Edward Terrell: Barrister, Liberal Candidate and Admiralty Inventor

Edward Terrell (1902–1979) was an English barrister who twice stood for Parliament as a Liberal, held a handful of patents for household gadgets, and then, during the Second World War, became one of the more unlikely weapons innovators in the Royal Navy. A lawyer with no formal engineering training, he devised "plastic armour," a cheap road-surfacing mixture that protected thousands of merchant ships from machine-gun fire. He went on to work on anti-submarine tactics and weapons, and on the "Disney" rocket-assisted bomb, before returning to the law, taking silk and sitting as a judge. He told much of the story himself in a 1958 book, Admiralty Brief.

Terrell's career is thinly documented compared with those of the scientists and admirals he worked alongside. The best sources are the Wikipedia article on him (which draws on his Times obituary, his own memoir, National Archives files and patent records), the Wikipedia articles on the inventions and organisations he was involved with, and the parliamentary records of the elections he contested. This article sets out what those sources establish about his life and places it in the context that makes it interesting: the interwar decline of the Liberal Party, the desperate improvisation of Britain's war at sea in 1940 and 1941, and the peculiar Admiralty department nicknamed the "Wheezers and Dodgers."

At a glance

Family and early life

Terrell was the son of Thomas Terrell KC, a Liberal Member of Parliament. "KC" stands for King's Counsel, the senior rank of barrister appointed by the Crown. His father practised patent law, a field that sits at the intersection of law and engineering, since patent barristers must understand the inventions they argue about well enough to explain them to a court. The Wikipedia article suggests that this background, together with Edward's own interest in science, later helped him get his wartime posting.

Edward Terrell graduated from the University of London and was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1924. Gray's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London, the professional societies to which every barrister in England and Wales must belong. Being "called" means being formally admitted as a barrister.

A lawyer with patents

Terrell was an inventor long before the war. By 1940, according to the Wikipedia article, he had registered a number of patents relating to pens, ink bottles and peeling knives. His United States patents, listed by number in the article's references, were:

These are modest domestic inventions, but they show a habit of mind that became important later: a willingness to look at an everyday object and ask how it could be done better.

Recorder of Newbury

In 1935 Terrell became Recorder of Newbury. A recorder in that period was a barrister appointed to sit as a part-time judge of the borough's quarter sessions court, which heard more serious criminal cases than magistrates could. It was a sign of standing in the profession for a barrister then in his early thirties.

Liberal politics between the wars

Terrell stood for Parliament twice, both times as a Liberal, both times unsuccessfully. To understand those campaigns, it helps to know what was happening to his party.

The Liberal Party in decline

The Liberals had been one of the two great parties of British politics before the First World War. By the late 1920s they had been overtaken by Labour and were fighting for survival as a third force. Under David Lloyd George, they went into the 1929 general election with an ambitious programme of public works, set out under the title We Can Conquer Unemployment.

The 1929 election, held on 30 May, was the first in which women aged 21 to 29 could vote, which earned it the nickname the "flapper election." It produced a hung parliament. Labour won 287 seats, short of the 308 needed for a majority, and Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority government. Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives won the most votes (38.1 percent) but lost 152 seats, finishing with 260. The Liberals won 59 seats with 23.5 percent of the vote, a partial recovery that left them holding the balance of power.

By 1935 the picture was bleaker. In the general election of 14 November 1935, the Liberals won only 21 seats with 6.7 percent of the vote, and their leader, Herbert Samuel, lost his own seat at Darwen. The National Government, dominated by the Conservatives, won 429 of 615 seats, and Labour under Clement Attlee recovered to 154.

Watford, 1929

Terrell's first contest was at Watford in Hertfordshire in 1929. The seat was held by the Unionist (Conservative) Dennis Herbert. The result was:

Herbert's majority was 6,295 on a turnout of 40,536 (72.4 percent).

Terrell did not win, but the result was respectable for a Liberal in 1929. At the previous election in 1924, the Liberal candidate at Watford, Margery Corbett Ashby, had finished third with 5,205 votes (18.7 percent). Terrell lifted the Liberal share by 11.6 percentage points and pushed Labour into third place.

1931: standing aside

Terrell did not stand at the 1931 general election. That election, fought in the middle of a financial crisis, saw the formation of a National Government, and at Watford Herbert faced only a Labour opponent, winning 34,076 votes (78.34 percent) to Frank Jacques's 9,423.

Lambeth North, 1935

Terrell's second contest was at Lambeth North in south London in 1935. This was a seat with Liberal history. In 1931 the Liberal Frank Briant had won it with 16,368 votes to Labour's 8,766. But at a by-election in 1934, Labour's George Strauss took it with 57.9 percent, the Liberal candidate falling to 25.5 percent.

At the 1935 general election Terrell, as the Liberal candidate, tried to win it back:

Strauss's majority was 2,056 on a turnout of 19,098 (54.2 percent). Strauss went on to hold the seat until its abolition in 1950.

In a year when the Liberal Party was reduced to 21 seats nationally, 44.6 percent in a straight fight with Labour was a creditable showing. But it was Terrell's last parliamentary contest. Within five years, his energies were directed elsewhere.

The war at sea in 1940

Terrell's wartime work only makes sense against the background of the crisis Britain faced at sea.

The Battle of the Atlantic

Britain depended on imports carried by merchant ships for food, fuel and raw materials. The Battle of the Atlantic, the long struggle to keep those shipping routes open, lasted from 3 September 1939 to 8 May 1945. According to the Wikipedia article on the battle, about 3,500 Allied merchant ships were lost and about 36,000 merchant seamen killed, while Germany lost 783 U-boats. Winston Churchill later wrote that "the only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril."

Attack from the air

U-boats were not the only threat. In 1940 and 1941, merchant ships near the British coast were also attacked from the air by bombers and by aircraft strafing their decks and bridges with machine guns. Long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft based at Bordeaux and Stavanger also attacked shipping further out; the Wikipedia article on the Battle of the Atlantic records that they reportedly claimed about 365,000 tons of shipping in early 1941, though they were few in number and their pilots had little anti-shipping training.

For the crew on a merchant ship's bridge, the most immediate danger from a strafing aircraft was the bullets themselves. Merchant ships were not warships and had no armour. Proper steel armour plate was expensive and in short supply. The Wikipedia article on plastic armour records that in August 1939 the Admiralty had recommended concrete slabs up to 6 inches (150 mm) thick as protection, and that these proved nearly useless against machine-gun fire.

Into the Navy

When war came, Terrell volunteered for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), the reserve through which civilians were commissioned into the wartime Navy. He was commissioned as a lieutenant to run an information section. The Wikipedia article attributes the appointment to his scientific background and his father's patent-law practice.

Goodeve's "private army"

Terrell became part of a small group led by Charles Goodeve that developed naval weapons. Goodeve (1904–1980) was a Canadian chemist, born in Neepawa, Manitoba, who had joined the RNVR and from 1939 worked at HMS Vernon on countermeasures to German magnetic mines, developing degaussing (a word he coined) and the "Double L" sweep. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1940.

Terrell called the group a "private army." It was nominally attached to the office of the Inspector of Anti-Aircraft Weapons and Devices, set up in 1940 under Admiral James Somerville, a title that Navy wits corrupted into the "Instigator of Anti-Aircraft Wheezes and Dodges." When Somerville moved to the Mediterranean, the group was due to be disbanded. According to the Wikipedia article on Terrell, Goodeve and a colleague named Millar arranged instead for it to work with the Admiralty's Trade Division, which was responsible for protecting merchant shipping.

The group grew into the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD), which existed from 1941 to 1945 and was nicknamed the "Wheezers and Dodgers." Its directors were Captain G. O. C. "Jock" Davies (1941–1943) and Captain F. W. H. Jeans (1943–1945). Its staff over the war included the novelist Nevil Shute (under his real name, Nevil Shute Norway), the engineer Barnes Wallis and the motor-racing photographer Louis Klemantaski, as well as Terrell. The Wikipedia article on Terrell names F. D. Richardson among his collaborators as well.

Gathering intelligence

Terrell's first task was information. He collected intelligence on the methods German forces were using to attack merchant ships. That was a natural job for a barrister: sifting reports, interviewing witnesses, and building a picture from evidence of uneven quality.

Plastic armour

Terrell's best-known contribution grew directly out of that intelligence work.

The clue from Dunkirk

The Wikipedia article on plastic armour records that in August 1940 a shipwright's report from the Dunkirk evacuation noted something odd: machine-gun bullets striking a deck covered with cork-filled mastic did not ricochet. Mastic is a thick, tar-like compound. Terrell wondered whether a similar material could be made to stop bullets rather than merely absorb them.

Ten days from idea to recipe

Development was fast. Samples were ready by 17 August 1940. Initial tests at the Road Research Station at Harmondsworth failed, and Terrell proposed replacing the cork with rock. New targets were delivered on 20 August, and the report recording the successful recipe was drafted on 27 August. The whole development took about ten days.

What it was made of

Plastic armour was small, evenly sized stone aggregate in a bitumen matrix, a material much like the asphalt used for road surfaces. The 27 August 1940 recipe was:

Later, cheaper pitch replaced bitumen, and flint gravel replaced the Penlee granite originally used.

The principle was that the hard stone chips broke up and deflected incoming bullets, while the bitumen held everything together and absorbed the shock. The material was not "plastic" in the modern sense of a polymer. The word referred to its ability to be moulded when hot. Terrell chose the name "plastic armour" partly, the Wikipedia article says, because he thought it might mislead German intelligence.

How it was applied

Plastic armour was usually cast in place about 2 inches (51 mm) thick on a backing of 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) mild steel, or on 1/2 inch (13 mm) steel plate for prefabricated sections. Where it was poured between existing plates and wooden shuttering, it was usually 4 inches (100 mm) thick. Near a ship's magnetic compass, where steel would cause errors, it was laid on wooden backing.

Bureaucratic resistance

The invention met resistance inside the Admiralty. The Trade Division, responsible for merchant shipping, strongly supported it. The Department of Naval Construction, responsible for warship design, rejected it, objected to the use of the word "armour," and was eventually bypassed. A DMWD test report at HMS Excellent, the Navy's gunnery school, recommended plastic armour over concrete, but the Department of Naval Construction rejected it again. In Royal Navy fighting ships, that department insisted on the term "plastic protection."

Cheap, fast and widespread

Production began in October 1940 at ports around the country, using major road-building contractors, who already had the equipment and skills to mix and lay hot asphalt. The cost was about £12 10s per ton, compared with about £150 per ton for heat-treated armour plate, which was scarce in any case. By the end of the war, about 10,000 ships had been fitted.

Worked comparison. At those prices, a ton of armour plate cost about twelve times as much as a ton of plastic armour (£150 ÷ £12.5 = 12). The two materials are not equivalent ton for ton, since plastic armour needed more thickness for the same protection, but the comparison shows why the cheaper material could be applied on a scale that steel never could.

Patents and the Royal Commission

The process was patented secretly, with the Crown granted full use of the invention. Terrell and William Glanville later received British Patent 578,951 after a dispute with the manufacturers of a competing product, Insulphate.

After the war, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors considered Terrell's claim. This body is an occasional Royal Commission that hears claims from inventors whose work has been used by the government. It was first convened on 6 October 1919 to hear claims to the invention of the tank, and it was reconvened in 1946 to hear claims from inventors who "allege that their inventions, drawings or processes have been used by Government Departments and Allied Governments during the War."

The Commission found for Terrell as sole inventor and in 1946 awarded him £9,500, which the Wikipedia article on plastic armour puts at about £459,000 in 2024 money. Although the Commission had named him sole inventor, Terrell passed part of the award to Dr Glanville, who had worked with him.

Later developments

Terrell also designed the Scorpion, a plastic-armoured vehicle similar to the Armadillo armoured vehicle, and a semi-portable plastic-armoured pillbox for the Home Guard was considered for covering the commandos' withdrawal at Dieppe. In the United States, from 1943, the idea was developed further as protection against shaped-charge weapons, leading to an improved formula called HCR2 using quartz gravel in a pitch and wood-flour mastic; American researchers calculated that an M4 Sherman tank would need 8 to 12 tons of such protection against the largest Panzerfaust.

The film "The Gun"

Terrell's intelligence work produced another, less expected result. The Oerlikon 20 mm cannon had become a key anti-aircraft weapon for ships. The Royal Navy had placed a contract for 1,500 of the Swiss guns in 1939, but only 109 reached Britain before the fall of France in June 1940. Production began at Ruislip in late 1940, and the first British-built guns were delivered to the Navy in March or April 1941.

According to the Wikipedia article on Terrell, when the United States wanted film of German aircraft attacking merchant ships to encourage American production of Oerlikon guns, Terrell proposed a fuller story told with real merchant seamen. The Controller of the Navy, Admiral Fraser, approved it immediately. The resulting film, The Gun, featured the American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and used some of Terrell's footage of real attacks.

On the First Sea Lord's staff

Late in 1941, Terrell left DMWD for the staff of the First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy. He became assistant to Vice-Admiral Cecil Vivian Usborne, who was working on weapons and techniques against U-boats. Terrell was promoted unusually quickly to temporary commander, and the two formed what the Wikipedia article calls a "team of two."

The tactical table

The Wikipedia article states that the pair's first success was a tactical table for training anti-submarine tactics at Western Approaches Command, the Liverpool headquarters responsible for convoy protection in the Atlantic.

The Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU), formed in January 1942 under Captain Gilbert Roberts, used exactly such a table. Its officers played wargames on a painted floor grid on the top floor of Derby House, the Western Approaches headquarters in Liverpool. Players stood behind canvas screens that limited what they could see, as a ship's captain's view would be limited at sea, and issued orders, while members of the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) calculated the outcomes. Sixty-six Wrens served with the unit between 1942 and 1945, and it trained close to 5,000 officers before closing at the end of July 1945. Its first tactic, codenamed "Raspberry," was a response to U-boats attacking from inside convoys: when a ship was torpedoed, escorts swept the convoy's perimeter.

The tactical table turned anti-submarine warfare from a matter of individual captains' instincts into something that could be taught, tested and improved systematically. Terrell's role in introducing it is recorded in the Wikipedia article; the detailed development of WATU's tactics was the work of Roberts and his staff.

The lesson of U-570

On 27 August 1941, south of Iceland, a Lockheed Hudson of RAF 269 Squadron, flown by Squadron Leader James Thompson, attacked the German submarine U-570 with depth charges as it dived. The submarine resurfaced, and its crew surrendered by displaying a white sheet. The Royal Navy commissioned the captured boat as HMS Graph on 5 October 1941. The name marked her as a captured German vessel and also, according to the Wikipedia article on the boat, referred to the many graphs drawn from her testing. Terrell's Admiralty Brief is one of the sources that article cites for the naming.

Testing the captured boat revealed uncomfortable facts. Her safe diving depth was 230 metres (750 feet), "much deeper than the British thought for this kind of boat." Royal Navy depth charges could only be set to 170 metres (560 feet), so a U-boat could dive beyond their reach; the depth charges were subsequently modified.

Usborne and Terrell drew a different lesson. According to the Wikipedia article on Terrell, after examining U-570 they concluded that 20 mm shell hits breaching a U-boat's hull would leave the crew unable to stop the flooding. A surfaced submarine caught by a patrol craft could be disabled by relatively light gunfire. Patrol craft were therefore armed with Hispano 20 mm cannon.

Back at DMWD: Squid, smoke and the Disney bomb

The Wikipedia article records that Terrell also contributed, at the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, to three further projects.

Squid

The standard British anti-submarine weapon at the start of the war was the depth charge, dropped or thrown from the stern of an escort as it passed over the submarine's estimated position. Its weakness was that the escort's sonar lost contact with the submarine as the ship ran over it, so attacks were partly blind.

DMWD's first answer was Hedgehog, designed in 1941 and in service from 1942. It threw 24 small contact-fused bombs ahead of the ship, so the sonar could keep tracking the target. Each carried 30 lb (14 kg) of TNT or 35 lb (16 kg) of Torpex, and they exploded only if they hit something hard, such as a hull.

Squid, which the Wikipedia article on Terrell describes as a more powerful successor to Hedgehog, followed. It was designed in 1942 and rushed into service in May 1943, first fitted to HMS Ambuscade, with the first production unit going to HMS Hadleigh Castle. It was eventually installed on 70 frigates and corvettes. Squid fired heavy projectiles with depth-set fuzes in a pattern about 275 yards ahead of the ship. Its first kill came on 31 July 1944, when HMS Loch Killin sank U-333.

The records show how much difference the new weapons made:

Worked check. 5,174 ÷ 85.5 ≈ 60.5; 268 ÷ 47 ≈ 5.7; 50 ÷ 17 ≈ 2.9. On these figures, Squid needed about one-twentieth as many attacks per kill as depth charges. Post-war trials, according to the Wikipedia article on Squid, found it nine times more effective than conventional depth charges.

The Wikipedia article on Squid does not mention Terrell. His contribution is recorded in the article on him, which does not describe its nature in detail. It is fair to say that he worked on Squid's development; it would overstate the sources to call him its designer.

Smoke

A merchant ship or warship giving off heavy smoke could be seen from far beyond the horizon, by U-boats and aircraft alike. The Wikipedia article on Terrell records that he devised techniques to reduce the visible smoke ships produced. It gives no further technical detail.

The Disney bomb

Terrell's most dramatic later project was a bomb. By 1943, U-boats operating from the French and Norwegian coasts were sheltered in massive concrete pens that ordinary bombs could not penetrate. The Wikipedia article on the weapon credits its design to Captain Edward Terrell, "a former lawyer," with development beginning in September 1943 and manufacture by Vickers-Armstrong.

Officially the 4,500 lb Concrete Piercing/Rocket Assisted (CP/RA) bomb, it acquired its nickname, according to an anecdote recorded in the Wikipedia article, from the 1943 Walt Disney propaganda film Victory Through Air Power, which showed a similar fictional rocket bomb smashing through concrete.

Its principle was simple. A free-falling bomb's penetration depends on its speed at impact. The Disney bomb added rockets to drive it faster:

The bomb was too long for a B-17's bomb bay and was carried in pairs under the wings. Early in 1944 Churchill asked for it to be considered by a committee, and in May 1944 a War Cabinet meeting gave it top priority.

The United States Army Air Forces used it in combat in 1945, mainly through the 92nd Bomb Group. On 10 February, nine B-17s dropped 18 Disney bombs on a submarine pen at IJmuiden in the Netherlands. On 30 March, 36 aircraft attacked the Valentin submarine pens near Bremen, launching more than 60 bombs, of which only one hit, to little effect. In all, 158 were dropped before the war ended, without the loss of any aircraft or crew.

Post-war trials were mixed. In 1946, the Anglo-American Project Ruby dropped Disney bombs on targets including Heligoland and the Valentin pens. About 37 percent of the rocket ignitions failed, some bombs broke up because of flaws in their casings, and angled hits reduced penetration. Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs achieved similar effective penetration, largely through the effect of their detonation. The conclusion was that none of the tested bombs was fully suitable, but that rocket assistance was worth retaining for future designs. In January 2009, an inactive Disney bomb was removed from the roof of the Watten bunker in France, where it had lodged during a 1945 test.

After the war

Representing another inventor

Terrell's legal and inventive careers met again at the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors. The Wikipedia article states that in 1947 he represented Robert Stuart Macrae, of the wartime weapons establishment known as MD1, whose claims, including for work on the sticky bomb, were being considered by the Commission. (The article's own archive citation dates the hearing to 26 February 1951, so the year given in the text may need checking.)

Return to the Bar

Terrell returned to legal practice. He took silk, meaning he was appointed Queen's Counsel (QC), and became a Recorder of the Crown Court, a part-time judicial appointment. He was also a Justice of the Peace (JP) and held the OBE.

Admiralty Brief

In 1958 Harrap published Terrell's account of his war, Admiralty Brief: The Story of Inventions That Contributed to Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. The title is a lawyer's pun: a brief is the set of instructions a barrister receives for a case. The book is a primary source for several of the episodes described above and is cited by the Wikipedia articles on Terrell, on U-570 and on DMWD.

Death and papers

Terrell died on 13 November 1979, aged 77. His obituary appeared in The Times on 22 November 1979. Some of his wartime papers are held by the Imperial War Museum. The Wikipedia article also cites National Archives files ADM 1/13712 and T 166/15 in connection with his work and award.

Timeline

Why Terrell matters

The amateur inventor in a professional war

Terrell's story is a vivid example of something that ran through the British war effort: the use of talented civilians, often without formal technical training, in roles where improvisation mattered more than credentials. DMWD gathered a novelist-engineer (Shute), a chemist (Goodeve), an aircraft designer (Wallis), a photographer (Klemantaski) and a barrister (Terrell). Its projects ranged from successes, such as Hedgehog and Squid, to famous failures such as the Panjandrum, a rocket-propelled device intended for breaching beach defences.

Speed over perfection

Plastic armour is a case study in good-enough engineering. It was not the best possible protection; armour steel was better. But steel was expensive and scarce, and plastic armour could be made in ten days of development from road-building materials, laid by road contractors, and fitted to ships by the thousand at about a twelfth of the price per ton. For a merchant seaman on an open bridge under air attack, that difference was the difference between some protection and none.

A lawyer's skills in a technical war

Terrell's legal training showed up throughout his war. He began by gathering and assessing intelligence, a job of evidence. He fought the Department of Naval Construction over the word "armour," a battle of words. He presented his invention's case before a Royal Commission, and later represented another inventor before the same body. His book's title is a legal pun. It is tempting to see in this a lesson about the value of people who can explain technical ideas persuasively to those with the power to adopt them.

Common misconceptions

"Terrell was a Liberal MP." He was a Liberal candidate, not an MP. He stood at Watford in 1929 and Lambeth North in 1935 and finished second both times. It was his father, Thomas Terrell KC, who sat in Parliament.

"Plastic armour was made of plastic." It was a mixture of stone chips and bitumen, much like road asphalt. "Plastic" referred to its mouldable quality when hot, and Terrell chose the name partly to mislead German intelligence.

"Terrell invented Squid." The sources say he contributed to its development at DMWD. The Wikipedia article on Squid does not mention him.

"The Disney bomb was a Disney company project." The nickname came, according to an anecdote, from the 1943 Disney propaganda film Victory Through Air Power, which showed a similar fictional bomb. The real weapon was developed by the Royal Navy, designed by Terrell and manufactured by Vickers-Armstrong.

"The Disney bomb was a great success." Its combat record was modest. On the largest raid, against the Valentin pens, more than 60 were launched and only one hit. Post-war trials found frequent rocket failures and concluded that none of the tested bombs was fully suitable.

"Terrell kept the whole award." The Royal Commission named him sole inventor of plastic armour, but he passed part of the £9,500 to Dr Glanville.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Edward Terrell? An English barrister (1902–1979) who stood twice for Parliament as a Liberal and, in the Second World War, became a Royal Navy officer and inventor, best known for plastic armour.

What was plastic armour? A bullet-resistant layer of stone chips in bitumen, usually about 2 inches thick on a thin steel backing, used to protect merchant ships' bridges and gun positions from machine-gun fire. About 10,000 ships were fitted by the end of the war.

How much did plastic armour cost compared with steel? About £12 10s per ton, compared with about £150 per ton for heat-treated armour plate.

How quickly was it developed? In about ten days in August 1940, from samples ready on 17 August to the report recording the recipe on 27 August.

What award did Terrell receive? £9,500 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in 1946, about £459,000 in 2024 money according to the Wikipedia article on plastic armour.

What was the Disney bomb? A 4,500 lb rocket-assisted bomb designed to penetrate concrete U-boat pens. Its rockets drove it to about 1,450 feet per second at impact. 158 were dropped in combat in 1945.

What did Terrell learn from U-570? With Vice-Admiral Usborne, he concluded that 20 mm shell hits breaching a U-boat's hull would leave the crew unable to stop the flooding, which led to patrol craft being armed with Hispano 20 mm cannon.

Did Terrell write about his war? Yes. Admiralty Brief: The Story of Inventions That Contributed to Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was published by Harrap in 1958.

What were the "Wheezers and Dodgers"? The nickname of the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, the Admiralty department (1941–1945) that developed Hedgehog, Squid and many experimental devices, and in which Terrell served.

Where are his papers? Some of his wartime papers are held by the Imperial War Museum.

Summary

Edward Terrell's life divides into two careers that turned out to be closely linked. As a barrister and Liberal candidate between the wars, he was a capable professional in a declining party, twice finishing a respectable second. As a wartime naval officer, he applied a lawyer's habits of gathering evidence and making a case, together with an amateur inventor's eye, to some of the most urgent problems of the war at sea. His plastic armour, developed in ten days from road-building materials, protected thousands of merchant ships at a fraction of the cost of steel. His later work touched the training of convoy escorts, the arming of patrol craft, the development of Squid and the rocket-assisted Disney bomb. After the war he returned to the courts, took silk, sat as a judge, and wrote his own account of the inventions that helped win the Battle of the Atlantic.

Sources

• Edward Terrell (Wikipedia)
• Plastic armour (Wikipedia)
• Disney bomb (Wikipedia)
• Squid (weapon) (Wikipedia))
• Hedgehog (weapon) (Wikipedia))
• Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (Wikipedia)
• Charles Frederick Goodeve (Wikipedia)
• German submarine U-570 (Wikipedia)
• Western Approaches Tactical Unit (Wikipedia)
• Watford (UK Parliament constituency) (Wikipedia))
• Lambeth North (UK Parliament constituency) (Wikipedia))
• 1929 United Kingdom general election (Wikipedia)
• 1935 United Kingdom general election (Wikipedia)
• Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors (Wikipedia)
• Battle of the Atlantic (Wikipedia)
• Oerlikon 20 mm cannon (Wikipedia)
• Nevil Shute (Wikipedia)