Thanks to everyone for the most amazing response to the launch of the website, and my asking for stories and anecdotes and pictures. Plus I’ve heard from those of you who already have an historic interest and have written books and run websites that mark this amazing radar story. And about the people- parents and […]
Category: Uncategorized
Barry Symonds shares his story
My (not particularly exciting) story is simply that during the nineteen eighties, on several occasions I escorted a number of teenage apprentices on visits to an adventure experience trip to Dorset. One of the centres that we used had a large display board on the wall explaining that the building had been used to examine […]
Sheila Crosby remembers Andrew (Andy) Smart
Sheila Crosby writes: – Hi Anne. My dad was Andrew (Andy) Smart. He was conscripted to join TRE in 1943, cutting short his studies at Glasgow University. He arrived on the train with two other Scots – Allan Young and Alex Young. He was to work on Airborne Intercept and H2S Navigation and Bombing Radar. […]
Remembering Geoff Tootill
Peter Tootill writes: – Hi Anne, My father also worked on radar at TRE during the war. His name was Geoff Tootill (he died in 2017). I don’t remember him mentioning Jimmy Diamond but I expect they would have known each other. Dad worked on Beaufighter radar (AI Mk VIII, I seem to remember) and […]
Heroes of a different hue.
Where I grew up, me and my friends knew that it wasn’t carrots that made you see in the dark. It was radar. We knew it was a wartime myth made up by Churchill to protect the lives of our very families in WW2. Because it was our dads, and also many mums, who developed […]
And what about the Americans?
BRILLIANT BOFFINS! -the extraordinary, brainy, and often oddball men and women of Malvern. There were lots of them in Malvern from time to time, because of the huge US camp (near Hanley Swan?) My mother became briefly engaged to a handsome young US Army captain, a medical student working in a MASH unit, who took […]
Does anyone remember this chap?
BRILLIANT BOFFINS! -the extraordinary, brainy, and often oddball men and women of Malvern One well-known scientist was an ordinary family bloke during the week but dressed very bizarrely at weekends and used to walk through the town with a shopping basket on his head and his children tethered by rope behind him. As you’d probably […]
Karen Burt (nee Hilsum) – Brilliant Boffin
BRILLIANT BOFFINS! -the extraordinary, brainy, and often oddball men and women of Malvern The story of radar and Malvern isn’t just about the men though – there were many brilliant women too. One such was Joan Cullen, who invented “WINDOW”. (The Americans later dubbed it “chaff”). One of my best friends at Hillside school was […]
Joan Curran – Brilliant Boffin
BRILLIANT BOFFINS! -the extraordinary, brainy, and often oddball men and women of Malvern The story of radar and Malvern isn’t just about the men though – there were many brilliant women too. One such was Joan Cullen, who invented “WINDOW”. (The Americans later dubbed it “chaff”). She got a BSc from Cambridge before they ever […]
The unbelievable Truths
Radar and Malvern’s Secret Scientists The country’s Telecommunications and Radar Establishment (TRE) came to Malvern in May 1942 Two thousand scientists and their families had to be accommodated in Malvern virtually overnight. They lived either in a large former hotel in the centre of Malvern, or were billeted with families. For a while the Winter […]