Teaching communications across Britain's armed forces

Somerville's appointment to the Imperial Defence College carried his experience beyond the Royal Navy. He was helping educate officers who would make decisions about radar and other new systems as the 1930s technologies matured. The services had different operational needs and consequently different ideas about communications, so common standards and mutual understanding were difficult to establish. Somerville's task was to create enough commonality, standardization, and integration for the Navy, Army, and Royal Air Force to work together. He and his colleagues gave Britain a useful, though imperfect, foundation for inter-service communications in the Second World War.