Stewart Blacker
British Army officer (1887–1964)
Lieutenant-Colonel Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker OBE (1 October 1887 – 19 April 1964) was a British Army officer and inventor of weapons; he invented the Blacker Bombard, from which was developed the Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot-mortar – and laid the basis of the PIAT anti-tank weapon.
A descendant of Valentine Blacker (1778–1823), he was born in Cheshire to Major Latham Charles Miller Blacker of the Royal Artillery. He was educated at Cheltenham College and Bedford School, before going to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After passing out from Sandhurst in 1907, he was commissioned initially on to the Unattached List of the Indian Army and was subsequently admitted.
He served in Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Russia, earning several mentions in dispatches. He served with the 69th Punjabis, Queen's Own Corps of Guides, and 57th Wilde's Rifles.
Blacker had learned to fly in 1911, receiving Certificate No. 121 from the Royal Aero Club, and at the start of the First World War he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down and wounded in 1915, 1916 and 1917. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1921 for his service in Persia.
The public source identifies “Stewart Blacker” as british Army officer (1887–1964). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Stewart, Blacker and British.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7615730. VIAF identifies the subject as 19359734. The Library of Congress control number is no2003009118. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1964, 1778 and 1823.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stewart Blacker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.