25 Facts About Millis Jefferis

Major-General Sir Millis Rowland Jefferis KBE MC was a British military officer who founded a special unit of the British Ministry of Supply which developed unusual weapons during the Second World War.

Millis Jefferis saw active service in the Waziristan Campaign where his main responsibility was the construction of roads.

Millis Jefferis then returned to Chatham and went to Cambridge University.

Millis Jefferis returned to Britain in 1936 and joined the Twenty-third Field Company at Aldershot.

Millis Jefferis was promoted major on 6 June 1938, and on 4 April 1939 he was appointed a General Staff Officer, Grade 2.

In 1940, after World War II had begun, Millis Jefferis was sent to Norway.

Millis Jefferis returned to give a personal account of his activities to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who used his report to brief the War Cabinet:.

Major Millis Jefferis had been sent out to Andalsnes with instructions to blow up the Western railway in Central Norway.

Millis Jefferis had accordingly gone down the railway line and joined Brigadier Morgan's Brigade; but the Norwegians had categorically refused to allow him to carry out any demolitions.

Millis Jefferis had been present when Morgan's Brigade had been engaged by the enemy.

Millis Jefferis had eventually found himself with the Germans behind him.

Millis Jefferis estimated that it would take some three weeks to repair these.

Millis Jefferis had spent a day in a sloop in the harbour at which thirty bombs had been aimed.

The general conclusion which he drew from Major Millis Jefferis's account was that it was quite impossible for land forces to withstand complete air superiority of the kind which the Germans had enjoyed in Norway.

Millis Jefferis started working on sabotage devices for the "Military Intelligence Research".

When MIR was combined with other hush-hush elements to form the SOE, Millis Jefferis' unit was not included and it instead became a department in the Ministry of Defence; the only unit of the Minister of Defence and was known as "MD1", ultimately based in a house called "The Firs" in Whitchurch near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire England.

Millis Jefferis was an explosives expert and engineer, but lacked the ability to manage men well.

Millis Jefferis's most ambitious project was a bomb designed to sink capital ships, his ideas were put forward by himself and Lord Cherwell in 1944 and coincided with the Admiralty's interest in developing a homing bomb for use against the Japanese.

Millis Jefferis received substantive promotion to this rank on 10 February 1944.

Millis Jefferis was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Churchill in the 1945 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours, having previously been appointed a Commander of the Order.

Millis Jefferis was promoted to acting major general on 15 May 1945, and substantive colonel on 14 July 1945.

Millis Jefferis left the Ministry of Supply on 20 November 1945, reverting to the temporary rank of brigadier.

In 1945, Millis Jefferis became deputy Engineer-in-Chief in India and 1947 he became Engineer-in-Chief in Pakistan, holding the temporary rank of major general.

Millis Jefferis was promoted to substantive brigadier on 1 November 1947, and returned to England on 2 January 1950 to become Chief Superintendent of the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment, reverting to the rank of brigadier on 8 March 1950.

Millis Jefferis was made ADC to the King on 24 May 1951 and held that appointment until he retired on 18 August 1953, on his retirement he was granted the honorary rank of major-general.