Not sure if this has been posted here before but quite a good read: (notwithstanding the anti-Hoover slant and stilted narrative).
http://inwa-advisers.com/features/the-bawdwin-mines/Some interesting points I took away:
- Gold had been found in the 7-8th centuries
- From 1412 there are records of silver extraction.
-The initial investors in Hoovers Burma Mines, Railway and Smelting Company were diluted to oblivion and Hoover and his cronies did a dodgy deal to end up with the lot (trust that won't happen here!)
- The Great Chinaman orebody under the historical workings was only discovered in 1913 during the construction of the Tiger tunnel
- Bawdwin didn't really hit its straps as a 'modern' mine until WW1 and after, primarily for metal (lead) supply to the British Govt for munitions
- Peaked at 25,000 workforce
- By 1921, Bawdwin production was 20% of the lead and 15% of the silver produced in the entire British Empire, and 8% of Burma’s total exports
- Rumours of a buried cache of silver (78 mule loads) left by the Burma Corporation, evacuating ahead of the Japanese
- The Bawdwin mine/Namtu infrastructure was actually destroyed during WW2 not by the Japanese but by a British engineer working elsewhere in Myanmar who had been recruited by the British Special Operations Executive to stop it falling into Japanese hands. Subsequent to that the Japanese for the rest of the war only recovered the production level to 20% of the pre-war level.
