大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War web site by a volunteer on behalf of Vic Taylor and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At the outbreak of war in September 1939 when I was 22 years old and had just received my B Sc (Physics) Degree I attended a Joint Service recruitment Board at Nottingham on 14 September. I volunteered and was recruited as gunner 1479013 in the Royal Artillery. However, in January 1940 I was directed to join the scientific section of the Torpedo and Mining Establishment at Portsmouth. This consisted of a group of six headed by a distinguished scientist Dr E C Bullard from Cambridge University. Our immediate task was to devise means to protect ships against the new German magnetic mines which were sinking ships daily.

The use of 鈥渄egaussing coils鈥� wound horizontally around ships and energized with direct current was being implemented as quickly as supplies of cable etc allowed but there was a need for interim action. 大象传媒 was by no means 鈥渓aboratory research鈥� but rather 鈥減ick and shovel鈥� investigation. We quickly developed a technique called 鈥淲iping鈥� which we tried out on a small collier called 鈥淭he British鈥�. We found that a current of al east 1000 amps was required. With this current the cable clung to the plating and could be 鈥渨iped鈥� up the side of the steel hull using ropes secured at about 10ft intervals and hauled by a team of men stationed along the deck. This wiping magnetized the plating so as to approximately neutralize the normal magnetic field of the ship at beam depth.

We tried the same method on submarines where cable fitting would not have been possible. I was immediately sent to the naval base at Harwich to try out this method on the 鈥淪 Class鈥� submarines based there. It was a Sunday and I arrived at Portsmouth station at 9.00 am to find that my 200 yards of heavy insulated cable had already been loaded on to a train which was about to depart. Unfortunately, the train was going to Brighton and not to London so at the first stop 鈥� Havant 鈥� I had to persuade the guard to get help to unload all the cable together with a heavy magnetometer and instrument box. I had then to persuade the guard on the next London train to reload all the gear. Finally I did get to Harwich.

I started work the next day and after six weeks the task was complete and I returned to Portsmouth. By this time the team had developed a method of further improving the safety of ships. This involved using a wiping cable going under the keel of the ship to form a vertical loop which then had to be hauled from bow to stern. This magnetized the side plating in a direction which opposed the magnetization hammered into the plating during the building of the ship. Again I was off to Harwich to use the new technique on the destroyers there. We later devised a technique of winding several turns of cable round a ship and energizing the cable as a more controllable means of reducing this longitudinal magnetization.

In August 1940 I was back at Portsmouth and in September our team was moved to Helensburgh in Scotland. A small team of five of us had to be ready to go to any of the major ports where special magnetic treatment to a ship was required. I went for example to Rosyth to supervise work on two aircraft carriers and to Belfast to deal with a destroyer which had had the bow section blown off. As the repair had been done on a heading different from that on building this complicated the horizontal magnetization of the ship.

I spent two years in Helensburgh and then was transferred to the Admiralty Research Laboratory at Teddington. In August I married my school and college sweetheart Winifred Cooley B Sc. Win was working as a Junior Scientific Officer in the Operations Research Branch of RAF Fighter Command at Bentley Priory. We first lived in digs in Harrow then eventually found a house to rent in Hampton, Middlesex, near Teddington. Win obtained a transfer to Millbank House in London, which meant an easier train journey.

In June 1944 a few days after D-day the doodle bugs or flying bombs started to arrive. I was on fire duty at the laboratory and the next evening saw the exhaust flames of four doodle bugs all at the same time heading for London. The next Saturday morning our neighbours joined us to see the amazing sight of an unmanned craft 鈥� a flying bomb 鈥� at about 500 ft. We stood discussing this and heard a whistling sound and a lump of metal from an anti-aircraft shell hit the ground at our feet. Some thirty flying bombs landed in our borough and one hit a house about 50 yards from us. Fortunately one-one was injured but the blast broke nearby windows and brought down many slate roof tiles.

We were told that our landlord was shortly returning so we urgently needed a new home. Fortunately the house next door became vacant and we were able to become tenants. Roger was born on 22 March 1945 and I spent the time that Win was in the nursing home trying my hand at wall plastering and interior painting and decorating. The last air raid warning of the war was on the day before Roger was born.

Vic Taylor 鈥� May 2005

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