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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2012-02-28
    Description: The islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark lie close to the Normandy coast of France. They expose a largely Precambrian crystalline basement of metamorphic and igneous rocks – Jersey and Alderney also expose some early Palaeozoic clastic sediments – and all have a thin but widespread Quaternary sedimentary cover. The three largest islands were progressively fortified by the British between the early 13th and mid-19th centuries, and by German forces during occupation in World War II, a legacy illustrated by the castles, forts and numerous German coastal fortifications that still adorn them. A German military geologist based on Jersey from mid-1941 to mid-1944, and a military geological team on Guernsey and Alderney during 1942, generated hydrogeological maps and reports that were then in advance of understanding of crystalline basement aquifers elsewhere in the British Isles. All the major documents have now been found in Germany, the USA and UK, although none survived on the islands themselves. Geological mapping and hydrogeological studies postwar under the auspices of the British Geological Survey were completed without access to German data. However, German and British data together now facilitate an appraisal of the heavily stressed aquifers on these small, hard-rock islands over an unusually long (65 year) timespan.
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2019
    Description: 〈p〉170 Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers left England in January 1940 to excavate bomb-proof military headquarters in northern France. Expansion into companies 170, 171, 172 and 173 was delayed when the British Expeditionary Force was defeated and evacuated, but completed in England in July to excavate accommodation underground for regional headquarters and artillery batteries – mostly in Cretaceous chalk. Companies 178, 179 and 180 formed in England in May–June 1940, and 178 and 180 soon deployed to Gibraltar, joined by 170 in 1941 and successively by 1st and 2nd Tunnelling Companies Royal Canadian Engineers. They excavated a major complex of tunnels and chambers within Jurassic dolomitic limestone by October 1943 to help fortify the rocky peninsula, work completed by a single company (172) thereafter. Companies 183, 184 and 185 joined 179 in 1941 to emplace ‘Canadian pipe mines’ to inhibit the invasion of Britain. 173 served in Malta 1941–43, and 171 during 1943–45, excavating 〉50 bomb-proof facilities in Oligo-Miocene limestones, plus works to enhance the civilian water supply. By late 1943, all companies except 172 (Gibraltar) and 171 (Malta) were based in Britain. At least five were converted for general engineering use and no longer needed geological assistance.〈/p〉
    Print ISSN: 0375-6440
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2019
    Description: 〈p〉Eight Quarrying Companies Royal Engineers were raised during World War II, the first four in 1940. Unable to deploy to France as planned, these were used initially for bomb disposal, but from January 1941 companies 851 and 854 (succeeded in 1942 by 857) quarried stone for the construction of two military ports in western Scotland. In early to mid-1943, these companies were sent to support Allied forces in the North African Campaign and, from December 1943, the subsequent Italian Campaign. Other companies initially focused on ports and airfields associated with operations in the Atlantic: Company 853 quarried from 1941 to 1942 in Northern Ireland; Company 855 was deployed in 1941 to Poolewe in NW Scotland, before assignment in 1942–43 to Gibraltar; and companies 125 and 856 quarried from 1942 to 1943 on the Faroe Islands. Four companies were successively employed from 1942 to 1944 quarrying in Oxfordshire to aid the construction of a Central Ordnance Depot. Although three companies were operational in the Mediterranean region, the other five were united in 1944 to form a Quarry Group to support Allied operations in Normandy and the subsequent campaign across northern France, Belgium and into Germany. All eight received some geological guidance; all were disbanded before 1947.〈/p〉
    Print ISSN: 0375-6440
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2019
    Description: 〈p〉Napoleon Bonaparte was, in 1798, the first general to include geologists as such on a military operation. Within the UK, the following century saw geology taught, and national geological mapping initiated, as a military science. Nevertheless, military geologists were not deployed on a battlefield until World War I, first by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and later and less intensively those of the UK and USA. Geologists were used primarily to guide abstraction of groundwater, construction of ‘mine’ tunnels and dug-outs, development of fortifications and quarrying of natural resources to enhance or repair supply routes. Only the USSR and Germany entered World War II with organized military geological expertise, but the UK and later the USA made significant use of military geologists, albeit far fewer than the 〈i〉c.〈/i〉 400 in total used by German forces. Military geologist roles in World War II included most of those of World War I, but were extended to other aspects of terrain evaluation, notably the rapid construction of temporary airfields and factors affecting cross-country vehicular movement (‘going’). After 1945, more military geologists were used in the USA than Germany or the UK, in these and wider roles, but mostly as civilians or reservists.〈/p〉
    Print ISSN: 0375-6440
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2019
    Description: 〈p〉During the war of 1939–45, intelligence was gleaned from aerial photographs by a newly founded organization that developed into the Allied Central Interpretation Unit. This was based primarily at Danesfield House (known as Royal Air Force Medmenham) some 50 km west of London, in Buckinghamshire. At least six British geoscientists (and at least one American, L. J. Simon) were amongst its pioneering photographic interpreters, all recruited from civilian life: palaeobotanist H. Hamshaw Thomas; geologists L. R. Wager, N. L. Falcon, P. E. Kent and P. Allen; and a geologist who became distinguished as a geographer, D. L. Linton. Of these six, all except Linton were to become Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS): the highest British academic accolade for a scientist. Work at Medmenham, although important for the war effort, required interpreters familiar with aerial photographs rather than geology as such – but geology did assist the search for storage sites for ‘V’ weapons, terrain interpretation for the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy, and in guiding plans to bomb German industrial complexes hidden underground.〈/p〉
    Print ISSN: 0375-6440
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2019
    Description: 〈p〉Quarrying Companies were a new type of unit first raised within the Royal Engineers in World War I. Thirteen served in northern France, on the Western Front: two from late 1916 (198 and 199 Quarrying Companies) and 11 more from 1917 (320–329 and 348 Quarrying Companies). Recruited from Great Britain, Ireland and the Channel Island of Guernsey, each consisted of four officers and 264 soldiers; over 3000 men in total, assisted by 〈i〉c.〈/i〉 4000 less skilled labourers. They were used to support the British Expeditionary Force by providing ‘stone’, mostly from existing quarries near Marquise, NE of the port of Boulogne. There they excavated Devonian and Carboniferous ‘limestones’ in the Ferques Inlier, relatively strong rocks within a region of wide Mesozoic and Cenozoic outcrop. As the British Expeditionary Force expanded to a peak of five armies and 〈i〉c.〈/i〉 1.5 million troops, ‘stone’ was required for the enhancement or repair of the roads, railways and associated facilities that formed a crucial element of its infrastructure, essential for the efficient movement of soldiers and their copious supplies of food, stores and ammunition. The requirement ceased soon after the end of hostilities and all Quarrying Companies Royal Engineers were disbanded in 1919.〈/p〉
    Print ISSN: 0375-6440
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2018-11-10
    Description: Napoleon Bonaparte was, in 1798, the first general to include geologists as such on a military operation. Within the UK, the following century saw geology taught, and national geological mapping initiated, as a military science. Nevertheless, military geologists were not deployed on a battlefield until World War I, first by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and later and less intensively those of the UK and USA. Geologists were used primarily to guide abstraction of groundwater, construction of ‘mine’ tunnels and dug-outs, development of fortifications and quarrying of natural resources to enhance or repair supply routes. Only the USSR and Germany entered World War II with organized military geological expertise, but the UK and later the USA made significant use of military geologists, albeit far fewer than the c. 400 in total used by German forces. Military geologist roles in World War II included most of those of World War I, but were extended to other aspects of terrain evaluation, notably the rapid construction of temporary airfields and factors affecting cross-country vehicular movement (‘going’). After 1945, more military geologists were used in the USA than Germany or the UK, in these and wider roles, but mostly as civilians or reservists.
    Print ISSN: 0305-8719
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2018-07-12
    Description: During the war of 1939–45, intelligence was gleaned from aerial photographs by a newly founded organization that developed into the Allied Central Interpretation Unit. This was based primarily at Danesfield House (known as Royal Air Force Medmenham) some 50 km west of London, in Buckinghamshire. At least six British geoscientists (and at least one American, L. J. Simon) were amongst its pioneering photographic interpreters, all recruited from civilian life: palaeobotanist H. Hamshaw Thomas; geologists L. R. Wager, N. L. Falcon, P. E. Kent and P. Allen; and a geologist who became distinguished as a geographer, D. L. Linton. Of these six, all except Linton were to become Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS): the highest British academic accolade for a scientist. Work at Medmenham, although important for the war effort, required interpreters familiar with aerial photographs rather than geology as such – but geology did assist the search for storage sites for ‘V’ weapons, terrain interpretation for the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy, and in guiding plans to bomb German industrial complexes hidden underground.
    Print ISSN: 0305-8719
    Electronic ISSN: 2041-4927
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2012-08-01
    Description: In 1942 the US Geological Survey formed a Military Geology Unit (MGU) at Washington, DC of in-house and other earth scientists and engineers to gather terrain and related strategic intelligence. MGU compiled reports containing data about regions outside the USA as tables, text and maps for use by Allied forces, especially American and British. Benefiting to some extent from both Allied and German geological experience in World War I, MGU developed into by far the largest geology-based intelligence unit used to help guide Allied planning and operations in World War II. About 50 ‘Strategic Engineering Studies’ were completed in 1942, and at least 50 more in 1943. MGU products contributed significantly to the Allied campaigns in Sicily and Italy from 1943, and complemented British geotechnical work associated with Normandy and the NW Europe Campaign in 1944–1945. In 1944–1945, MGU deployed teams from Washington to US Army theatre headquarters in Europe, and more substantially to the SW Pacific and Pacific Ocean areas, principally to provide intelligence for strategic and tactical planning, and advice to and (in the Pacific) participation in combat operations. After 1945, MGU developed into a Military Geology Branch, responding to demands of wars cold and hot until 1972.
    Print ISSN: 1470-9236
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 10
    Publication Date: 2009-01-20
    Print ISSN: 1431-2174
    Electronic ISSN: 1435-0157
    Topics: Geosciences
    Published by Springer
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