War Office in the context of "Pall Mall, London"

The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the British War Office.

Over its lifetime the Directorate underwent a number of organisational changes, absorbing and shedding sections over time.

First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the title of the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible for the direction and control of the Admiralty, and also of general administration of the Naval Service of the Kingdom of England, Great Britain in the 18th century, and then the United Kingdom, including the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, and other services. It was one of the earliest known permanent government posts. Apart from being the political head of the Naval Service the post holder was simultaneously the pre-eminent member of the Board of Admiralty. The office of First Lord of the Admiralty existed from 1628 until it was abolished when the Admiralty, Air Ministry, Ministry of Defence and War Office were all merged to form the new Ministry of Defence in 1964. Its modern-day equivalent is the Secretary of State for Defence.

The Secretary of State for War, commonly called the War Secretary, was a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom. The position existed from 1794 to 1801 and again from 1854 to 1964. The Secretary of State for War headed the War Office and was assisted by an under-secretary, a parliamentary private secretary who was also a member of parliament (MP), and a military secretary, who was a general.

The secretary at war was a political position in the English and later British government, with some responsibility over the administration and organization of the Army, but not over military policy. The Secretary at War ran the War Office. After 1794 it was occasionally a Cabinet-level position, although it was considered of subordinate rank to the secretary of state for war. The position was combined with that of secretary of state for war in 1854 and abolished in 1863.

Notable holders of the position include Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, Henry Fox, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, William Windham and Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay.

Northumberland Avenue is a street in the City of Westminster, Central London, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to the Thames Embankment in the east. The road was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the Percy family, the Dukes of Northumberland between 1874 and 1876, and on part of the parallel Northumberland Street.

When built, the street was designed for luxury accommodation, including the seven-storey Grand Hotel, the Victoria and the Metropole. The Playhouse Theatre opened in 1882 and became a significant venue in London. From the 1930s onwards, properties were used less for hotels and more for British Government departments, including the War Office and Air Ministry, later the Ministry of Defence. The street has been commemorated in the Sherlock Holmes novels including The Hound of the Baskervilles, and is a square on the British Monopoly board.

Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE (/heɪɡ/; 19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a senior officer of the British Army. During the First World War he commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war.

Haig's military career included service in the War Office, where he was instrumental in the creation of the Territorial Force in 1908. In January 1917 he was promoted to the rank of field marshal, subsequently leading the BEF during the final Hundred Days Offensive. This campaign, in combination with the Kiel mutiny, the Wilhelmshaven mutiny, the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918 and revolution across Germany, led to the armistice of 11 November 1918. It is considered by some historians to be one of the greatest victories ever achieved by a British-led army.

A German air campaign of the First World War was carried out against Britain. After several attacks by seaplanes, the main campaign began in January 1915 with airships. Until the Armistice the Marine-Fliegerabteilung (Navy Aviation Department) and Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches (Imperial German Flying Corps) mounted over fifty bombing raids. The raids were generally referred to in Britain as Zeppelin raids but Schütte-Lanz airships were also used.

Weather and night flying made airship navigation and accurate bombing difficult. Bombs were often dropped miles off target (a raid on London hit Hull) and hitting military installations was a matter of luck. Civilian casualties made the Zeppelins objects of hatred. British defensive measures made airship raids much riskier and in 1917 they were largely replaced by aeroplanes. The military effect of the raids was small but they caused alarm, disruption to industrial production and the diversion of resources from the Western Front. Concern about the conduct of the defence against the raids, the responsibility for which was divided between the Admiralty and the War Office, led to a parliamentary inquiry under Jan Smuts and the creation of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on 1 April 1918.

The Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. They were designed in 1942 then built in under a year in great secrecy; within hours of the Allies creating beachheads after D-Day, sections of the two prefabricated harbours were towed across the English Channel from southern England and placed in position off Omaha Beach (Mulberry "A") and Gold Beach (Mulberry "B"), along with old ships to be sunk as breakwaters.

The Mulberry harbours solved the problem of needing deepwater jetties and a harbour to provide the invasion force with the necessary reinforcements and supplies, and were to be used until major French ports could be captured and brought back into use after repair of the inevitable sabotage by German defenders. Comprising floating but sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways, this innovative and technically difficult system was being used for the first time.

The Territorial Force was a part-time volunteer component of the British Army, created in 1908 to augment British land forces without resorting to conscription. The new organisation was create by the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 (7 Edw. 7. c. 9), which consolidated the 19th-century Volunteer Force and yeomanry into a unified auxiliary, commanded by the War Office and administered by local county territorial associations. The Territorial Force was designed to reinforce the regular army in expeditionary operations abroad, but because of political opposition it was assigned to home defence. Members were liable for service anywhere in the UK and could not be compelled to serve overseas unless they volunteered to do so.

In the first two months of the First World War, territorials volunteered for foreign service in significant numbers, allowing territorial units to be deployed abroad. They saw their first action on the Western Front during the initial German offensive of 1914, and the force filled the gap between the near destruction of the regular army that year and the arrival of the New Army in 1915. Territorial units were deployed to Gallipoli in 1915 and, following the failure of that campaign, provided the bulk of the British contribution to allied forces in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. By the war's end, the Territorial Force had fielded twenty-three infantry divisions and two mounted divisions on foreign soil. It was demobilised after the war and reconstituted in 1921 as the Territorial Army by the Territorial Army and Militia Act 1921 (11 & 12 Geo. 5. c. 37).