Page 96 - They Also Served

Post-war, he set himself up as a private developer of weapons, funding his own research, and served on the general staff between 1924 and 1928. He retired from the Indian Army as a major in 1932 and was immediately commissioned into the TA Royal Artillery. In 1933, he organised Lady Houston’s expedition to the Himalayas and was the observer in the Westland Wallace, which was the first aircraft to fly over Mount Everest.
At the start of the Second World War, Blacker was a lieutenant-colonel and offered his services to the War Office, where he was sent to work with Major Millis Jefferis, who headed the military intelligence research department. This department, known as ‘Winston Churchill’s Toy Shop’, was responsible for developing special weapons. There, in 1940, Blacker developed the Blacker Bombard, a simple spigot mortar. Lightweight, basic, and cheap weapons such as this, and the Smith Gun, armed the home guard, enabling armaments factories to develop and build weapons for the regular army, which had lost much of its heavy equipment at Dunkirk. Blacker was awarded £50,000 for his invention (equivalent to over two million pounds today). The Blacker Bombard was later developed into the highly successful Hedgehog (aka an anti-submarine projector), one of the cornerstones of the Allied victory over the U-boats in the Battle of The Atlantic.
Blacker also developed the PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank), which became the standard British infantry anti-tank weapon of the war. Jefferis refined Blacker’s early work and the weapon entered service in 1942. Six soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross for actions involving the PIAT, and Blacker and Jefferis shared another £50,000 award. Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Blacker OBE, soldier, pioneering aviator and inventor, died in 1964.
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