Canadians in Radar
A Collaborative Oral History of World War II Veterans
proudly presented by
The Secrets of Radar Museum
Preparing for Duty: Training in Radar
Individuals who enlisted to serve as radar personnel did so without being fully informed of what their duties would entail. Due to the secretive and sensitive nature of their work, they would only be granted access to this information upon completing an intensive training course. Often these individuals were simply told that a background in radio communication or electronics would be helpful. Potential radar mechanics and operators first had to complete a technical training course and pass a written exam, which were both rigorous and challenging as many students failed and did not proceed to complete their training. Canadian radar personnel interviewed for this project completed training in Clinton, Ontario, or elsewhere in Canada and the United Kingdom. Training was ongoing throughout the war as new radar technologies were improved and developed.
Art Bamford
Art Bamford: I studied all that kind of stuff and was in that kind of business.
Interviewer: You were working with radio before the war?
AB: Not directly with radio, but you know, general electrical theories and stuff. And so, as I say, an awful lot of guys struggled away and I was doing remarkably well on the exams, as I say, because it was a cup of tea for me.
Janet Bates
Janet Bates: When I went for the actual interview with the WAAF officer, she said “We’re looking for people to work in RDF,” and I said, “Well, what’s RDF?” - which was the original name of radar, Radio Direction Finding. And she said “You’ve had a good schooling, you’ve had a year at university, we want to send you on this course.” So I said “That’s fine. I can do it, I’ll do it.” So then I got sent to Cranwell, which was the radar training station on the east coast of England. The course was six weeks, but it’s so far back I can’t remember. And I supposed I passed.
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Interviewer: What sort of rules were there for women, in terms of behavior and appearance?
Janet Bates: Well, you always had to keep your cap on, of course. Except you could take it off to go in to church. Yes, I remember that. And always be neat and tidy, and you know, make sure that hair wasn’t touching the collar. And of course there was always parade inspections and you had to look straight ahead and hope to god she didn’t say “Hey woman, get your hair cut!” I know I wore mine, because I had it fairly long, I just put a ribbon around. Some of them used to use a shoelace and then tucked it in as a roll around the back so that it wasn’t touching the collar.
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Interviewer: So when did you find out about radar? Did people know that radar existed before you became an operator?
Janet Bates: No.
I: So when they said “We need RDF operators” you didn’t know what that meant?
JB: No, it was such a sad world. “What is it?” “Well, you’ll be sent on a course …”
I: “… and you’ll find out later.”
JB: Yeah. See we had to swear the national security act that we wouldn’t talk about it.
I: And was that a fifty year oath as well? The same as the men?
JB: Yep, yeah. So, well I mean, if it got blabbed, I suppose the Germans had radar. We can’t kid ourselves. But especially when you were on offensive, it was very, very … you had to be very, very careful because they all often used to say that maybe you go into a pub and have one too many and start blabbing “Oh, I’ve got to go on duty because there’s an operation tonight!” Well, you never knew who was sitting around, there could be a spy or what have you. So they warned you that you’ve just got to watch what you’re saying.
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Joseph Lesley Brown
Interviewer: How did you become involved in radar?
Joseph Lesley Brown: Well, at the time, people were joining the services and I thought the Air Force would be good, and I went on a preliminary, while still a civilian, course in Toronto, and just learned general electronics and from that I was selected to go into the Air Force, into radar.
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Joseph Lesley Brown: Eventually we, a lot of us, boarded a train in Toronto and we needed up in Clinton. And we were very impressed with the set up there. The barracks were, well of course they were brand new, they were lovely barracks. And we soon started off on our airborne equipment training and I managed to get myself put on a charge whilst I was there. I was charged with negligence of the king’s property.
Interviewer: What did you do?
JLB: We had summer uniforms that were light brown uniforms and I inadvertently left my pass into the secret compound in my tunic pockets and sent it to the cleaners. They discovered it and sent it right back to the CO and that’s how I got put on a charge. I got three days confined to barracks. I had to cut a lot of grass and polish a lot of floors in the hospital. But I got over that.
I: And how did you like Clinton?
JLB: Loved it, just loved it. One of our number who was somewhat older than the rest of us, a musician by training I think, anyway, he started up a choir and I’d been in a church choir prior to that and so thought “Oh yes, I’ll join this choir,” so that was great fun. \one Sunday morning, we were the choir in the local church. Afterwards we were invited out by various members of the congregation to come have Sunday lunch. Which was very nice. I loved Clinton, it was great fun, comradery just… everybody speaks of that, that was excellent.
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Donald Harrett
Donald Harrett: I was called up in the army and had two months army training. After two months I decided I’d rather fly than walk, so I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. So the guy enlisted me, said, “You’d be good in this special radio that we have.” I didn’t know a thing about radio so they sent me to college for five months to learn all about radio. Hey, I got good at it! I even made my own radio! After five months of radio work, they sent me to a special school that they called radar. It was at Clinton, Ontario and we were there for two months. Supposed to learn all that you needed to know about one set of radar.
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Charlie Jackson
Charlie Jackson: I was thinking about trying to find a job, knowing of course, that I would be conscripted if I didn’t volunteer for something. And I was talking to the electrical teacher at … I was trying to find a job of course, the best I could get was about ten dollars a week, and for a full forty-some odd hour week. And I was talking to Mr. John Simpson, who had been teaching us electricity, and he said, “Well, they’re offering a course in… an elementary course in electronics at the university. Why don’t you just try that out for the fun of it?” And I ... so I applied to that and twenty of us managed to get into it and we didn’t know how long the course was going to be. It was sort of at anybody’s convenience and by the time we’d finished they recomended that the best thing we could do was join the Air Force. They couldn’t tell us why, but the idea was that we would join the Air Force and they would take care of us. Well, the recruiting officer didn’t know why we’d joined either. And, in my case of course, I wore glasses, so I couldn’t go in for one of the famous air crew positions, had to be ground crew. And five of us joined up all together and we went to Manning Depot out west and of course the idea was that if you’re an easterner you went out west, far away from home, so that that wouldn’t be much of an influence on you. And you’d be at… right under the influence of the disciplinarians and so on at the Air force. And all the westerners went east, to Toronto. And they didn’t know what to do with us when we got out west. They signed us up as operators and …so we spent, I think, two or three months at the Manning Depot out in Dauphin, Manitoba.
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Interviewer: What were you trained in, in England?
Charlie Jackson: In the equipment that was developed prior to the war, and it was called CH equipment: Chain Home. We didn’t… we were trained in the R7, which is a radar receiver, and the MV2, which was the transmitter.
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Jack Jillman
Jack Jillman: So we got discussing and he says, “Do you like flying?” and I says, “Yes and no. I wouldn’t be too disappointed if I didn’t make it, but is there something else that I would like?” He says, “Well, we’ve been listening to you and your voice” – my voice is gone now, by the way, after all these years – “and we need someone with good voices to talk on the radio telephone to a filter room.” And on came the story about radar, and so on. And of course, none of us had ever heard about radar and we weren’t supposed to talk about it, you know it was a secret, just getting out recently. What was the date of that again?
Interviewer: 1991 it was officially lifted.
JJ: 1991 was it? So it was secret up until then and so that’s how I got into it. So I could talk to the girls in the filter room in Victoria, up there off Alaska.
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Edna Simpson
Edna Simpson: Well, I went down to be interviewed and they did all sorts of testing and she said to me, “We really need RDF operators very badly, would you be willing to be an RDF operator?” And she said, “It’s very secret, we can’t tell you much about it.” So I thought, “Well, I might as well.” So I signed up to be an RDF operator. And of course that turned out to be radar. And I went to join the Air Force and I went to where they were giving out uniforms and all the rest of it. And then we did there weeks square bashing, which was marching along the prom and walk in the winter, which was a very hard experience. And from there they didn’t have space for me in the training school, the radar training school, so they sent myself and a friend of mine and two other girls to the east coast of England and we went directly into a radar station.
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Edna Simpson: And then they had space for me at Yatesbury and we had a six week intensive training. And during that time they taught us how the radar worked, how the beam worked, and all these kind of technical things. We had to pass tests.
Interviewer: Was it difficult?
ES: Yes, yes. Not everyone passed.
I: Do you know maybe how many people passed? Was it half, or…?
ES: Well, I think that in the testing, when they had assigned us to go into radar, they had a certain level of testing so that they had sort of assessed your ability to learn at that time. So, you know, not many failed but a few did.
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Edna Simpson: Because they kept improving the radar equipment to meet the circumstances. So from there, I took a train and I went into South Wales and then I was sent on a course which was on a different type of equipment which was called ten centimeter. And that had a very, very low beam and that type of radar could pick up anything right across the water. I mean, as low down as it could come.
Interviewer: So it could catch a plane that was skimming the water?
ES: It could. And it could even, they found, could pick up E-boats and U-boats around the coast. So I was sent down to Cornwall then and I worked on that until after D-Day. And a lot of our work there was picking up E-boats or U-boats around the coast, because they were a lot of them.
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