Danny digs in deeper.
(follows my #3694 sent 14.4.13.)
However, it was still Monday morning, and I had a pleasant surprise. Bob Schroder must have checked with the Mess and been told that I'd arrived the night before. He came up and tracked me down to SHQ. We went over to our place and he showed me round.
It was gloomy inside, for the protective blast walls cut off a lot of daylight, and of course in the interior we were on artificial light all the time. The offices were on the south outside wall, IIRC, mine on one side of the massive steel external door, my C.O's and Bob's on the other. In the corner past my office was the Battery Charging Room; apparently the equipment needed a lot of low-voltage DC - and, although it had an extractor fan, the acid fumes worked their way down the internal corridor, on the inner side of which was the orderly room, opposite my office.
The core of the building was a large square space in which our simulator Fighter Sector Operations Room was laid out. There cannot be a soul in Britain who is not tired of seeing (on film and TV) the Fighter Plotters with their croupiers' rakes, each busily moving the markers in response to the information fed through their headsets from their "oppos" - the Radar Operators - who would be in front of a (simulated) individual radar display; these had been set up in spaces behind the "Ops Room". The rest of the peripheral space was allotted to radar and radio workshops, a Telephone Exchange, our little "canteen", and the Usual Offices.
Bob told me that the prime purpose of the unit was to train Auxiliary WRAFS in these two trades only. We had a small establishment of Auxiliary Clerks, Nursing and Equipment Assistants, etc, but they would go out to the various sections of the Station and learn their trades by "sitting next to Nelly". These "admin" people from all three units would "muck-in" together - for example, all the Nursing Assistants would be instructed by Dr Ian Stewart (the Auxiliary M.O. of 608 Sqdn). And these ancilliary trades would have Auxiliary NCOs, recruited from ex-war RAF trades. It worked fine.
For the devising, and the maintenance of all our technical equipment, Bob had two first-class technical assistants. They were basically civilian employees, but a condition of their employment was that they should join the Auxiliaries to fill two F/Sgt posts which had been established for the purpose. Both ex-Group 1 tradesman, one a Radio and the other a Radar Fitter, it meant that we had as good as two regular RAF Flight Sergeants.
After our recruits had been kitted-out and medically examined, they did all their basic training in the simulator until they were adjudged ready for the Real Thing. Every Sunday morning a double-decker hired from the Stockton Corporation would take a full load out to RAF Seaton Snook (some miles NE along the coast), and there "down the hole". This was one of the many underground Operations Rooms in the Sector Defence complex, being linked-in to (IIRC) Boulmer and Patrington (?). There they would spend all day with the regular plotters and operators "on the job".
A lot of the time they would be tracking, and doing GCI exercises with Auuxiliary Fighter Squadrons (608 and others), who would be most of the RAF traffic over the North Sea at weekends.
We had no RAF Fighter Control officers on strength, so all the Auxiliary officers' instruction was done by the regular Controllers at Seaton Snook. It is important to realise that there was a strict divide between the Fighter Control "operational dog" and my "administrative tail". For example, I never once went underground at Seaton Snook - for that required a special security clearance which was denied to me on the "need to know" basis.
Paradoxically, this meant that some office clerk or shop assistant who had been recruited a month ago would be issued with this clearance, but I would be turned away by the SPs at the gate on top (the same went for all my Secretarial officers, clerks, drivers, cooks and bottlewashers - and the Station Commander).
Bob Schroder was in charge of all our technical training: all the rest fell to me. and I spent the rest of Monday and Tuesday in the empty HQs, with me asking the questions and Bob trying to provide answers.
On the Wednesday morning all my regulars came in, chief among them Sergeant Watt, my Orderly Room Sergeant, who was to prove as much of a tower of strength to me over the next three years as Sgt. Williams had been on 1340 Flight in India in '44. (I've always been blessed with excellent SNCOs: they are the bedrock of the RAF). A rather lugubrious Scot, he rarely smiled (and I cannot recall ever hearing him laugh), but he was worth his weight in gold to me. With him came a dozen airmen: a couple of clerk/typists and telephonists, an MT driver, a storeman, Radar mechs, one or two others - and of course, the two civilian cum Auxiliary F/Sgts who managed all the technical details and problems with Bob.
Thornaby had a Drill Hall, and it came in useful early in '53 as the venue for the Court Martial of G/Capt Jarman (O.C. Middleton St George), where room had to be found for all the National (and some overseas) Press, their hangers-on and the numerous public attracted by this very interesting cause celèbre.
That's enough for the night,
Cheers, Danny42C
All in the day's work !
Last edited by Danny42C; 18th Apr 2013 at 20:45.
Reason: Add Text.