Discusses his unit and a plane crash during the war

1942, I were Twenty, 20 years of age.

What were you doing before the war?
I worked in a food warehouse, in Huddersfield.

Did you write stories?
Not in those days, no. I didn't have a story to tell, but everybody has got a story to tell of some shape or form. And somebody can see a thing and they'll tell you one thing and ask somebody else and they have a different story. So out of all these people here, they'll all probably have different stories to tell from me apart from same main things, because when some of the things happened they were sleeping, this is because during the actual war, abroad in Germany, France, Belgium. France, Belgium, Holland and Germany you were probably sleeping, so out of the men a third would be on duty the other two-thirds would be doing something else.

How many people from your unit died in World War 2? Do you know?
Er I think there was just 1 and that was a road accident, on a motorbike. We were very fortunate, although we were quite near to the front line, we had to be just that little bit further back and we were very mobile. And I have come to the conclusion that the Germans didn't know that we were there. Or else they were very busy at other things. Because ssshh we were very secretive - radar.

What unit were you in?
Er. 15-054. Now 15 is the type of equipment and 54 was the 54th unit and it was a FDP - a Forward Director Post. And we had very secret equipment, maybe a little bit 'Heath Robinson', but it was very valuable, we could, couldn't operate on the front line because we would probably be destroyed and that would have been the whole thing Kaput! The Germans were finished you see, so we had to be about 3 miles back from the front line, and when the front line moved up, we moved up. And the Forward Director Post - that means to say we picked up the radar responses from the aircraft and we passed all the information back to 83 Group Control Centre and they controlled the fi- the pilots - the fighter pilots where to go but sometimes if we had a big move up. We made two one was about 120 miles that we moved up. At one time we moved 208 miles up, the Germans were pulling back that fast that we had to run to keep up with them. All Right? And so then that means that the Headquarters were that far behind, too far behind for controlling the planes, so we used to take over the job and - and at Grossoeuvre, we were in charge of all the fighters in that area and there was 700 sorties - every time a plane takes off it's a sortie. And at Maelsbroek - that was the aerodrome for Brussels - that was a great time was that - they - we had 813 sorties, and that was great. And when we got to site 9 which was Wauberg in Belgium up the eastern part of Belgium we recorded a 161 flying bombs. Have you seen a flying bomb?

Theres a flying bomb.
That was the engine at the back, and there is nobody pilot, nobody flying in it as you say a plane with explosives in. And that engine used to hear pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop that how easy tell - hear from ordinary planes cos they used to prrrrrr, amazing.

How many people were in your unit?
About 82. But at other times we used to have er what it used to be a light warning system, it was a radar type but is wasn't as big as ours, but it could look underneath, and we used to have wireless operators, wireless mechanics, radar operators, radar mechanics, em MT, transport, cooks and a GD or two.

Did a plane every crash or that?
Did a plane ever crash near us? Who's been telling you little stories. Eh.

That sounds like a good story to me?
Right thats a good one, its funny you should say that.
At Wauberg in Belgium we were there over the Christmas an the New Year.
Theres Wauberg where we were er that's the place. We were there. All right. And this was the German radar station and they went out. Now we used to go round and shoot their radars up, but as I said before, perhaps they didn't know where we were and this was er we used to sleep in tents, but this was the winter of 44-45 and it was a bit severe and so the CO Squadron leader Kemp and decided to have this, and this was the main road, and a side road up coming in to by this, and this was the building like a letter T and there was the cookhouse, the dining room and they had a stage here, and these were all the little - were we used to sleep and these are the stoves. And there was a ditch round there. Now - one day - it's in this this one over here this Typhoon crashed there and it split open with the cockpit like that there. All right. And squa -Tom Watson - Tom Watson - that's the boy there. He was the LUA who went out and got the pilot and he wasn't a - I think he was a sergeant or a flight sergeant and he gave him a cup of tea and the pilot says Right lets away from this plane as usually when they crash they burst into flames. Now if that plane had been 2 degrees further it would have been on the hut. And anybody that was sleeping on duty, off duty, they would have been killed.