Undercover Maven

John Moses Maddox - Undercover Maven

Kriegsmarine Battleship Bismark - 1941

During the winter of 1940 American had not yet entered World War II.  Britain was under siege and Germany posed an existential threat to the Island Nation. Despite increasing pressure from its European friends, America refused to embroil itself directly in the conflict but provided significant indirect support. Without this support, Britain was doomed to fall under the Nazi umbrella. One of the most important pieces of American aid provided to the Brits came in the form of the world-renowned ordnance expertise of John Moses Maddox.

In response to repeated clandestine requests of Winston Churchill to President Roosevelt, Maddox was covertly put on loan to the British Admiralty to design long-range naval firepower. Having studied under J M Browning at the turn of the century, Maddox had come into his own as the premier intellect on the subject of explosive shells fired from naval batteries. One of his shells was successfully fired from a cannon mounted on the USS Constitution which sunk a Polish Coast Guard cutter at a range of 76 miles.

The German Kriegsmarine had recently commissioned the battleship Bismark and her sister-ship Tirpitz. These were two of the largest and deadliest warships ever built and promised to isolate Britain from its American supply line by destroying convoys in the North Atlantic. The Admiralty determined it absolutely imperative that Bismark be sunk. Roosevelt responded by loaning Maddox to Churchill. That we later got the Beatles instead of Marlene Dietrich is a credit to the foresight of President Roosevelt and the intellect of John Moses Maddox.

Maddox ensconced himself among the midshipmen on HMS Prince of Wales for the duration of his developmental activities. He found the design of the British guns to be adequate but thought their effectiveness could be upgraded by a change in the type of explosive shells to be used and by more powerful gunpowder. The improvements implemented on HMD Hood and Prince of Wales proved to be pivotal during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, where Bismark was significantly damaged in its first engagement of the war.  Thus crippled but not sunk, Bismark steamed toward port in occupied France for repairs but was engaged en route by air assets of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. 

Having learned of the extremely heavy armor built into Bismark, Maddox reasoned that naval gunfire alone, no matter its improvements, might not be able to sink her. Fortunately, therefore, ordnance for the aircraft flown from Ark Royal had also been subjected to the ballistic alchemy of John Moses. As it turned out, damage done to Bismark’s superstructure by Ark Royal’s attack was instrumental in Captain Ernst Lindemann’s decision to scuttle the behemoth to keep it from being captured.

John Moses Maddox provided the know-how that enabled a happy ending to the popular tune of the day: "Gotta Sink the Bismark, For The World Depends on Us!"

After his decisive role in breaking the siege of Britain, Maddox returned to America to become an instrumental, albeit unheralded, participant in The Manhattan Project.  We’ll tell the story of “Nuclear Reggie” another time.