This is a well-written historical narrative about the proximity fuse's development in WWII. The idea was to be able to shoot down individual aircraft in time to save ships. Later on this technology would have to be used against the V-1 cruise missile the Germans developed.

12 Seconds of Silence is an excellent addition to WWII history, covering less visible subjects who were critical to the allied victory. The book follows the American, British, and German scientists behind some of the key scientific inventions of World War II and their work from creation to testing to production for an army. Many of the most common issues faced, such as receiving funding through the government bureaucracy and moving from experimentation to full-scale production, are not frequently discussed in other World War II books. The author successfully places the inventions into the context of the war, aptly describing scenes in visual, well-researched detail. This context is also critical to understanding the effect of these weapons, several of which produced turning points in the war for both sides before turning the war in favor of the allies. Science-based warfare took enormous steps forward during WWII, and 12 Seconds of Silence provides original insight that would interest any follower of the period.

Hey, readers of WW2 history, remember how as Nazi Germany militarized and then started the war in 1939, isolationists in the US were adamant that the country stay out of the conflict despite Churchill’s importuning and FDR’s desire to get involved? Luckily, FDR was able to start some advanced military weapons projects by executive order, and one of them involved the development of a “proximity fuse.”

A proximity fuse would allow anti-aircraft missiles to explode when its technology sensed it was very close to enemy aircraft, vastly increasing the percentage of missile attacks’ effectiveness from the then-current likelihood that it could take thousands of shells to take out one aircraft. But would the proximity be detected by light, sound, radar or something else? And how to test each possibility, when current scientific instruments were big and delicate?

The development of the proximity fuse was under the direction of Merle Tuve, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants, who grew up in a nowhere town in South Dakota obsessed with tinkering with radio and explosive devices, along with his best friend, Ernest (“Eddie”) Lawrence (who won the Nobel Prize for his cyclotron).

While Tuve and his team worked tirelessly, spies on both sides tried to gain intelligence about each others’ work. The infamous Duquesne spy ring, broken up in 1941, had as part of its mandate to find out for the Nazis whatever they could about US work in air war technology. Agents for Britain and later, the Allies, also spied on the Nazis to learn about their weaponry research and developments.

This book closely tracks the work of Tuve and his team, interspersed with the story of the spy wars. Holmes shows what a difference the proximity fuse made to combat Germany’s rocket war against Britain, eventually able to stop 90% of the dreaded V-1 rockets. Against Tuve’s wishes, the proximity fuse was adapted to become an offensive weapon. This allowed it to design shells that would detonate at the optimum height to cause maximum carnage, which made a huge difference to the war in Europe in 1945. There was even a smart fuse in “Little Boy,” the A-bomb dropped over Hiroshima.

The writing can be hard going at times when Holmes shows the depth and detail of his technological research. But at other times, as when Holmes focuses on the personalities, the spy games and the battles in the sky, this is a fascinating and thrilling study of a lesser-known aspect of the Allied war effort and the sheer ingenuity and persistence of people who fight battles from laboratories and testing fields.

That was an overall interesting read.

The writing was engaging, and though I have read a lot about the Second War, I confess that I did not know this story. You can see that the author has done a lot of research regarding the subject, and tries to make it sure that the story does not get boring. It is told from the point of view of different people, which at times did not work very well for me. Some chapters I really liked and was completely engaged, others I basically skimmed because I could not concentrate on what was going on. It felt a bit like it was being sold too hard, and the beginning was a somehow hard to go through - it picks up after though. I kinda of felt that It reads a little like one of those "Based on real facts" Hollywood war movies.