Henry Cobden Turner
Henry Cobden Turner was an English engineer, businessman, and managing director of Salford Electrical Instruments.
Life and career
Cobden Turner attended Manchester Grammar School, Salford Technical School, and Manchester College of Technology.He was made managing director of SEI in 1918, overseeing advancements in instrumentation. Before the outbreak of the Second World War he also became a councillor for Salford, concerning himself with the plight of the unemployed in the city. After the Nazis came to power, he became concerned about the lack of defence technology to counter the threat of aggression.
Shortly before the war began, he had learned from his friend Hans Ferdinand Mayer who worked at Siemens, and who he had met at the CCIF telecommunications conference in Oslo in 1938, that the Germany was working on developing influence fuses for its artillery. This inspired them to use their combined skills to propose a new kind of fuze.
From late 1939, Cobden Turner contributed to the development of the radio proximity fuse, a critical innovation in military technology. A high frequency oscillator would transit disruptive signals to bombs, causing them to detonate. On 8 May 1940 a proposal for the device was submitted to the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
He continued to communicate with Mayer via an intermediary in neutral Denmark throughout the war. Together they organised the escape of a Jewish girl from Nazi Germany, who then lived with Cobden Turner and his family at their home. Mayer was later revealed as the source of the Oslo Report, one of the biggest German military leaks of the war, which he had planned to send to Cobden Turner, but ultimately decided it was safer to send it to the British Legation in Oslo. There, it ended up in the hands of military intelligence specialist Reginald Victor Jones.
By chance, Cobden Turner met Reginald Victor Jones in person while travelling in 1953, beginning several years of correspondence between the two. He also consulted with him on technical matters on behalf of SEI until he retired from his role there in 1957. Jones pushed for official recognition of Cobden Turner's work.
Henry Cobden Turner died in 1970.