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Victoria Cross

Gordon Angus Mackinlay

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

re the gentleman‘s cooments that the material which states the metal the VCs are made from is just a pile of slag. Well!!

Having been to Hancock‘s the company which manufactures the VC (amongst many other items) in 1999 in Britain. Shown the safe in which the metal is contained, it is in twelve pound pieces, which quite obviously have been cut from a guns barrel. The items actually have a NATO Stores Stock Number (of the 13 digit variety) with a designation of (I think) "Metal, Manufacturing, bronzed, 12lb lumps".

When they manufacture VCs, they cut a one pound piece off, this is melted down and a casting of ten VCs is manufactured. Each rough casting is then hand finished to the highest standards by a commercial jewellry tradesman, each completed VC is unique, and its measurements and identifying marks are recorded. Not all ten casts are acceptable, and those not being up to Handcocks extremely high standards are destroyed (metal not reused).

The actual current ‘lumps‘ were tested a number of years ago, and the metalurgists concluded that the metal structure was consistant with Chinese pre-1850 manufacturing. It would appear that it was a weapon captured in the 1860 China War, whilst the original VCs were manufactured from Russian cannon, some time in the twentieth century the original stock ran out. Ancedotal evidence points to there having been some 10 or 12 Russian barrels used, but, due to flaws in the metal content a lot was disposed of.

Soldier Magazine ran a article on the subject a number of years ago, with interesting photos of the various items.

Handcocks when a VC is prepared for issue, have all of the relevent details of the items completed manufacture ie naming and the individual structure of the VC recorded.

The VC for Canada has actually been manufactured, apart from the initial manufacture proof items.

Yours,
Jock in Sydney
 
From The Times (of London) 11 Nov 2002
November 11, 2002

Oldest holders and history of VC
From Mr Russell Vallance

Sir, In the Birthdays section of the Register (November 5) you noted the 88th birthday of Richard Annand, VC, and said that he was the now the oldest surviving holder of the decoration. In fact Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously while with the Somaliland Camel Corps after it was believed he had been killed in action, turned 90 last month. Colonel Wilson had been badly injured and was suffering from malaria. He was taken prisoner by the Italians but freed when the prison guards fled in the face of advancing Allied Forces.
The article went on to say that the Victoria Cross “is cast from metal taken from a pair of Russian guns captured in the Crimean War. There is enough metal left to make a further 85 VCs.” Queen Victoria took a personal interest in the design of the medal and it may have been her suggestion that captured Russian guns be the source of the metal.

However, the person detailed to visit Woolwich cut it from the cascables of a pair of Chinese cannons possibly captured by the Russians. Hancock’s, the manufacturers of the VC, found that it was impractical to stamp the Chinese metal, so the medal was sandcast and given a processed bronze finish. The Chinese metal is now in the custody of the Royal Logistics Corps The original cannons from which the metal was cut still exist and are on display in Woolwich. Since 85 VCs should suffice for many years to come, a future generation of museum curators can decide on the ethics of whether further metal should be cut from the VC guns.

Yours faithfully,
RUSSELL VALLANCE,
Firepower Royal Artillery Museum,
The Royal Arsenal,
Woolwich, SE18 6ST.
russellv@firepower.org.uk
November 6.
 
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