Dr sidney alford biography of william

It is truly an honor to present him with this well-deserved recognition for his 25 years of service. Nominations are limited to those extraordinary cases where individuals have demonstrated exceptional service of substantial and long-term benefit to the Navy and the Marine Corps. It is with great sadness that Alford Technologies announce the passing of our founder, Dr Sidney Alford.

Email address. Enter your password. Sign in by entering the code we sent toor clicking the magic link in the email. He accepted an invitation to join Hotforge, a small company which provided explosives services to the petroleum industry, and was offered a directorship. He was thus able to devote himself to the development of explosive cutting charges.

Alford designed underwater steel-cutting charges which he used for chain cutting, plate perforating using his new trepanning charges and well-head severing operations in the North Sea for the petroleum industry.

Dr sidney alford biography of william

His first experiments using flexible linear fracturing charges which depended upon the collision of shock waves were demonstrated and patented. In mid he was approached by a retired army officer and his colleague and they formed a new company, Alflex, whose first operation was participation in the record breaking expedition to the Barents Sea which recovered 93 per cent of the approximately five tonnes of gold ingots from the wreck of HMS Edinburgh.

During the next three years he acquired a great deal of experience in demolition, felling numerous brick, concrete and steel chimneys. He carried out many explosive demolition operations on such steel and concrete structures as bridges, industrial buildings and, very sadly from a historical point of view, the blast furnaces at the Consett Iron Company which closed in The old manually operated iron penstock gates beneath the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth and Gibraltar Harbour were gently blasted into removable fragments and replaced by modern hydraulic structures.

Various other underwater operations were conducted for marine salvage companies. That activity was swiftly followed by the clearance of mines and sub-munitions and aircraft bombs immediately after the repulsed invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in The former work involved the development of the user-filled linear cutting charge in kit form which became known as Dioplex.

Kuwait provided a testing ground for the development of what became the Vulcan, using its water-filled cone and his recently invented magnesium projectile. The Vulcan shaped charge proved paramount in the clearance of large bombs in sea with the Royal Navy off the Scottish coast and of limpet mines and shells with the US Navy off Pearl Harbour in —, made possible by the addition of a component which permitted its reliable use under water.

In Sidney's son Roland, a graduate in mechanical engineering, became a director of the family owned company. When the Vietnam war finally stopped, the huge number of bombs which had been dropped on Indo-China became apparent, as did the very dr sidney alford biography of william proportion which had not exploded as they hit the trees and soft soil.

Accompanied by his son Roland, they tested the usefulness of the precursor of the Vulcan at rendering safe the larger bombs without destroying for a second or third time the village which had been targeted during the war. This led to the production of the Vulcan itself and further verification and instructional visits to Laos followed and valuable data was gathered which contributed to the device going into use in many countries.

InAlford's invention and ownership of water lined and water projecting shaped charge technology was reluctantly recognised by the UK Ministry of Defence MOD. A settlement was reached with Alford, enabling UK MOD to legitimately develop their own water-based charge technology which incorporated Alford's ideas. InAlford's son Roland Alford became managing director, with Sidney Alford becoming the company's chairman.

The use of guns using blank cartridges to eject water from the barrel at high velocity was well known as a means of disrupting relatively small and thin-skinned targets with a relatively low probability of causing detonation or ignition. They were, however, easily defeated by the use of more robust cases, such as those made from structural steel tubes.

The replacement of the copper liner of conventional shaped charges first by gelled water, then by low melting point salts with high proportions of water of crystallisation and finally with thin-walled plastic containers of water, provided a simple means of generating jets of water of much higher velocity and with correspondingly enhanced penetrating power and disruptive capability than was possible using gun barrel technology.

Concomitant experiments demonstrated that, in contrast to metal-lined charges, shaped charges projecting liquids still functioned with their cavities filled rather than just lined with water. One of Alford's early experiments involved a cucumber which was carved into a prism with a longitudinal V-shaped groove with a strip of sheet explosive behind.

This generated a crude linear liquid jet capable of cutting steel. From this charge was developed a family of thin-walled plastic containers in which explosive was sandwiched between a grooved, water-filled, projectile and a rear water-filled component which acted as a tamper and flash suppressor. Alford's work during the " Tanker War " phase of the Gulf War inspired development of the user-filled linear cutting family of charges which became known as Dioplex.

Alford was invited to attempt the cutting operations of the deformed hulls which, by the time he got on the scene were either floating or were run up on the shore of Sirri Island. For this he designed linear cutting charges which consisted of strips of plywood, which were glued into elongate rectangular boxes, with a degree steel liner inside.

Each charge was closed with glued-on end pieces with holes for detonators or detonating cord and with a plywood lid. The primitive, user-filled charges proved themselves in cutting the substantial steel hull in air and under water and, not surprisingly, requirements for larger quantities for further wrecked tankers soon arrived and were flown out.

Next, he undertook research in Japan, before returning to Britain to join a small company conducting clinical trials of food for astronauts. Subsequent demolitions included Spandau prison blown up in — after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess — to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine and redundant North Sea oil platforms.

While others used large-scale explosions with inevitable collateral damage to countermine ordnance, Alford used tiny amounts of high-speed water or molten metal to achieve similar effects. At one stage he even examined the possibility of shattering kidney stones by tiny explosive charges passed through a cannula in the abdominal wall. In Alford founded Alford Technologies, which now provides counter-terrorism products, services and training worldwide to governments and to humanitarian organisations.

Infor the Channel Four documentary Kaboom! He was also a gifted linguist, holding his doctoral viva in French and endearing himself to his examiners by using an umbrella as a pointer. In he hosted the Japanese Emperor Hirohito on a state visit to Britain, when he toured the biochemistry department of the Nuffield Institute.