The Day the Sun Disappeared'

This is a true, historical novel of the day the peaceful farming villages on the border of Staffordshire and Derbyshire were rocked by a terrific explosion of 4,000 tons of explosives stored, by the RAF, in old alabaster mines, under the fields. The day was 27 November 1944. The Air Ministry were using the mines to store and re-arm bombs before sending them out for the war effort against the Nazis. The explosion sent up a mushroom-like cloud, miles into the air, taking with it earth, alabaster, farmland, cattle and trees that blocked out the sun, and finally descended in a treacherous rain that shattered buildings. The explosion was so huge it was recorded on a seismograph as far away as Geneva.

I relate the true reports by local PC Tom Mackay and the heroic rescue attempts by the emergency services and coal mining rescue teams to try to save people trapped underground. before deadly gas could get to them, or by the flooding from a shattered nearby reservoir.. Men had to scramble for their lives or die in the pitch-black gas-filled crater, that would be their coffin. Many died, who had been working in the RAF store or the nearby alabaster mines,.

The explosion left a crater the size of six football pitches - one farm having disappeared into the crater in its entirety.

Families were struggling to survive, with no wages coming in. I have obtained stories from families who lived through those sad, dark days, some who, after all these years, have found it distressing to relate.

The RAF enquiry was covered up, via the Official Secrets Act, for another 30 years but it is a story of catastrophic and resounding proportion, a story of a make-do-and-mend attitude by the RAF to enable the bombs to be got out in record time, to try to end the war, leading to mistakes and short-cuts that should never have happened