When turkey rained down on London during the Blitz , they fell on houses , on churches , and , less famously , on embankments along the River Thames . The damage embankment could have broadcast devastating floods through London , but they didn’t — thanks to a group of engineers who worked secretly and at night .
Cities have a fraught relationship with their rivers . The Thames H2O that made London ’s very universe potential could also taketh away , occasionallyflooding whole neighborhoodsand drowning unfortunate souls . London had built up wall and embankment over the years to keep water supply in its place . By World War II , 2o square miles of the city laid below the Thames ’s high recorded tide and 10 square miles below the river ’s usual springtime tides . A breech in a river wall could have scourge those area .
Londoners had no idea how often and how tight the city come to flooding . Records show that the Thames wall was reach by bombs121 timesduring the war . Each prison term , they were repaired by a team from the Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repairs , which worked under the cover of darkness to keep the London ’s vulnerability secluded from its residents and its enemy .
“ It could have brought London to its knees very , very easily , ” said Gustav Milne , managing director of the Thames Discovery Programme , told the Associated Press . “ Not just people drowning — we would have lost buildings , it would have flooded the sewer and brought up all the sewerage , it would have contaminated the water supply , cut off gas and electrical energy . There would have been far-flung desolation and huge loss of life . ”
The man behind all this was the engineer Thomas Pierson Frank , who was recentlycommemorated with a newfangled plaque in Victoria Tower Gardens . His story , secret at first and then only forget , had been unearth by archeologists with the Thames Discovery Programme .
Gustav Milne , music director of the Thames Discovery Programme , points to a patch of concrete where the embankment river wall was repaired . Image : Matt Dunham / AP
Under Frank ’s direction , the Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repairs was sent out , often when bombs were still falling , to animate broken river walls . They solve quickly and in the dark , piling up sand bag to temporarily slow the flow of urine until the walls could be for good recreate with concrete . Today , you could still see a bandage of concrete in a wall otherwise made of granite near the Houses of Parliament in London .
Repairing river walls scarcely sound like the most heroical deed to arrive out of World War II , but warfare , ultimately , is all about logistics . Had London been less prepared , it would have sustained even more damage . Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repairs , a little known piece of the government bureaucratism , save up London from the devastation of floods . [ Associated Press , Maritime Journal , BBC , City of Westminster ]
Top image : London during WWII.NARA
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