How Britain Nearly Lost WW2 By Christmas 1939

This week saw the 86^th anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.  Within weeks, the shipping on which Britain so heavily depended was at a standstill thanks to a mysterious and deadly new secret weapon that Germany was deploying along the coast and in the estuaries of Britain.  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.  The Admiralty was forced to warn Churchill that unless they could discover the secrets of the new weapons and develop effective countermeasures, the country faced starvation and would be forced to surrender within six weeks.  Not even the U-boats could achieve that.

The Royal Navy’s theory was that the new weapon could only be a new form of torpedo or mine, but if a mine, it wasn’t the conventional contact mine.  Surveys of the damage to the stricken ships showed that their backs were broken by explosions directly underneath the hulls.  When a ship struck a contact mine, its bows tended to suffer.  This new weapon was proving far more effective.  Fortunately, 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.  I have done my best to describe and honour the brave men of the Royal Navy’s Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) sections in my 5* novel They Have No Graves as Yet.  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 the RMS teams achieved 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. My explosive and gripping novel tells the history of this deadly cat and mouse game as faithfully to the truth as possible.  It is available for sale as an e-book or paperback on Amazon worldwide and I hope the sequel, Death to Touch, will be published before Christmas.

Lieutenant Commander John Ouvry with his DSO

Parachute mine