Newnham alumna honoured with the largest ever all-women RAF flypast
The contribution and capabilities of women in the Second World War have not always been fully acknowledged. With the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8th May, one of Newnham’s alumnae has been honoured and recognised.
Physicist Joan Curran (NC 1934) was honoured by Bomber Command for her extraordinary contribution during World War II as one of ten women being celebrated in a new permanent display created by ‘Standing with Giants’ at the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) in Lincolnshire. The ten women have been immortalized as 8ft-tall (2.4m) steel silhouettes, to represent the contribution, courage and leadership shown by women at all levels during the Second World War.
On Saturday 14th March the largest all-female RAF flypast took place over Bomber Command in Lincolnshire in honour of these women. Every aircraft in the flypast was flown by an all-female crew, making this the largest flypast performed solely by female aircrew. Squadron Leader Stewart, said: “Today was really important to me because it gave us a chance to honour the work that women have done before us. One of the statues that was unveiled today was Joan Curran who invented what today we know as aircraft countermeasures.”
The flypast featured a spectacular prefect from 57 Squadron at RAF Cranwell, followed by a second, breathtaking display of one Atlas 400M from RAF Brize Norton and one Typhoon from XI (Fighter) Squadron at RAF Coningsby.
Nicky van der Drift, chief executive of the IBCC, said: "This exhibition is a testament to the IBCC's commitment to recognition, remembrance, and reconciliation. We are proud to honour the women who played such a vital role in protecting the freedoms we enjoy today.”
The ten steel silhouettes, crafted by Standing with Giants, honour the bravery and resilience of individual wartime women. They will serve as a lasting tribute at the IBCC to the vital roles women played during the war.
The event also welcomed the ‘Modern Giants’, a group of distinguished women leaders from across the UK who have made significant contributions to their respective fields including Shonaid Jemmett-Page, (NC 1978), CEO CDC Group pictured below with the silhouette of Lady Curran.
Baroness Hogg, instrumental in driving the exhibition, emphasised the importance of recognising these often-overlooked heroines. "By 1943, women were integral to the war effort, filling crucial roles in the armed forces, industry, and other wartime organisations," she said. "These ten silhouettes represent the vast and varied contributions of women, whose capabilities were finally acknowledged in the face of their undeniable impact."
Lady Joan Curran
A brilliant physicist, Joan won a scholarship to study Natural Sciences and Physics at Cambridge matriculating in 1934, before women were awarded degrees by University of Cambridge.
Born in Swansea and educated at Swansea Girls' High School, she graduated from Newnham in 1937 and started a PhD working in the field of nuclear physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Philip Dee’s group. Alongside her scientific achievements she was also one of the eight women to race in the first real women's boat race on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge in 1935.
In 1938 she joined the Air Ministry as a Junior Science Officer and was responsible for many technical innovations. With the outbreak of the Second World War Dee’s group moved to the physics department at the University of Exeter where Joan met her husband Samuel Curran and together, they worked on the development of the proximity fuse. Their proximity fuse was manufactured in the USA in time to become vital in the fight against the V2 bombs later in the war.
Together they were transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) near Swanage, where Joan was assigned to the radar countermeasures group. Most notably, Joan specialised in military red-herrings: she invented aluminium chaff, which was dropped to confuse enemy radar searches for aircraft or ‘invent’ vessels at sea. The invention of "Window" was used extensively in the Channel in the lead-up to D-Day.
It was here that she devised the technique that was codenamed ‘Window’ (or Chaff), which consisted of strips of metal to fool the enemy radar. She tried various types of radar reflectors before settling on strips of tin foil 1 to 2 centimetres wide and 25 centimetres long that could be scattered from bombers.
Samuel wrote: “When my wife was working at TRE on radar intelligence and countermeasures, she carried out personally very early in 1942 the first experiment on ‘Window’ and this proved to be an experiment of truly major importance. I remember that at home she cut up a large amount of metal foil with her household scissors and then she organized the dropping of the thin metal foil strips from an aircraft sent up from Christchurch aerodrome. She had arranged that observation at the radar detection stations on the ground should be done. The effects on the radar screens were truly amazing and it looked as if a large fleet of aircraft was present. This first demonstration of ‘Window’ was clearly of outstanding importance to the whole of radar science.”
On D-Day ‘Window’ was dropped by Lancasters of 617 Squadron to synthesise a phantom invasion force of ships in the Straits of Dover and keep the Germans unsure as to whether the brunt of the Allied assault would land on Normandy or in the Pas de Calais.
Joan’s husband was knighted for his war work, but a senior contemporary scientist believed that in his opinion Joan made the greater contribution to the war effort. Chaff is still in use today by the world’s armed forces, and its use for military exercises often causes confusing images on weather forecasters’ radar.
In 1944 Joan and her husband were sent to Berkeley, the University of California to work with Ernest Lawrence on the separation of isotopes of uranium as part of the Manhattan project. Joan died in 1999.
