The Mystery of Birnbeck Pier's Missing 'Wheezers and Dodgers' Plaque (1949)

A while ago I was sent a photograph of a missing plaque which, I was told, used to hang in one of the buildings on Birnbeck Island, Weston-super-Mare. The plaque commemorated a close association between Birnbeck Pier and HMS Vernon from 1942 to 1949. The words inscribed on the plaque speak to a unique period in the life of Birnbeck Pier, for in 1941 the pier, and the island to which it is linked, was requisitioned by the Admiralty for secret war time weapons testing. The story of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD) and the men and women who were employed by this most secret of military organisations is a fascinating one (the personnel at HMS Birnbeck, as it was designated by the Admiralty, were known as the 'Wheezers and Dodgers'). As a small first step I made it my mission to try and discover the whereabouts of the plaque. 

HMS Vernon / Birnbeck Pier Plaque

The most obvious place to look would be Birnbeck Pier. The pier is currently undergoing a multi-million pound restoration but since its' closure in 1994, on safety grounds, the buildings on the island have fallen into a state of disrepair. Indeed, there is not much left apart from a clocktower and the walls of roofless buildings. When I visited the island in 2017 the interior of the buildings were a sea of debris and rubbish. Anything of value had long since gone - removed at the time of closure, stolen or simply lost. So where to start the search? As a starting point I enlisted the help of Peter Lander of the Birnbeck Regeneration Trust, a man with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Birnbeck Pier's history. Peter introduced me to a local woman, Jean Sugar, whose mother had the foresight to retrieve an old photograph album from a skip in Locking (near Weston-super-Mare) when the nearby RAF base closed in 2000.

The Plaque in the Birnbeck Pier Refreshment Room - 1949 (Jean Sugar Collection)

The album is a treasure trove of information about the DMWD, and amongst the gems therein, I discovered a series of black and white photographs showing the plaque in its' original position adjacent to the bar in what was know in the 1940s and 50s as the Birnbeck Pier Refreshment Rooms. Above the plaque the photograph shows a mural or very large picture of HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, in Portsmouth Dockyard. An appropriate pairing given that the anti-submarine warfare establishment designated as HMS Vernon sits within the dockyard complex. Beneath the plaque four women are sitting enjoying a pot of tea whilst at the mirror backed bar a white-coated barman is chatting to two men. But that is not all that Jean Sugar's album had in store. The collection also includes a series of photographs showing HMS Vernon's commander, Captain W.J.Robertson, presenting the plaque to Mr W. J. Jesseman, the managing director and secretary of the Birnbeck Pier Company on the 17 March 1949.

Birnbeck Pier in the 1940s (Postcard)

The Plaque Presentation (Jean Sugar Collection)

With the date in mind, my next step was to interrogate the British Newspaper Archive. Sure enough, the event was covered by several newspapers. In particular there was an extremely descriptive report in the Weston Gazette dated 19 March 1949. In his speech at the event, Captain Robertson explained why Birnbeck Pier had been chosen for weapons testing. 

Torpedoes and mines, by their very nature, were required to be recovered after trial. One might drop them in the sea and use divers, but in that way recovery is not certain. This part of the Bristol Channel, with its strong tides and full ebb, was ideal for our purpose. I need hardly remind you that in two wars we have come very near indeed to losing because of our failure to cope with the submarine.

The report goes on to recount some of what the Birnbeck Pier Company's chairman said in response.

Mr. Jessemann paid tribute to the work of the Piermaster, Capt. K. J. Wide, who had been commissioned as a Lieutenant, R.N.R. during H.M.S. Vernon’s occupation. The hole and splat near the Pier used during the experiments had been constructed at very short notice under his supervision.

The ever helpful Peter Lander was able to provide a picture of Captain Wide (the piermaster) outside the boarded up - for wartime - main gates. Jack Wide (as he was known) worked in close collaboration with the Naval authorities and during the war years was given the rank of Lieutenant, Royal Naval Reserve. 

Captain Wide and his wife, Catherine (Peter Lander Collection)

Whilst the Pier Company Directors were quick to offer the pier for military use in time of national emergency at least one was not impressed with the fees paid by the Admiralty. £350 per year, not even enough to pay the pier's insurance premium! Indeed, in examining the Birnbeck Pier Company's cash book in the Somerset Archives (A/DUY 2/3) the foregone income was considerable.

Having established the circumstances under which the plaque was handed over, the question remains as to what happened to it. The next step was to find images of the Refreshment Rooms bar and see if the plaque remained in situ over subsequent years. In the Somerset Archive I discovered a plan, dated 1948, showing a proposed alteration to the bar area. It is not known exactly what alterations were made in the ensuing years but we do know that prior to the 1970s, the plaque was moved. The picture below (from the 1970s) shows the bar area with a staircase installed directly in front of the HMS Victory mural. The plaque is not in its' original position so at the time the steps were put in it was either relocated or removed entirely. My guess is the former, but that can't be proven in the absence of further evidence.

The bar area without plaque (Peter Lander Collection)

The same spot in 2017 (Phil Curme Collection)

Furthermore, by a happy coincidence, I took a photo of the wall space in question during my visit in 2017 - no HMS Victory, no HMS Vernon plaque, no Victorian event place settings, no white coated barman, no happy tea drinkers ... just a shell of a building and a broken down piano.

So what can be concluded about the whereabouts of the plaque? Well, we know where it was installed and we know it was subsequently moved. As to what happened then, the mystery remains. is it amongst the broken roof remnants on Birnbeck Pier? was it thrown into the sea? is it on a wall in someones office or house? Is it hidden away in a loft somewhere? Your guess is as good as mine! One newspaper report described the plaque as being inscribed on brass and another that it had a wooden frame. Maybe the material was reused?

I will finish with an unattributed 1949 newspaper report which stated that the plaque was now treasured possession of the Birnbeck Pier Company. Treasured it may have been, but for now we must consider it lost. The story it references though, is far from lost - and will no doubt be brought to life as part of the 'interpretation' work which will be undertaken for the Birnbeck Pier Restoration Project.  

The last helicopter out of Saigon (April 1975)

 It must be twenty years since my wife and I were last in Ho Chi Min City. Since then much has changed - the bicycles have been replaced by scooters, the city centre is dominated by multinational retail brands and the old city name 'Saigon' has been rehabilitated. On this, our second albeit very brief visit, we decided to do something a little different and seek out the building which was the subject of an iconic photo taken by Hubert van E on the afternoon of the 29th April, 1975. The photograph shows a Huey helicopter leaving the rooftop of an office block in downtown Saigon as desperate evacuees were whisked out of the city following the arrival of the North Vietnamese Army in Saigon at the very end of the Vietnam War. The image is often incorrectly captioned as showing the American Embassy and, to compound the error, is sometimes misdescribed as showing the 'last helicopter to leave Saigon'. 

Hubert van E's iconic photograph - The Fall of Saigon

In 1975 the building was actually a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) residential block and office facility. The building, in what was then Gia Long Street, was one of several CIA safehouses and offices across Saigon. On the the 28th April 1975, rocket and artillery strikes were hitting Tan Son Nhut Airport making fixed wing evacuation impossible and on the following day the U.S. authorities switched to helicopter evacuation under the code name 'Operation Frequent Wind'. It was a fraught time as desperate military personnel, civilian staff, interpreters and Vietnamese civilians sought to secure a seat on one of the evacuation flights. In all, over 7,000 people were taken by helicopter to U.S. Navy Task Force 77 - principally the two carriers, USS Enterprise and USS Coral Sea. News coverage at the time showed recently arrived helicopters being pushed off the flight decks to make room for additional landings.

The CIA buiding now in Li Tu Trong Street

The building wasn't difficult to find as we weren't the first to seek it out. Indeed, the office block with the easily recognisable elevator building on the top, can be seen from the ornamental garden situated to the south east of Notre Dame Cathedral. Back in 1975 the roof of the building would have been one of the highest points in the city. Nowadays the eight storey structure is dwarfed by a giant tower block which stands across the street, directly opposite the main entrance. We made our way past the central post office and worked out which was the correct address. In present times the building is a simple office block with no obvious clue to its' fascinating history. Anyway, we ventured in and approached a reception desk manned by a concierge. After flashing a copy of Hubert von E's famous photograph and offering a small payment in Vietnamese Dong, we were rewarded with a grin and gestured towards the elevator. We got in, I pressed the button for the eighth floor and up we went - to revisit history!

The view from the top of the old CIA building

The elevator control room, where the ladder was

On leaving the elevator at the top, it takes a bit of imagination to picture the scene as it was on that afternoon - 29th April 1975. In the famous picture a CIA operated Air America Huey hovers directly above the elevator 'hut'. Those boarding did so by mounting a ladder from the office block roof. Again, there is nothing to remind the occasional visitor of the evacuation. The rooftop was obviously a bar at one time. There had been a temporary structure up there but that has since collapsed. I managed to get up to the level where the base of the ladder was by clambering over a pile of broken beams and other debris. One can certainly get a sense of what it must have been like by surveying the view which encompasses Notre Dame Cathedral and the Independence Palace (it was only one day later - 30th April, 1975, that North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the palace gates. They are still there attracting the attention of tourists, see below).

Tanks at the Independence Palace 

Whilst up on the roof I tried to visualise the scene. I imagined the guards at street level holding back desperate potential evacuees. The long climb up the internal stairs (or maybe the elevator was till operational?), the anxiety of those waiting and the relief in getting one foot on the bottom of the access ladder. The situation at the time was chaotic but there are at least a couple of eye-witnesses to the events at 22 Gia Long Street. First Hubert van E who took the photo from a nearby rooftop. He recalls a CIA operative helping evacuees up the ladder and describes the process as appearing to being 'organised but tense' - certainly not 'mob panic'. CIA operative Frank Snepp was present in the building. He recalled that those evacuated included CIA and U.S. Government personnel and Vietnamese associates. Furthermore, he remembered that evacuees were taken up to the roof in small groups (presumably from the upper storeys).

And the last helicopter to leave? Well, not this one. It was actually a CH-53 Sea Stallion which evacuated a group of security guards from the U.S. embassy roof in the early hours of the morning on the 30th April, 1975.

On a related note, it is possible to gain an impression of the Vietcong perspective by visiting the tiny 'Saigon Gia Binh' Special Forces Museum which is situated a mile or so from the CIA building.  This private museum is situated in a second floor apartment and accessed from a busy shopping street via a blue doorway - see the photo below.

Special Forces Museum

Ho Chi Min Shrine

The proprietor / lift operator (pictured above with my wife) was an excellent host, and explained via my translation app that the museum is situated in an old North Vietnamese safehouse. In the carefully curated space there is a shrine to Ho Chi Min, a reconstructed 1970s living room, an impressive collection of weapons and other military artefacts, plus explanatory panels explaining some of the exploits of the men who were based there - for example the sinking of the USNS Card in 1964 and the bombing of the Brink Hotel that same year. Controversial episodes from a problematic war. 

As an aside, I would recommend Vietnam as a place to visit. We discovered so much to see and experience and found nothing but friendliness and helpfulness from the local people. Vietnam may once have been a war zone, but now it is a delight!