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During the early 1930s, I was in the Merchant Navy where I trained as a volunteer. I got out of that in about 1936 and ended up in Coventry where, before the war, I worked on Whitley bombers. When the war began, I was at work transferring and re-commissioning equipment from the RAF for use by the Fleet Air Arm. This chiefly involved testing transmitters.

At about this time, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ advertised for an engineer. One of the four engineers at the Adderley Park Transmitter (situated about 2 miles from New Street Station) had gone to join the RAF Reserve and they needed to appoint another to take his place. As the bombing raids on Coventry had increased, I realised I might soon be out of a job at the hangars and so I applied to the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

I was told to report to 282 Broad Street, Birmingham, on a Thursday in November 1940. In between being told to report and actually going for the interview, Coventry suffered its heaviest raid on 14 November 1940. When I turned up, I was told that Adderley Park Transmitter had also been hit and destroyed. Three engineers were killed that night; their names are now on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ War Memorial which is in the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s offices at The Mailbox.

So there I was at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ offices with no job to go to. The Controller said to me ‘Go and sit in the Control Room and I’ll phone London’. Whether he did or not I don’t know but when he came back he offered me a job in Birmingham which I took. I moved to a house in Frederick Street and worked as a studio engineer for the rest of the war.

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