Millis Jefferis

In 1940 Jefferis was sent to Norway. He returned to give a personal account of his activities to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who used his report to brief the War Cabinet:

The Prime Minister gave the War Cabinet an account of the report which had been made personally to him by Major Jefferis. Major Jefferis had been sent out to Andalsnea with instructions to blow up the Western railway in Central Norway. He had accordingly gone down the railway line and joined Brigadier Morgan’s Brigade; but the Norwegians had categorically refused to allow him to carry out any demolitions. He had been present when Morgan’s Brigade had been engaged by the enemy. The Germans had attacked with artillery, tanks and armoured cars, which our troops had been without. Far more destructive of morale, however, had been the low-flying attacks with bombs and machine guns. Although the casualties had not been so great as from shell fire, the moral effect of seeing the aircraft coming, of being unable to take cover, of being able to observe the bomb dropping, and of the terrific explosion, had been overwhelming.

Jefferis had eventually found himself with the Germans behind him. Picking up a sergeant and two privates, he had succeeded in making his way back to Andalsnes; and on the way he had managed to blow up the girders of two bridges on the German side. He estimated that it would take some three weeks to repair these. At Andalsenes the conditions of air attack had been such as to make it quite impossible to walk down to the jetty during daylight hours. He had spent a day in a sloop in the harbour at which thirty bombs had been aimed. None had hit, but the immunity of a ship under such conditions could only be, in Major Jefferis’s opinion, a matter of time, and he calculated that his life would probably not be more than three days.

The general conclusion which he (the Prime Minister) drew from Major Jefferis’s account was that it was quite impossible for land forces to withstand complete air superiority of the kind which the Germans had enjoyed in Norway. This made it all the more imperative to the success of our operations at Narvik that we should establish air bases in that area, not only for fighters, but also for bombers.[9]

For his service in Norway, Jefferis was awarded the Norwegian War Cross with sword,[10] and Mentioned in Despatches for his efforts in the withdrawal from Lillehammer.[11][12]

Jefferis started working on sabotage devices for the "Military Intelligence Research" (MIR). When MIR was combined with other hush-hush elements to form the SOE, Jefferis' unit was not included and it instead became a department in the Ministry of Defence; the only unit of the Minister of Defence (The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill) and was known as "MD1", ultimately based in a house called "The Firs" in Whitchurch near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire England.[13]

The unit was responsible for the design, development and production of a number of unique special forces and regular munitions during the Second World War. It gained the nickname "Winston Churchill's toyshop".

Jefferis was an explosives expert and engineer, but lacked the ability to manage men well. He was assisted in the management of MD1 by a wily assistant – Major Stuart Macrae, whose book Winston Churchill's Toyshop, is still one of the few published works on this unique unit.

Over the period of the Second World War, MD1 was responsible for the introduction into service of a total of 26 different devices.

Their designs include the PIAT, the Sticky bomb and one of the first magnetic Limpet naval mines.

Through the application of the Squash head and HEAT technology they had a role in the development and production of Lt-Col Stewart Blacker's Blacker Bombard, the PIAT (Blacker's smaller version of the bombard) matched to a hollow charge warhead, Hedgehog (effectively an adaption of the Bombard spigot mortar principle working with the Navy's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development) and tank variants including the AVRE with its "Flying Dustbin" 290mm Petard spigot mortar,[14] and a bridge-laying tank.

Jefferis developed the idea of the squash head further. His most ambitious project was a bomb designed to sink capital ships, his ideas were put forward by himself and Lord Cherwell in 1944 and coincided with the Admiralty's interest in developing a homing bomb for use against the Japanese. The development of this weapon was supported by the Air Staff and MAP who allocated it a higher priority that any other anti-capital ship weapon. When the war ended, development of the 'Cherwell-Jefferis' bomb was continued under the code names Journey's End and Blue Boar.[15]

Prime Minister Churchill became acquainted with then Jefferis in 1940 and regarded him as a "singularly capable and forceful man." He recommended a promotion to lieutenant colonel so that Jefferis would have more authority. Jefferis received substantive promotion to this rank on 10 February 1944.[16]

Jefferis was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Churchill in the 1945 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours, having previously been appointed a Commander of the Order (CBE).[17] He was promoted to acting major general on 15 May 1945,[18] and substantive colonel on 14 July 1945.[19] He left the Ministry of Supply on 20 November 1945, reverting to the temporary rank of brigadier.[20]