Bas Pease

Who was Bas Pease?

Rendel Sebastian "Bas" Pease FRS was a British physicist.

Pease's father was the geneticist Michael Pease, son of Edward Reynolds Pease. His mother was Helen Bowen Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood IV. He was the great-great-great-great-grandson of the potter Josiah Wedgwood.

During WWII he joined RAF Bomber Command's Operational Research section, where he was the expert in charge of the use of a precision navigation system called G-H. Field-based, he advised on operational techniques to use the equipment most effectively. Notably, he helped No. 218 Squadron RAF in Operation Glimmer, a diversionary "attack" on D-Day that distracted and pinned-down German defences while the real attack occurring 200 miles to the west. His G-H-equipped bombers flew low, in tight circles, dropping window over radar transponder-equipped small ships, in order to deceive the German radars that they were the main invasion fleet.

After the war he was director of the Culham Laboratory for Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion and head of the British chapter of Pugwash.