What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

OR MORE APT- BACKWARD IN TWATTERY”.

This former quango is without doubt one of the worst examples of governance in modern history, with the role of waste disposal and pollution prevention being the rotting corpse in a grave that kept on leaking. For much of its existence it was steered by a bloke called  Ken Harvey, who I believe was nothing more than a Birmingham bins bloke foreman who suddenly found himself elevated to the souped-up role of “county waste disposal officer”, a role for which he was an absolute fucking failure and disaster, and architect of things that are still left over today from 40+ years ago. Of course the bunch of greasing turds in charge as c”o”unty councillors at this time are also culpable for passing waste disposal licences such as SL31 and their weak wording which allowed scum like Albright and Wilson to carry on polluting with little implications on them.

Their doomwatch sites, I have listed from these dark days of Harvey’s failure to control pollution , as well as showing how incompetent his officers were in that they could not even identify a location where 250,000 gallons of sulphuric acid had been dumped, after those who had done the crime had been prosecuted!

As well as the failure of licensing, it is clear that Harvey’s idiots were not even competent chemists or scientists, which would have come in quite handy in tackling and challenging deceitful liars like AW about their waste disposal activities.

Harvey and co passed a licence which allowed AW to dispose of one of the most toxic substances handled in the region, (white phosphorus),  into an urban watery lagoon, on the basis that it would be “safe” to let it oxidise in “small quantities”– as we know, hundreds of tonnes of it actually FFS!

What an absolute crock of shit! The process was neither “safe” and the amounts were not “small”. Albright and Wilson liars of the chemical industry.

Not only was the plant in which this cargo came from not competent in stopping pollution over decades harming people and the environment, but its dump was already known as a notorious hell in the middle of Dudley Port that was “a peril to children”.

When road tanker operation took over from canal barge, it was clear that the operation was still not safe, when material deposited at rattlechain was allowed to burn out. I looked at how a tanker carrying waste to rattlechain, including drums of toxic material had caught fire on route there from Trinity Street. 

This was from The May 16th 1976 edition of the Sandwell Evening Mail and therefore before the SL31 licence had been passed in 1978. You would have hoped that incidents such as this would have informed those passing the licence, or refusing to allow it to continue- well at least any reasonable person would.  🙄 

“An official enquiry has been launched into the incident in which highly combustible phosphorus waste caught fire in Oldbury while being transported by open lorry to a tip.

A full scale police and fire brigade alert was started when a 40 gallon drum containing the waste burst into flames. It was being driven through Oldbury to a Tividale tip from the Langley works of chemical manufacturers Albright and Wilson Ltd.

Mr Ken Harvey the county council’s waste disposal officer said “I would not consider this a satisfactory method of transporting such materials.

I am aware of the Albright and Wilson waste tipping operations but I am not aware that waste is being handled in this manner.

We intend to pursue this matter through discussions with the company because after this incident one must accept that present transportation arrangements are not entirely satisfactory.”

I discussed the paradox as to how Harvey could claim that the practice of transporting this waste was “not satisfactory” , yet allowing it to continue under his watch under a licence bearing his own name just months later.

What I have recently found through another article, is that Harvey’s claims and “enquiry” were absolutely nothing of the sort, and that any discussion with AW must have involved either brown envelopes of cash to look the other way , a freemason handshake, or ignoring any safety implications of continuing this operation, as it clearly did continue.

The 11th June 1976 Birmingham Mail is a shocking indictment of Harvey’s incompetence in his job, and that of the entire regulator. In less than one month, this white wash lie concluded that the firm were not to blame for the incident, of course clearing Harvey’s own useless organisation of any wrong doing themselves, in that they were quite happy for AW to have been doing this to start with.

What is more bizarre is that it recommended that the lorries should no longer be single crewed, rather than the highly flammable cargo being unsuitable to be carried through residential streets! I mean what the actual fuck are they talking about here?

Thirteen drums of p4 containing waste had left the site heading for rattlechain, when one caught fire- thus all them would have eventually.

“A spokesman said that Albright and Wilson were transporting this cargo with authority”. 

Yes of course, ultimately the ass clown Ken Harvey’s authority. 

Even more incredible is that the berk at WMCC, probably this lazy thick hopper tipper twat himself, claims that they did not know how the incident started. FFS! P4 catches fire when exposed to air, it really is that simple! 

There is also the absolute lie from the driver and AW that there was “a burst tyre”. This for me is typical of this company and their red herring bullshit which attempts to switch blame onto anything but the chemicals they fail to handle safely. I mean if a tyre had “burst”, how would the driver have been able to tour the area looking for somewhere to park when knowing that one of the drums was on fire behind him? He would have lost control of the vehicle and probably crashed. Did that happen; I think not? I also wonder as to whether the driver was pressured into making this fake claim to keep his job, nothing would surprise me at all with the management of this shameful operator.

Another provable lie is that AW steered clear of residential areas. THEY DID NOT! They were still using the same route described in the SEM article in the 2000’s !

The map below from the period shows both the former toxic trail by canal barge compared to the toxic trail by road. There may have been some variations of this route from Trinity Street via Shidas lane/Lower City Road for example, but I stalked these bastards along the route at the time in the 2000’s between loads, so I know what I am talking about.

Albright and Wilson’s Toxic trails, from factory to tip– blue the canal route, red the road route.

I am not sure how two men could have done anything differently than one, and it is clear that one man in a tanker continued to dump the waste all those years later when I first came across the scene in the 1990’s. WHAT IS CLEAR IS THAT ANY ONE MAN COULD HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB THAN KEN HARVEY DID, AND THAT THE OLD BOYS NETWORK OF MILITARY PAST DEEDS/CIVIL SERVICE BACK SCRATCHING FROM AW CONTINUED TO GIVE THEM SPECIAL PASSES TO DO WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANTED TO WITH AN APPARENT DIPLOMATIC INDUSTRIAL IMMUNITY. 

WMCC could not detect a white phosphorus fire if it came up and lit them up the arse.

I have looked previously at the location app called what3words in connection to rattlechain lagoon.  

Some of the 3 square metre locations within the site offer some pretty hilarious and relevant 3 word unique combinations. I think my favourite is the one below.

But something just popped in there like A LIGHT BULB the other day in my head as it often does from nowhere. I wonder if there is a place in all of the world that consists of everyone’s favourite most controversial waste disposal site that in itself consists of three words- RATTLE CHAIN LAGOON? Surely there would not be such a place that could have been so unlucky to have been assigned such a hellish namesake consisting of three square metres? WELL THERE IS! 

WHAT.THE.FUCK?

The location appears to be located near to a lagoon or lake with similar shape to our rattlechain!

But where in the world is this place, which also looks like it is in the middle of nowhere? The answer when I went to Google maps takes an even more bizarre twist, and I am starting to wonder if I am in either a bad lucid dream or someone is PULLING.MY.PLONKER.

Alaska!

Of course, rattechain lagoon has a connection with this state in the US given the white phosphorus military firing range at Ford Richardson alongside The Eagle River Flats where birds died as a result of white phosphorus poisoning, and the studies of which helped to confirm the link that birds on Rhodia’s LAKE.OF.DEATH were also dying after ingesting the BANNED.RAT.POISON. 

The scientists who were involved in these studies helped us enormously in the endeavour to unpick the mistruths that the Oldbury polluters were peddling, and even mentioned an article about the site in a remediation paper as to options for dealing with another contaminated P4 lagoon.

The area in Alaska of the other rattle chain lagoon is located South West of Anchorage and The Eagle River within the area known as The Lake and Peninsula Borough, or sometimes appears to be called “The Lake and Peninsula school district.” 

This is a very rural area with very few inhabitants and plenty of Grizzly Adams style critters, with the nearest populated area called Pilot Point.  

Isn’t it a small world! What I am sure about however is that whatever 3 square metre rocky outcrop RATTLE.CHAIN.LAGOON Alaska falls within, it would be a much safer place for man and beast that the white phosphorus CONTAMINATED.SHIT.HOLE  namesake in Oldbury England!

This white phosphorus misadventure involves yet another common theme, foolish youth associated with dangerous chemicals. I suppose some people never grow up and continue to play with them in industry- per Albright and Wilson.  😈

To Scotland then and the 2nd May 1951 Edinburgh Evening News , where a couple of wee Jimmies got more than they bargained for when playing with the Devil’s element.

Fan-dabi-implozi !

Apparently, the two Glaswegian youngsters did not know that Phosphorus has to be stored in water, and again one of them put it in their pocket after nicking some from school. Obviously, his behind or jock parts were badly burned in the incident, which also affected passengers on the tram who tried to douse the flames. No time for trainspotting here then.  😆

So I suppose the moral of the story is, if you are going to put P4 in your pocket, it might help to keep it moist.  😛  😆  😆

I think most people living next to a Control of Substances Hazardous to Health site, such as the Solvay plant in Langley, would like to know what those substances are, but why are Sandwell Council making this information difficult for people to access?

There is a major problem with Sandwell Council’s planning department in the way in which they are working for applicants and NOT for the public.

Many examples have come to light about officers scheming with developers who just happen to be party political donors, and also the scandal of land sales by a councillor on a committee to do so which benefitted his developer son- who also worked in the planning department at SMBC!

I have already given examples of my experiences with them in the form of the CCTV permissions at Rattlechain, and  with the Gower Tip fiasco, and now I have found more evidence of applications which Solvay put in regards Hazardous Substance consents,  (dangerous and flammable chemicals they can store and handle on site), which had reportedly been shelved, yet it now emerges that HS/040 was given consent in 2020.  👿

The history of this application is as follows. I have now also added a page to the list of HSC’s already put in the public domain on this website. THIS INFORMATION IS IMPORTANT FOR ANYONE LIVING IN THE AREA TO KNOW, BUT SANDWELL COUNCIL FOR WHATEVER REASONS KNOWN UNTO ITSELF APPEARS TO WANT TO HIDE IT FROM PUBLIC VIEW. 

I first mentioned this consent application after being contacted by a concerned resident of Langley in August 2018.

You can read about this in THIS POST.

I mentioned here that Sandwell council had deliberately removed all mention of detail of the hazardous substance consents at Trinity Street, as well as giving little information about this latest application. The only opinion I can form from the removal of this key information that was once there is that whoever instructed this or did this is a bent officer or a shill of this company. This is not an oversight, or anything else, it was an intentional and calculated obfuscation of information, and there is no valid reason in the public interest as to why it was done. Obviously, what is in Solvay’s interest is obviously more important to Sandwell Planning. 

I contacted Alison Bishop- yes her again, in the email below dated 27th July 2018. Needless to say, that like all the other attempts to contact this woman, she has to be reminded several times , or does not even have the courtesy to reply at all- as was the case here. I followed this up with the listed case officer Dean Leadon- and got no response either, only to be told at a later date, that he had left the authority. His name is still listed as the case officer on the application on the council website however.

With little time to object, the list of documents suddenly appeared on the council website. Ignore the first two, which I will talk about later. You can see they were uploaded in bulk and the date given is 26th July 2018. This was just one day before I had emailed Bishop.

I objected to this scheme, which can be read in the PDF below.

hs040 objection

After this, I emailed again asking for updates, and received absolutely nothing from the planning department.

I put in two freedom of information requests in early 2019 to The Environment Agency , and to The HSE.

The EA replied claiming that they had had no communication with the council- astounding given that they had been involved with the investigation into the fire and other matters at this site.

The HSE replied that in one document supplied, it could take them up to 26 weeks to respond as the application was being considered by a specialist unit due to the uncertainty of the situation. This consisted of Email dated 17/8/2018 from Sandwell Council to HSE containing revised Application form and Email dated 21st August 2018 to Sandwell Council with HSE attachment  Holding Letter.

I received no further updates from Sandwell council on this matter. The HSE comments have clearly NOT been uploaded to the SMBC website, and so we get the 17 MONTH GAP between talk of pipework, the reworded application, and then it being finally passed under delegated authority nearly a year later on 2nd October 2020.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? AND OH THE IRONY OF LOCKING PEOPLE AWAY IN THEIR HOMES UNDER A “PANDEMIC” WHEN A FAR GREATER CHEMICAL RISK AWAITS ON THEIR DOORSTEP. OPEN THE WINDOWS AS WAS ADVISED BY HEALTH LIARS, AND YOU MIGHT BREATHE SOMETHING IN THAT REALLY DOES DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH FFS! 

There is too much going on out of the public eye between these SMBC planning officers and other agencies and the applicants. They appear to be pissing in the same pot, and it just will not do when it comes to compromising people’s safety and not allowing a chance to question decisions or examine the applications in a fair manner. They are covering up documents out of public view, and this is deliberate.

But it seems that another application was also put in unbeknown to me tabled HS/041 in    June 2021 . This too is a devious application which hides new chemicals being added to the list which were previously not registered as Hazardous substances on the site. I have also looked at the details of this application and the chemicals involved ON THIS PAGE. 

Something very odd appears to occur when planning applications are put in to Oldbury. I think there is a case that Sandwell council should be renamed

“The Spoon Council”. 

In fact, I think that the sculpture below would look just spiffing in Freeth Street, right outside The Oldbury Kremlin.

Well, this one concerns red phosphorus actually.  😛

I have looked at white phosphorus and accidents in schools in this post, when it used to be allowed in school laboratories.

There was another case of misadventure where an idiot school boy got burnt whilst clowning around with some P4 and then tried to sue the school master whom he falsely claimed to be negligent.

This post deals with a very similar incident but involves a Scottish girl, remarkably named “Burns”  😆

The time of year is also bizarre in that it was published on 4th November 1954 in the Edinburgh Evening News. It had taken Ms Burns two years to bring action against the Glaswegian council for injuries claimed to have been sustained in the classroom after a teacher had not given proper instruction of disposing of chemicals, notably red phosphorus and potassium chlorate. 

I will discuss this reaction  further on in this post, but safe to say that anyone who knows anything about chemistry will know that this reaction would cause significant exothermic activity resulting in the fire which burnt her clothes and hospitalised her.

A different story however is given in defence, arguing that this silly miss was in fact well aware of what the reaction would be in pondering “how the school could be blown up”, or words to that effect when adding chemicals into a bag.

The following days paper tells how her case had failed to persuade the court jury into granting her the £1000 damages she was seeking. The jury found that she had not followed the teachers instructions, having “meddled” with the chemical mixture that had burnt her- thus, she was the author of her own Burns.

It is little wonder that she suffered injury from her stupidity.

6P + 5KClO₃  → 3P₂O₅ + 5KCl

The reaction is that of striking a match.

The gritty material on the side of a match-box is coated with red phosphorus. The match-head contains potassium chlorate and some red colouring. When the match-head rubs against the box, friction ignites the mixture of phosphorus and potassium chlorate.

A couple of videos below demonstrate this reaction. Don’t try this at home or in school, yall, or even think of adding cough sweets or sugar in cetain ratios;-) ……

ALBRIGHT AND WILSON’S “ABSOLUTE AND UTTER SCANDAL”

Without doubt things began to unravel for this abysmal employer in the 1990’s along with their ultimate demise. The number of incidents at Trinity Street and elsewhere during this decade made them a public menace and a threat to life in all of the communities which they unfortunately had premises.

But their workers also suffered, and unlike some who appear to have been coercively brainwashed into thinking they were working for a good employer that cared about their health, there were some brave souls who chose to fight and expose their corporate and managerial negligence.

One such example comes from the  Friday 28th May 1993 Sandwell Evening Mail. I have chosen to redact the name of the employee, though if they want to get in touch with this blog, I would be very interested to talk to you, hoping that your silence was not bought. 

The story tells how the chemical process worker at Trinity Street lost a leg and his foot on his other was “mangled” when he got caught in the blades of machinery. The accident had occurred some 11 years previous and the man had returned to work, but he had not received any compensation from Albright and Wilson!

The follow up story from the mail of  29th May 1993 reveals that he had received £258,000. Unfortunately, I would wager that much of this probably never reached him and reached his legal team instead. The judge identifies that the company knew that they were liable, yet had held out paying their worker until this ruling. What an absolute bunch of evil scum they really were. Quakers my arse!

In 1951, Sydney Barratt, then vice chair of AW stated in the history of the company “100 years of phosphorus making”  ;

“When at the close of the second war the company could take stock of themselves and make plans it was decided to embark with energy upon the diversification and increase of their business. It was at this time that decisions were taken which added oil additives, insecticides, and certain organic chemicals to established manufactures, and were the beginning of the silicones project now in hand. The annual turnover of these new ventures already  exceeds that of the Parent Company as it was in 1930. Each of these developments had some connection with previous interests, if only a tenuous one, but each offered the Company entry into new markets.”

Barratt was as disingenuous as he was a Home Guard poser, and I have already written several posts about how the oil additives plant , the part brainchild of fellow war dodger Home guard twat Bill Albright, created the notorious “Oldbury smell”.

This was fine for those making profit, but it blighted the area. Part of the reason for the AW success came as a result of new machinery installed on the back of the war, and no thanks to the Nazi’s themselves- when AW engineer and British intelligence Ministry of Supply part timer Alf Loveless toured the captured factories on behalf of The British Government.

It should also be said that the production of insecticides mentioned here , was also a Nazi invention that AW obviously picked up the baton in wartime “victory”.

For this they have a man called  Gerhard Schrader to thank. Schrader worked for IG Farben, the home of Nazi produced chemical extermination. Anyone associated with such a place is/was evil as far as I am concerned. Whereas those in power face the consequences of show trials after the war, the perversity of the so called “allies” offered people like this fucking scum a job for life. Officially, it is claimed that he declined, but I wonder? The damage of his “work” was already enough. He should have been gassed with his own accidental invention. 

“During World War II, under the Nazi regime, teams led by Schrader discovered two more organophosphate nerve agents, and a fourth after the war:

• Tabun (1936)
• Sarin (1938)
• Soman (1944)
• Cyclosarin (1949)”

We therefore have this man to thank for chemical warfare under the guise of “insecticides”, and the continued demise and poisoning of the environment in the name of agriculture and farming. Thank him also for insidious cancer causing substances that large corporations claim falsely does not cause such illness and the way in which they buy political support and crooked civil service confederacy in policy making.

Organophosphates destroy life, they offer no legitimate use and they kill life by blocking the enzyme acetylcholinesterase which is produced to break down the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine and disrupt the proper functioning of the nerve cells. Hence, these insecticides are called acetylcholinesterase inhibitors.

One of his discoveries was the first contact insecticide “Bladen” of which the main ingredient for killing insects was Hexaethyl tetraphosphate, (HETP). Also along the same lines was Tetraethyl pyrophosphate, (TEPP). Both are highly toxic to animals as well as insects. 

So it should come as little surprise that Schrader’s legend cover story of wanting to “feed the world” and instead creating substances which could destroy it for the Nazis would be used by such capitalistic scum as Albright and Wilson and their fake Quakerism.

The adverts below were taken from 1949, and directly show how by this time, they were employing people to recreate the Nazi discovery for commercial gain.

19th February 1949 Illustrated London News

Phosphate insecticides like the ones mentioned would make AW a great deal of money by using their commercial stocks of phosphorus oxychloride and phosphorus pentoxide- both used as methods for making the chemical. It should come as no surprise that Schrader and others were interrogated about their work with TEPP and other such substances by British intelligence, to which I have very little doubt the likes of AW scientists would have been involved in advising upon.

This company profited from war and it profited from the Nazi science – but stick a “made in Oldbury ” sticker on it, and pretend it’s a British thing.- that’s the toxicity of companies like Albright and Wilson. 

19 February 1949  The Sphere

what lies out there……?

It seems the berks in the Home Guard were not the only fools to dispose of P4 WMD, but whereas land was their preferred method, the regulars were at it using watery graves.

A great piece from Chemistry World raises the issue of former white phosphorus weapons that have been ludicrously dumped at sea finding their way back to land and the issues this causes when beachcombers may pick up fragments of still dangerous armaments.

It states

“In 1995 more than 4500 incendiary bombs – made of phosphorus, benzene and cellulose – washed up on beaches around Scotland’s west coast. They were part of an estimated million tons of munitions dumped between 1945 and 1976 by the Ministry of Defence in Beaufort’s Dyke, an underwater trench between Northern Ireland and Scotland. It was speculated that the munitions were disturbed by work on an undersea gas link between the two countries.”

I have found a few more incidents similar to this which reveal the British Government’s insane legacy of post war fly-tipping.

The 30th August 1968 Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald reported how a young boy had been digging near to a caravan site in Swalecliffe when the mud started to smoke.

One may speculate if the “enemy” had dropped a bomb in the area, or if this was another Gov dumping event gone wrong.

It appears that there was not much of a plan, other than to rake the area and let it burn out.

Just a couple of years later, the Herne Bay Press of 24th July 1970 revealed that more p4 had washed ashore “probably from a submerged wreck in The Thames Estuary”. I have no doubt that this was from the notorious SS Richard Montgomery, which the UK Government have been shitting themselves for years as to what to do with it, but I don’t think that these off floaters from the wreck , or the potential for such events have been publicised in recent times. So they continue to leave it where it lies.

“experts from Portsmouth were called in”

Two Liverpool Echo reports perhaps show the waste of taxpayers money spent on supposedly training soldiers who appear to be thicker than dogshit for blowing up bombs on the beaches. This hazard was created by them and their utter incompetence which meant that fragments of the solid had scattered over a wider area putting the public at more risk than the actual bomb itself.

The first of 5th August 1969 concerns how the morons blew up a rocket on a Dorset beach , which would require 5 tonnes of contaminated sand to be removed. How is it possible that these “experts” were not able to identify that the device contained p4?

  On 6th June 1972 , we appear to get a repeat exercise taking place.

A couple of more recent incidents in the UK can be found in internet searches.

This article from 2015 shows just how dangerous white phosphorus is when it comes into contact with flesh. “Not a chemical weapon”- my fat hairy arse!

Newcastle man found ‘Orange stone’ on beach and it set his leg on fire | Daily Mail Online

Just last year the Navy EOD destroyed a phosphorus flare

Navy bomb squad blows up phosphorus flare found on Cornish beach – Plymouth Live (plymouthherald.co.uk)

And it isn’t just in the UK that Britain’s wartime legacy rears its ugly head. The Beaufort’s Dyke graveyard continues to drift unwanted munitions debris towards Irish beaches as the Hartland Evening News of 5th June 1998 showed. 

And in Germany, the legacy of the RAF firestorm still persists in tiny pockets of “amber” like rocks burning civilians.

Two Women Injured After Touching WWII Phosphorus on German Beach – DER SPIEGEL

Woman mistakes WWII white phosphorous for an amber stone | Daily Mail Online

I suppose it goes to show that “war criminals” are only those who lose wars I suppose.  😥

A warning from an Israeli case also shows the dangers of taking such artefacts home and discusses the medical implications of treating injuries.

The burning issue of white phosphorus: a case report and review of the literature – PMC (nih.gov)

So the next time you head for the coast and pick up something orange and unusual on the beach, forget Jurassic park , just don’t put it in your pocket, or you might find your behind getting very warm, and that will just be the least of your worries…..

amber stone

An empty grenade crate where 24 AW bombs would have been stored.

I have compiled several recorded incidents of AW bomb discoveries previously, but here are a few more I have found recently which shows just what a pain they really were/still are.

The first from The Spalding Guardian of 17th August 1962 is a typical example of back garden digging going wrong. The 48 grenades that would have been in the two boxes like the one pictured above were found in what used to be a Home Guard Headquarters.

It is clear that these fucking idiots did not even bother to bury them more than a foot deep, and is another example of why this organisation was not fit for purpose.

We all know what that plate said!

Copyright I Carroll

Of course, the bombs never worked at all, they were useless.

Another demonstration of the incompetent Home Guard was shown in the Daily Mirror of 7th February 1966, and this time they upset the local vicar.  😛

Another cache of bombs had been buried by the uniformed clowns at their old HQ in the rectory stables. The finding is another example of new development finding the buried items. What is most interesting is the quote from one of those who buried them.

“When the war ended, we were given orders from the top to bury the bombs”. 

Oh yeah, please name names so they could get the blame , yer daft Dick. Why anyone would have thought this would be a good idea and just “followed orders” is pretty lame to say the least. I very much doubt the story.

The Sunday Mirror of 18th January 1970 uncovers another find in the woods, by another recurring theme in that children had found the devices whilst at play. It is not clear if they were still in a box or just loose at surface level, but it is obvious that they were also just dumped by The Home Guard of that area.

A further 9 AW bombs were found in another garden in Tunbridge Wells- yes even the posh areas saw them buried too. The Kent and Sussex Courier of 19th March 1971 tells how more garden digging  found them. I’m not sure that the local plod would have appreciated them being taken into the station.

The final article from the Dundee Courier of 30th April 1987 occurs around 45 years after the Albright and Wilson milkers were written off.

This tie a bakers dozen were found by more workmen, one of whose boots started to smoke. I’m not sure that the RAOC idea of blowing them up on the beach, and then telling the public to stay away from the area where the bottles were found makes any sense at all. I would have advised people to stay away from the beach where the army blew them up, as this is not the correct way to deal with such devices at all, given that all those years ago, white phosphorus AW bombs that had been disposed of similarly gave off remnants that poisoned wild animals.

You can probably see why they wanted to dump them into some type of pit, where the public would be discouraged from going, and that too had a beach area.

It’s just a question of how many of them went into a clay pit in Tividale after the war under the cover of “a waste disposal site”. 

I have looked extensively at the production, use and ultimate abandonment of these useless but highly dangerous white phosphorus filled half pint milk bottles, manufactured by Albright and Wilson on behalf of The British Government during The Second World War for an anti-tank guerrilla warfare campaign that never transpired. Over seven million of them were produced between 1940-42 at Oldbury and satellite factories , and then dispatched to Home Guard units around the country in wooden boxes of 24.

All came with clear instructions for use, and some later designs were made to be fired from a gun known as the Northover projector. Many were used for demonstrations and training, but by 1943 it was clear that they were useless for anything but gathering dust.

Many had been buried under water or in back gardens, and then as time passed by, so people forgot like absent minded squirrels as to where they had buried them.

It is widely believed that many ended up destroyed at Rattlechain lagoon before AW became a private limited company, conveniently operating the site as a Government contractor for the ministry of supply before their own waste stream went into the drink.

I have found more evidence of the problems that these dangerous and useless artefacts caused the authorities from newspaper archives, when it had obviously become clear by 1942 when their manufacture ceased that there was no use for them. The issues appear to be twofold.

1. There was no real plan as to how to destroy them and they had been stashed away, often found by children.
2. Even bigger “kids” used them in “demonstrations” for fire guard training.

The 4th November Blyth News from 1943 tells how some schoolboys had half-inched the half pint bottles from the Home Guard stores and were before the beak for doing so. It wasn’t quickly apparent that they had even been stolen, but it appears they had been dumped into the environment before they were missing. This method of secreting them under water would become a common theme in later years 😥

A year later from the 5th August Crew Chronicle, we see how these devices were now not being used for anything other than starting fires, rather than destroying tanks, and were becoming the play thing of the Home Guard rivals, The Fire Guard. They were aware of the properties of phosphorus and how to fight such fires, but I don’t think that AW or those who toiled on their dangerous manufacture would have believed that they would have been used in such a blasé way.

Post war, as we know, AW bombs gave the authorities considerable headaches when it was seen repeatedly that the Home Guard had abandoned their weapons before stand down. The  27 May 1950 Gloucester Citizen reported how two soldiers from The Royal Army Ordnance Corps carried AW bombs that had caught fire at an ammunition dump that appears to have been in the process of decommissioning in the Midlands area. 100 boxes of AW bombs would be 240 phosphorus filled grenades, and so there is no doubt that these “unserviceable ammunition” could have caused a serious loss of life if coming into contact with other explosive devices. It isn’t clear if they had been disturbed and the bottles broken, or if they had just corroded and auto ignited on contact with air. Either way, it is clear that storing large numbers of bombs together was a very dangerous practice in confined internal conditions. 

Though these weapons may have been haphazardly processed, it was obvious 11 years after the war had ended that AW bombs amongst other things were now a serious risk to the public The Stamford Mercury of   20th July 1956 published a letter from a Chief Constable. He was concerned as to how these “extremely dangerous” contraband weapons could fall into the hands of criminals and children. He was offering an amnesty as to their surrender , but I wonder how many of the absent minded Home Guard could even remember where they had dumped them after this time?

It was pretty clear that discussions must have taken place with the manufacturer of these weapons in dealing with such incidents at a centrally located dump not far from the factory where they had been made.