大象传媒

During the war an Alarm Control Room was set up at Civic House situated at the top end of Great Charles Street.The purpose of this room was to keep factories working when enemy action was near but not iniment.The room was connected to a large number of places involved in essential war work ie production of amunition guns ,aircraft ect.By a bank of switches was when activated would show at the various places a White Red or Purple light.These were operated by the alarm controllers..The room had a large table in the form of a map divided into one inch sqares in blocks of twenty five all the blocks were numbered,The plotters sat at the four coners each recieving plots of planes flying over the mapped out Area from the Royal Observer Corp.The plotters had to build up the galows wich showed the height number of planes a plot id and the direction of flight.at the top of each galow was a slot to take a plastic disk with a v cut into it if this was showing it was a visual plot otherwise a Radar one.The disks were coloured Red Green Blue and yellow these corisponded with colurs on the clock every two and a half minutes.This was duplicated with the central Block that was of opaque glass illumunated by the four colours.By this means the controllers could see if a plot was up to date .
I was the youngest plotter due to a mistake made in my age this was only discovered after I had been sworn in on the Official Secrets Act and had been trained as a plotter .We were recruited from The 491 Squadron of the Air Training Corp based in Albert Road Handsworth.I was a part time plotter from 1942 till the end of the war.The only name that I can remember was that of a Mr.Tandy a Jewller of 122 Vyse Street then Spencer Street.
At then end of the war we were told that we were all going to get a medal with the Royal Observer Corp this never came to fruition.
William H.N.Fleming