Stewart Blacker

Lieutenant-Colonel Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker OBE (1887–1964) was a British Army officer and inventor of weapons.

He invented the Blacker Bombard, laid the basis of the PIAT - both based on the spigot mortar - and the Ayre Petard. The Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot-mortar was developed from the Blacker Bombard.

A descendent of Valentine Blacker (1778–1823), he was born in Cheshire to Major Latham Blacker of the Indian Army. He was educated at Cheltenham College and Bedford School, before going to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. After passing out from the college in 1907, he was commissioned into the Indian Army himself. He served in Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Russia, earning several mentions in dispatches. He served with the 69th Punjabis, Queen's Own Corps of Guides, and 57th Wilde's Rifles.

He had learned to fly in 1911, receiving Certificate No. 121 from the Royal Aero Club. At the start of the First World War he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down and wounded in 1915, 1916 and 1917. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1921 for his service in Persia.

After the war he set himself up as a private developer of weapons funding his own research. He served on the Imperial General Staff between 1924 and 1928. After retiring from the Indian Army as a Major in 1932, he was commissioned into the 58th (Home Counties) Field Brigade, Royal Artillery (Territorial Army).

In 1933 he was with the Lady Houston-funded expedition to fly over Mount Everest. He organized the event with Colonel Etherton and was the chief observer., writing a book First over Everest.

At the start of the Second World War he was a Lieutenant-Colonel. He took his weapons to his contacts at the War Office and was introduced to Major Millis Jefferis who engaged him and sent him to Coates Castle at Coates, West Sussex from where his Blacker Bombard, a Spigot Mortar was developed. It was adopted briefly by the British army before it was redeployed for use with the Home Guard.

Later one of his experimental guns based on the same principle was developed further by Jefferis and entered service as the PIAT for which he received £25,000.

Blacker retired from the TA in October 1942.

Published works

 * On Secret Patrol in High Asia. London: John Murray, 1922.