Chemist specialized in explosive technology
Talents focused on both using, detecting devices
Sidney Alford, who has died aged 86, gained a worldwide reputation for explosives technology.
In 1972, terrorist bombings in england and Northern Ireland turned his attention to defeating improvised explosive devices (Ieds).
He experimented at the kitchen table until his wife evicted him to the backyard. Neighbours’ complaints about the bangs brought a visit by security services, who were so impressed they gave him access to a military range.
eventually he patented several devices, including the bootbanger, which fires water at high speed to destroy Ieds, and — his proudest invention — the vulcan disrupter, a small, highly versatile explosive Ordnance disposal (eod) device.
vulcan has been used worldwide more than any other eod device, against munitions ranging from hand grenades to cruise missiles, and has an almost 100 per cent success rate.
Alford probably did more than any other to neutralize Ieds, minefields and dangerous military ordnance.
Sidney Christopher Alford was born in england Jan. 11, 1935. As a schoolboy, after wartime blitzes he would search for bomb fragments and anti-aircraft shells to make homemade fireworks, and experimented with chemicals bought from a drugstore five minutes’ walk from his home.
After the Army, where he qualified as a sharpshooter, Alford started his professional life as a chemist. He did not complete university studies, but was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate from the usines Chimiques des Laboratoires Français.
Next, he did research in Japan, before returning to britain to conduct clinical trials of food for astronauts.
In 1981, he advised on blowing a hole into the HMS edinburgh, which lay at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, to facilitate the recovery of five tons of gold. The explosion had to be scaled so as not to disperse the gold or set off remaining ammunition.
In 1985 he founded Alford Technologies, to provide counterterrorism products, services and training worldwide to governments and humanitarian organizations.
In 2015 he was appointed Obe, and last year was awarded the u.s. Navy’s distinguished Public Service Award. His wife, Itsuko Suzuki, a co-director of his company, survives him with their two sons.