大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Harold Page with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

When the war started, I was 15 and in my last year at grammar school in Middlesborough. We couldn鈥檛 use the local school because it didn鈥檛 have proper air raid precautions. We were given four days worth of homework and had to take it in once a week to be marked.

At Easter 1940 I left school and started work as a Lab Assistant (really a general dogsbody) at ICI in Billingham on the other side of the river. Work there had become part of the war effort.

The first project I worked on, in a team of four or five under Dr. Snowdon, was to develop a synthetic rubber which would wrap around aircraft fuel tanks to make them leak-proof if they were punctured by a bullet. The idea was that the rubber would immediately close over the hole. To do this, we had to develop a type of polyisobutylene of sufficient molecular weight so that it could be made into a sheet-like material similar to rubber.

(Another development using polyisobutalene was the production of a lubricant which would operate at -55 degrees Centigrade. Apparently Hampden bombers flying over Norway couldn鈥檛 open the bomb bay doors or operate the release mechanism due to the extreme cold freezing up moving parts.)

We were successful and the rubber went into production 鈥� and on to the aircraft used by the RAF 鈥� in late 鈥�42 / early 鈥�43, by which time I had moved on to the next project 鈥�

About this time, Professor Polanyi of Imperial College, London, came to Billingham. Very soon after, the level of security at the plant increased dramatically. Several labs were isolated with locked doors and staff were not allowed to move between labs or discuss their work with colleagues. The programme 鈥� called simply Tube Alloys to cover its true purpose 鈥� involved developing centrifuges to separate uranium trifluoride. It was not until hearing the project mentioned while watching a 大象传媒 documentary in the 1960鈥檚 that I realised that I had contributed to early work on making the atom bomb. The centrifuges we were developing would eventually isolate uranium 235.

When I found out, my reaction was to remember the feeling of being bombed back in Middlesborough, especially watching landmines descending slowly on parachutes, tracked by the searchlights. I also had several school friends who were not in reserved occupations killed in action. So I saw the justification for the development of the bomb. To bring an end to the war, it was the best thing that could have happened. Also, I suppose that if I examine my feelings closely, I will admit to a wish for revenge. It鈥檚 a natural reaction.

My last project, towards the end of the War, involved analysing enemy fuels. It was before chromatography was invented, so we used fractional distillation stills. We were sent samples of fuel from various theatres of war and we had to identify the components and relate them to the German economy. Their aircraft always had the best stuff, but it was noticeable that as the war drew to a close, the quality of the fuel declined. There was some rubbish used in tanks and trucks.

In the evenings I worked on Air Raid Precautions (ARP). One time we were called to Wilson Street where a landmine had exploded. As we were working through the rubble, someone in the team shouted, 鈥淗old on, there鈥檚 bodies here!鈥� We had to get rubber gloves, bags and dustbin lids (all that was available) to gather the remains. After we had been working grimly on this grisly job for a while, it dawned on us that what we had thought were human remains were in fact joints of meat. Then someone remembered that the site had been a butcher鈥檚 shop!

I also went to night school to improve my qualifications. Once a week, on the 2 till 10 shift, I was allowed to leave at 6:30 to get to the class starting at 7:00. The study paid off. After the War, my days of being a dogsbody came to an end. I eventually became Senior Scientific Officer for The National Coal Board, then Research Manager for a firm of Boilermakers and later the Senior Fuel Technologist for Shell.

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