Lieutenant
Commander A. C. Brinsmead
We have some brief information
on Mr. A.C. Brinsmead, set out below. There is additional biographical
information at the page about his parents. We would be interested in hearing from
anyone who can add any further information.
During World War II, A.C. Brinsmead apparently served with the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Developments (DMWD). This group of experimenters were nicknamed "The Wheezers and Dodgers". He became a Lieutenant-Commander.
A reference to Lt-Cmdr A.C. Brinsmead in the book "The Secret War 1939-45" by Gerald Pawle, with a foreword by Nevil Shute (Norway) who worked on many projects with them, read:
"Brinsmead, in peace time was a furniture manufacturer and owned a 40-foot motor cruiser. During one of the Department's many "crazy" experiments with rocket devices Brinsmead was "scorched brown from head to foot".
A longer extract reads:
COUNTERBLAST! THE ROCKET WAR
A section taken from Gerald Pawle's book "The Secret War 1939-1945"
………………(Nevil Shute) Norway's next venture was a shore-based rocket projector called the "Radiator." Although, now that winter had set in, there was no likelihood of a major invasion attempt, it was thought that the enemy might well try again in the spring, and the Admiralty called for a weapon which could be mounted at the mouths of rivers, to fire on approaching landing-craft. Once again speed was the essence of the problem; Norway had to find a simple contrivance which could be easily mass-produced at a time when the country was desperately short of steel. The Radiator was simple enough; it fired salvos of ten 2-inch rockets horizontally, and it did not have to be elevated or trained. Again, the inaccuracy of the rocket was useful.
For its trials a secluded stretch of water west of Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, was chosen, and Tolman, who by then had finished his abstruse gunnery calculations in the office in Archway Block North, went down to Suffolk with Brinsmead, another new recruit to the department. When they arrived and unpacked their gear they found they had not brought a firing switch with them, so an ordinary cheap tumbler switch was bought at a shop in the nearest village. Rocket weapons have one particularly unpleasant trait; at the moment of firing a searing tongue of flame belches from the rear of the mounting.
Mindful of this, Tolman and Brinsmead followed a set safety routine, and two switches - a safety switch and a firing switch - had to be brought into operation before each salvo was loosed off across the marshes.
When the Radiator was wired up they fired several rounds successfully, and they were both standing behind the rocket gun, when Brinsmead said, "Let's try one more salvo, and then pack up." He flicked over the safety switch, and Tolman had just started to walk across to operate the firing switch when there was a tremendous explosion. The tumbler switch had short-circuited, everything was enveloped in flame, and Brinsmead, standing right in the path of the blast, was instantly scorched brown from head to foot. Several discs of thick millboard from the base of the rockets struck Tolman, hurling him flat on his face, but he got off lightly, his only substantial wound being caused by a most unlikely projectile -a spirit level, which the blast had swept from a bench at the rear of the mounting. The arrival back at the Admiralty of the Radiator trial team caused quite a stir, for the unfortunate Brinsmead had lost his eyebrows, his eyelashes, and most of his hair - and he was deaf for several weeks afterwards. It was a salutary lesson in safety pre-cautions !
Radiator passed its trials with no other mishaps, and many of these anti-invasion rocket guns were installed on the East Coast. By this time Goodeve's team had learnt a good deal about rockets and their possibilities.
A web site about Nevil Shute give a little more information on the operations of the Wheezers and Dodgers:
After the War, Lieutenant-Commander Brinsmead applied for compensation for one of his inventions, the account of which was published in the Times of London.
The Times of London - March 20th, 1952 - Page 2, col. e.