James Owen - Danger UXB: The Heroic Story of the WWII Bomb Disposal Teams

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Table of Contents

Also by James Owen

A Serpent in Eden

Danger UXB

JAMES OWEN

Hachette Digital

www. littlebrown. co. uk

Published by Hachette Digital 2010

Copyright James Owen, 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

eISBN : 978 0 7481 1342 2

This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE

Little, Brown
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY

An Hachette Livre UK Company

For Felix - those of every generation engaged in Bomb Disposal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All works of history are mosaics. Many people have given generously of their time, expertise and advice over the last couple of years, so enabling me piece by piece to assemble this book.

I am particularly grateful to those who allowed me to interview them about their experiences in Bomb Disposal, or who shared memories of their fathers lives and work. I should like to thank for these opportunities Colonel Stuart Archer, Deirdre Strowger, Professor Dick Hudson, the Earl of Suffolk, Maurice Howard, Ricky Hards, June Daughtrey, John Emlyn Jones, Oswin Kent and Elga La Pine.

Captain Sandy Sanderson kindly allowed me to consult the archives of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technical Information Centre, and patiently answered my novice questions about fuzes. WO1 Colin Rae instructed me in the chemistry of high explosive, and Tina McKenna helpfully arranged my visit to 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD). Steve Venus shared his vast knowledge of wartime BD, and Chris Ransted that of its casualties. Jo Wisdom at St Pauls Cathedral put me in touch with Peter Boalch, who freely gave me the fruits of his own long research into the UXB there.

Robin Bennett and Gary Woodman-Simmons provided much-needed information about BD veterans, and Didy Grahame and Terry Hissey points of contact for winners of gallantry awards. Marion Hebblethwaite started me on some valuable lines of enquiry, and I commend her biographical dictionary of recipients of the George Cross to all those stirred by tales of courage. Paul Hughes produced detail about Con Stevens, and Hans Houterman repeatedly conjured up natal dates and Army numbers that I was unable to find elsewhere.

Ken Abraham delved into the Newry & Mourne Museum for more about Max Blaney. I was also much aided and guided by the collections staff of the Imperial War Museum, under the watchful stewardship of Roderick Suddaby, and by those of the National Archives, the National Army Museum, the British Library, the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, the Royal Engineers Museum, Library and Archive, the Second World War Experience Centre, the Historical Disclosures section of the Army Personnel Centre, EODTIC and the London Library. I must also thank Michelle Miles for her swift and efficient research in the Bundesarchiv, Freiburg, and for her translation of material from it. Jamie Crowe, in Sydney, and Rosemary Falls, in Dubai, provided refuges in which to write when a volcano was doing its best to prevent me from delivering the final pages of the book.

I am tremendously grateful for the support and forbearance of my publisher Richard Beswick and my copy-editor Zoe Gullen, and for the perspicacity and encouragement of my literary agent Julian Alexander. Despite their best efforts, all judgements expressed in the book are my responsibility alone, as are any errors.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Section I

Stuart Archer arrives at Buckingham Palace to receive his George Cross (Stuart Archer)

John Hudson prepares to freeze the Y fuze designed to kill bomb disposers (Dick Hudson)

The Earl of Suffolk and Fred Hards with a parachute mine in Richmond Park (Crown Copyright)

Robert Davies removing a UXB at the German Hospital, Hackney (Getty)

Ludgate Hill cordoned off while Daviess squad searches for the UXB at St Pauls (Getty)

George Wyllie, who uncovered the UXB at St Pauls, wearing the George Cross (Evening Star)

The site of the excavation for the bomb at St Pauls (IWM HU003046)

A Heinkel He-111 flies over the Thames at the start of the Blitz (Topfoto)

More than two million houses were damaged by bombs in 1940 and 1941 (Getty)

A family from East London made homeless by the Blitz (Getty)

A bomb that fell on Bank Underground station killed 111 people and left a giant crater (Getty)

The ruins of Swansea after three consecutive nights of bombing in February 1941 (Alamy)

The centre of Sheffield following the raids of December 1940 (Alamy)

Herbert Hunt with a 1800-kilogram German bomb, a type nicknamed Satan (Topfoto)

Edward Talbot supervises an excavation at Neath for a UXB (Royal Engineers Museum, Library and Archive)

A twelve-foot-long German bomb is hoisted out at Croydon more than four year after it fell (IWM HU003050)

The fuze boss of the Croydon UXB, showing its date stamp and markings (IWM HU043048)

A Type 17 time fuze and its Zus 40 booby trap (Courtesy of Steve Venus)

Section II

Herbert Gough, chairman of the Unexploded Bomb Committee (National Portrait Gallery)

Herbert Rhlemann, inventor of the electric fuze (Elga La Pine)

Cornelius Stevens, deviser of the S-Set defuzing kit, and his son, Barry (Courtesy of Paul Hughes)

Harry Newgass with a parachute mine like that which he made safe inside a Liverpool gasometer (IWM HU058436)

Len Harrison, RAF bomb disposal expert and the first to tackle a live UXB (IWM HU042013)

Anti-personnel butterfly bombs could be detonated from a safe distance by a tug on a rope looped around them (Topfoto)

Winston Churchill surveys the devastation at the House of Commons after the last raid of the Blitz (Getty)

The King and Queen visit an area hit by a raid (Topfoto)

Scraping out explosive from a UXB by hand (Crown Copyright)

A Stelna trepanning machine attached to a 1400-kilogram bomb (Crown Copyright)

A Freddy automatic fuze extractor in position on a UXB (Courtesy of Steve Venus)

The liquid discharger kit used by bomb disposal officers to defuze UXBs (Courtesy of Steve Venus)

Normandy, 1944: listening with headphones for the ticking of a time fuze (Courtesy of Steve Venus)

A V-1 rocket at its launch site - it took more than a week to defuze the first to land intact (Getty)

Foreword

A NATION ON GUARD

On the evening of 23 September 1940 the people of Britain gathered around their radios to listen to a broadcast by their king. Speaking in the deliberate manner that had become familiar to them, each phrase a struggle with his stammer, he praised their courage and cheerfulness in the face of the Blitz unleashed by the Germans two weeks earlier, above all against London. This was a new kind of war, one that for the first time placed the British population on the front line and sought through bombing to break their morale. Tonight, the king told them, we are a nation on guard.

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