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While I was at RAF Bentley Priory we were on Naval shift hours, which were an variation of the formal naval shift hours, which were:
0001 — 0400 hours
0400 — 0800 hours
0800 — 1200 hours
1200 — 1600 hours
1600 — 1800 hours
1800 — 2000 hours
2000 — 0001 hours.
The operations room was manned 24 hours each day. We had 3 watches to cover the 24 hours, two female and one male watch. I rose to the dizzy height of Corporal, and then Sergeant on the watch. I seem to remember we had about 45-50 on each watch. As Sergeant, I could choose whom I worked along side. We carried an extra 7 personnel on each watch to allow a day off each week, but if someone was ill, then the day off came less frequently, that caused quite a lot of problems. We had one girl who used to pretend she was ill, in fact she used to look awful. She used make up to appear ill and report sick which in turn meant that someone else was being ‘done out’ of their day off. When it was found out that she ‘was putting it on’ she had a wretched time.

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