Britain Might Have Lost WW2 by Christmas 1939

This week, on 10 September 1939, the SS Magdapur, a cargo ship off the coast of Suffolk suddenly sank.  It was initially thought that she had been sunk by a torpedo.  Her back was broken and had she struck a contact mine, she would have gone down by the bows.  However, other ships were soon reported as sinking under similar circumstancesalong Britain’s coast and in its estuaries.  Within weeks, the shipping on which Britain so heavily depended was at a standstill.  Tens of thousands of tonnes of merchant shipping had suffered catastrophic damage and the threat caused ports to be clogged with ships unable to leave harbour, offering opportunities for the U-boats to pick them off.   A young barrister, serving in the RNVR was summoned to put into practice his forensic analytical skills to correlate the information on all the sinkings and identify the mysterious secret weapon.  The Royal Navy quickly suspected the Germans had developed the magnetic influence mine, an invention of the British several years earlier.  However, they needed a sample of the new weapon in order to develop countermeasures.  Churchill was advised that if the mystery could not be solved, coal could not be delivered to the power stations and the country faced starvation.  Britain would be forced to surrender within six weeks.  Not even the U-boats could achieve that.

Then, in November 1939, the Navy had a lucky break.  Mine watchers along the coast of Essex spotted a Luftwaffe bomber dropping a cylindrical object by parachute into the shallow waters off Shoeburyness, near Southend.  Unfortunately for the Germans, the object was high and dry on the mudflats at low tide and the Navy seized its chance to analyse the find.  A team of four men from the Navy’s mine and torpedo school at HMS Vernon in Portsmouth were immediately despatched to investigate, but not before the officers were summoned to meet Churchill in person.  Churchill briefed Lieutenant Commanders Ouvry and Lewis that they had to uncover the weapon’s secrets even at the expense of their lives!  There was no question that they could take the easy option and blow it up.

Ouvry and Lewis discovered two of the weapons.  Knowing that a mistake would be suicidal, the two men agreed to tackle each weapon separately.  Ouvry and Chief Petty Officer Baldwin would tackle the first weapon watched from a safe distance by Lewis and Able Seaman Vearncombe.  As the Vernon men suspected, the object proved to be a brand-new weapon – a magnetic mine, detonated by the change in magnetic field surrounding the mine as the iron hulled ships passed over it.  At length, and with suicidal bravery by the teams, both mines were successfully defuzed and the men’s cold courage was rewarded by the King with the first naval honours of the war.  King George VI wanted to give the men the VC, but was advised this was not possible since their brave actions hadn’t been conducted in the face of the enemy.  That soon changed with the introduction of the George Cross and George Medal.

Thanks to the extraordinary courage of the Vernon team, the Admiralty scientists were soon able to develop countermeasures to protect British and Allied shipping and allow Britain’s mercantile trade to continue.   However, when Hitler realised that he was not winning the war at sea, he ordered the new mines to be dropped on British cities to spread terror and disruption.  As these were naval weapons, the Navy responded by recruiting men, many with a background in physics or electrical engineering, to form Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) teams to deal with the new threat across Britain.  As the Germans learned of their success in dealing with the mines, the designs of the mines were updated with booby traps and other devices to confuse and even kill or maim the men dealing with them.  So began a deadly cat and mice duel.

What fantastic material to form the basis of a novel!  A young barrister becomes an intelligence officer tasked with haring around the country to learn the latest fiendish developments in mine technology.  Meanwhile, a young physics master faces suicidal risks as a guinea pig stripping the deadly mines to render them safe.  So came about my highly-acclaimed book, They Have No Graves as Yet.  In it I have done my best to describe and honour the brave men of the Royal Navy’s RMS teams.  Thanks to its successful sales, I was encouraged to turn the story into a trilogy and the final book in the series, He Who Would Valiant Be, will be published on 16 October 2026.