Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section

Defunct British government body

The Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Munitions Inventions Department was an organisation set up within Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions in early 1916. Originally based at Northholt aerodrome, in May 1916 the section moved to the National Physical Laboratory[1] at Bushy House, Teddington before moving to HMS Excellent on Whale Island near Portsmouth in Hampshire in September 1916.[2] The section was led by the physiologist A. V. Hill, who was previously a Captain in the Cambridgeshire Regiment. While on leave suffering from flu in January 1916, Horace Darwin approached him to work on anti-aircraft measures. Hill accepted and started to find the personnel for the unit, which acquired the nickname "Hill's Brigands".[3]

## Staff

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Members of the section included Ralph H. Fowler Douglas Hartree, Arthur Milne and James Crowther.

## Precursors

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Horace Darwin's brother Leonard Darwin had been an officer in the Royal Engineers. In the 1880s he had developed a method of locating the position of a military balloon according to the x, y and z axes of Cartesian co-ordinates.[4]

## References

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1. ^ Katz, Bernard (1978). "Archibald Vivian Hill. 26 September 1886-3 June 1977". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 24: 88. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1978.0005. ISSN 0080-4606. JSTOR 769758. PMID 11615743. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
2. ^ Pattison, Michael (1983). "Scientists, Inventors and the Military in Britain, 1915-19: The Munitions Inventions Department". Social Studies of Science. 13 (4): 547. doi:10.1177/030631283013004004. ISSN 0306-3127. JSTOR 284847.
3. ^ Smith, Meg Weston (1990). "E. A. Milne and the Creation of Air Defence: Some Letters from an Unprincipled Brigand, 1916-1919". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 44 (2): 241–255. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1990.0020. ISSN 0035-9149. JSTOR 531609.
4. ^ Van der Kloot, William (20 December 2011). "Mirrors and smoke: A. V. Hill, his Brigands, and the science of anti-aircraft gunnery in World War I". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 65 (4): 393–410. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2010.0090. PMID 22332470. Retrieved 2 December 2020.