Sidney Alford

Sidney Christopher Alford OBE (11 January 1935 – 27 January 2021 ) was an inventor, explosives engineer and a doctor of chemistry.

Returning to Ilford (1942, aged 7) he experienced more aircraft bombs, usually dropped under cover of night, and he started a collection of fragments of bombs and of anti-aircraft shells.

His searches rewarded him with the occasional magnalium incendiary bomb of which the bodies later provided a welcome source of metal for his earliest fireworks.

Alford's interest in explosives and pyrotechnics was born.

On one occasion Alford found a complete flying bomb engine in Epping Forest.

He had the opportunity to hear and observe the V-1 flying bomb ("Doodlebugs") and V2 rockets and was able to compare and contrast their effects.

Fascination with the technology of warfare, its causes and its effects upon the cultures of the people involved, has remained with him.

His professional life began as a chemist and, in 1966, he was awarded a doctorate of the University of Paris (mention très honorable) for research on the chemistry of plant products carried out at one of Europe's oldest organic chemistry laboratories in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle under Professor Charles Mentzer.

The following two years at Tokyo and Waseda Universities gave him some understanding of research in Japan and the language respectively.

Returning to England in 1969, he joined a tiny company in Piccadilly organising clinical trials of a diet developed for NASA for astronauts.

This work brought him into contact with some prominent physicians, pathologists, surgeons and biochemists and one of the latter, Dr (now Professor) Michael Crawford of the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine, offered him a bench in his department which specialised in the study of the chemistry and nutritional implications of fatty acids in the diet.

Unable to raise funds sufficient to enable him to continue his research, Alford moved from central London to Ham in its western suburbs.

The "Troubles" in Northern Ireland awoke Alford's interest in explosives and he began to consider more effective means of defeating improvised explosive devices (IEDs) than such devices as rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) with cement-filled warheads.

He experimented with the use of elongated gas cylinders, filled with liquid carbon dioxide and provided with an axial tube containing a small explosive charge, as a penetrative disruptor of potentially buried packages.

The use of letter bombs by the Black September Organization (BSO), one of which had killed a diplomat in the Israeli embassy in September 1972, led him to develop blast absorbing vermiculite-based containers for small suspect devices which enabled them to be transported in relative safety.

These were purported to be the first blast containers of their kind.

In 1974 a visit by the Security Service resulted in Alford being offered a job as a part-time conference interpreter by the MoD using his knowledge of both languages and explosives.

This helped sustain him and his young family while he studied for an MSc in Environmental Pollution Science at Brunel University.

In 1976 the Royal Armaments Research & Development Establishment (RARDE) at Fort Halstead (later to become DSTL) arranged for Wallop Industries (now Wallop Defence Systems) to provide facilities for him to develop one of his inventions, the water lined and water-filled shaped charge, initially made in his house and tested in his garden, in more orthodox surroundings.

Alford's findings were ground-breaking at the time, and were some of the first demonstrations of using water-tamped charges for countering the emerging threat from IEDs.

Other inventions were made in the course of this research but eventually Alford received a letter, which he kept with pride, effectively ordering him to stop having any more new ideas since he did not work for Fort Halstead.

Undeterred, Alford moved to Wiltshire in the south west of England and joined Leafield Engineering where he continued to develop novel explosive charges but realised that his future did not lie therein when he was told by the head of sales that his devices worked well enough but some of them, because of their novelty, did not look as if they would work.

During this time – in June 1978 – Alford was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Explosives Engineers (IExpE).

He accepted an invitation to join Hotforge, a small company which provided explosives services to the petroleum industry, and was offered a directorship.

He was thus able to devote himself to the development of explosive cutting charges.

Alford designed underwater steel-cutting charges which he used for chain cutting, plate perforating (using his new trepanning charges) and well-head severing operations in the North Sea for the petroleum industry.

His first experiments using flexible linear fracturing charges which depended upon the collision of shock waves were demonstrated and patented.

He carried out many explosive demolition operations on such steel and concrete structures as bridges, industrial buildings and, very sadly from a historical point of view, the blast furnaces at the Consett Iron Company which closed in 1980.

In mid-1981 he was approached by a retired army officer and his colleague and they formed a new company, Alflex, whose first operation was participation in the record breaking expedition to the Barents Sea which recovered 93 per cent of the approximately five tonnes of gold ingots from the wreck of HMS Edinburgh.

During the next three years he acquired a great deal of experience in demolition, felling numerous brick, concrete and steel chimneys.

Dr Alford was the Chairman of Alford Technologies Limited, a world-leading provider of explosive engineering and explosive charge technology, that he founded in 1985.

In 1985, Alford started his own company, Sidney Alford Ltd with his wife, Itsuko as co-director.

In 2015 he was awarded the OBE in Her Majesty the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to explosive ordnance disposal.

Alford is considered the pioneer in water projecting disruptors driven by high explosive.

These are used in bomb disposal.

He also developed the renowned Dioplex linear cutting charge, and Vulcan shaped charge.

Alford's explosive charges are some of the most highly regarded in the industry and are said to have saved many lives.

Alford's equipment was used to support operations in Afghanistan in countering the threat from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

Alford was born in Ilford, a suburb of London, and was one of two children.

During the early stages of the Second World War he moved with his family to Bournemouth on the south coast where "tip and run" German aircraft raids introduced him to machine gun fire and air-dropped bombs.