179th Tunnelling Company

The 179th Tunnelling Company was one of the tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers created by the British Army during World War I. The tunnelling units were occupied in offensive and defensive mining involving the placing and maintaining of mines under enemy lines, as well as other underground work such as the construction of deep dugouts for troop accommodation, the digging of subways, saps (a narrow trench dug to approach enemy trenches), cable trenches and underground chambers for signals and medical services. 179th Tunnelling Company is particularly known for its role during the Capture of La Boisselle and for the Lochnagar mine during the Battle of the Somme 1916. The Lochnagar mine formed part of a series of seven large and eleven small mines that were placed beneath the German lines.

Background
By January 1915 it had become evident to the BEF at the Western Front that the Germans were mining to a planned system. As the British had failed to develop suitable counter-tactics or underground listening devices before the war, field marshals French and Kitchener agreed to investigate the suitability of forming  British mining units. Following consultations between the Engineer-in-Chief of the BEF, Brigadier George Fowke, and the mining specialist John Norton-Griffiths, the War Office formally approved the tunnelling company scheme on 19 February 1915.

Norton-Griffiths ensured that tunnelling companies numbers 170 to 177 were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915. In the spring of that year, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood, St Eloi and The Bluff which required the deployment of new drafts of tunnellers for several months after the formation of the first eight companies. The lack of suitably experienced men led to some tunnelling companies starting work later than others. The number of units available to the BEF was also restricted by the need to provide effective counter-measures to the German mining activities. To make the tunnels safer and quicker to deploy, the British Army enlisted experienced coal miners, many outside their nominal recruitment policy. The first nine companies, numbers 170 to 178, were each commanded by a regular Royal Engineers officer. These companies each comprised 5 officers and 269 sappers; they were aided by additional infantrymen who were temporarily attached to the tunnellers as required, which almost doubled their numbers. The success of the first tunnelling companies formed under Norton-Griffiths' command led to mining being made a separate branch of the Engineer-in-Chief's office under Major-General S.R. Rice, and the appointment of an 'Inspector of Mines' at the GHQ Saint-Omer office of the Engineer-in-Chief. A second group of tunnelling companies were formed from Welsh miners from the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment, who were attached to the 1st Northumberland Field Company of the Royal Engineers, which was a Territorial unit. The formation of twelve new tunnelling companies, between July and October 1915, helped to bring more men into action in other parts of the Western Front.

Most tunnelling companies were formed under Norton-Griffiths' leadership during 1915, and one more was added in 1916. On 10 September 1915, the British government sent an appeal to Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to raise tunnelling companies in the Dominions of the British Empire. On 17 September, New Zealand became the first Dominion to agree the formation of a tunnelling unit. The New Zealand Tunnelling Company arrived at Plymouth on 3 February 1916 and was deployed to the Western Front in northern France. A Canadian unit was formed from men on the battlefield, plus two other companies trained in Canada and then shipped to France. Three Australian tunnelling companies were formed by March 1916, resulting in 30 tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers being available by the summer of 1916.

The Somme 1915/16
The 179th Tunnelling Company was formed in Third Army area in October 1915 and moved into the Thiepval-La Boisselle sector of the area of the Somme recently taken over by the BEF.

Early attempts at mining by the British on the Western Front had commenced in late 1914 in the soft clay and sandy soils of Flanders. Mining at La Boisselle was in chalk, much harder and requiring different techniques. The German advance had been halted at La Boisselle by French troops on 28 September 1914. There was bitter fighting for possession of the village cemetery, and for farm buildings on the south-western edge of the village known to the Germans as "Granathof" ("Shell Farm"), to the British as "Glory Hole" and to the French as "Ilôt". In December 1914, French engineers began tunnelling beneath the ruins. With the war on the surface at stalemate, both sides continued to probe beneath the opponent's trenches and detonate ever-greater explosive charges. When the British took over the front in August 1915, the French and Germans were working at a depth of 12 m; the size of their charges had reached 3000 kg. The British tunnelling companies extended and deepened the system, first to 24 m and ultimately 30 m. Above ground the infantry occupied trenches just 45 m apart. On 24 July 1915, 174th Tunnelling Company established headquarters at Bray, taking over some 66 shafts at Carnoy, Fricourt, Maricourt and La Boisselle. Around La Boisselle, the Germans had dug defensive transversal tunnels at a depth of about 80 feet (24 metres), parallel to the front line.

In October 1915, the 179th Tunnelling Company began to sink a series of deep shafts in an attempt to forestall German miners who were approaching beneath the British front line. At W Shaft they went down from 30 ft to 80 ft and began to drive two counter-mine tunnels towards the Germans. From the right-hand gallery the sounds of German digging grew steadily louder. On 19 November 1915, 179th Tunnelling Company's commander, Captain Henry Hance, estimated that the Germans were 15 yards away and ordered the mine chamber to be loaded with 6000 lb of explosive. This was completed by midnight from 20–21 November. At 1.30 am on 22 November, the Germans blew their charge, filling the remaining British tunnels with carbon monoxide. Both the right and left tunnels were collapsed, and it was later found that the German blow had detonated the British charge. The wrecked tunnels were gradually re-opened, but about thirty bodies still lie in the tunnels beneath La Boisselle.

At the start of the Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916), La Boisselle stood on the main axis of British attack. The Germans had strongly fortified the cellars of the ruined houses, while the deeply-cratered ground made direct assault on the village impossible. To assist the attack, the British placed two massive mines, known as Y Sap and  Lochnagar, on either flank. (see map).

185th Tunnelling Company started work on the Lochnagar mine on 11 November 1915, and handed the tunnels over to 179th Tunnelling Company in March 1916. Other tunnelling units involved in the Battle of the Somme were the 174th, 178th, 181st, 183rd, and 252nd Tunnelling Companies. For their work on the Lochnagar mine, the tunnellers used bayonets with spliced handles and worked barefoot on a floor covered with sandbags for silence. Flints were carefully prised out of the chalk and laid on the floor; when the bayonet was manipulated two-handed, an assistant caught the dislodged material. Spoil was placed in sandbags and passed hand-by-hand, along a row of miners sitting on the floor and stored along the side of the tunnel, later to be used to tamp the charge. The Lochnagar mine consisted of two chambers with a shared access tunnel (see map). The shaft was sunk in the communication trench called Lochnagar Street. The tunnel was 4.5 × and excavated at a rate of about 18 in per day, until about 1030 ft long. When about 135 feet (41 metres) away from the German Schwabenhöhe strongpoint, the tunnel was forked to form two branches, the end of each branch was then enlarged to form a chamber for the explosives, the chambers being about 60 feet (18 metres) apart and 52 feet (16 metres) deep. The tunnel for the Y Sap mine started in the British front line near where it crossed the Albert to Bapume road, but because of German underground defences it could not be dug in a straight line. About 500 yards (457 metres) were dug into no-mans-land before it turned right for about another 500 yards (457 metres). Lochnagar was loaded with 60000 lb of ammonal, in two charges of 36000 lb and 24000 lb, 60 ft apart and 52 ft deep. Just north of the village, the Y Sap mine was charged with 40600 lb of ammonal. Two additional smaller mines of 8000 lb each, were planted from galleries dug from Inch Street Trench and designed to wreck German tunnels. Communication tunnels were also dug for use immediately after the first attack, but were little used in the end. All of these mines were laid without interference by German miners but as the explosives were placed, German miners could be heard below the Lochnagar and above the Y Sap mines.

The Lochnagar mine was detonated at 7:28 a.m. on 1 July 1916, the first day on the Somme. The explosion was initiated by Captain James Young of the 179th Tunnelling Company, who pressed the switches and observed that the firing had been successful. The two charges of the Lochnagar mine created a single, vast, smooth sided, flat bottom crater measuring some 220 feet (67 metres) diameter excluding the lip, and 450 feet (137 metres) across the full extent of the lip. It had obliterated between 300 and 400 feet (91 and 122 metres) of the German dug-outs, all said to have been full of German troops. At the time, the Lochnagar mine, along with the Y Sap mine, were the largest mines ever detonated. The sound of the blast was considered the loudest man-made noise in history up to that point, with reports suggesting it was heard in London. They would be surpassed a year later by the mines in the Battle of Messines.

Despite their colossal size, the mines failed to help sufficiently neutralise the German defences in La Boisselle. When the 34th Division attacked on 1 July, they suffered the worst losses of any unit on the first day on the Somme. After further costly assaults the ruins of La Boisselle were eventually captured on 4 July.

Fighting returned to the Somme in March 1918 when the Germans retook La Boisselle, only to be forced back in August.

Ypres Salient
In spring of 1917, the unit moved to the Ypres Canal sector near Boezinge where it commenced work on dugouts. The BEF had decided to carry out all operations in the offensive of summer 1917 from deep dugouts. East of the Ypres Canal in the close vicinity of Boezinge there were several dugouts, seven of which were finished by the 173rd or 179th Tunnelling Company. Of these, Yorkshire Trench, Butt 18, Nile Trench and Heading Lane Dugout were double battalion headquarters, Bridge 6 was a brigade headquarters, and Lancashire Farm Dugout contained two battalion and two brigade headquarters. The condition of the ground made digging the deep dugouts extremely difficult and dangerous. Work had to be carried out silently and secretly, facing an observant enemy who was only a few hundred metres away. About 180 dugout sites have been located in the Ypres Salient and in the 1990s some of them were entered, at least in part. Yorkshire Trench and its dugout were rediscovered by amateur archaeologists and systematically excavated in 1998. Although the area is now part of a large industrial estate, the location was opened to the public in 2003 (see aerial photo of the site). Yorkshire Trench is located close to the John McCrae memorial site at Essex Farm.