大象传媒

By 1943 ground radar stations in the UK were run by regional Wings under the control of No 60 Group, which had its headquarters at Leighton Buzzard. The Group's personnel staff took the ban on my serving in hot climates too literally for my liking and posted me, with effect from 1 Jan 1944, as Senior Technical Officer of No 70 Wing, at Inverness; it was a Wing Commander's post. Fuel for heating was strictly rationed, I was short of thick clothing and I had no coupons to permit me to buy more, so I found the Scottish winter appallingly cold. 70 Wing covered a larger area than any other and was responsible for the radar stations in Scotland, the Northern and Western Isles, and Northern Ireland. There were about 30 stations, most of them CH or CHL, but also a few G (or Gee) stations, which operated in chains of three, not to detect aircraft but to provide navigational aid for friendly aircraft. There was very little enemy activity. The one consolation was that I could borrow a Percival Proctor aircraft and use it for visits of inspection. However, by March, 1944, I was finding service in the UK very boring after the pressure of work that I had been used to overseas.

By then it was obvious that the Allies would invade Europe in 1944, so I reminded 60 Group that I was their only technical Wing Commander with experience of operating a radar station in France. I then learnt that Allied plans called for aircraft-detection and fighter-control radar stations in North-Western Europe to come under the control of 2nd Tactical Air Force, but that 60 Group would provide a wing, No 72, to run G-stations and give technical support to stations of two other types, Oboe and GH, that enabled aircraft to drop their bombs fairly accurately even when the target could not be seen. Oboe was regularly used to control aircraft of the Pathfinder Force that dropped the target indicators on which the main stream bombers attempted to drop their bombs. In both systems the ground stations worked in pairs. With GH the aircraft sent out radio pulses which the ground stations received, amplified and returned; the time intervals indicated to the aircraft its distance from each station. With Oboe the ground stations sent out pulses that were received, amplified and returned by the aircraft; by this means the pilot kept the aircraft at a constant distance from one station, flying along the perimeter of a circle centred on the station, and the navigator released the target indicator when told to do so by a controller at the other station. The Oboe controllers belonged to the Pathfinder Force. Oboe and GH were not expected to be needed in France until well after D-day, because the Pathfinder aircraft could operate under the control of stations in the UK until there was an appreciable advantage to be gained from the use of stations on the Continent. I was posted as Chief Technical Officer of 72 Wing and attached temporarily to HQ 60 Group, to familiarise myself with the plans and equipment for 72 Wing.

While I was there another requirement arose. The Allied invasion of Sicily, in 1943, had almost been a disaster: it was the first operation in which American troop-carrier aircraft took part and at the critical time a violent storm blew up. One C47 aircraft even landed in Malta, the pilot thinking he was in Sicily. Many of the glider-borne and parachute troops were dropped at the wrong place in Sicily, many others were dropped in the sea and drowned. But in 1944 a landing in the south of France was being planned and the Allied commander, wishing to make sure that there could not be a repetition of the events in Sicily, demanded Gee navigational-aid cover for the dropping zones, which were to be near Toulon. 72 Wing was to provide this cover, using light-weight, man-transportable Gee equipment. To achieve maximum navigational accuracy over the dropping zones it was desirable to place the three G-stations (a) on a hilltop near Calvi, on the west coast of Corsica, (b) on top of Asinara, an island off north-west Sardinia, and (c) on a mountain in Provence. The Special Operations Executive assured us that site (c) could be held by French maquisards for at least 24 hours, which should be all that would be required. I should fly the equipment there in a glider towed by a C47. However, the proposal for (c) was vetoed on the grounds of signals security and in the event the third station was put in a technically less suitable position, on top of a mountain in the north of Corsica, near Cap Corse.

Two Douglas Dakota aircraft took us from Twinwood Farm, near Bedford, via Cornwall, Gibraltar and Algiers to Caserta (Naples), the headquarters of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, and then on to Lido di Roma, where the US 51st Troop Carrier Wing was based. An American C47 aircraft then flew us over the sites provisionally chosen for the Gee-stations, so that we could inspect them from the air, a necessary precaution as the most up-to-date maps of Corsica that had been available were those made by Napoleon's surveyors. They appeared suitable, so we made the usual second check, on the ground. Transport to the site near Calvi presented no difficulty, as a jeep appeared to be standard equipment in USAAF C47s, for use on arrival at the destination; but a jeep was of no use for getting to the island of Asinara from the nearest aerodrome, Alghero, in north-west Sardinia. However, I had noticed some Supermarine Walrus amphibian biplanes, with Free French markings, on the ground as we came in to land at Alghero, so I appealed for help to the French officer in command of them. Nothing would induce him to order one of his aircraft to fly during the sacred, meal-time hours between noon and 1400h but he did agree to detail his most junior pilot to take me there after that. It had been a penal colony under Mussolini, and on arrival I had to listen to a speech of welcome by the mayor, translated into French by his schoolteacher daughter, and I had to make a brief reply in French, but I eventually reached the highest point on the island and found it suitable for the G-station. Takeoff from the harbour at Asinara was nearly a disaster, the pilot having evidently misjudged either the width of the harbour or the height of the breakwater, but we eventually got back to Alghero and later made a night-landing at Lido di Roma, among the sand-dunes. Unconventional transport was used also for getting the equipment up to the site near Cap Corse. As we approached it by air I had noticed what appeared to be French army barracks near the base of the mountain. Remembering, from 1939, that where the French army was to be found there were usually some mules not far away, I called on the colonel. There followed, over several glasses of wine, a conversation that proved difficult until I discovered that the French for mule is mulet. He promised to provide a dozen, to be at the base of the mountain at 1400h the next day. They turned up at 1500h, but any help was appreciated.

It had been decreed, for reasons of signals security, that the Gee-stations were not to come on the air until the troop-carriers were half-way across the sea on their way to the dropping zones in the south of France. The Gee-chain had to work accurately first time, or not at all. If it had worked, but erroneously, the troops would have been dropped in the wrong place and the whole operation a disaster. A B17 bomber equipped with Gee was therefore already airborne when the troop-carriers took off, and when the Gee-chain came on the air the readings predicted for a point on Elba were compared with those observed when the aircraft was over that point. They agreed, so evidently the Gee-chain was operating correctly and the troop-carriers would not be misled. It was just as well that Gee had been provided: when the troop-carriers reached the positions of the dropping zones as indicated by Gee, they found them covered by mist. They circled for two hours before dropping the troops, but fortunately the Luftwaffe did not interfere.

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