John MacMillan Stevenson Patton, GC, CBE (29 August 1915- 13 May 1996) was the only Bermuda-born British person to be awarded the George Cross. He was raised in Burlington and Hamilton, Ontario.
At the height of the Battle of Britain when the Hurricane was the principal British fighter aircraft, Lieutenant Patton was a chemical engineering officer in the 1st Battalion, Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers, recently arrived in Britain and based at Boxhill, near Dorking, Surrey. On 21 September, at 8.30 AM when he was leading a team clearing debris at the bomb-damaged Vickers-Armstrongs aircraft factory at Brooklands near Weybridge, a lone Luftwaffe Junkers Ju88 attacked the Hawker Hurricane factory on the South-West side of Brooklands. Two of the three bombs dropped failed to explode and, despite having no previous experience or training of bomb disposal, Patton soon attended the scene. One unexploded bomb was buried under part of the factory floor but another had passed through the main building and ended up on an adjacent hardstanding. Patten decided that the unexploded bomb had to be removed as soon as possible before it damaged the vital factory, so with the help of four others (including his adjutant Captain Douglas W C Cunningham and Vickers Home Guard Section Leader A H Tilyard-Burrows ), he rolled it onto a sheet of corrugated iron and secured it to the back of a 15 cwt truck. While Patton sat on the tailgate of the lorry to watch over the bomb, the driver towed the bomb out onto the aerodrome where it was then rolled very carefully into an existing bomb crater where it subsequently exploded harmlessly the next morning. Patton was awarded the George Cross for his bravery (Cunningham and Tilyard-Burrows were awarded the George Medal) and subsequently served in India and Burma fighting against the Japanese.
After the war, he received Canadian citizenship as a result of his participation with the Royal Canadian Engineers. He was also made an Honorary Member of the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Association. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for public Services to Bermuda on the New Year's Honours List in 1974. He died on 13 May 1996 in Warwick, Bermuda.
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On the morning of 21 September 1940 at about 0830 hours, Hawker Aircraft Factory at Weybridge was attacked by an enemy aircraft. Three bombs were dropped, two of which exploded, doing slight damage. The other, a 500-pound bomb, penetrated the factory roof, passed through a wall at the end and came to rest on the concrete driveway outside the erecting shed, having failed to explode. As the explosion of the bomb at the position where it rested would have caused considerable damage, its immediate removal was a matter of national importance. A messenger from the factory came over to "A" Company, 1 Canadian Pioneer Battalion, Royal Canadian Engineers, to enquire if there was a bomb disposal section in the company. There was not, but Lieutenant Patton at once realized the gravity of the situation and notwithstanding the fact that he had no instruction in or experience of the handling of delayed-action bombs, undertook without hesitation to remove the bomb to a place where the consequences of any explosion would be negligible. Lieutenant Patton, having seen the bomb, sent at once for a truck and a length of cable. Then, obtaining a sheet of corrugated iron he, with the assistance of four volunteers of Hawkers Detachment of the Home Guard - Sergeant Tiller Burrow, W.J. Avery, E.A. Masltn and C. Chaplain - rolled the bomb onto the sheet of corrugated iron and lashed it in place. He then attached the sheet of iron to the truck by means of the cable. Captain Cunnington, temporarily in command of "A: Company, 1 Canadian Pioneer Battalion, who had by this time arrived at the scene, cleared a path for the bomb and undertook to drive the truck to an old crater about 200 yards away, partially filled with water, where it could do no harm. The task was successfully accomplished in little more than half an hour from the time the bomb had fallen. The initiative, leadership and cool courage displayed by Lieutenant Patton were of the highest order, and the promptness of his action combined with the complete disregard of danger displayed by himself, Captain Cunnington, Sergeant Tiller Burrow and Privates Avery, Maslin and Chaplain resulted in the removal of a serious threat to the productive capacity of this aircraft factory. The bomb in question exploded the following morning.
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