George Binney

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Frederick George Binney (born September 23, 1900 in Great Bookham , Surrey , England , † September 27, 1972 in Saint Lawrence , Jersey ) was a British polar explorer. During World War II he led operations to supply the British defense industry with ball bearings from Sweden .

Life

George Binney was one of four sons of Maximilian Frederick Breffit Binney, Vicar in Richmond , and Emily Blinkhorn. He attended the Summer Fields School in Summertown in Oxford , as well as King's Scholar , the Eton College . He then studied at Merton College of Oxford University . In 1921, while still a student, he organized Oxford University's first expedition to Spitzbergen . The official director was the botanist Francis Charles Robert Jourdain , among the participants were the ornithologist Julian Huxley , the later ecologist Charles Sutherland Elton , the doctor and ornithologist Tom George Longstaff (1875–1964), the geologist Noel Odell and the botanist Victor Samuel Summerhayes ( 1897–1974). With the Norwegian ship Terningen , the mainly ornithological expedition visited Bear Island , Prins Karls Forland and the Billefjord , a branch of the Isfjorden, from June to August . Two years later he organized a second expedition, the Merton College Arctic Expedition , which he also led - at the age of 22. With five British scientists and a Norwegian crew, the Terningen drove to northeastern country , the northernmost of the main islands of Svalbard . Adverse ice conditions and technical problems on the ship hampered the work. North-east was explored in depth on five landings between Vibebukta and the North Cape of Chermsideøya . In addition to the geological and botanical work, numerous corrections were made to the existing maps. In 1924 Binney led the Oxford University Arctic Expedition with two ships, the Polarbjørn and the Oïland , and a seaplane to northwest Spitsbergen . This made him one of the first to use an airplane for land surveying in the Arctic . For this expedition, Binney engaged the Norwegian ice pilot and dog sled driver Helmer Hanssen , who had accompanied Roald Amundsen on several trips and had reached the South Pole with him.

From 1926 to 1930 Binney worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and then for the United Steel Companies , for whose export he created a worldwide network on numerous trips.

From 1939 he worked for the newly founded Ministry of Supply , as its agent he bought steel , machine tools and ball bearings in Sweden for the needs of the British armaments industry. When the trade routes to Sweden were cut off due to the occupation of Denmark and Norway by the German Wehrmacht , Binney organized operations Rubble (January 1941) and Performance (March 1942) to break the blockade . He was expelled from Sweden, made himself available to the Royal Naval Reserve and in 1943 directed Operation Bridford . In 1944 he was also involved in Operation Moonshine , which supplied Danish resistance fighters with weapons via Sweden. After the war he returned to United Steel, for which he worked until 1959.

He died on the island of Jersey in 1972.

Familiar

George Binney was married twice, from 1946 until the divorce in 1954 with Evelyn Mary Fane, née Marriott, and from 1955 with Sonia Simms, née Beresford Whyte.

Honors

George Binney was knighted in 1941. For his military service in World War II, he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order in 1944 . In 1957 he was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his Arctic research .

Works

  • With Seaplane and Sledge in the Arctic (1925)
  • The Eskimo Book of Knowledge (1931)

literature

Web links

  • Photos by George Binney on gettyimages

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralph Barker: The Blockade Busters , 2005, p. 10.
  2. ↑ a b c d e The Papers of Sir George Binney at janus.lib.cam.ac.uk, accessed on February 2, 2017 (English).
  3. ↑ a b Caroline M. Pond: Charles Elton's Accounts of Expeditions from Oxford to the Arctic in the 1920s (PDF; 409 kB). In: Arctic . Volume 68, No. 2, 2015, pp. 273-279 (English).
  4. ^ HR Thompson: Oxford Expeditions to Nordaustlandet (North East Land), Spitsbergen (PDF; 747 kB). In: Arctic . Volume 6, No. 3, 1953, pp. 213-222 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Binney, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Binney, Frederick George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Great Bookham , Surrey , England
DATE OF DEATH September 27, 1972
Place of death Saint Lawrence , Jersey