Thomas Peirson Frank: an unsung hero of the London Blitz

In May 2025, to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, the Post Office has issued a new set of stamps, the Valour & Victory collection. This commemorates some of the forgotten heroes of WWII, including those who worked so courageously during the horrors of the Blitz. One of these people was Thomas Peirson Frank, a name that is not well known, even in London, the city he served with such singular distinction.

However, archaeologists working on the Thames foreshore and in the London Metropolitan Archives have researched and revealed one of the many aspects of Thomas Peirson Frank’s 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 UCL’s 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. 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 work of the LCC’s Emergency Repair teams.

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.

Peirson Frank’s’ 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.

He 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 -  Gustav Milne, The Thames at War: Saving London from the Blitz (Pen & Sword). 

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Gustav Milne is a British Archaeologist, writer and TV contributor who has led the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN) project and the earlier Thames Discovery Programme.