Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk

As Liaison Officer for the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research during the Second World War, the Earl of Suffolk and his colleague Major A. V. Golding (1902–1992 ) were posted to Paris.

Charles Henry George Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk, 13th Earl of Berkshire, (2 March 1906 – 12 May 1941) was an English bomb disposal expert who was also an earl in the Peerage of England, belonging to the ancient Howard family.

He was styled Viscount Andover until 1917.

After leaving the Royal Naval College, Osborne, at 15, he attended Radley College, but quit in 1923 to join merchant naval service on the windjammer Mount Stewart as an apprentice officer.

After his return from a round-the-world voyage, he was commissioned in the Scots Guards but was later asked to resign from his post by his superiors because of his "wild ways".

In 1926, he returned to Australia; where he first worked as a jackaroo and later owned a large farm jointly with Captain McColm, who had been Master of the Mount Stewart.

He enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, graduating three years later with a first-class honours degree in chemistry and pharmacology.

In his early twenties, he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The Nuffield Institute of Medical Research at Oxford University offered him a research post in the area of "explosives and poisons".

From there they made their way to Bordeaux, where British Embassy representatives introduced them to the master of the British tramp ship SS Broompark (1939), which was one of many standing by to carry refugees to safety.

They embarked 33 eminent scientists, with their families.

Two more scientists, Lew Kowarski and Hans Halban, arrived with the heavy water.

Then the managing director of the Antwerp Diamond Bank, Paul Timbal, joined, with $10 million worth of gem diamonds.

They discovered 600 tons of machine tools in wagons on the quay, which were also loaded.

The Broompark carried them safely to Falmouth, from where a special train took her passengers and cargo to London.

The diamonds were placed in the vaults of the Diamond Corporation and most of the heavy water was sent to Windsor Castle, where it was stored alongside the Crown Jewels, until needed.

Howard's approach to his missions earned him the nickname "Mad Jack" or "Wild Jack".

Herbert Morrison, Minister of Supply, later described him as "one of the most remarkable young men employed by the Government on dangerous missions.": Morrison told the House of Commons, when in Secret Session, that "A considerable service has been rendered to the Allied cause by the safe arrival of this shipload."

Following his return from France, the Earl worked for the Ministry of Supply as a Research Officer learning how to defuse bombs of new and unknown types.

The Earl served as part of an unexploded bomb detachment in London during the Blitz.

The detachment consisted of himself, his secretary Morden, and his chauffeur, Fred Hards.

They called themselves "the Holy Trinity" and they became famed for their prowess in detecting and successfully tackling 34 unexploded bombs with "urbane and smiling efficiency."

Morden stood by his side taking notes, as the Earl worked at defusing the bombs.

He looked on each bomb as a new challenge – examining it from all angles, listening to it, his fingers exploring the metal shell and dictating his conclusions to Eileen Morden and the method he proposed to use in disarming the bomb when the time came for her to take shelter.

If anything went wrong, then at least others would not make the same mistake.

An official report underlined the strain of his work: "On many occasions Lord Suffolk cleared everyone away from the danger area and proceeded to operate alone. Deliberately he exposed himself daily to danger."

Jack was a fatalist saying that "If my name is on a bomb, that's it."

He is most famous for being responsible for rescuing a team of French nuclear scientists and transporting the entire world stockpile of heavy water from France to Britain in the face of the imminent French defeat in 1940.

He was known by the nicknames Mad Jack, Wild Jack or Just Jack and although he was generally referred to in aristocratic circles as Suffolk, he was better known in the workaday world as Jack Howard (more officially Charles Howard).

They, and their private secretaries, Eileen Beryl Morden (Suffolk) and Marguerite Nicolle (Golding), left Paris on 10 June 1940 due to the impending Fall of France.

The 35th blew up on Erith Marshes in Kent on 12 May 1941, killing all three.

The bomb, a 250 kg weapon, was at one of the so-called 'bomb cemeteries', on open ground on the marshes.

Bombs were transferred here after being temporarily made safe for transport and then destroyed using controlled explosions.

The bomb had been dropped some six months earlier, the previous autumn and after removal and transfer to the marshes had been at Erith for so long it had been known to the Sappers as 'Old Faithful'.

It contained two fuzes, a Type (17) and a Type (50); these two types were in short supply to the Bomb Disposal Sections, intact fuzes being required for instructional purposes and it was to recover the fuzes that the Earl was dealing with the bomb.

The Type (17) was a delayed-action fuze containing a clockwork mechanism, while the Type (50) was an anti-handling device containing a motion sensor.

Both fuzes had been temporarily made safe so that the bomb could be transferred from the impact site to an open area; the fuzes remained inside the bomb.

The Germans had added a Zus 40 booby trap to some bombs, that detonated when the Type (17) was withdrawn.

He was the son of Henry Howard, 19th Earl of Suffolk, and his American wife, the former Margaret Hyde Leiter (aka "Daisy"), sister of Lady Curzon and daughter of the American businessman Levi Leiter.

The 19th Earl was killed in the First World War at the Battle of Istabulat, Iraq.