” against the Japanese-occupied port of Singapore. The operation went wrong, the boats were sunk and the participants either fell in battle or were captured by the Japanese, who later executed them. Sir Malcolm Campbell also developed a silenced outboard engine for Hasler, but it was not particularly quiet. Most naval commando actions against enemy shipping were pure suicide missions and, if successful, achieved what a squadron of heavy bombers would have achieved. But there was something that airplanes could not possibly do. An eminently important question for the success of the planned landing in Normandy was whether there was any peat under the sandy beach. Professor Bernal, who dealt with the geological questions of the Normandy operation, had studied reports from the Roman imperial period and (the ancient Romans were very precise about this) knew that peat had once been mined on the Normandy coast. Now a subsoil of peat was a big risk for a planned landing. The big question was whether the layer of sand on top would be thick enough to support wheeled and tracked vehicles. The only way to find out was to take soil samples. The Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) had been set up by Lord Mountbatten after the disaster of the Dieppe landing specifically for the purpose of beach exploration before landing operations.
Mountbatten ensured Churchill that the members of the unit knew about Allied plans for landing operations. For this reason, they were all given the highest level of secrecy, which remained in force even after the war. However, Churchill insisted that all actions by the COPPs had to be tested in England first.
At Combined Operations, Campbell was – rightly – regarded as a specialist in the load-bearing capacity of sandy beaches for wheeled vehicles. After all, he had set a world speed record on the sandy beach at Daytona Beach, which he himself had previously tested for its load-bearing capacity. In Campbell’s opinion, a 14-inch layer of sand was sufficient to support heavy vehicles. He had developed a device for taking soil samples. Unfortunately, the device, which the soldiers called “Malcolm Campbell’s Pogo Stick”, was unwieldy and made a lot of noise when in use. It had to be completely redesigned. COPP combat swimmers were to go ashore in Normandy and collect soil samples, as it was now known, thanks to Professor Bernal, that layers of peat lay beneath the sandy beach, which could jeopardize the entire invasion. After a successful test run in England, the two combat swimmers of Combined Operations Pilotage Party 1 went ashore on New Year’s Eve 1943/1944 from an LCN boat half a kilometer off the coast in sub-zero temperatures and high waves in Normandy and brought back important findings with their soil samples (“Operation Bellpush Able”). One more thing about the aforementioned Briggs company. It specialized in pressed parts made of sheet steel, such as those used in car body construction. Briggs developed and produced the British paratrooper helmet from 1940 and the British radar helmet from 1942. The company also built parts for the famous Mosquito fighter plane. Incidentally, Donald Campbell, Sir Malcolm’s son, also worked at Briggs. He had joined the Royal Air Force in September 1939, but had to be discharged in 1940 due to serious health problems. He worked as an engineer at Briggs during the war years. After the war, he successfully continued his father’s world record attempts and died during one on Coniston Lake in 1967. In the same year, the fifth James Bond film with Sean Connery was shot. Ian Fleming, the author of the original novel, was inspired by Sir Malcom Campbell for the character of the resourceful “Quartermaster” (Q for short).
