Chapter Seven

      It was at this time, my cousin Eric, a graduate pilot from Cranwell College was killed. Having qualified and received his wings, he was sent on a flight to Scotland. The weather was poor, his training minimal. He hit a mountain. His death affected me greatly. I was 18 years old, intensely patriotic and full of ideals. There and then, I decided to join the WAAF, the women’s section of the RAF, in the hope of replacing him.

     December 1940, I volunteered and when asked what trade I wanted to join, I said Clerk ‘Special Duties’. I had no idea what this entailed but I had taken the advice of a friend, already a WAAF working in that capacity. She had been unable to tell me more about it as she was covered by the Official Secrets Act but she said ‘Tell them you are good at Maths’. The enrolling officer asked me why I had chosen this branch and that was the answer I gave. This was enough. My name was entered immediately as Clerk Special Duties.

     It took a few months before I received my calling up papers but March 1941 saw me on my way to a new life. Arriving at Innsworth Barracks, Gloucester for initial training, I entered a whole new regimented world. I learned how to salute officers, recognise the different ranks. I learned how to march, what ablutions were, how to pass a kit inspection and a myriad more Air Force requirements. This training lasted a few weeks.

      I found myself amongst a mixed bunch of recruits, debutantes and prostitutes, vicars’ daughters and academics. We all lived together in Nissan huts, heated by an antique boiler in the middle of the room, twenty odd girls, all equally as bemused as I was. I had lived a comparatively safe and sheltered life so imagine my surprise on the second day there to find a new recruit giving birth in the ablutions. This was a month of hell but we got through, helped by a bit humour and a lot of tolerance. After a passing out parade we were separated into our different trades and sent off for special training.

     My Special Duties category turned out to be a Filter Plotter; double Dutch to me at that time. I was sent to Leighton Buzzard for one month’s intensive training. The Special Duties category covered three different types of work. An Operations Room plotter received collated information from the Filter Room, displayed it on a map table from which many defence operations were then initiated. A second category of RADAR Operator implied working on the Chain Home RADAR stations around our coast, using information received by the RADAR equipment which was then passed on to the Filter Room. This was the hub of the whole RADAR system. The category I was allocated to as Filter Plotter was responsible for displaying information from various RADAR stations. This was then swiftly and mathematically estimated and corrected by the Filterer Officers. This important information was then used to identify hostile aircraft, give air raid warnings, initiate fighter interceptions, organise air-sea rescue of ditched air crews, give warning of any aircraft in difficulties who were giving the Mayday or SOS signals.  It was also immediately passed to Royal Observer Corps personnel who then carried on plotting the aircraft overland, using purely visual and sound information. RADAR was in its initial stages and was at that time unable to be used successfully overland due to the interference to readings caused by metal objects, such as church spires and high buildings.

     That was when the world of RADAR, then called Radio Direction Finding (RDF) was revealed. This amazing invention by Watson Watt in 1936 gave our small Air Force the edge over the enemy. It prevented us requiring fighter aircraft continually to patrol the skies, allowing them to scramble only when the enemy was detected approaching our shores. It was invaluable as the RAF was lacking in aircraft in those initial years. And I was to become part of this special organisation, just one small cog in this amazing machine.

     Contacts with home and friends were sparse. I would receive an occasional airgraph letter from George who, I finally learned, had been one of the last people to leave the Dunkirk beaches. He had acted as Beach Master, getting the troops on to boats, organising the evacuation of the injured. It is only in recent years that I have learned that he and a fellow military policeman, being keen rowers, had found a boat and had rowed on ten occasions boatloads of soldiers out to a waiting rescue ship.   

     Finally the ship’s captain had said “No more, lads, we’re full to the gunwales, you jump aboard and we’re off”. He had now been sent overseas again with the 7th Armoured Division to the Middle East, I guessed. From there the occasional air letter he was able to send usually took weeks to arrive.

     But there was no time for worrying in my first month of training as there was so much  to learn and absorb. As trainee Filter Room Plotters, we were sent to Leyton Buzzard to learn the necessary techniques before taking up our positions at a Fighter Group Headquarters Filter Room, as part of the RADAR chain.

     Filter Plotters were connected by telephone to the RADAR operators at our coastal Chain Home stations, who relayed to the Filter Room the grid positions of aircraft around our coast. This information was calculated from the responses on their cathode ray tube screens. This information was then displayed on the map table, showing plan position, height, estimated number of aircraft and whether they were showing identification friend or foe (IFF). Speed was essential as the aircraft were moving all the time. If it was an incoming hostile aircraft, then early warning was essential. Everyone had to work rapidly, accurately and under great pressure.

     After we passed the final test, proving we were both fast and accurate, once again we were all separated and sent off to different Fighter Group Headquarters, where the Filter Rooms were located. There were seven of them, spread around Britain and Northern Ireland. These were the nerve centres which co-ordinated information received from the chain of Radiolocation stations covering the entire coastline of Britain and Northern Ireland. After the plotting of aircraft, the Filter Room Controller, who was notified of all friendly aircraft movements, then identified them as friend or foe. This was passed on to the Operations Rooms which controlled Fighter operations, monitored our bomber raids, initiated air raid warnings and other land and air defences against the Luftwaffe attacks and instigated air sea rescue operations. At all times, speed and accuracy were of paramount importance.

     I was sent to 10 Group Filter Room at Rudloe Manor, a few miles from Bath. We worked underground in cramped and uncomfortable conditions. Air conditioning and heating were very primitive. There was a lot of air activity in this region as it covered the coast from the Isle of Wight to North Wales and there was considerable bombing of the ports and the factories as well as regular Coastal Command patrols looking for U-boats. We usually worked a three watch basis, 8 hours on duty, plus an hour each end to liase with the incoming or outgoing watch, and 14 hours off. After eating, sleeping, doing one’s laundry, having parades and inspections, there was not much time left for other activities. I had an aunt living in Bath and I managed occasional rare visits to her but there were very few chances of much time off. Life consisted of work, sleep, eat and then back on duty.

     By late summer of 1941, I was recommended for a commission by the Wingco, Wing Commander Rudd, a great leader and organiser who ran 10 Group Filter Room superbly. I had previously applied to go for an Intelligence Commission but he said he would block that since Filterer Officers were needed desperately. And this he did.

     When I was sent up to Air Ministry for an Intelligence interview, I was put in a room and left there for over two hours. People looked at me from windows high-up in the room but nobody came. Realising that the Wingco’s message that I was not to be considered had got through, I left without being interviewed and returned to Rudloe, realising I was destined to be a Filterer Officer.

Wartime WAAF

Bridging the Centuries 

By Eileen Younghusband

 In September 1941 I was posted for the necessary technical training as a Filterer. This took place at the famous Bawdsey Manor, the place where Watson Watt had first thought of RDF, (radio direction finding, RADAR’s initial name,) and where he planned the Chain Home stations which were linked around our coast. The training was intense. We had to learn how RADAR worked, know the siting of all the stations to evaluate their accuracy and learn about the ever-increasing new types of detection being designed. New inventions were constantly being made. Each and every one increased our ability to give advance warning or gave assistance to our bomber and fighter crews to perform more accurately.

 Our job was to use the information displayed by the plotters, assimilate and collate it and estimate the correct position of all aircraft from the information displayed by the overlapping RADAR stations.

Speed and accuracy in assessing and estimating the position, direction of flight, height and numbers of aircraft as well as recognising friend or foe was essential. This information had to be instant as the aircraft were constantly moving.

     We were all young women under twenty-one years of age. We were not to have reached the age of caution as instinctive action was needed for the work. There