EXPLOSIVES experts based at Shrivenham have teamed up with the BBC to produce a historic documentary on the Battle of Jutland.

Producers approached Cranfield University’s Defence and Security School, based at the Defence Academy site, to make use of their facilities which are unique for any civilian organisation in the UK.

The documentary, Battle of Jutland: The Navy’s Bloodiest Day, aired earlier this month on BBC2 and is still proving popular on the BBC iPlayer.

Presenters, historian Dan Snow and engineer Shini Somara, were looking for a way to demonstrate how the structure of the ships involved in the battle impacted on the number of casualties suffered when they were attacked.

Trevor Lawrence, director of operations at Cranfield's Ordnance Test and Evaluation Centre, said: “Over the years we’ve been involved in various TV programmes, it’s something we do as standard.

“Quite often when a TV programme needs some sort of scientific expertise around explosives, Cranfield is one of their first ports of call.

“This is a unique facility, it’s the only military firing range owned by a university in the country and quite possibly the world.”

The Defence and Security School has extensive facilities at Shrivenham including a professionally staffed explosives range and a license to produce explosive materials.

In addition they have their own explosives facility at the world-renowned Salisbury Plain army firing range – it was this unique environment that the BBC team came to work in for the Jutland programme.

Trevor, who has been with Cranfield for 11 years but previously worked as a British Army bomb disposal officer, explained: “That bit of filming took all day and it was a pretty long day too.

“There is quite a lot of planning that goes into organising it all beforehand and we have to build the various bits and pieces we are going to use.

“The presenters were there for the whole day, they seemed to enjoy themselves – I don’t think Dan Snow wanted to leave.”

In the programme, Snow and Somara can be seen watching on in awe as the team set off explosions to replicate what happened at Jutland.

After seeing the explosion in real time, they were able to use the advanced set up at the range, in particular slow motion hi-res cameras, to analyse exactly what happened.

Trevor added: “We’ve got cameras that will go up to 1 million frames per second.

“The technology is now so good that high speed photography is one of our best diagnostic tools.

“We use it for demonstrations but also of course for Masters and PhD research.”

The Jutland documentary will be available online until June 28.