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127-607: In 1942 he left university with a degree in Chemical Engineering and joined the Petroleum Warfare Department working on incendiary devices at the same time as his doctorate. He began his industrial career with the Agwi Petroleum Corporartion. When this became part of Esso he rose rapidly, eventually becoming managing director in 1968. In retirement he continued to hold important posts such as

254-430: A subaltern at the turn of the century, with the goal of keeping a clear recollection of what had happened during the day and allowing him to reflect on the day's events. These were written directly into bound foolscap volumes, a page or more a day, each night; throughout his life, he totalled some twelve volumes and the best part of a million words. He did not ask for these to be destroyed on his death, though their content

381-467: A battery varied from just one drum to as many as 14; a four-barrel battery was the most common installation and the recommended minimum. Where possible, half the barrels in a battery were to contain the 40/60 mixture and half the sticky 5B mixture. A series of experiments investigated the possibility of burning the invader's barges before they could reach the English shore. The first idea was simply to explode

508-481: A driving accident, he was injured in a fall at his home; he was taken to Queen Alexandra Military Hospital in London where he died on 22 September 1959, aged 79. His coffin was escorted to Westminster Abbey with full military honours, and he was buried near his home at Hingham, Norfolk . He is commemorated by a memorial plaque in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral . Ironside kept a diary throughout his life, starting as

635-639: A far more dominant personality, and had concluded several months earlier that Gort was "out of his depth" as CIGS ; he is unlikely to have shown much deference. He held the post of Inspector for a few months, visiting Poland in July 1939 to meet with the Polish High Command. Whilst his sympathetic manner reassured the Poles, the visit may have unintentionally given the impression that Britain was intending to provide direct military assistance. He returned able to report that

762-508: A few Germans." PWD took inspiration from events that happened during the retreat to Dunkirk in June 1940. One example occurred when Boulogne was attacked in the early hours of 23 May and the road to Calais was cut. In the defence of Boulogne, a group of pioneers under Lieutenant-colonel Donald Dean VC , had improvised a road block made of vehicles and piles of furniture from bombed-out houses. An approaching tank began to push its way over

889-627: A first-line division of the Territorial Army. Banks got on well with his commander, Major-general Giffard LeQuesne Martel . Banks admired his leadership and his enthusiasm for experimentation and improvisation. In October 1939, the division was sent to the Cotswolds , and in January 1940, it was moved to France. When Germany attacked in May, the division was heavily involved in the fighting around Arras and

1016-481: A flaming ribbon 880 yards long and 6 feet wide (800 m × 2 m) that could be towed at four knots. Neither of these experiments were carried forward to produce workable defences. The Suffolk did, however, provide a trial run for an even more ambitious idea - the invasion barges would be burned even before they left port. The plan was first floated in early June/July 1940 and became known as Operation Lucid . Three old tankers were quickly prepared as fire ships for

1143-584: A grain of salt. On the evening of the following day, Shirer arrived back in Berlin: I noticed several lightly wounded soldiers, mostly airmen, getting off a special car which had been attached to our train. From their bandages, the wounds looked like burns. I noticed also the longest Red Cross train I've ever seen. It stretched from the station for half a mile to beyond the bridge over the Landwehr Canal . [...] I wondered where so many wounded could have come from, as

1270-530: A job as a wagon driver working for the German colonial forces in South West Africa . This intelligence work ended unsuccessfully when he was identified, but managed to escape. This escapade later led to claims that he became the model for Richard Hannay , a character in the novels of John Buchan ; Ironside was always amused by these novels when reading about Mr Standfast in the implausibly romantic setting of

1397-517: A limited military pension . As the cost of living in the late nineteenth century was substantially lower in mainland Europe than in Britain, she travelled extensively around the Continent, where the young Edmund began learning various foreign languages. This grasp of language would become one of the defining features of his character; by middle age, he was fluent enough to officially interpret in seven, and

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1524-571: A military mission which supervised the withdrawal of Romanian Forces left in Hungary after the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919 , and in the summer was attached to the force occupying İzmit , Turkey, as it prepared to withdraw. His third overseas posting of the year was to Persia in late August. The precise level of British involvement in Reza Khan's coup remains a matter of historical debate, but it

1651-536: A mine. By November, any invasion plan had been called off and Lucid was shelved. During August the corpses of about forty German soldiers were washed up at scattered points along the coast between the Isle of Wight and Cornwall. The Germans had been practising embarkations in the barges along the French coast. Some of these barges put out to sea in order to escape British bombing and were sunk, either by bombing or bad weather. This

1778-555: A new and geographically unfavourable front. Both Ironside and Churchill supported the plan enthusiastically, but it met with opposition from many other officers, including from Gort – who saw his forces in France being depleted of resources – and from Cyrill Newall , the Chief of the Air Staff . Planning continued through the winter of 1939–1940, and by March 1940 a force of around three divisions

1905-502: A nozzle secured by ground spikes. Flow was initiated by a pull string that opened a valve and ignition was provided by Molotov cocktails. The Petroleum Warfare Department soon received the assistance of Henry Newton and William Howard Livens , both known for designing mortars during the First World War. During the First World War, Livens had developed a number of chemical-warfare and flame-throwing weapons. The largest of his works

2032-609: A personal acquaintance of Ironside's, but decided to retain him in Britain and send Lord Gort instead. On 25 June, he was called to the War Cabinet to brief them on the plans for Home Defence; his system of defence in depth provided for: The plan was "on the whole" approved by the Cabinet, and by the Chiefs of Staff later in the week. He was clear in his diaries that he saw the static focus as an undesirable option – "[the] eternal preaching of

2159-657: A plan to prevent their stocks being of use to the invader. On 29 May 1940, as the evacuation of the BEF was in progress, Maurice Hankey , then a cabinet minister without portfolio , joined the Ministerial Committee on Civil Defence (CDC) chaired by Sir John Anderson , the Secretary of State for the Home Office and Home Security . Among many ideas, Hankey "brought out of his stable a hobby horse, which he had ridden very hard in

2286-432: A road. The pipes were steel, 1–2 inches (25–51 millimetres) in diameter and drilled with 1 ⁄ 8  in (3.2 mm) holes at angles carefully calculated to cover the road evenly. The perforated pipes were connected to larger pipes that led to a tank of fuel in a raised position. The fuel mixture was 25% petrol and 75% gas-oil that was contrived to be of no use as motor vehicle fuel should it be captured. All that

2413-528: A shortage of petrol, but because it might lead to large congregations of well-fuelled vehicles at popular places. In the event of an invasion, the British would be faced with the problem of destroying these stocks lest they should prove of use to the enemy (as they had in France ). By mid-June, as a basic anti-invasion precaution, wayside petrol stations near the coast had been emptied, or at least had their pumps disabled, and garages everywhere were required to have

2540-432: A spontaneous ignition. This system had the advantage that it could be turned on and off repeatedly. The development of the flame fougasse (see below) provided a method of remote electrical ignition that could only be used once, but was virtually instantaneous. Some 200 static flame traps were installed, mainly by the employees of oil companies whose services were placed at the disposal of the government. In addition to

2667-478: A traditional staging post to retirement. He was recalled from "exile" in mid-1939, being appointed as Inspector-General of Overseas Forces, a role which led most observers to expect he would be given the command of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the outbreak of war. However, after some political manoeuvring, General Gort was given this command and Ironside was appointed as the new Chief of

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2794-502: A vessel filled with oil, and this was tried at Maplin Sands , where a Thames oil tanker, Suffolk , with 50 tonnes of petroleum, was blown up in shallow water. Another idea developed was that the oil should be held in place on the water by a trough formed from coir matting. A machine formed the trough from a flat mat as it was paid out over the stern of a ship. Trials with the Ben Hann produced

2921-502: A volunteer soldier with little professional experience – he found himself almost commanding the division on occasions, noting in his memoirs that Watson regularly authorised Ironside's orders in his name. On its arrival in France in late 1916, the division participated at the end of the Battle of the Somme , before being moved north to prepare for the attack at Vimy Ridge . During the final phase of

3048-765: Is almost certain that Ironside himself at least provided advice to the plotters. On his departure from Persia in 1921, the Shah awarded him the Order of the Lion and the Sun . After Persia, he attended the Cairo Conference , where Winston Churchill persuaded him to take command of the newly reorganised British force in Iraq; however, returning to Persia in April, the aircraft he was flying in crashed and he

3175-529: Is always loyal to his friends." On his arrival at Home Forces HQ, Brooke was astonished that Ironside had not stayed to apprise him of the situation; neither had he left him any notes except for a brief memo to say that he had arranged for Brooke to use his staff car. Shortly before being dismissed, Ironside was implicated as a potential military leader for a fascist coup organized by Leigh Vaughan-Henry, intended to take place when Germany landed in Britain. While neither Ironside's approval nor even his knowledge of

3302-461: The 6th Division , but to his surprise he was assigned to the newly formed 4th Canadian Division . Ironside pushed for a hard training regime, intending to get the division to the front as quickly as possible and prevent it being broken up to feed reinforcements to the other three divisions of the Canadian Corps. Because of the inexperience of the divisional commander, Major-General David Watson –

3429-483: The British Expeditionary Force (BEF). By some accounts, he was one of the first British officers to arrive in France. He was promoted to major and attached to the newly arrived 6th Division at the end of October 1914, ranked as a General Staff Officer , Grade 3 (GSO3). He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-colonel and appointed GSO1 in March 1916. He had expected to be made GSO1 – Divisional Chief of Staff – to

3556-552: The Meerut district, in India, in 1928. He enjoyed life in India, but found the military situation to be equally uninteresting; the equipment was old-fashioned, as were the regimental officers and the overall strategic plans. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in March 1931, and left for England in May, where he returned to half-pay with the sinecure of Lieutenant of the Tower of London . He

3683-534: The Prochancellorship of the University of Surrey . This article about a British businessperson born in the 1920s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Petroleum Warfare Department The Petroleum Warfare Department (PWD) was a government department established in Britain in 1940 in response to the invasion crisis during World War II , when Germany apparently would invade

3810-592: The Royal Artillery in 1899, and served throughout the Second Boer War . This was followed by a brief period spying on the German colonial forces in South-West Africa . Returning to regular duty, he served on the staff of the 6th Infantry Division during the first two years of the First World War, before being appointed to a position on the staff of the newly raised 4th Canadian Division in 1916. In 1918, he

3937-554: The Royal Field Artillery on 25 June 1899. Later that year his unit, 44th Battery, RFA, was despatched to South Africa. He fought throughout the Second Boer War being wounded three times, and was mentioned in despatches in 1901. He was also promoted lieutenant on 16 February 1901. At the end of the war in May 1902, he was a member of the small force which escorted Jan Smuts to the peace negotiations . He then disguised himself as an Afrikaans -speaking Boer , taking

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4064-637: The Second BEF in early June, but was dubious about Churchill's decision to bring home troops from the Middle East and India; even after the fall of France and the potential collapse of the defences in Britain, he still held to his pre-war position that "[it] is essential to hold the East firmly, whatever happens here". By mid-June, he had begun to collect a scanty mobile reserve – the 8th RTR , with infantry tanks, and six regiments of armoured cars beginning to form – and

4191-699: The Secretary for Petroleum , to press ahead with experiments, with Hankey taking the matter under his general supervision. Donald Banks had served with distinction in World War I, winning the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross . He joined the civil service, and in 1934, he was made Director-General of the Post Office , he then moved to the Air Ministry and served there as Permanent Under Secretary from 1936 to 1938. Due to overwork, Banks

4318-784: The Small Arms School , with the rank of acting colonel. He quickly returned to the Western Front, however, when he was appointed to command the 2nd Division 's 99th Brigade as a temporary brigadier-general at the end of March. Ironside remained with 99th Brigade for only six months; in September 1918, he was attached to the Allied Expeditionary Force fighting the Bolsheviks in northern Russia, and in November given command of

4445-755: The Staff in September of the same year, and then as a Brigade-Major in June 1909. He returned home in September 1912, in order to attend the Staff College, Camberley . Ironside's two-year course at the Staff College, which he found unstimulating, was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914; on 5 August, he was confirmed in his appointment as a Staff Captain, and assigned to Boulogne-sur-Mer and then St. Nazaire , both large Army bases supporting

4572-468: The peerage as Baron Ironside . Lord Ironside retired to Morley Old Hall in Norfolk to write, and never again saw active service or held any official position. Shortly before being dismissed in 1940, Ironside had been named as a future military dictator for a potential fascist coup against Britain intended to take place when Germany landed in Britain. While neither his involvement nor even his knowledge of

4699-481: The pillboxes and coastal defences were being prepared, though he emphasised to the local commanders that the latter "are only meant as delaying lines, and are meant to give the mobile columns a chance of coming up to the threatened points." The fall of France led to a brief interlude where the Cabinet debated sending Ironside on a diplomatic mission to meet Charles Noguès , the French commander in North Africa and

4826-503: The 1914–18 war – namely the use of burning oil for defensive purposes." Hankey believed that oil should not just be denied to an invader, but used to impede him. Towards the end of June, Hankey brought his scheme up at a meeting of the Oil Control Board and produced for Commander-in-Chief Home Forces Edmund Ironside extracts of his paper on experiments with oil in the First World War. On 5 June, Churchill authorised Geoffrey Lloyd ,

4953-626: The Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. At the beginning of World War II, in September 1939, little fighting occurred in the West until the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940. Following the fall of France and the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the beaches at Dunkirk in June 1940, Britain was threatened with invasion by German armed forces in 1940 and 1941 . In response to this threat of invasion,

5080-552: The Army as Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley , where he advocated the ideas of a close friend, J. F. C. Fuller , who was a proponent of mechanisation. He later commanded a division, and military districts in both Britain and India, but his youth and his blunt approach limited his career prospects, and after being passed over for the role of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in 1937 he became Governor of Gibraltar ,

5207-654: The Balkans. He strongly supported the development of a close-support air force, preferably under Army command, but at the same time argued that when a German offensive began in the West, the Royal Air Force (RAF) should throw its main strength into strategic bombing of the Ruhr rather than attacking the forward units. Ironside's enthusiasm for "peripheral" operations led him to plans for Allied intervention in Scandinavia; rather than

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5334-534: The Beach , Hayward makes a compelling case for the view that the burning seas work was driven substantially by the needs of propaganda and was a sophisticated bluff that became Britain's first major propaganda success of the war. Writing just after the war, Banks said, "Perhaps the greatest contribution from all these variegated efforts was in building up the great propaganda story of the Flame Defence of Britain which swept

5461-479: The Birch Igniter, the pressure of the oil at the end of the pipe would squeeze glycerine from a rubber bulb; the glycerine would fall onto a container of potassium permanganate , which would then ignite spontaneously. Another method was to run a pair of small rubber tubes, down one of which would be passed acetylene and the other chlorine ; when, at the far end, these two gases were allowed to mix, there would be

5588-546: The British sought to expand the Royal Navy , Royal Air Force , and Army, replace the equipment that had been left behind at Dunkirk, and supplement the regular armed services with volunteer organisations such as the part-time soldiers in the Home Guard . With many types of equipment in short supply, frantic efforts were made to develop new weapons – particularly those that did not require scarce materials. Although oil imports from

5715-522: The Chief Engineer's office at GHQ Home Forces read: "The PM is personally interested in it. It is something which can be provided without any adverse effect on the production of other equipment or on our War effort generally. It is unlikely that we shall have enough A/T weapons to cover all our road blocks for many months, if ever. These flame traps do at least give the Home Guard a sporting chance of frying

5842-516: The Chiefs of Staff, both to Ironside's great frustration. He also found it hard to cope with Churchill's mood swings and insistence on micromanagement of the campaign, and a gulf began to grow between the two. Ironside's main contribution to resolving the Norwegian campaign was to insist on a withdrawal when the situation worsened, and he pushed through the evacuation of central Norway at the end of April despite ministerial ambivalence. Ironside himself

5969-505: The Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), and indeed had already despatched his Assistant to Aldershot to begin preparing his headquarters. The reorganisation was politically driven; Hore-Belisha had fallen out heavily with Viscount Gort during 1939, and the outbreak of war provided an excellent pretext for Gort to leave Whitehall. This left the post of CIGS vacant, and after heavy lobbying by Churchill, Ironside

6096-439: The Continent of Europe in 1940." The details of the story indicated the invention of a bomb that would spread a thin film of volatile liquid on the surface of the water and then ignite it. This rumour was whispered into attentive ears in neutral cities such as Stockholm , Lisbon, Madrid , Cairo , Istanbul , Ankara , New York, and other places, probably around late July or early August 1940. The burning-seas rumour appealed to

6223-621: The County of Aberdeen", and retired to Morley Old Hall in Norfolk with his family. He never received another military posting, and ostracised by the Army establishment, rarely visited London, and never spoke in the House of Lords . He turned to lecturing and writing books, including a study of the Archangel expedition, and farming his estates in Norfolk. After almost two decades in retirement, having survived

6350-415: The English coast or in rehearsals with boats and barges off the French coast the British had given the Germans a bad pummelling. The reports reaching Switzerland from France were that many German barges and ships had been destroyed and a considerable number of German troops drowned; also that the British used a new type of wireless-directed torpedo (a Swiss invention, the Swiss said) which spread ignited oil on

6477-435: The French Army's unwillingness to fight, accepted Gort's view that evacuation of the BEF was the only answer. In his diary on the afternoon of 25 May, Ironside wrote that "I am now concentrating upon the Home Defence ... [The Cabinet] want(s) a change to some man well-known in England. They are considering my appointment". That night, he spoke to Churchill, offering to take up the new post, and – again from his diary: I

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6604-463: The Government would leave first for Bristol and then for the Colonies, General Ironside would become dictator and after things had settled down Germany could do as she liked with Britain." At the end of August, a month and a half after his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces, Ironside was appointed a field marshal . He was raised to the peerage in the New Year Honours , on 29 January 1941, as "Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in

6731-436: The Home Guard laid on a demonstration. The petrol valve was opened and created a huge spray, which reached the opposite side of the road. I think the original idea was that a limited amount of petrol would be released, but the valve remained open. An army Sergeant with a Very pistol fired a round (from the top of the Goods Yard) into the pool of petrol in the road dip, while fuel was still coming out at force. It created one of

6858-408: The Imperial General Staff. Ironside himself believed that he was temperamentally unsuited to the job, but felt obliged to accept it. In early 1940 he argued heavily for Allied intervention in Scandinavia , but this plan was shelved at the last minute when the Finnish-Soviet Winter War ended. During the invasion of Norway and the Battle of France he played little part; his involvement in the latter

6985-422: The Middle East had stopped and most oil for Britain came from the United States, no shortage of oil existed at the time; supplies originally intended for Europe were filling British storage facilities and full tankers were kept waiting in American ports. The amount of petrol allocated for civilian use was strictly rationed and pleasure motoring was strongly discouraged. This was not, at least initially, because of

7112-406: The PWD experimented with "setting the sea on fire" by burning oil that was floating on the surface. It was immediately appreciated that the possibilities of such a weapon lay not only in its ability to destroy the enemy, but also in the propaganda value of the terror of fire. In 1938, an Enemy Publicity Section , created for propaganda to be sent to the enemy, was formed by Hankey and a new section

7239-405: The Petroleum Warfare Department was created. The Petroleum Warfare Department started on 9 July 1940 in three small rooms. They were independently administered and financed with a few staff entirely lacking in technical knowledge. Hankey and Lloyd were not alone in their interest in the development of petroleum warfare weapons; encouragement came from the highest quarters. In August, a note from

7366-401: The Polish Government was unlikely to provoke Germany into war, but warned that the country would be quickly overrun and that no Eastern Front was likely to exist for long. His warnings, however, were broadly ignored. His appointment on 3 September 1939 as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) came as something of a surprise to Ironside; he had been led to believe he would be appointed as

7493-438: The SOE. Subsequently, in September 1941, responsibilities for political warfare was taken away from the SOE with the formation of the Political Warfare Executive . Although PWD would go on to work on burning floating oil, a plan was hatched to spread the story that such a weapon already existed even before the first trials were performed. Writer James Hayward has made an extensive study of this curious story; in The Bodies on

7620-434: The armies in the west stopped fighting three months ago. As there were only a few porters I had to wait some time on the platform and picked up a conversation with a railway workman. He said most of the men taken from the hospital train were suffering from burns. Can it be that the tales I heard in Geneva had some truth in them after all? The stories there were that either in attempted German raids with sizable landing-parties on

7747-409: The battery of drums where the party was standing failed to go off. The experiments led to a particularly promising arrangement - a 40-gallon steel drum buried in an earthen bank with just the round front end exposed. At the back of the drum was an explosive which, when triggered, ruptured the drum and shot a jet of flame about 10 ft (3.0 m) wide and 30 yd (27 m) long. The design

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7874-479: The burning-seas story became embellished to the point where the story included a German invasion attempt thwarted by the ignition of oil on water. American war correspondent William Lawrence Shirer was based in Berlin at the time, but in mid-September, he visited Geneva , Switzerland. News coming over the near-by border of France is that the Germans have attempted a landing in Britain, but that it has been repulsed with heavy German losses. Must take this report with

8001-548: The button of his tunic. The man is completely defeated." Although Billotte was supposed to be co-ordinating the British, French and Belgian armies' operations in Belgium, Ironside took over the job himself, ordering Gort and Blanchard to launch a counter-attack against the Germans at Arras . This attack achieved some local success, but the German onslaught proved unstoppable. The French Commander-in-Chief, General Maxime Weygand , so resented Ironside's actions that he said he would "like to box Ironside's ears." Ironside, despairing of

8128-441: The coast and into a central mobile reserve, but this was not possible until they were trained and equipped for the role. He threw himself into the details of the strategy, laying out plans for the static defence of village strongpoints by the Home Guard, patrols of "Ironsides" armoured cars to strengthen the divisions, and light artillery mounted on trucks as improvised tank destroyers . He agreed to release two divisions for

8255-425: The coastal areas before they could be effectively replaced. However, criticism of the "Ironside plan" was soon manifest. On 26 June (only a day after the plan's approval) at a meeting of the Vice-Chiefs of Staff, Air Marshal Richard Peirse pointed out that many of the RAF's main operational airfields would be overrun by an invader before they reached Ironside's principal stop line, the "GHQ Line". The conclusion of

8382-506: The corps-level regional commands in the United Kingdom, responsible for a single Regular division and three Territorial Army divisions. Here, he realised that a European War would come sooner rather than later, and that the Army was in a parlous state to defend the country. However, he found that as with his earlier posts, he could achieve little in Eastern Command – the most important decisions being made in Whitehall . He himself seemed to lose his opportunity for higher office in 1937, when he

8509-558: The country. The department was initially tasked with developing the uses of petroleum as a weapon of war, and it oversaw the introduction of a wide range of flame warfare weapons. Later in the war, the department was instrumental in the creation of the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (commonly known as FIDO) that cleared runways of fog allowing the landing of aircraft returning from bombing raids over Germany in poor visibility, and Operation Pluto , which installed prefabricated fuel pipelines between England and France soon after

8636-416: The dark imaginations of both friend and foe. Soon, interrogation of captured Luftwaffe pilots revealed that the rumour had become common knowledge. German armed forces began experimenting with burning floating oil. On 18 August, they ignited 100 tons of floating oil; it burned for 20 minutes producing heat and copious smoke – this was almost a week before the first successful British ignition. In Europe,

8763-429: The defensive and taking cover behind anti-tank articles has been the curse of our tactics" – but that it was the only practical way to make use of untrained and badly-equipped forces. By early July, he was optimistic that more troops could soon be pulled out of static positions and used in a mobile role, with the Home Guard taking over the local defences, but strongly resisted orders from Churchill to pull divisions out of

8890-400: The enemy by surprise. Both Livens and Newton experimented with field-expedient versions of the Livens projector using commercially available five-gallon drums and tubes. Newton experimented with firing milk bottles filled with phosphorus using a rifle. None of these experiments were taken forward. However, one of Livens' PWD demonstrations, probably first seen about mid-July at Dumpton Gap,

9017-443: The fact that Hore-Belisha was particularly reliant on the advice of Liddell Hart, an old acquaintance of Ironside's, who was already beginning to fall out with Gort. As expected, Ironside chose to interpret the posting as indicating that he was the presumptive Commander-in-Chief, and soon began to clash with Lord Gort over their respective powers. Whilst Gort was nominally in the more senior position, Ironside had seniority of rank and

9144-452: The fiercest of fires I have seen, destroying the grass banks, the railway sleeper fence, scorched the telegraph poles and burned the surface off the road. Very effective! This little episode (about 1940-41) was never repeated! A static flame trap allowed a length of road, typically 60 to 150 ft (18 to 46 m), to be covered in flame and smoke at a moment's notice. The weapon was a simple arrangement of perforated pipes placed alongside

9271-438: The fighting at Vimy , Ironside again was required to take unofficial command of the division, overruling an ambiguous order from Watson – who was out of contact at headquarters – to halt the attack, and personally ordering the leading battalions into action. He remained with the division through 1917, when it fought at the Battle of Passchendale , and in January 1918 was appointed to an administrative posting, as commandant of

9398-436: The flame fougasse called the "demi-gass" was a fougasse barrel placed horizontally in the open with an explosive charge underneath that would rupture the barrel and flip it over towards the target. Another variant was the "hedge hopper", a fougasse barrel on its end with an explosive charge underneath that would send it bounding over a hedge or wall; this made the hedge hopper particularly easy to conceal. A further variant of

9525-509: The force as a whole had almost no modern artillery or anti-tank guns, and the armoured division had just a small number of light tanks. The deficiencies with equipment led to an overall lack of mobility, which coupled with the limited training of the units meant that very few were capable of organised offensive counter-attacks against an invading force. As a result, the only way they could practically be used would be to commit them to static defence; Ironside planned to steadily pull units away from

9652-575: The force, retaining his temporary rank of Brigadier-General. This was his first independent command, and he threw himself fully into it; for over a year, he travelled continually along the Northern Dvina to keep control of his scattered international forces, at one point narrowly escaping assassination. However, the Red Army managed eventually to gain a superior position in the Civil War and in late 1919 he

9779-438: The general approach to the defence of Britain and refused to apply it." When Churchill visited Montgomery's 3rd Infantry Division on 2 July, he described to the prime minister how his division, which was fully equipped except for transport, could be made into a mobile formation by the requisitioning of municipal buses, able to strike at the enemy beachheads rather than strung out along the coast as ordered. Ironside's credibility

9906-450: The ground. Gas tubes for chlorine and acetylene gas were provided for ignition. The resulting jets of flame had a range of 60–70 ft (18–21 m). Because a shortage of pumps existed – they were badly needed for fighting fires started by bombing – a simpler type of mobile flame trap was also designed. This consisted of a number of 12-inch (30 cm) diameter pipes welded shut to make a 12-foot (3.7 m) long cylindrical drum, which

10033-511: The hedge hopper idea was devised for St Margaret's Bay , where the barrels would be sent rolling over the cliff edge. In all, some 50,000 flame fougasse barrels were distributed, of which the great majority were installed in one of 7,000 batteries mostly in southern England and a little later at 2,000 sites in Scotland. Some barrels were held in reserve, while others were deployed at storage sites to destroy fuel depots at short notice. The size of

10160-635: The importance of a properly coordinated system for sending information to enemy countries. The Permanent Secretary (most senior civil servant of a department) at the Air Ministry to whom the note was addressed was Sir Donald Banks, who would later head the PWD. On 25 September 1939, Department EH was mobilised to Woburn Abbey where it joined another subversion team known as Section D that had been formed by Major Laurence Grand . In July 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill invited Hugh Dalton to take charge of

10287-549: The limited approach of simply mining Norwegian waters to stop Swedish iron-ore shipments to Germany, he argued for landing a strong force in northern Norway and physically occupying the Swedish orefields. If successful, this would allow the resupply of Finland – then fighting the Soviet Union , and aligned loosely with the Allied forces – as well as interdicting Germany's ore supply, and could potentially force Germany to commit troops on

10414-511: The main focus of British attention in the war. He took up the governorship in November 1938, and threw himself into preparing the colony for war; here, finally, he had free rein. Under his tenure, the defences were strengthened and the garrison prepared for a long siege. In December 1938, only a month after he had taken up the post, Hore-Belisha had begun to consider the possibility of recalling Ironside to become Inspector-General of Overseas Forces. The position gave him overall responsibility for

10541-455: The material was selected from May 1937 to his retirement in June 1940, and published as numbered daily entries with editorial notes. A second volume, High Road to Command: the diaries of Major-General Sir Edmund Ironside, 1920–1922 , was published in 1972, edited by his son ; this covered the period from 1920 to 1922, during his service in the Middle East. The book was assembled by Ironside shortly before his death and, whilst it drew heavily on

10668-500: The meeting was that the plan was "completely unsound". Although Ironside managed to placate the Chiefs of Staff, discontent amongst his subordinates was growing; one divisional commander wrote "We have become pill-box mad". There was widespread concern that troops were spending their time constructing defences rather than on the training which they desperately needed. Another critic was Major-General Bernard Montgomery , who later wrote that he found himself "in complete disagreement with

10795-516: The newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE). The mission of the SOE was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines, or as Churchill put, it: to "set Europe ablaze". Among those present at the first summit meeting of SOE on 1 July 1940 were Lord Hankey, Geoffrey Lloyd and Desmond Morton – people who would be instrumental in the formation of the PWD just a few days later. Department EH and section D later became SO1 and SO2 of

10922-437: The next few days and consulting with other soldiers, Banks found both professional scepticism and enthusiasm. Banks, a man who said he preferred the prospect of real fighting over "Whitehall warfare", was not himself keen and his first instinct was to suggest that petroleum weapons should be developed locally. Lloyd would have none of it and Banks was ordered to report to him for special duties. On 9 July, cutting through red tape,

11049-553: The obstruction, as Dean wrote: We were prepared for this ... I had some lorry petrol tanks punctured with a pick, the tank being unable to shell us during its crushing climb, and we set fire to the lot. A sheet of flame went up, and the tank backed hastily off ... Our roadblock burned for quite a while, and allowed for a further block to be made under cover of smoke. The newly formed department quickly made arrangements for some practical experiments at Dumpton Gap in Kent. These were

11176-471: The operation under the command of Augustus Agar VC with Morgan Morgan-Giles as his staff officer. Each ship was laden with over 2,000 tons of flammable oils and a miscellany of leftover explosive devices. Although the operation was started several times in September–October 1940, the attempts were thwarted by bad weather, unreliable ships, and finally, one of the destroyers in the group was damaged by

11303-508: The passenger seat of an open-cockpit biplane flying from Iraq to Persia. He left Cape Town on the HMT Britannic in early October 1902, and arrived at Southampton later the same month. Ironside was subsequently posted to India, where he served with I Battery Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) , and South Africa, with Y Battery RHA . He was promoted to captain in February 1908, appointed to

11430-408: The plot were conclusively proven, J.F.C. Fuller, a confirmed participant in the plot, told retired Admiral Barry Domvile , a fellow participant, that "Ironside is with us." A fellow conspirator, Samuel Darwin-Fox, told an MI5 agent that: "Italy would declare war almost immediately, that France would then give in and that Britain would follow before the end of the week. There would be a short civil war,

11557-541: The plot were ever conclusively proven, J.F.C. Fuller, a confirmed conspirator, told another conspirator that "Ironside is with us." Ironside was born in Edinburgh , Scotland, on 6 May 1880 to Surgeon-Major William Ironside (1836-1881) of the Royal Horse Artillery and Emma Maria (1845-1939), daughter of William Haggett Richards. His father died shortly afterwards, leaving his widowed wife to bring up their son on

11684-486: The problem of the 'old men' still filling the upper ranks of the army; in the end, he was reprimanded by the chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS), General Sir George Milne . After Camberley he was appointed to command the 2nd Division in England, a post he held for two years with little effect or interest – he was frustrated by the task of training an infantry force with no modern equipment – and then sent to command

11811-650: The readiness of forces based outside the United Kingdom, and many at the War Office worried that he might interpret this as a precursor to being given formal command of the Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of war. However, after some debate, Hore-Belisha went ahead and offered Ironside the position in May, appointing a corresponding Inspector-General of Home Forces at the same time, both under Lord Gort's command. The decision to recall Ironside may have been helped by

11938-419: The required pipes and valves could be obtained from the gas and water industries with little modification required beyond drilling a few holes. In general, gravity was all that was required to provide sufficient pressure for the fountains of oil but, where necessary, pumps were provided. Later versions were a little more sophisticated; remote ignition could be achieved in a variety of ways. In one system, called

12065-464: The rugby 2nd XV as well as playing for Scotland. He was built for both of these sports, six feet four inches tall and weighing seventeen stone (108 kg), for which he was nicknamed "Tiny" by his fellow students. The name stuck, and he was known by it for the rest of his life. After attending the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich he was commissioned into the army as a second lieutenant with

12192-548: The rumour machine inflated light casualties to proportions of strategic consequence. Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside , GCB , CMG , DSO (6 May 1880 – 22 September 1959) was a senior officer of the British Army who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the first year of the Second World War . Ironside joined

12319-598: The same time Ironside was succeeded as CIGS by his deputy, Sir John Dill. In his new command, Ironside commanded a force which amounted – on paper – to fifteen Territorial Infantry divisions, a single armoured division, fifty-seven home-defence battalions, and the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). However, all of these were deficient in training and organisation, as the operational units had already been sent to France. They were also lacking in equipment;

12446-466: The source of some excitement for witnesses, who included the pilots of enemy planes. Many of the first ideas to be tried proved fruitless, but experience quickly led to the development of the first practical weapon - the static flame trap. I lived in Longniddry from 1927 until my wife and I moved [away] ... twenty years ago. [...] It was on a platform high up in the trees opposite a dip in the road between

12573-431: The static flame traps, mobile units were created. The main design used an otherwise redundant 200–300-imperial-gallon (910–1,360 L) tank mounted on the back of a 30 cwt lorry, just behind the cabin. In the middle of the remaining space was a petrol-driven pump and either side of this was stored 75 ft (23 m) of armoured rubber hose. Two nozzles were provided with a primitive sight and with spikes for pushing into

12700-402: The two old telegraph poles. My recollection is that the tank was as high as the telegraph poles. A vertical pipe from the tank was connected to a horizontal pipe fixed to the top of the wall. This pipe had a line of small holes along its length. Opening a valve inside the wood allowed the petrol to escape under a considerable pressure head. I only saw this Flamme operated once. Army personnel for

12827-520: The water and burned the barges. Those cases of burns at the station this morning bear looking into. The following day, Shirer heard about further train loads of wounded soldiers. A plausible explanation for these wounded is that they were hurt in RAF bombing raids on ports of embarkation. Such raids were certainly going on, though it seems they were generally fairly ineffective and no records of significant German casualties have been turned up. It seems likely that

12954-472: Was appointed a lecturer at the College at the same time, and became a close acquaintance of Sir Basil Liddell-Hart . Fuller's views were deeply influential on Ironside, who became a supporter of reforming the Army as an elite armoured force with air support, and of forming a single central Ministry of Defence to control the services. He argued frequently over the need for faster modernisation and rearmament, and

13081-543: Was appointed an aide-de-camp to HM the King in October, a purely ceremonial position, and early in 1938 accepted the offer of Governor of Gibraltar , generally seen as a quiet role where to retire. He was helped to accept Gibraltar by the suggestion that, in the event of war, he could be transferred to command the forces in the Middle East; as he believed no major force could usefully be sent to France, this seemed to him likely to be

13208-595: Was chosen over Sir John Dill , then the General Officer Commanding, Aldershot Command . As CIGS, Ironside adopted a policy of rapidly building up a strong force in France, aiming to put some twenty divisions in the field. However, this force would be broadly defensive, acting to support the French Army , and he aimed to influence the course of the war by forming a second strong force in the Middle East, which would be able to operate in peripheral operations in

13335-403: Was filled with 43 imperial gallons (200 L) of petrol-oil mixture and pressurised with an inert gas. Five of these cylinders could be transported on the back of a vehicle, and at a weight just under 1,000 lb (450 kg), could be deployed reasonably quickly wherever an ambush was required. The cylinders would be placed at intervals along a road, each with a short length of hose leading to

13462-616: Was forced to abandon the White Army to their fate. In November he handed command over to Henry Rawlinson , who would supervise the eventual withdrawal, and returned to Britain. Ironside was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath , and promoted to substantive major-general for his efforts; this made him one of the youngest Major-Generals in the British Army. In early 1920 he commanded

13589-472: Was formed under Sir Campbell Stuart , who was a former editor of The Times newspaper. Being allocated premises at Electra House , the new section was dubbed Department EH. During the Munich crisis of 1938, a number of leaflets were printed with the intention of dropping them over Germany. The leaflet drop never took place, but the exercise prompted Department EH to issue a note to the Air Ministry insisting on

13716-572: Was given command of a brigade on the Western Front . In 1919, he was promoted to command the Allied intervention force in northern Russia. Ironside was then assigned to an Allied force occupying Turkey, and then to the British forces based in Persia in 1921. He was offered the post of the commander of British forces in Iraq, but was unable to take up the role due to injuries in a flying accident. He returned to

13843-597: Was given lighter duties, including a mission to Australia to advise on aircraft production and a job at the Import Duties Advisory Committee . During this period, Banks was in the Territorial Army Reserve . When hostilities broke out in September 1939, the advisory committee was abolished and he was free to serve in the armed forces. Banks was soon posted as air attaché to the quartermaster general of 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division –

13970-425: Was invalided home after several months in hospital. After recovering from his injuries on half-pay, Ironside returned to active duty as Commandant of the Staff College in May 1922. He spent a full four-year term there, running the college efficiently as well as publishing several articles and a book on the Battle of Tannenberg . Most importantly for his future career, he became the mentor of J. F. C. Fuller , who

14097-402: Was later withdrawn to the coast. Banks later recalled looking out to sea from a clifftop and seeing "an awe-inspiring sight [...] A few miles away an oil tanker had been bombed or had struck a mine. Masses of the blackest smoke pillared up into a gigantic pall in the sky while in the vast lake of fire, spreading it seemed for miles on the water a flame blazed and leapt like an angry volcano [...] I

14224-425: Was limited by a breakdown in relations between him and Gort. He was replaced as CIGS at the end of May, and given a role to which he was more suited: Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, responsible for anti-invasion defences and for commanding the Army in the event of German landings. However, he served less than two months in this role before being replaced. After this, Ironside was promoted to Field Marshal and raised to

14351-454: Was more promising. A barrel of oil was simply blown up on the beach; Lloyd was said to have been particularly impressed when he observed a party of high-ranking officers witnessing a test from the top of a cliff making "an instantaneous and precipitate movement to the rear". The work was dangerous. Livens and Banks were experimenting with five-gallon drums in the shingle at Hythe when a short circuit triggered several weapons. By good fortune,

14478-479: Was not improved by his association with "Boney" Fuller , a senior member of the British Union of Fascists . Finally, on 17 July, Churchill had a long drive with Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Brooke , the commander of Southern Command , whose views on creating mobile reserves held close to possible landing sites were in accordance with his own. On 19 July, Ironside was summoned to the War Office and informed that he

14605-427: Was often to recall that scene in subsequent days of Flame Warfare". The division was evacuated to England . Early in July 1940, Banks was summoned to the presence of Geoffrey Lloyd, who explained the vision that Hankey and he shared: "Flame all across Britain" he said, "ringing the coasts, spurting from the hedges and rolling down the hills. We will burn the invader back into the sea." Considering Lloyd's ideas over

14732-588: Was prepared to sail. On 12 March, however, Finland sued for peace , and the expedition had to be abandoned. Following the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 as part of Operation Weserübung , the Norwegian campaign of April–June 1940 saw significant British forces committed to action for the first time in the Second World War. Flaws in the command system quickly began to show. War Cabinet meetings dragged on at great length to little effect, as did meetings of

14859-566: Was proficient in perhaps ten more. He was educated at schools in St Andrews before being sent to Tonbridge School in Kent for his secondary education; at the age of sixteen he left Tonbridge to attend a crammer , having not shown much academic promise, and was admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich , in January 1898 at the age of seventeen. At Woolwich he flourished, working hard at his studies and his sports; he took up boxing, and captained

14986-423: Was rebuked over his mishandling of a mobile force in the annual exercises; until this point, he had been considered a possible candidate as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but was dropped from consideration in favour of Lord Gort , whom Ironside considered unfit for the job. The Secretary of State for War , Leslie Hore-Belisha , gave him official notice that he was deemed too old for the post, aged 57. Thus, he

15113-440: Was reminiscent of a weapon dating from late medieval times called a fougasse - a hollow in which was placed a barrel of gunpowder covered by rocks, the explosives to be detonated by a fuse at an opportune moment. Livens' new weapon was duly dubbed the flame fougasse. The flame fougasse was demonstrated to Clement Attlee (Lord Privy Seal), Maurice Hankey , and General Liardet (GOC 56th Division) on 20 July 1940. A variant of

15240-411: Was required to trigger the weapon was to open a valve and for a Home Guard to throw in a Molotov cocktail creating an inferno. The ideal location for the trap was a place where vehicles could not easily escape, such as a steep-sided sunken road . Some trouble was taken with camouflage; pipes could be hidden in gutters or disguised as handrails; others were simply left as innocent-looking plumbing. All

15367-547: Was sent to France in May 1940 to liaise with the BEF and the French in an attempt to halt the German advance. He was not well-qualified for this task, having a deep dislike and distrust for the French, whom he considered "absolutely unscrupulous in everything". At a conference in Lens he clashed with the French Generals Billotte and Blanchard , whom he considered defeatists. He wrote: "I lost my temper and shook Billotte by

15494-420: Was sometimes quite contentious, but did write a will – in 1930 – asking that they not be published. In the late 1950s, however, a former colleague persuaded him to allow extracts to be published as part of an account of the run-up to the Second World War, although he died shortly before it saw print. This was published as The Ironside Diaries: 1937–1940 , edited by Colonel Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly, in 1962;

15621-596: Was the Livens large-gallery flame projector , which could project burning fuel 50–60 m (160–200 ft). His best-known invention was the Livens projector : a simple mortar that could throw a projectile containing about 30 lb (14 kg) of explosives, incendiary oil, or most commonly, poisonous phosgene gas. The great advantage of the Livens projector was that it was cheap; this allowed hundreds, and on occasions thousands, to be set up and then fired simultaneously, catching

15748-480: Was the source of a widespread rumour that the Germans had attempted an invasion and had suffered very heavy losses either by drowning or by being burnt in patches of sea covered with flaming oil. We took no steps to contradict such tales, which spread freely through the occupied countries in a wildly exaggerated form and gave much encouragement to the oppressed populations. – Winston Churchill From its earliest days,

15875-555: Was then posted to India as Quartermaster-General in 1933, where he travelled extensively, crossing the country to visit regiments and oversee the Indianisation process. For all this, however, it was the best of a bad job; he was still far from the War Office , and unable to make significant impact on the army's preparation for a future war. He returned home in 1936, recently promoted to full General, to lead Eastern Command , one of

16002-416: Was to be replaced by Brooke as C-in-C Home Forces, effective immediately. The formal reason was that the Cabinet wished to have someone with recent combat experience in command, and Ironside accepted the dismissal gracefully – "I was quite prepared to be released. I had done my best ... I can't complain. Cabinets have to make decisions in times of stress. I don't suppose that Winston liked doing it, for he

16129-442: Was told that I had to take over the command in England and organise that. I am to be made a Field Marshal later. Not at once, because the public may think that I am being given a sop and turned out. An honour for me and a new and most important job, one much more to my liking than C.I.G.S. in every way. His appointment as Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces was announced to the public on 27 May, succeeding General Sir Walter Kirke . At

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