Thomas Coughtrie RIP

Kyt · Oct 18, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4964635.ece

An electrical engineer who during the Second World War was involved in the installation, inspection and maintenance of the 1,000-ton “Whale” floating roadways for the Mulberry Harbours through which Allied military supplies were brought ashore in Normandy to supply the invading armies after D-Day, Tom Coughtrie also earned the gratitude of many thousands of DIY enthusiasts after the war for his invention of the remarkable “Mole” self-grip wrench.

With its combined fixed and movable jaws, which could be clamped with irresistible force on to an object of any width, shape or diameter, thanks to an easily adjustable bolt device in the handle, the “Mole” gave relief to many weary hands and wrists that wrestled with nuts and bolts in awkward, and often dimly lit, situations. At the point where exertions with a normal spanner, or even adjustable spanner, would have to be suspended while the grip of the operator was rested, the Mole could continue to be deployed with impunity. When the job was over it could be unclamped by a simple quick-release lever. Versions of the Mole wrench are still used in households all over the world more than half a century after Coughtrie patented it.

Thomas Robb Coughtrie was born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, into a family of manufacturing electrical engineers in 1917, and educated at Bellshill Academy. After a broad, six-year training, much of it in night school, that covered the structure of cranes and bridges, steelmaking and design and planning in the electrical and mechanical fields, he qualified as a chartered engineer. In 1940, with the war in its second year, he joined the staff of the Chief Inspector of Electrical and Mechanical Equipment, with responsibility for examining all equipment in these categories being built in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In a world war that was a far more technologically complex affair than its predecessor had been, he was, as D-Day drew near, soon inspecting the Mulberry Harbour “Whales”, the floating roadways that were to connect the “Spud” pier heads (which stood on the seabed) to the land. These remarkable structures would prove vital to the success of maintaining the flow of military equipment over the beaches. A highly “hush-hush” notion, they were manufactured locally in secret and then moved to remote coastal areas away from enemy surveillance. Coughtrie was also involved in the degaussing of ships to protect them from magnetic mines, devices that caused havoc in the early years of the war.

In 1947 he became assistant to the joint managing directors — both brothers — of the Birmingham engineering company M. K. Mole and Son, which had been founded in 1835. After the deaths of the two Mole brothers, in 1948 and 1950 respectively, he became managing director. He had already been working on his idea for a self-grip wrench and in 1955 his remarkable device was patented, and did much to underpin the fortunes of Mole and Sons. In 1960 the company relocated to Newport, Monmouthshire, then an area of high unemployment, and Coughtrie invented the slogan “Ship through Newport, the home of the Mole Wrench”. Mole exported its lockable pliers to 60 countries and while the financial benefits came to Coughtrie through the company, the firm did sufficiently well to allow the inventor-manager to own his own Rolls Royce.

Coughtrie played full part in the economic life of South Wales as a director of Cwmbran New Town, and governor of four technical colleges in the area. He became a deputy lieutenant for Gwent (as Monmouthshire had then become) in 1978 and high sheriff of the county in 1981.

He retired from Mole and Sons in the later 1970s and became managing director of his father’s old firm, Cardol Engineering, based outside Newport.

He retained close links with Normandy associations and in June 1944 was invited to a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landings, at Arromanches. There, when identified as the man in charge of examining the “Whales” and passing them as fit for service, he was told by the miliary who had to use them: “We never found a fault.” A copy of his study of the project, Mulberry Harbour “Whales”, published in 1999, is held by the British War Museum.

Coughtrie’s wife Brenda died in 1994 and a daughter also predeceased him. He is survived by a son.

Thomas Coughtrie, electrical engineer, was born on November 25, 1917. He died on August 27, 2008, aged 90
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Antipodean Andy · Oct 19, 2008

Wow. What a legacy. Parts of the Mulberry Harbour can still be seen, IIRC, and he invented vice-grips? Legend. RIP.

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