1945 Radar Trials

WW2 LETTERS — 1945
My father, Ron Taylor, was working on radar development for TRE, based in Malvern, and testing equipment at various air and naval bases. I am not sure whether it was aircraft or naval radar he was testing at Holyhead.

Naval Base, Holyhead
29/3/1945

Dear Molly,

Arrived without incident on Tuesday night. Yesterday the weather was useless, so in the afternoon, Meakin, ‘that woman’, & I visited the station at Llandudno. Later we had a meal in the town and went to see “Rainbow Island” with Dorothy Lamour and much colour but little clothing. I can hardly wait to go out East.
The mess at Mona is a shocking place; dispersed, no hot water, elementary sanitation and a dining room rather like a British Restaurant.
Today the weather was again hopeless so we all visited the Naval base at Holyhead, where our co-operation in some other trials was requested.
As a result we are dining and sleeping here from now on. (“TW” is with friends). We are hoping for better weather tomorrow but do not look like finishing before Sunday.
How is Ann; there will not be time for you to write so I shall probably ring up one night, (when you are out) to find out.
Hope you and Val are all right; Vernon will presumably suffer from the Easter travel ban ………
I had a piece of pigeon on Llandudno and have been in great haste numbers of times today starting at 6.00 am, as a result. It must have been a very bad pigeon.
Hope to be better weather tomorrow, or flying will be very difficult.
Love to both, Ron

Naval Base, Holyhead, Anglesey
1/4/1945

This has been a most depressing expedition; and we have now abandoned anything further. The weather here is appalling, but the aircraft managed to get off about a couple of hours ago to return to Defford, as conditions are much better inland.
This afternoon I have to go to Llandudno (ALONE) to see their results and will set off for Malvern tomorrow morning.
I can think of worse ways of spending Easter Sunday than messing about on top of Gt Ormes Head in a howling gale and driving rain, but that’s no consolation.
Still the war in Europe really seems to be approaching the end; Germany, even with a last stand, cannot recover now. Side by side with the cheering war news, however, is the announcement of the possible postponement of the San Francisco conference and talk of “difficulties” and disagreements.
Russia proposes to send a very junior representative and is insisting on the Lublin Polish government being represented.
I have finished “The Apple Cart” and it seems to be a picture of Edwards abdication written long before it occurred, but perhaps I have read more into it than is justified.
Peter Scott used to stay in the ward-room here and has painted his well-known pictures on the walls, thus considerably improving the internal appearance of a Nissen hut.
I may be able to get some eggs on the return journey; if so will pack them and send them to you. As usual the food here is very good indeed…which reminds me that it is lunch time and I am very hungry.
Love to both, Ron

2 Ingleside, Hanley Terrace, Malvern
23/4/1945

I got your letter this morning and was glad to hear that you were both keeping well.
Things are working out awkwardly as usual; the next session at Llandudno starts on Thursday and lasts til the following Friday (9 days). I have to spend 2 or 3 days up there at least …….
I would suggest that you returned to Newport first and I could spend a night there before we returned to Malvern. I don’t know how this fits in with Hereford; could we call there on the way back?
I looked up the trains from Porthcawl on a Sunday and find they are pretty hopeless…..
In spite of the war news it is still an urgent problem and may have unpleasant repercussions on people like your brothers, so we are continuing to put a good deal of effort into it…
I listened to Howard Marshall describing the final lifting of the black-out in London this evening. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t mind living on the outskirts of the “big city” again. With good holidays (including a boat), it has much to recommend it.

2 Ingleside, Hanley Terrace, Malvern
15/5/1945

I had a very satisfactory journey back on time, and spent half-an-hour in the office before going home.
Yesterday was a glorious rush — meeting at 9.00 am — left for London at 10.20, meeting 2.30 — 5.00 arrived back in office 8.56 for meeting at 9.00 pm.
Things are happening pretty fast at the moment; the programme for which we have been working, that is the group I formed after Ann was born (July 1943), is apparently to be cancelled on Friday! Others are being cut down and confusion is all around.
Touch has returned from America and I saw him for an hour this morning. In his view the Americans do not want us in the Far East and they have already cut off the Jap forces in Burma and Malay, kindly leaving it to us to do the mopping up and face-saving at Singapore.
Our Naval and Fleet Air Arm forces are finding it difficult to obtain bases and the Australian theatre, the Americans having control of both the location of such bases and of the manpower with which to equip them.
(Eddie) Bowen is apparently pretty depressed about this and is visiting England in June or July.
More mundane but extremely interesting is the fact that he and (Gerald) Touch are arranging a joint claim for all members (approx. seven) of the original Bawdsey airborne group in respect of the patents on the basic systems we evolved. There are apparently a number of precedents for this, but what it will amount to I cannot guess. Possibly the odd £100.
Touch has also suggested to Sir Robert Watson-Watt & Lewis that I should go to the States to study a new technique which is being evolved there, before the exchange of information ceases.
Apparently Lewis’ reply was that I had been booked for the other job I mentioned to you last week.
In the meantime I am having an important session with the F.A.A. on Friday regarding the drastic reduction of our Far East programme and will of course raise in a definite manner the Australian question.
Further, Denis Taylor still expects me in India in the Autumn.
So WHAT!
Having read the Penguin on China I am full of enthusiasm for learning Chinese and offering my services (for the odd £1000 a year) to them. This is probably a little impractical.
…… I am sending the case by passenger train today.
I hope you don’t mind my spending what time I get here this week-end, but I really have to catch up with my usual collection of jobs (film prints, car, boat etc) and I won’t have much chance for a bit.
Love to both, Ron.

Wardroom, HMS Bee (?) Holyhead, Anglesey
17/5/1945

As I have told you the B.S.A. is now sold, for £110, and was taken to Swindon on Friday night, I think. It really looked quite smart by the time I had finished it, and was running well.
Your mother will be pleased about the arrival of a girl — is Vernon getting better all right? ….. Will Vernon’s move to Worcester affect Valerie as far as sharing Gowanlea is concerned? I hope not as I feel that the present arrangement is a good thing and I hope you are still keen on it.

28/5/45
Sorry I did not get this finished but I am sharing a cabin with Hunter, the A.S.E. man who is co-operating with us in these trials, and he discusses the results until far into the night.
The whole thing here has been very successful and we are practically finished. I have to be in London on Wednesday afternoon and Friday for policy meetings.
I have had a trip in an MTB on a practice torpedo shot. We also dropped a couple of depth charges to blow up some fish for supper, but unfortunately one of the depth charges did not go off so we could not go back to look for the fish.
What did Elaine weigh and has everyone decided who she is like yet? Did they want a girl. I believe you said they both did.
I shall probably ring you before Thursday to confirm giving notice on that day …. I’m glad to hear everything is all right with you and that Ann is keeping fit. Give her my love; I hope she’s looking forward to having a brother*. Do you want me to take any action about furniture removal or any other matters!
Love to all three, Ron
*He must have been disappointed - it was a sister!

29/5/45
Arrived back tonight sooner, for once, than expected. I have to be in London by 3 tomorrow.
Correspondence from Hereford CC and Worcs CC shows that confusion has set in about the hospital arrangements. The HCC say that they have noted that your home address is Malvern, and therefore their services are not available. The WCC say that they have received a copy of Scholefield’s report and ask you to attend the Malvern Link clinic on Tuesday 5/6/45 to make arrangements for the confinement in Worcester. I have written off to Scholefield, enclosing the HCC letter, and asked him what can be done about it. I have stated that we want him to handle it in Hereford and that we have made arrangements to that effect……
Very many thanks for all your letters and for handling the arrangements; it certainly appears that the bungalow will be working to capacity during July & August.
I hope to find out more about my future in the next few days; I have turned down the ABL proposition.
Love to all, Ron

There is a long gap in the letters during which I was born on 14 July 1945 in Hereford Hospital. My mother, sister Ann, mother’s sister Valerie and daughter Branwen Elaine, born May 1945, and I went to live in a bungalow in Porthcawl. We moved to Felixstowe in January (?) 1946.

Officers’ Mess, R.A.F. Malvern
18/8/45
I am going away on Wednesday not to Burscough but to Gosport, near Portsmouth, to which station the squadron concerned has just moved.
You may or may not have noticed the “story of radar” appearing in the papers during the last two or three days (including photographs in the Mirror!). The (Malvern) Gazette this week is, of course, full of it, with “now of Malvern” tacked on to the O.B.E.s etc. To amuse you, I tried to get a copy, but failed.
Temporarily the place is bathed in a warm glow of self-satisfied publicity; the broadcast programme is at 9.30 pm on Monday.
Naturally the accounts do not include comments on how T.R.E. failed to solve the housing problem, how it left the wives of its employees cooped up in wretched flats with the husbands quite often away, or, at best, only at home in the evenings; how it kept some of the more struggling types so busy that they failed to find the right friends and social activities. Perhaps that side could be told more amusingly along the lines of an Evelyn Waugh novel?
I have got Warren’s radio-gram into working order and it is certainly quite a good outfit.
No reply has yet been received from B.S.A. re the engine for the Scout and Rawford’s cannot prophesy whether they will be able to do anything for me.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.