Hugh Iorys Hughes: A Man Little Known in the Annals of History
Hugh Iorys Hughes was born on April 16, 1902, in Bangor, north-west Wales and died in 1977. He was a civil engineer, for which he studied at Sheffield University. Before WWII, Hughes had worked on Wembley Stadium and the Hyde Park Corner underpass; he was also an accomplished sailor and diver.
Little is truly known about Hughes, or the story surrounding the Mulberry Harbours plans. It is widely agreed that Hughes first submitted his idea about floating harbors to the British War Office, but the idea was shelved until his brother - a commander - brought officials' attention to the proposed idea. The plans received a very lucky break when they caught Prime Minister Churchill's attention; in WWI, Churchill had proposed a similar idea, and was favorably inclined towards accepting and testing the plans for a mobile harbor.
Hughes was aided in the construction of the mobile harbors by Oleg Kerensky. Kerensky, son of Aleksandr Kerensky (the last democratic head of Russia in 1917), is one of the most noted structural engineers of the 20th century in his own right, and designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia in 1932 among other projects. The association between Kerensky and Hughes speaks to Hughes' eminence and significance in the development of the harbors. Hughes was retained by Churchill throughout the subsequent work and had the chance to construct part of a Mulberry Harbour used in the Normandy Invasion. We can ask whether D-Day could have ever occurred, or occurred by the time it did, without Hughes' initiating role. The Mulberry Harbours made the Allied invasion of Normandy possible, and were thus pivotal in turning the tide of WWII (more info). In addition, the design and construction of the Mulberry Harbours is one of the key engineering and technological achievements of the 20th century--under-recognized, perhaps, because while everyone knows of D-Day, the planning and design that went into the mobile harbors was top secret. The Newcomen Society's (The International Society for the History of Engineering and Technology) prestigious 19th annual Dickinson Memorial Address for 1990 was on the Mulberry Harbours--presented by the late Sir Alan Harris of Imperial College, London, and a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum.
The civil engineers who subsequently got much of the credit for Mulberry are those whose large firms profited from this association after the war, and who wrote of their own role without crediting Hughes.
Little is truly known about Hughes, or the story surrounding the Mulberry Harbours plans. It is widely agreed that Hughes first submitted his idea about floating harbors to the British War Office, but the idea was shelved until his brother - a commander - brought officials' attention to the proposed idea. The plans received a very lucky break when they caught Prime Minister Churchill's attention; in WWI, Churchill had proposed a similar idea, and was favorably inclined towards accepting and testing the plans for a mobile harbor.
Hughes was aided in the construction of the mobile harbors by Oleg Kerensky. Kerensky, son of Aleksandr Kerensky (the last democratic head of Russia in 1917), is one of the most noted structural engineers of the 20th century in his own right, and designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia in 1932 among other projects. The association between Kerensky and Hughes speaks to Hughes' eminence and significance in the development of the harbors. Hughes was retained by Churchill throughout the subsequent work and had the chance to construct part of a Mulberry Harbour used in the Normandy Invasion. We can ask whether D-Day could have ever occurred, or occurred by the time it did, without Hughes' initiating role. The Mulberry Harbours made the Allied invasion of Normandy possible, and were thus pivotal in turning the tide of WWII (more info). In addition, the design and construction of the Mulberry Harbours is one of the key engineering and technological achievements of the 20th century--under-recognized, perhaps, because while everyone knows of D-Day, the planning and design that went into the mobile harbors was top secret. The Newcomen Society's (The International Society for the History of Engineering and Technology) prestigious 19th annual Dickinson Memorial Address for 1990 was on the Mulberry Harbours--presented by the late Sir Alan Harris of Imperial College, London, and a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum.
The civil engineers who subsequently got much of the credit for Mulberry are those whose large firms profited from this association after the war, and who wrote of their own role without crediting Hughes.
Controversy Surrounding a Competition