On This Day ... in 1944
After six days of painstaking and extremely dangerous work, a bomb disposal team led by Major Hudson, Royal Engineers, and two civilian scientists from the Ministry of Supply, Dr Dawson and Mr Hurst, succeeded in defusing a V-1 "doodlebug" that had crashed intact on a farm in Sussex. Three separate fuses in turn had to be made safe, one of them of a previously unknown design. Dawson and Hurst were awarded the George Medal, while Hudson received a Bar to the George Medal which he had been awarded for previous bomb disposal work.
Comments
Amazing bravery by all three men.
Posted by: Snafu | July 4, 2005 5:57 PM
This is what I did in the service, and we had precise schematics of all foreign weapons. No need to 'cut the red wire', we knew what every wire did and there were guys on the other end of the sound powered phones with the book. Generally bombs got blown in place unless there was a Jarhead standing on it.
Anything else I ran across was jury-rigged and of simple mechanical design...no easy cell-phone detonators back then.
Finding a manufactured fuse that was new and unknown...seriously beyond my pay grade.
Posted by: trainer | July 5, 2005 2:49 AM
My Wifes late stepfather earned some shiny chest wear for similar service during and long after WW2. Royal Navy Land Incident teams!
Posted by: Tim C | July 3, 2006 9:12 AM