The secret activities of the several research establishments in and around Orford, on the Suffolk coast, during the early years of the Second World War and the startling rumours they engendered were current then and in subsequent years. It was believed that fearsome weapons, intended primarily for defence, were being developed, including one in which a network of pipes, extending some distance offshore, enabling ‘a petroleum inferno’, or flame barrage, to be released on the sea in order to defend beaches in the event of invasion. Numbers of sappers were said to have met accidental and horrific deaths as the weapon was developed. Eyewitnesses claimed to have seen charred bodies apparently contorted with pain, lying on the beach, while others floated out at sea. It was also claimed that they were Germans wearing British uniforms, part of an invading force caught in a sea of flame.
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