{"id":12591,"date":"2014-01-03T23:34:52","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T03:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=12591"},"modified":"2014-01-03T23:34:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-04T03:34:52","slug":"document-the-butt-report-1941","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2014\/01\/03\/document-the-butt-report-1941\/","title":{"rendered":"Document: The Butt Report (1941)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">My book manuscript, <i>Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960\u00a0<\/i>is now under contract with the MIT Press. \u00a0I will be revising and formatting the manuscript through mid-February, so expect to continue hearing little from me until then.\u00a0I do, however, want to start trying some new experiments with this blog, one of which is to make certain unpublished government documents more widely available.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Today&#8217;s document is the so-called &#8220;Butt Report&#8221; found at The National Archives of the UK, Public Record Office, AIR 14\/1218. \u00a0Issued in August 1941, the report detailed, on the basis of photographic evidence, the extreme inability of RAF bomber crews to locate, let alone strike, targets in the dark. This investigation was ordered by Winston Churchill&#8217;s friend and adviser, Oxford physicist Frederick Lindemann, and was undertaken by his assistant, <span style=\"color:#003366;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Bensusan-Butt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color:#003366;\">David Bensusan-Butt<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u00a0The Butt Report is well known, having played a role in shaping subsequent debate over the aims of British bombing policy in view of technical limitations. \u00a0However, I do not believe it has previously been made available in full (or nearly in full, as the last page appears to be missing).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">The rules of the National Archives of the UK state that facsimile\u00a0copies of its records may not be distributed without permission and the payment of a large fee. Transcriptions, however, <span style=\"color:#003366;\"><a style=\"color:#003366;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/doc\/open-government-licence\/version\/3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">may be distributed freely<\/a><\/span>. Upon learning this, shortly after publishing this post, I quickly removed the photographic reproduction I had originally made available here. However, in December 2014 I found time to transcribe the report, adhering as closely as possible to the format of the original. Here it is:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Butt Report transcription (TNA PRO AIR 14 1218)\" href=\"https:\/\/etherwave.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/01\/butt-report-transcription-tna-pro-air-14-12182.pdf\">Butt Report transcription (TNA PRO AIR 14 1218)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My book manuscript, Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960\u00a0is now under contract with the MIT Press. \u00a0I will be revising and formatting the manuscript through mid-February, so expect to continue hearing little from me until then.\u00a0I do, however, want to start trying some new experiments with this blog, one of<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; Document: The Butt Report (1941)<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2014\/01\/03\/document-the-butt-report-1941\/\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}