Biography of Ralph Bagnold (1896 - 1990)
Ralph
Alger Bagnold (1896 - 1990)
- leading
authority on mechanics of sedimentary transport and eolian (wind effect)
processes and instigator
of the Long Range Desert Group
Ralph Bagnold was born 3 April 1896, the younger brother of Enid
Bagnold the famed playwright and novelist. He was the son of an officer
in the Royal Engineers Regiment. Bagnold was educated at Malvern College
and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and he followed in his father's
footsteps and was commissioned in the Royal Engineers with the rank of
2nd Lieutenant in 1915. He spent three years in the trenches in France.
After First World War service he returned to England in 1919 to study at Gonville and Caius College for the Cambridge Engineering Tripos, where he obtained a degree in Engineering. He resumed his army career in 1921. A posting in Egypt, 1926-1928, instilled in him a fascination with desert exploration. He went on expeditions with fellow officers into Sinai, Transjordan and the Libyan Desert. He then served in Cairo and India and in both of these locations he spent much of his leave exploring the local deserts. One such expedition in 1929 was mounted using Ford Model-T motor vehicles to search for the mythical city of Zerzura in the desert west of the Nile.
He then returned to North Africa to lead expeditions in 1929, 1930 and 1932. In 1934 Bagnold received the Gold Medal of the Royal
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Ralph Bagnold on expedition in
1932
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Geographical Society and in 1935 recounted his desert expeditions in Libyan Sands, "Travel in a dead world". During these expeditions Bagnold became interested in the physics behind the creation and movement of sand dunes.
He is credited with developing a sun compass, which is not affected by the large iron ore deposits found in the desert areas or by metal vehicles as a magnetic compass might be. During the 1930s his group also began the practice of reducing tyre pressure when driving over loose sand. In addition, Bagnold is credited with discovering a method of driving over the large sand dunes found in the "sand seas" of the Libyan Desert. He wrote, "I increased speed... A huge glaring wall of yellow shot up high into the sky. The lorry tipped violently backwards - and we rose as in a lift, smoothly without vibration. We floated up on a yellow cloud. All the accustomed car movements had ceased; only the speedometer told us we were still moving fast. It was incredible..." However, noted Fitzroy Maclean, "too much dash had its penalties. Many of the dunes fell away sharply at the far side and if you arrived at the top at full speed, you were likely to plunge headlong over the precipice...and end up with your truck upside down on top of you."
Bagnold wrote, "Never in our peacetime travels had we imagined that war could ever reach the enormous empty solitudes of the inner desert, walled of by sheer distance, lack of water, and impassable seas of sand dunes. Little did we dream that any of the special equipment and techniques we had evolved for very long-distance travel, and for navigation, would ever be put to serious use."
He is thus generally considered to have been a "pioneer" of desert exploration, an acclaim earned for his activities during the 1930s. These included the first recorded east-west crossing of the Libyan Desert (1932).
He retired from the army in 1935. and began scientific research at Imperial College, London using a home-made wind tunnel. This work culminated in Bagnold's 1941 monograph "The Physics of Blown Sand and desert dune"..
At the outbreak of the Second World War Bagnold was recalled to the army and in 1940 and was commanded to Kenya, but a fortunate accident to his ship near Port Said delayed his passage and led to a meeting with General Wavell that Bagnold requested. He asked permission to create a small motorised mobile scouting force to undertake reconaissance and raids deep into enemy-held territory. Wavell asked him what he would do if he found the Italians were not doing anything in the desert, Bagnold then suggested that his unit might be able to commit acts of "piracy". Bagnold was given six weeks to form his unit under the conditions that any request he might make of "should be met instantly and without question."
He called together his old military explorer colleagues and formed the LRP, which was soon renamed the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). Even though Bagnold soon stepped down from commanding the unit and concentrated on staff work in Cairo, it was his expertise in formulating requirements for the Group's tactics and equipment that enabled LRDG to become one of the most successful special forces units of the war. The LRDG later evolved into the famous Special Air Service Regiment (SAS).
Bagnold received the OBE (Military) for the part he played in establishing the Group and was later promoted to Brigadier. He returned to England in 1944 and left the army at the end of the war.
In 1947 he became Director of Research of the Shell Refining and Marketing Company. He resigned in 1949 to concentrate on research at Imperial College, London into the transport of solids by a stream of water. This led to collaborative work with L.B. Leopold, Head of the Water Resources Division of the US Geological Survey, on the annual rate at which rivers transport solids.
He remained an authority on the transport of blown sand and in 1977 was invited by NASA to be key-note speaker at a meeting on the desert landscapes of Earth and Mars. His 1941 work "The Physics of Blown Sand" was used by NASAin studying sand dunes on Mars. In later years Bagnold also studied patterns of random distributions, work which had its origins in observations made in 1927. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1944.
He died in 1990 aged 94.