Harry Wimperis

Harry Egerton Wimperis CB CBE MIEE FRAeS AMICE Wh.Sch (27 August 1876 – 16 July 1960) was a British aeronautical engineer who acted as the Director of Scientific Research at the UK's Air Ministry prior to World War II.

He is best known for his role in setting up the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence under Henry Tizard, which led directly to the development and introduction of radar in the UK.

[2] During this period he became a Whitworth Scholar,[3] wrote a series of engineering books covering internal combustion, road transport and air navigation.

[9] Here he was put on the problem of devising a useful bombsight that did not require manual calculations or a stopwatch to estimate the wind speed.

The result was his Drift Sight, which used a small bar that was aligned with the motion of objects on the ground to measure the wind.

[11] Wimperis took the memo seriously and set about creating the Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence, placing Henry Tizard in the chairman's position.