Ask people from outside the area what Watford means to them and you’ll get many replies, all of them different (and some probably quite rude). But few, I’ll warrant, will mention that it’s the home of what, in March 1953, was described by the Army, no less, as “probably the most powerful [gun] used by any infantry in the world today.”

I’m referring to the “recoilless 120mm anti-tank gun” which was produced in the Watford bypass factory of Messrs Savage and Parsons Ltd.

In the Watford Observer of March 13, 1953, “industrial reporter” W.R. Vann revealed all – well, as much as he was allowed – following a tour around the premises.

Perhaps understandably it reads a little at times like a promotion piece for the firm, but it’s still worth revisiting. He began with that anti-tank gun.

He wrote: “Although the gun is off the secret list, details remain rationed but it is a 120mm gun of unconventional design, comparatively light and easy to handle, is towed instead of self-propelled and fires a low velocity projectile.

“With Major J.B. Savage, the firm’s managing director, I watched two men glide one of the uptilted green gun barrels through the ‘sleeve hole’ of its armoured coat suspended by overhead chains.

“Production was a well-kept secret since Savage and Parsons started on the job about two years ago. The first two of the new anti-tank guns were completed in 14 weeks and Major Savage was one of the privileged quartet who watched the successful range trials. Now production for the regular Army is in full swing.”

But Savage and Parsons didn’t only make guns “under its generalised telephone book description of ‘engineers’”, as Mr Vann was keen to point out.

“For seven years,” he continued, “they have been making and equipping Army radio trucks, complete with generators, and a small fleet of them made the Bypass yard look like a barrack depot.

“Then there is radar equipment of all kinds, from something quite new in compact, relentless mobility for aircraft, to tail vanes like the curved sides of some monstrous mine.

“‘There is not a ship in the British Navy that has not got some of our equipment, mostly radar,’ Major Savage told me. The Royal Canadian and Australian Navies are supplied from Watford, too; also the Navies of Sweden, Chile and Venezuela, among others.

“In fact, about one-third of the Watford firm’s output fills overseas orders.”
The firm also produced refrigerators in the days before every home had one.

The report continues:

“One new thermostat-controlled model I saw was specially designed in the factory itself by a Toronto University professor of industrial design, an expert on the job, who had come over especially for the purpose. The first batch of this type is going to the vast refrigeration-minded American market.

“That is but one specimen sample of Savage and Parsons’ bold and practical approach to technology.

“A 50-way strain recorder that looks (from the outside) as simple as a radio set with knobs on seemed about the simplest of all their wonders.

“Delving somewhat deeper, there were uncanny contraptions (that’s not what the scientists call them) which pick up and chart such sporadic electrical impulse as nerve tremors, heartbeats and even brain potentials.

“And if that sounds too easy, may I just mention an unassuming ‘box of tricks’ appropriately grey matter in outside hue, which detects, analyses and codes sound patterns from the jumbled mass of vibrations, impulses etc which bombard the ear from the outside world.

“Reeling from the research unit before some fresh device discerned my mental confusion and flashed it onto a screen, I returned with Major Savage to his office for some strong tea.

“He told me how the firm came out to Watford from Hendon early in the last war, when his father, the late Major J.C. Savage – aircraft and sky signwriting pioneer – was at the helm.

“The ‘Parsons’ part of the firm’s title is the connection with the late Sir Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine which bears his name.”

Going back to Major J.C. Savage, his exploits with skywriting are well documented on the website of The Scarf and Goggles Club. The website describes how, in the days immediately before World War I, an accidental discovery was made: if low viscosity oil inadvertently found its way into a hot exhaust it would vapourise, creating a vast and dense cloud of white smoke without any real detriment to the aircraft.

One aspiring aviation engineer at this time was the aforementioned  Major J.C. (John Clive) Savage, born in 1891. Savage had a flair for the theatrical and broke off his engineering career in order to become manager and agent to B.C. Hucks, the first Englishman to loop the loop.

Anyway, once the war was over, the idea of smoke trails was revived. By 1921, ‘Mad Jack’ Savage, as he’d become known, had revisited the idea of producing smoke and experimented with making first shapes and then letters in the air… and the art of skywriting was born.

Savage’s inventiveness caused a sensation when his skywriting plane made its debut at the 1922 Epsom Derby.

A bumper crowd for one of the biggest racing weekends of the year was enthralled as the silver speck 10,000 feet above them spelt out DAILY MAIL in vast white letters which, the newspaper later claimed, was “the greatest single development in outdoor advertising” and that “everyone within an area of 100 square miles – and there were millions – gazed spellbound at this fascinating sight.”

It was certainly a smash. Among those in the VIP enclosure at Epsom was none other than the leading novelist of the day, Virginia Woolf, who used the occasion as the opening segment in her next book, Mrs Dalloway.

There’s much more to the story of skywriting, of course, and this website is heartily recommended. Find it at https://scarfandgoggles.wordpress.com.