THROUGHOUT the Second World War the Royal Ordnance factories were prime targets for raids by the Luftwaffe. The enemy’s intention was to disrupt the production of tanks, artillery and weapons of all kinds. But in the period building up to D-Day the urgent necessity to build up huge stocks of munitions in preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy resulted, on occasion, in catastrophic accidents which had nothing to do with enemy action.

Arthur Bywater was the development officer at a Royal Ordnance factory at Kirkby, near Liverpool. Ten thousand workers were engaged in manufacturing, among other munitions, 150,000 anti-tank mine fuses each week. The fuses had a sensitive mechanism and an unusually powerful explosive charge.

On the morning of February 22, 1944, 19 operators, mostly women, were working in one of the buildings filling fuses set out in trays of 25. Around them were other trays, in stacks of 40, holding fuses already filled with explosive or waiting to be filled. At 8.20am one of the fuses exploded, detonating the other 24 in the tray. The girl working at the bench was blown to pieces, and two others were injured, one critically. The roof was torn off the building, which housed 12,000 fuses in all, and the electrical fittings were left hanging in the air.

Aware that another explosion could detonate all the filled fuses and result in massive damage and loss of life, Bywater quickly arranged for the orderly evacuation of the damaged and adjacent buildings. He then undertook to lead a team of three volunteers to examine the fuses, dispose of any found to be defective and move the rest to safety. The team set to work at once, with a February wind howling through holes in the roof and setting up a vibration likely to cause another detonation. By 5pm on the second day 4,000 fuses with faulty strikers — which could easily result in premature detonation — had been identified and moved to a specially prepared burning ground a mile away.

During this work, Bywater found 23 fuses he considered in a critically sensitive state. After ordering his team to safety, he carried each one out of the building and destroyed it individually with a controlled explosion in a nearby sandbagged pit. One fuse was in such an acutely sensitive state that he knew it would explode with the slightest shake. Knowing he would never get it as far as the pit, he carried it on tiptoe from the building, put it in a steel safe with a gun-cotton charge and destroyed it there.

Explosives experts close to the scene rated the chances of Bywater’s surviving the first two days of inspecting and moving the fuses as virtually nil. But he did survive and only when he was certain all danger was past delegated the evacuation to new storage of the great volume of fuses he considered to be safe. For his heroic leadership and disregard for personal safety he was awarded the George Cross.

Seven months after these dramatic events, another explosion occurred at the same factory, causing much greater damage than the February disaster. Bywater again displayed courage and coolness in guiding dazed workers to safety and organising measures to avoid further casualties or damage by subsequent explosions.

His heroism on this occasion was recognised by the award of the George Medal. Although a very small number of servicemen involved in bomb or mine-disposal operations during the war received the George Cross and the George Medal, Arthur Bywater was the only civilian to have been awarded both.

Richard Arthur Samuel Bywater was born in Birmingham in 1913, the third son of Walter Bywater, who was chief clerk in charge of stores for the Austin Motor Company. He was educated at Kings Norton Grammar School, to which he had won a scholarship, and Birmingham University where he took a first in chemistry, and later an MSc.

He married Patricia Fernyhough in 1947. In 1954 they emigrated to Australia, where he helped to set up an ordnance factory in New South Wales. When that contract ended, he made a complete change of career and became general manager of the note printing branch of the Reserve Bank of Australia, in Melbourne. Subsequently he was involved with introducing the Australian decimal currency.

On retirement from the bank in 1976, he and his wife owned a farm of 240 acres on the Murray River, growing wheat and fattening lambs.

In 1980 he and his wife moved to Albury, near Scone in New South Wales, to help their daughter and son-in-law with the management of their dressage business.

He is survived by his wife, and by a son and a daughter.

Arthur Bywater, GC, GM, wartime munitions factory manager, was born on November 3, 1913. He died on April 6, 2005, aged 91.