Home Guard Cap Badges

[Regorian]

I don't wish to dampen your ardour Malcolm but I expect every member of The Home Guard got an appropriate card. Group photographs were common following Army practice etc.

 

[FAHR451]

I have seen hundreds of them as I am a tech volunteer at a museum . This is a little different because of the additional information you have and his connections with individuals of national importance in particular Barnes Wallis .
Several of these citations were handed out for distribution by ICI to its platoon leaders as shown by the pencilled name in the top left corner and are still quite rare particularly for a 2ndLt , when there were higher ranks involved.
The use of the word ' original' in the description clearly shows that they had been split up for special duties prior to 44 . Anything like this involving ICI your Dads background from Nobel his connection to Barnes Wallis is not pure coincidence as I shall explain .
I have searched patent under his name and found a Canadian one for a fabric coating from 1948 with no company assignee , so I don't think this is him .
I have searched world patents and the American site has come up with self sealing tanks applied for in 1937 and finalised in 42 with credits going to 2 inventors so nothing there and no citations of any note .I have searched ICI patents and all of this type of work was attributed to the Teeside works and the coated fabrics patented by them were highly complex materials .They patented more products than any other .So this type of material was more than covered by other patents by ICI . And as I mentioned before ICI collaborated with another giant in the US Dupont (hence ICI Dulux)  , not only on paints but explosives too a partnership which was dissolved post war . Dupont explosives division evolved from Nobel's .

At Teeside a special team or 'committee' was set up code name 'Tube Alloys ' under Michael Perrin whose job it was to develop the UKs Atomic Bomb .Perrin had joined the company a few years invented polythene , before specifically working on the separation of radioactive materials at ICI Teeside works . There seems to be pattern forming at ICI prior to WW2 ,a notable industrial chemist is hired produces something innocuous and is then quietly moved to a special programme .
This is why I am particularly interested in your Dads work and the the Russian trip as the UK had agreed to share knowledge on the development of fissile materials with their team of scientists doing the same thing , particularly on the containers that held the primary and main charges and development of textiles to protect workers from radiation . Because of negotiations with the Americans arrived at a solution to the financing solution of the ICI atom bomb , Perrin's team joined the Manhattan Project and was instrumental in producing the first atomic bombs to be tested under Oppenheimer .
The rest shall we say is history .
If your Dad was involved in any other company as an engineer for Avro or May and Baker ,Briggs, Royal Ordinance etc, I would agree , but an industrial chemist from Nobel at ICI , who was associated with Barnes Wallis (the inventor of bombers and special bombs) , who although was working at the paints division was developing materials of a protective nature (the work of the Teeside complex), and then the Russian connection involving 'containers of aid' all around the same time makes a person wonder if he was involved in something a little more sensitive than that of HG radar operator (the description given was not even a good one as radar at the time showed a series of vertical spikes on a cathode ray tube across the screen from which the operator could calculate altitude distance etc , this is how they could pin point the launch of V2s in 44 from the CHL stations around the south and east coast until the spike disappeared off the top of the screen !) , doesn't seem to work for me as he was clearly describing the later rotational reflector system rather than the fixed type then in use , no wonder he didn't see much action ! The government pulled the plug on cooperation with the Russians by orders of Washington ( some historians say that this act almost triggered an invasion of the UK by the US at the time as bizarre as this seems ). It appears there was an invasion threat by the Americans details and reasons not very clear , but collaboration with Soviets in the manufacture of an atomic bomb is quite a good one, particularly as we had a strong socialist bordering communist element in the coalition government at the time under Eden.
All this makes you think that there could be more to this than meets the eye .Too much going on behind what appears to be a lame cover story.
It's funny that one of ICI later acquisitions was Norsk Hydro , the company that produced heavy water for the Nazi atomic bomb project ! A lot of people don't know that ICI was in the atom bomb making business during WW2 , thanks to the Americans who take the credit for everything ! In fact during the 20thC the British scientists and engineers patented vastly more important and world changing inventions than any other nation in the world and ICI was responsible for tens of thousands of them !
Perhaps you can now see why I am keen to have a little more information, but if you feel that for whatever reason you don't want to uncover his wartime experience then that is also understandable of course .

Thanks
Malcolm

[Regorian]

The entries for two patents dated March 1942 no longer appear on net. However, there is this list:- See No. 71.

http://patent.ipexl.com/date/19460606_8.html.

I don't really have any more to tell you, my father was not a bragger, he just did his job and his duty like millions of others.

Better not mention his visits to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War

Here'a ref. to the self sealing improvement.

http://patent.ipexl.com/GB/577956-a.html.

[ChrisEM]

Interesting thread, which has somehow found its way from Home Guard cap badges to self sealing aircraft fuel tanks! If I may and with apology to cati, I will add a bit to the latter aspect.

Discussion about ICI has so far centred around Paints Division and the Teesside chemical activities. But ICI also had a Metals Division which was based in the West Midlands. In that division was a wholly-owned ICI subsidiary known as Marston Excelsior Ltd. who operated several factories in the Wolverhampton area during the war. Amongst a wide range of engineering products was the fabrication of aluminium fuel tanks for aircraft. At some stage these started to incorporate a foam outer skin to give the tank some form of self sealing property. As things evolved rapidly with the pressures of war, the metal tank disappeared and the tank became a wholly flexible structure, still with its self sealing properties. This latter development must, I now realise, have come as a result of the ICI connection and, especially, the work which Mr Griffiths was doing in Paints. The patent describes pretty accurately how these tanks were manufactured from about 1942 onwards: a layer or layers of flexible reinforced material, with coatings and with a layer of foam which swelled when fuel was released as a result of penetration by bullet or shrapnel; and all manufactured on collapsible metal jigs. (It was a fascinating sight to see these quite large tanks being built up on a large rigid jig and then the latter being painstakingly taken apart within the tank and the components being carefully withdrawn through the largest aperture available).

The journey from idea to fruition must have been a complicated one with much liaison amongst all the interested parties, not least the engineers. It would be fascinating to know the extent to which Mr Griffiths collaborated with the people in Wolverhampton (some of whom I knew in later years) and others elsewhere, such as the rubber sheet manufacturers, to help produce what was an incredible product which must have saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives.

Marston's production of tanks of this type lasted for many years after the war until the concept of flexible aircraft tanks died a death. But the contribution of Metals Division and its metal bashers was by no means confined to this: Kynoch at Witton in Birmingham was one of the biggest ammunition manufacturers in the country and there was even significant involvement in the Tube Alloys project. But that of course is another story! The ironic thing is that the mighty ICI is no more as has already been mentioned; but the Midlands metal bashers, later known as IMI, survived and are now a very significant British engineering company with their HQ still in Birmingham (although "metal bashing" is hardly an appropriate description of their 21st century activities!)  In fact, so does Marston, still in Wolverhampton but now owned by a US company and with no interest whatever in rubber fabrication. (I have put online a potted history of IMI from its pre-ICI creation in 1862, if anyone is interested - http://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/KOtherInformationKynoch.htm ).

Thanks for a very interesting thread and how good it is to remember a remarkable inventor as well as his comrades in the local Home Guard..

Chris

[Regorian]

As I said previously my father was not a bragger. It was my mother who provided me with clues to what he had been involved in during the war. So I probably don't know the half of it. Self sealing fuel tanks for aircraft went back to 1917. The type you describe is probably the one improved by my father to be improved by others later. It was only 2 or 3 years ago that I put his name in my search engine and the 2 patent details came up, nothing else. Weird, he died in 1980 and yet someone could only have made the entry on the internet after 1995. All such patents were owned by the employer company, ICI in this instance.

He would have travelled around the ICI empire during the war and indeed after the war.

Perhaps some perspective. We lived in a country village about 3 to 4 miles from ICI Paints Division in Slough. The family car, a 1938 Vauxhall 14 was in the garage up on blocks for the duration. He would have gone to work and back on his bicycle. His best friend owned a building company and lived two houses away. This mans wife managed to wangle a petrol allowance. he would use his wifes car to go to the village pub which was 2 or 3 miles away. My father refused to travel in it, but go by bike. Not all people were patriotic. The Ministry of Information? even had a film made called 'The San Dimetrio' about an oil tanker that barely made the crossing from USA to UK. Intention to shame people abusing the system, but I doubt it had any effect at all.