He reminds me of Eggsy from the Kingsman series. What a legend.

Tackling unexploded bombs seems risky.

Nukes or regular bombs? But I guess both are equally deadly from one foot away.

The detachment was formed by 3 people: him, his secretary, and his chauffeur :-)

There were only two nukes during WW2. Unexploded bombs during the Nazi bombing of London.

There was a great British TV series about forty years back called Danger UXB ("UXB" was the abbreviation for "unexploded bomb") about the guys who defused bombs in London during The Blitz. Worth seeking out

I find it odd that they knew the importance of heavy water at the time.

... and unsuccessfully tackling one.

It was so well written and acted, but massively understated the danger that these men faced on a weekly - even daily - basis

The 35th one definitely was.

If you want an absolutely fascinating podcast, check out the Fighting Through Podcast, episode 13, it is an episode dedicated to some Blitz bomb disposal memoirs.

“Imagine the shock when your pick clangs against steel. You wonder if you have started the clock ticking. On your knees, you use a trowel to carefully uncover the bomb." - Brian Moss, Platoon Sergeant in 233 Field Company, Royal Engineers.

3 nukes

Trinity's Gadget, Little Boy and Fat Man.

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I thought it was later in his career.

Nuclear research had been going on for decades by then, weapons research not as long(the idea of a neutron chain reaction was only about 10 years old) but preliminary R&D into nuclear weapons was taking place in several nations by 1940.

iirc there was a British commando raid to destroy a heavy water production facility in Norway in '41.

Read the Bastard Brigade. Great book about the allied race to beat the Nazis to the bomb. Very entertaining.

Decades would be an overstatement, nuclear fission was discovered in 1938. Heavy water was only relevant then to slow neutrons. When it first started being produced was 1932. 1934 was the first working reactor. 1939 had the first official document for atomic weapons. Put your decades in a sack.

Wasn't what I meant. Didn't mean weapons research. Just the concepts of research into the atomic nucleus, first modernish theories of the nucleus etc.