The earliest known discovery of the 1946 eruption of T Coronae Borealis was made by A. S. Kamenchuk, an amateur astronomer in the Soviet Far East, on 1946 February 8 at about 19:00 UT. In the following few hours, two independent discoveries were made by British amateur astronomers. N. F. H. Knight, a variable star observer from Surrey, detected the nova on 1946 February 9 at 05:40 UT; correspondence between Knight and W. M. Lindley, Director of the British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section, reveals what might be the first prediction of a future eruption in 2026–’27. A slightly earlier independent discovery, however, has been largely overlooked. This was made on 1946 February 9 at ~01:45 UT by a 15-year-old schoolboy, Michael Woodman, observing from Newport, South Wales, when the nova was of magnitude ~2.0. Although credited as an independent discovery at the time, only scant details appeared in contemporary reports. This paper reconstructs the circumstances of Woodman’s observation from his contemporaneous notes and later recollections and evaluates its significance – alongside the observations of Kamenchuk and Knight – for constraining the earliest phase of the 1946 eruption light curve.