dogle,
"Quocunque jeceris stabit" ! (And whatever you chuck
on it, it seems to stand up just as well, too). Thanks for the link - I never knew there was so much going on there during the war, apart from the fact that there was a training establishment of some sort at Jurby, and also an internment camp on the Island for (mostly harmless) "enemy aliens", but then I was away for most of the time. I can offer comment on your story and the Andreas Gliding Club history (they must have got some grand "orographic" lift off N.Barrule with the wind in the north).
Your long departed family members showed good taste in their choice of resort. Pre-war, the I.O.M. was a lovely place (provided you kept clear of Douglas - and if you liked Blackpool, you might like that, too) * Former Naval Persons seemed to drift naturally to the Island: ours was an old P.O. Signaller called Tom Onley, and he held a ten-year old boy spellbound with nautical tales which I now suspect were akin to those told by "Uncle Albert" in a later generation. For years after I kept an old code book which he had given me, and could describe to you, at the drop of a hat, the details of the pennant of a Rear-Admiral in the 1912 Argentinian Navy (should you wish to know).
Never did fresh-caught mackerel and blackcurrent tarts with cream taste so good - or the roar of the dawn TT practices (as they pulled away from the Ramsey hairpin up the mountain road) sound so exciting to a bike-mad lad. And the miles that the old chap and I (and dog "Barney") rambled through the glens (Glen Auldyn was unspoilt then), and over the hills. As some were 1800-footers, they probably claimed victims in the War. Pity about the St.Andreas church, though - they should've put the tower back, I think.
Don't know much about aerial activity. A couple of RAF "Saro" flying boats alighted in Ramsey Bay one year in the late '30s (the local boatmen made a fortune from folk wanting to go and have a look). Defence of Liverpool was no great shakes - I remember seeing a (
PR ?) Me 110 sauntering unhindered N. up the Mersey one afternoon in '42 when I was on Embarkation Leave.
Eheu fugaces......Danny
Note * : '
Ware incoming ! 