As a brief sideline from Franek's fascinating posts, here are more childhood memories from the 1940s RAF: anyone remember the Tannoy in those faroff days before pagers and mobile phones? Massive steel horns were installed on buildings and hangars around the station, while inside featured big wooden boxes with the Tannoy logo in fretwork across the speaker aperture. Messages were broadcast from station headquarters and if the wind was in the right direction could be faintly heard at Binbrook school a mile away.
At RAF North Coates in 1948, used for families awaiting MQ at Binbrook on our return from India, a couple of horns were installed on corner houses at each end of the Patch although Coastal Command and its Beaufighters had left two years before. Sixty years ago the families were clearly in need of a morale booster, so a record of the RAF March on a scratchy windup gramophone in front of the microphone was played at full volume at 0900 every Saturday morning.