I'm 30, live with my Grandmother.

Ben Dover · Jun 1, 2017

Ben Dover said: ↑

I live with my grandmother (maternal)... It's just me and my grandmother in this house, she's 92 this year and is still out and about...
She signed up to join the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) when she was 16, 17 because, when she was 17, 18, she'd be conscripted anyway, and thus, wanted a say in the matter and took it upon herself to join the WAAF.
She served at radar stations, met my Grandfather who also worked in radar, he actually went over to Germany a week or 2 after the D Day landings, my grandmother being from a grammar school had a well to do job for the RAF as a WAAF, she also plotted the D-Day landings and the Battle of Britain... She would know all about air traffic control.
I could ask her when she comes home.
My grandmother's from London, London girl, before she joined up, she got bombed out twice!.. and... She was actually raised in Essex and went to a posh grammar school out there where she studied under a scholarship she got in her 11+, before returning to London just before war broke out.
She met my grandfather in her service, he was working on radar... Was a smart guy, I never met him and he passed away in 2000. He was from Birmingham way (Sutton Coldfield) from a family with roots in Stratford-Upon-Avon... Wound up in Brighton in the end; They were both stationed in Devon or Cornwall (somewhere that way), so it's because of the war, I am. - They had my mother in 1946... She be a baby boomer. My father was actually born in February 1939, so, actually before WWII in Britain. - That side of the family were slightly too old to see active service though my grandfather did do something...
I just forget what... I think it was involved with flares, signals, lighting something up, I honestly have no clue, so the only WWII I know in my family is that living connection I have with my maternal Grandmother. - Who, as I say, could probably answer all those questions OP has.
I know; Because she was stationed in the South, she was under General Eisenhower's command...
My grandmother saw blips on the screen and then did sums to work out things like it's location, it's altitude, where it was going, how fast it was going; all by a blip on a screen - She'd work out trajectories, write down the coordinates and hand them to someone who'd go and run what my grandmother wrote down along to the people who were by a big map charting it all.
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Ben Dover said: ↑

I just spoke to my grandmother, asked her all about it;
I've now deduced that she had a screen with a line on it that represented a 180 mile/200 mile radius, and would go on watch duty with 7 other people, and they would each alternate the roles, and sitting in front of the glass screen was a duty that they didn't encourage for more than an hour at a time, and there was a computer that done the coordinates, and, if it ever broke down, my grandmother and everybody was trained to work them out... You have a line, and a circle... at one end of the line it's 180 miles away, at the bottom, it's over your head... Then another dial you operate with your left hand would alter it and give you the bearing and... Then someone else fed that along into a computer and this information was passed from the people on watch duty by phone (everyone's wearing headphones) to the people by the map, with the sticks... and up on a higher level physically looking down at this big map with people charting it with sticks were the officers, who were in direct communication with the pilots and knew who was meant to be up in the air and where; So my grandmother had to do watch duty, from when she was 18 to the end of the war, 1942 - 1945, and so, was too young to plot the Battle of Britain (but she did get bombed out in Balham when that happened, or Bermondsey - she got bombed out twice, in those 2 places), but did plot D-Day - She said, the pilots also had a system on board called the IFF that they'd switch on if they were in distress, and when that happened it would show up on the screen as a big square and you knew if that square vanished/it went down in the sea or somewhere.
She also said there was other radar stations all across England and the officers got information from them all and drew a line directly in the middle and that was the most accurate way to determine where a H (hostile) was; and that some stories of these big birds of the Welsh coast that was known to show up on radar out there and where she was in Cornwall, they didn't see any doodlebugs (bombs) coming in.
I like talking to my grandmother, 92 years old this July and talks like she's a teenager again when she talks about it.
The OP asked about, how did they track allied air movements... I asked my grandmother, she said, anything like that flooded her screen, there was no way to determine an aircraft's line on her screen from another, so when that happened, the whole screen literally went white with all the lines, but then she said; the officers who were in direct communication with the pilots over the radio did all that stuff.
Also, my grandfather worked on... Something that was coming out then, because, what my grandmother used was rather rudimentary even the Navy had better sonar then those guys at the time, what with the map on the screen, and their low-dar (low radar) ability too... Was developing that signal that allows aeroplanes to navigate using a signal (like auto pilot does today) - my grandfather helped develop the thing that guided the aeroplane's path in WWII.
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My Grandmother was invited to attend a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on the 30th of May 2017 to meet Prince Harry.
She was introduced to Prince Harry as being on Radar Watch on D Day.
He said she looked very pretty and noticed her dress skirt and those two carried on some WAF/RAF banter that the Prince knew about as soon as he saw her WAF skirt, and noticed she was the only woman her group too. WWII Veterans.

This was yesterday;

toki2 · Jun 1, 2017

You must have been very proud to escort such a grand lady.

Otto · Jun 1, 2017

A great lady there Ben.

Pleased to see some WWII content from your side as well.

Ben Dover · Jun 1, 2017

toki2 said: ↑

You must have been very proud to escort such a grand lady.
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Thank you.
We had our fun.
I was touched when big men in uniform jumped to help my grandmother with the steps, and those Air Force women in the garden who doted on my Nan.
We made friends, met a lot of people from the organisation who selected my grandmother, and well, when the Prince called my Nan pretty - That made my day.

Ben Dover · Jun 1, 2017

Otto said: ↑

A great lady there Ben.

Pleased to see some WWII content from your side as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I love my grandmother..
She is great.

Thank you.

Ken The Kanuck · Jun 1, 2017

A suggestion, I am very happy I taped recorded my mom, father inlaw and some other WWII veterans. They lived through interesting times, it is good to hear their voices again.

Now they have digital recorders.

KTK

Ben Dover · Jun 1, 2017

My grandmother only served for 3 years.
After the war, she took advantage of this emergency teaching scheme and became a school teacher and is a retired school teacher.
Education is her passion.
And well...

This is my Nan doing what she loves at a local school in 2010..

Here she's teaching kids about the war.
(In uniform). (The same dress her and the Prince had an in joke about the other day).

Ben Dover · Jun 2, 2017

Before she joined the WAAF, she was a librarian in the Blitz.
She joined when she was 17 because the country was at war and would have forced her when she was 18 so, she joined the WAAF.

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I'm 30, live with my Grandmother.

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