Just over a year ago, the Museum received a rather large and interesting donation – the personal papers of Reginald Percy Fraser OBE (known mostly as R.P. Fraser). His work leading up to and during the Second World War was vital to the British development of flamethrower fuel, equipment and vehicles.
Flamethrowers were used heavily by all combatants during the Second World War, and Britain was no exception. The Churchill Crocodiles of the 79th Armoured Division were famously used to clear out stubborn resistance during the North-West Europe Campaign. The Wasp, a Universal Carrier variant, was present in every major theatre all the way to the Far East, as well as the arguably less well known Sherman Adder.
Reginald Percy Fraser was born in 1899 near Hailsham, Sussex to Percy and Francis. By 1921 he was living in Hailsham while studying as a Tech Chemist Student. Reginald married Emme O’Shea in 1928 before moving to Kingston Upon Thames, where they stayed the rest of their lives.
During the 1930s, Fraser was teaching and researching at Imperial College London, specialising in gasses and propulsion. It was during this time that he developed the first camera capable of taking images of flame travelling at 21,000mph.
When war broke out, he was seconded to Lagonda (the car manufacturer eventually bought by Aston Martin), where he put his theories into practice. His productions ranged from smaller man-portable devices, to large, fixed flamethrowers and purpose built and modified armoured vehicles. As well as trialling them in the more conventional anti-personnel and anti-fortification roles, he also experimented with the use of flamethrowers against armour and aircraft.
It seems that Fraser was heavily involved with the practical testing as well as the subsequent training to the army on how flamethrowers work. He also had a keen interest in rocketry and propulsion so naturally when the German program became apparent, Fraser and his team reconstructed a working V1 ‘Doodlebug’ while he devised some rather outlandish countermeasures.
Fraser was awarded an OBE for “his development of flamethrowers during the war”, and by 1947 he was one of four directors of a company set up to exploit this technology. Fraser appears to have devoted his post-war carrier to the study of rocketry propulsion technology, publishing multiple papers and works on the topic.
Reginald Percy Fraser died suddenly on 25 February 1966, with many newspapers publishing obituaries on his life’s achievements. Not long after his death, the MOD searched through his documents and papers and took a large proportion of them. What remained makes up the collection the Museum now holds, still a vast quantity of material. It primarily consists of documents, but also includes large numbers of photographs, drawings and plans and a sectioned flamethrower.
Once everything has been fully catalogued and sorted we will understand the extent of this donation, but it is shaping up to be a significant collection. Keep an eye out for further updates.
