大象传媒

My father George Haynes, worked as a Costing Clerk at Bristol Aeroplane Company and during his spare time he worked in the Auxiliary Fire Service. The rest of the crew consisted mostly of Mangotsfield Urban District Council workers.

One evening during the Spring they were sent to the Gloucestershire border in a 鈥淒ennis鈥� (a large fire appliance). The crew were in the middle of the countryside in the dark when suddenly they found that a few 鈥楲adies of The Night鈥� came along and propositioned them. When my father declined they melted away into the night as quietly as they came.

My father who was a Quality Controller was transferred down to Banwell, near Weston-Super-Mare. This was where they manufactured a Tempest aircraft, (made for small pilots). My father could get into the cockpit. He could agree whether the Plexi-glass cockpit cover was good enough for the aircraft. If there was a blemish he would have to have it removed and a replacement put in its place, before the aircraft was deemed airworthy.

I remember we had communal air raid shelters in Coronation Road in Downend, where we lived. We pulled back the gas curtain 鈥� a very thick hairy blanket, which had been sprayed with a chemical to absorb gas. Gas warfare was a very real worry in those terrible days, as people remembered the gas warfare of the Great War only twenty years or so earlier. A German aircraft was flying very low and close to us, and I waved, and the Observer waved back to our embarrassment, and fortunately they continued on their way.

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