Discovering an Unsung Hero of the London Blitz:
but who was Sir Thomas Peirson Frank?

Gustav Milne 14/04/25

In May 2025, the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, the Post Office will issue a new set of stamps, the VICTORY & VALOUR collection.

This commemorates some of the forgotten heroes of WWII, especially those non-combatants who worked so courageously during the horrors of the Blitz. One of these people was Thomas Peirson Frank, a name that is is not well known, even in London, the city he served with such singular distinction.

But archaeologists working on the Thames foreshore and in the London Metropolitan Archives have researched and revealed one of the many aspects of his remarkable work: his Thames Flood Emergency Repairs unit, a team he set up to deal with breaches in London’s river defences caused by the Luftwaffe’s high explosive bombs. Members of Thames Discovery Programme community archaeology project first stumbled upon surviving evidence of this work some 60 years later, while observing localised repairs to the river wall, sometimes in brick, more often in shuttered concrete.

Dolphin Square, Pimlico, 16th April 1941 Breached river wall- photo by LCC’s Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repair team

Dolphin Square, Pimlico, 2010 1940s bomb damage repair- photo by Peter Kennedy for the Thames Discovery Programme

Gradually they built up a picture of one of London’s best-kept secrets: during the Blitz, the river wall was breached over one hundred times. But not a single one of these potentially catastrophic events led to a major flood, thanks to the dedicated and effective work of the LCC’s Emergency Repair teams

Darfield’s Wharf Lambeth, 8th October 1940. Photo by LCCs Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repair team

Depending on the size of the breach, the next few weeks were often spent in carefully-constructing major sand-bag walling to serve as a “temporary” repair. These had to be robust, since some lasted for up to eighteen months before the final repair phase, often using shuttered concrete, was constructed.

Gengall Wharf, Millwall: the massive breach of 10th May 1941 has been systematically protected by a carefully-laid wall of 6,680 sandbags Photo by LCC’s Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repair team

Top) Victoria Tower Embankment Gardens (Houses of Parliament): bomb damage to river wall, 17th April 1941. Photo by LCC’s Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repair team
Bottom left) and right) 1940’s concrete repair as seen in 2010, with incised lines to mimic ashlar blocks. (P Kennedy, Thames Discovery Programme).

So who was the man who had the vision to establish and operate that life-saving Rapid Response unit? Thomas Peirson Frank was the London County Council’s Chief Engineer from 1930 to 1946, and thus served on the front line throughout the Blitz. He had arrived in the city with a wealth of experience in, for example, the ports of Plymouth, Cardiff and Liverpool, not to mention distinguished service with the Royal Engineers in France during the Great War in 1914-18. He would draw on all that experience, both civil and military, when it mattered most.

When he first arrived in London in 1930, he was very aware of the dreadful flood that engulfed large swathes of the capital in 1928, just two years earlier. Such an event was NOT going to re-occur on his watch. He fully appreciated that the potential area of low-lying London that could be flooded currently housed more than a million souls in 300,000 houses, most of the port’s warehouses, several major power stations, the telephone network’s underground accumulators and London’s utilities, much of the gas, electrical, drinking water and sewage facilities. Just one breach of the river wall by a high explosive bomb at high tide would clearly have terrible consequences (remember the devastation caused by the 1943 Dambusters raid in Germany?). So, starting in 1939, he ordered a survey of all the LCC’s river frontage, recording for the first time the varied heights of the river walls and calculating the size and importance of the area susceptible to flooding for each of the fifteen waterfront boroughs. Once war was actually declared, he then established depots for rapid response units in the most vulnerable areas of Battersea, Southwark, Millwall and Greenwich. Each depot would hold supplies of sandbags, timbers and so forth, two lorries and, during air-raids, would be staffed by an engineer, a foreman and fourteen labourers drawn from the local borough’s road repair gangs. They would remain on standby ready for action until the all-clear sounded.

Before the Blitz began, Peirson Frank estimated that each local team might have to deal with up to six major breaches and many more “minor” alarms. In the event, this was a gross underestimate: London’s riverwall was breached some 121 times, but nevertheless all (repeat all) these incidents were contained before major flood damage occurred. This was a huge testament to Peirson Frank’s forward planning and the selfless hard graft in truly dreadful conditions by the local teams. The Millwall team dealt with 43 “incidents”, Battersea 36, Southwark and the City, 25. and Greenwich 22.
The modus operandi is recorded in the hand-written log books compiled by the teams: as soon as a strike somewhere on the river wall was observed (often by the river police), the nearest Thames Flood team were immediately alerted and sped to the site (usually at night, usually before the All Clear was sounded). Each breach was then rapidly infilled with whatever bomb debris was available to secure the site before the next high tide.

Thames Flood Emergency Repair team Log book (London Metropolitan Archive/ Peter Kennedey)

OFFICIAL SECRETS
Today, there is no doubt that the LCC’s Thames Flood Prevention Emergency Repair teams quite literally saved London from drowning. The real surprise is that their heroic work was conducted in secret, no press coverage, no mention in any official reports. This was because it was considered too dangerous to let the Luftwaffe know just how vulnerable London was, with often just a meagre brick parapet separating the river from a civilian catastrophe. Londoners all knew where their heroic fire fighters and ARP teams were stationed, but not where the TF units were or what they did. The secret remained a secret until Peter Kennedy, a volunteer with the Thames Discovery Programme, first opened the TF’s handwritten logbooks some seventy years later. They been carefully boxed and stored in the LCC’s London Metropolitan Archive, together with copious notes, joined together with rusty paper clips.

PEIRSON FRANK’S WIDER RESPONSIBILITIES
But when war was declared in 1939, Thomas Peirson Frank also took on other major responsibilities. He was appointed as the Co-ordinating Officer for Road Repairs and Public Utility Services. Although a somewhat prosaic job description with not the most heroic-sounding title, it was a very demanding post at the height of the Blitz: it was crucial to simply keep London going in spite of the unprecedent onslaught of High Explosive bombs, incendiaries and the lethal V1 and V2 rockets.

London’s Streets in the Blitz
Left) Debris collapsing onto Queen Victoria Street;
Right) Clearing Upper Thames Street: many of the road gangs were too old for military service, but not too old for such hard labour (Cross & Tibbs Collection, London Metropolitan Archive)

In addition to dealing with 1,383 “incidents” on public buildings, his teams repaired 530 breakages to main drainage and sewer systems (think about it), mended countless severed gas, electricity, water and telephone supplies and cleared many, many tons of bomb debris from London streets to allow emergency services, supplies and buses to move freely.

PEIRSON FRANK’S BRIDGES

An Emergency Bridge built during WWII by the LCC: this one connected County Hall (Lambeth) with Whitehall (Westminster) in 1942. (London Metropolitan Archive: LCC Photo Library)
Bridges were another vital component of London’s transportation network: Peirson Frank not only supervised the completion of Waterloo and Wandsworth Bridges, but also built three more Emergency Bridges to ensure unimpeded traffic flow should the main bridges be bombed (which they were). In fact, during his fifteen-year tenure of the LCC’s Chief Engineer, he actually built no less than seven bridges over the Thames: that would be an achievement if that were his sole peacetime occupation: but that was not his sole occupation and this was not peacetime.

PEIRSON FRANK’S ARMY

Holes in the Road: every HE bomb that smashed into a road severed the underlying utilities. All had to be repaired and reconnected before the crater was infilled. (London Metropolitan Archive: Cross and Tibbs Collection)

To undertake his vast constantly-changing program of demolition, clearance, repair and reinstatement, Peirson Frank raised new companies of Royal Engineers conscripted from London’s construction companies, brought in 16 Pioneer Companies (for demolition and clearance works), and raised No. 2 Royal Engineers Docks Group of former dockers and stevedores. His new army of 13,000 men were supported by motorised transport units with over 200 lorries. All his military training and engineering expertise were thus successfully brought together to save London. For example, to support the hard-pressed Fire Services during the Blitz, forty new temporary pumping stations were installed on bridges and piers to extract water from the Thames even at very low tides, 17 miles of steel water pipes were laid under the streets, while watertanks containing 14.5million gallons and 80 temporary reservoirs with 250,000 gallons were established.

Much of the work conducted by Thomas Peirson Frank and his teams was conducted without fanfares, often in secret. But his role in the saving of the capital was absolutely crucial: it was his visionary, proactive program drawing on his military experience and his engineering expertise that gave the sprawling city an effective plan of action in the worst of times: it was the extraordinary spirit of that extraordinary Blitz generation that somehow found the strength to implement it. Peirson Frank’s role received some recognition (he was awarded a knighthood) but it took until 2015 before a plaque was unveiled in his honour in Westminster and first book recording the once top-secret work of the Thames Flood teams was not published until 2020.

Recognition for Sir Thomas Peirson Frank: 2015:-plaque in Westminster; 2020:-publication

THE NON-COMBATANTS WAR

Search and rescue- looking for survivors

A Very Hard Day’s Night (Mary Evans Picture Gallery: London Fire Brigade Collection)

The Blitz was a non-combatants war, won by its citizen army, which included firefighters, ARP workers, the police, WVS teams, nurses and doctors.

The Battle of Britain was famously won by The Few: the Battle of London was won by The Many.

And now, in 2025, with the new stamps, at least some of name and faces of those unsung heroes will be better known. And deservedly so.

Gustav Milne 2020 The Thames at Wat: saving London from the Blitz Pen & Sword