In 1937 I was still at high school with the Advanced School Certificate coming up and studying French, German and English. I passed the Higher School Certificate and my last years at school were interesting because a select few of us went back in the evenings to fire watch and listen to my German teacher play the cello.

I had joined the Air Cadets and the Local Defence Volunteers, later to become the Home Guard, My brother had been shipped down to the Masonic School in the South and I volunteered for the RAF, while my sister joined the army and later served in Ceylon. I went to RAF boot camp and was then sent to Glasgow Tech where we went through an intensive course in Electricity and Magnetism. There was a commonality about us all in the fact that we all were used to absorbing knowledge rapidly.

I was so scared of failing the course and being transferred to guard duty that I passed out quite well and was then sent South to do another intensive course on something not then known as radar. I was then posted to Deerness Orkney CHL (Chain Home - Low) station. After a bit I was sent to learn what was highly secret over and above a lot of other very secret stuff! After I had absorbed a heck of a lot with no relation to French, German and English, I went to a very small mobile unit up on the cliffs at Beachy Head, Eastbourne.

Our unit first went to have the standard wartime white lines painted on our vehicles, and we then went aboard an LCT and landed at Arromanches, where we were greeted eagerly by the rest of the unit who had crossed earlier and were very anxious because we had all the unit food with us. So when we made our way through the Netherlands and eastward, we were all on a tight ration. Our unit was almost swept aside in the Battle of the Bulge, as we were very close to a place in Belgium called Malmdey. Without a certain American Military Policeman telling us to “Get that **** crap offa the road!” we might well have been captured. As it was we were turned around smartly and hared off the way we had just come, as fast as the towed trailers would go…

Then the war was over and I ended up on the Central Germany Gee Chain (a navigation system initially developed as an aid to RAF bombers, but latterly used just for civil aircraft navigation after WW2)at a place called Winterberg. I spent a very pleasant time there until my demob came up and I was accorded a very unusual ride home from Frankfurt in a Lancaster. This was apparently a gesture of thanks from all the air crews who had made such good use of the navaids.

After I was demobbed I went into a labour exchange to see about a job. The guy behind the hatch asked what my qualifications were, and when I said I had School Certificate and Higher School Certificate he ignored that and asked again what qualifications I had. I think he was looking for bricklaying or plumbing or some such worthy trades. I vowed never to go into a labour exchange again, and I never did.

I had been demobbed virtually penniless from the RAF after HM Customs took my last £80 because I’d declared a Voigtlander camera that I had won the chance to buy in Germany. I could not even begin to think of anything but getting a job to provide some support for my mother, my Dad having sadly passed away in 1939.

I saw an advert from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and applied for a post as a Radio Technician. The time rolled on and I heard no offer so I managed to go down to London and went into their offices to ask why. The chap I saw apologised and said they hadn’t got down to my application yet, but since I had come all the way down from Liverpool, he put my application on the top of the pile! Sure enough I was hired and I heaved a huge sigh of relief.

I went first to Manchester (Ringway) Airport and I think I was known then as a Radio Mechanic. After a while I spent a couple of short tours of duty at London Airport and another time at a small remote station as leave relief. From Ringway I spent some time at Liverpool at the Northern Divisional Maintenance Unit before being sent to Bushmills in N. Ireland. Afterwards I became STO Nutts Corner (Belfast) Airport and subsequently, as a SATE, went to take charge of the new long range radar station at Ventnor, IOW. From Ventnor I was sent to Divisional HQ in Edinburgh, where a chance meeting led to my marriage to Anne and my emigration to Canada, having retired from CAA three years early.

(During those long years, apart from learning some new systems like the Bushmills Consol station, I determined to improve on those wretched qualifications and I set about taking exam after exam, first with City & Guilds and then with Ordinary and Higher National Certificates. As a result of that I managed to get accepted for membership of the Royal Aeronautical Society and through them I got my much-longed-for C.Eng.)

On arrival in Canada at Christmas 1980, I was offered a job with a telecoms company and started work as a technical editor on 13th January 1981. After about ten years the company was taken over by Northern Telecom (Nortel) and I retired for the second time when they realised that I was way over their retirement age!

Finally, I am delighted for this chance to tell my story and would be even more delighted if there are some hardy souls out there still who remember me and would care to get in touch via John Langley (johnvl@talktalk.net)

And finally, an anecdote from Bill’s time at Ventnor Radar.
The primary radar there was a Marconi 264AH. Like all primary radars it suffered 'permanent echoes' (PEs) - returns from local buildings, distant hills, etc that if left unprocessed would interfere with wanted echoes from aircraft within range of the system. Fortunately there was a technical solution whereby a delay line was used that would compare fixed and moving targets and cancel out those returns from fixed objects.
One year the annual overhaul of the system was due which involved inter alia changing the distilled water in the delay line. The maintenance team from TEE Gatwick who were in charge of the work went down to a local garage in Ventnor to purchase a large carboy of distilled water which they used to fill up the delay line. Work completed, off they went back to Gatwick.

Over a period of following weeks we had increasing complaints from ATC at LATCC about the poor radar pictures we were sending to them - too many PEs were appearing on their radar screens. After much head scratching at our end it was found that the distilled water from the local garage had been contaminated by battery acid that was eating into the highly polished brass reflectors used within the delay line to process the radar echoes. Bill was furious and rapidly organised a replacement delay line to get the system back to serviceable state. To prevent further disruption from use of contaminated water he had a notice placed in Station Standing Orders to the effect that in future any water put into the precious delay line must have been passed by him!

Big guffaws all round...
(Apparently the delay lines were also a nice way of keeping your meat pies warm since the water was heated to ensure a constant time delay, Ed