Richard Valentine Moore, GC, CBE (14 February 1916 – 25 April 2003)[1] was an officer of Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who was awarded the George Cross for the "great gallantry and undaunted devotion to duty" he showed in rendering mines safe during the Blitz of 1940 despite having "no practical training".
Seventeen failed to explode and Sub-Lieutenant Moore and Lieutenant Commander Dick Ryan of the Royal Navy's Torpedo and Mining School at Portsmouth volunteered to deal with them.
Moore, working alongside Chief Petty Officer George Wheeler, examined one of the unexploded bombs with a very damaged fuse ring which could not be removed.
He saw action in support of the Eighth Army in the coastal waters of North Africa and during Operation Vigorous, when Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian tried to fight a relief convoy through to Malta.
After being involved in the Navy's support for the Allied landings in Sicily, Salerno and Anzio, Moore served as deputy director of Torpedoes and Mining on the Admiralty delegation in Washington, D.C. for the last year of the war.
When Georgi Malenkov, the Russian energy minister, was shown round the Calder Hall plant in 1956, it was Moore, by then chief design engineer, who assured the press that care had been taken not to tell him either the station's output or commercial value.