Loch Striven and its Secret Weapons

During the Second World War, Loch Striven in western Scotland was used for testing several of Britain’s secret weapons, the most notable of them being the X-craft midget submarines and the Highball ‘bouncing bomb’, the latter being the smaller version of the Upkeep mine used against the Ruhr dams in the famous Dambuster raid of May 1943. Whereas several specimens of the Upkeep have been recovered since the war, over the years only one complete Highball was recovered. However, although the latter was earmarked to go to a museum, this did not happen and therefore there was no complete Highball on permanent display anywhere. Also, no Highball had ever been raised from Loch Striven, the site of its main trials ... that is not until our author Iain Murray initiated an undertaking to do so. In July 2017, after much planning and preparation, two Highballs were successfully lifted off the bottom of the loch.