大象传媒

Early in the New Year 1941 the section moved to the Racecourse Site Derby and stayed there for a year.

George had been at racecourse site about 2 or 3 months when he was promoted to Lance Sergeant and was the GPO Ack for that section: ((this promotion was a consequence of the departure of the two Wilson brothers from Northern Ireland and some others to form a new Battery. (An established battery threw off a cadre of 4 officers and about 6 sgts to form a new battery. George was nearly moved on himself for this when a further new battery was formed later.)))

There was a smoke screen which was used on clear nights to protect Derby from bombing. They were all down the middle of Osmaston Park Rd, for instance. However the burners would sometimes go on fire. It produced a very unpleasant atmosphere to live in with zero visibility. There were some alongside the racecourse gun site, and this produced unbelievable visibility reports on these clear moonlit nights!

At this time George was involved in creating the "Drill for Enemy Engagement Unseen with Radar" using Modified Sperry Predictor (see separate entry), which resulted in doiung some practice with it at Manorbier.

On his return from Manorbier, George was promoted to Full Sergeant. Lance Sgt is an acting Sgt - in Royal Artillery it has a significance: in infantry there is no visual difference between Lance Sgt and Sgt, but in RA Lance Sgt had 3 stripes: Full Sgt (substantive) wore a gun above the stripes. "Getting your gun" was the substantive step.

The Derby Racecourse Plotting School

After they had devised the drill and other things for night engagements, George personally set up a plotting room and little a training place and teams of command post personnel came from all over the 2nd division area (whole of the South-east of England except for London). George ran the course in between doing active service as well. It had a curious effect: George was supposed to have gone for an Officer Selection Interview, which some how or other was conveniently forgotten at Regimental HQ. They decided George was too useful. Also Tom Parry, the section officer, was getting browned off too. He was the senior subaltern in Regiment. When the Colonel was on leave George and Parry's names went in to form a new battery. One thing the commanders did was to send forward the people they did not want.

But their names went in, Parry was to go as Q Captain (i.e. quartermaster - senior of the 2 captains in battery), but he would only go if George could go as his quartermaster (i.e. promotion to Staff Sergeant), and one of the other Sergeants as the Battery Sergeant Major. When Colonel came back there was hell to play and he tore the whole thing up, and sent another set of people off. This rebounded on him because he sent off these dregs, and they posted the battery back to his Regiment. This repercussed further on George: the Colonel rang up our battery one day to the battery office and asked to speak to George personally: not to the Site Commander but to George. They were advocating that every man on the battery must be duplicated, and in particular George was teaching this on this course. He asked "Have you got an operational command post detachment if you and a detachment are detached from your site?" The answer to the Colonel had to be yes: couldn't say anything else. He said "Right, get your detachment together, and get them to pack their kits, and I want them to move tomorrow". George thought this a bit odd, a direct order from the Colonel to George. George said "Does Captain Riddle Know?". He said "I'll tell him when I've told you what I want". George knew the Colonel quite well by this time, he was very unpleasant - nobody liked him. George did not like him, but knew him. He said "I want you down at the site at Sinfin tomorrow morning, and you're to take operational control of the site. Neither the site commander nor his deputy knows anything about these drills." These were 2 of the men he had sent away. They had come back - a half battery and they did not know a thing about fire control. He said George was to train a detachment, and when they are trained these other men George took with him could come back. So George went with the detachment. George's own command post were not very pleased as they had to work a skeleton system.

At Sinfin, there were some George could train fairly quickly, some jobs were fairly straightforward. But one job, the operator of the circular slide rule, was more difficult. They had a circular slide rule used to convert the angle and the slant range into height. This had to be done every 10 secs as we plotted in order to get the right answer. Not only the height was needed, but also the ground range every 10 secs. This meant swinging the slide rule first one way then the other. George got all the others back, and eventually the slide rule operator, a chap called Jones, he went back. They also wanted George back on the racecourse, but the 2 in command on the Sinfin site wanted to keep George as long as they could on their site, which was a bit of an embarrassing position: George was a Sergeant and the 2 in charge were commissioned officers, but George was running the fighting side of the site. There was one thing George found pleasant. There was a Sergeant called Jack Marshall who was in charge of the radar. It was one of the radar plotting sites for Derby's defence. Jack had been on the racecourse site at one stage and George and he had got to know each other. When George arrived he had said he was thankful George had come - "at least we have got someone who knows what is happening". "What about your radar detachment?" "They are as green as the rest, except for a Lance Bombadier". He was one of the early sergeants dealing with radar. When George was in the command post and the radar was on, at least he was talking to Jack and knew what was happening.

Eventually George decided they knew what to do - at least their Sergeant Ack I GPO Ack knew something about it. When he knew the Command post stuff inside, all the ones outside had to do was shout "engage" and "fire". They ought to know what to do. It was almost a reversal under night firing of the normal: the GPO was outside controlling the guns from the information which came from the plotting side whereas in daytime firing the GPO Ack only took orders from what the GPO could either see of the target or what the visual instruments were doing and he told the GPO Ack to carry out the drills. But at night the plotter bloke was the one who really knew what was going on.))

At the racecourse, they were patted on the back once for spotting a plane and giving it as unidentified as it was flying at 33000ft. and had every characteristic of a Wellington (normal ceiling 28,000ft.) but had in-line engines instead of radials. In fact it was a Wellington Experimental with Rolls Royce engines in it, flying from Hucknall. No one had been told, and ours was only site that had spotted it in the whole area. George (who was an artist in civilian life) had very acute sight and could see things invisible to other people.

George went on various training courses (nothing very special) while at the Racecourse

(as told to his son in 1990)

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