my war experience

F. Griffiths
dorset
I was born in Birmingham and attended King Edwards’ high school. After taking my school certificate, not wishing to stay on to take my matriculation, I was fortunate enough to be taken on as an apprentice draughts woman. This was unusual in those days (as a female).
My first job was with general electric company, but as the war had started this meant a long journey from home. I decided to work near a home at the Birmingham small arms factory, where the chief production at the time were guns. I was seconded to the air ministry and was placed in a small office with three men where we worked on the Hispomo Swiza, a 20mm cannon which was to be adapted for the spitfires.
Just after this assignment was finished I went into work after a particularly heavy air raid to find a lot of the factory had been demolished. Things were very disorganised and I was sent to Oxford to work on sea mines, air craft, fuse boxes and pressed panels. At one time a few of us were sent to work in an old disused orphanage, it was over run with mice and we had to remove our drawing from the drawing board and place items in metal containers partly because of air raids or the risk of damage by the mice. It was here that I worked on a midget submarine which was so secret that we had to be identified before we were allowed in, working with us was Basil Plaice (a naval officer) who was to be a member of the crew he was supervising the sealing and accessibility of the controls. He received the V.C for his gallantry and our chief draughtsman got an O.B.E. The submarine was involved in the disabling of the Tirpil.
We had a tank in the main factory in which the submarine was lowered to make sure it was water tight and functional. We worked very long hours - a 12 hour day and sometimes many weekends after that I worked on the fuse boxes on the tempest and Typhoon. It was not so interesting - but necessary.
At the time I was sent to Oxford, I was very sad to leave my family at the mercy of the bombing. We lived in a vulnerable area, fortunately they were safe.

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