Dan Snow's History Hit - The Women Who Organised the Battle of Britain

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

In a suburb of North-West London, among housing estates and residential streets lies a secret bunker, you may never have heard of it but it's one of the most important World War Two sites in Britain. Here, deep underground, the RAF built its Uxbridge headquarters where it commanded the defence of the country in the Battle of Britain. The pilots who fought in the skies are rightly hailed as heroes and affectionately known as 'the few', but they wouldn't have been able to do what they did without the many women behind them and under the ground gathering intelligence and commands, distributing them at lightening speed under the intense pressure of active battle.Dan goes down into the earth with Dr Sarah-Louise Miller, who brings their stories to life in the room where the Battle of Britain was organised, overlooking the very maps that show what happened there during that decisive summer of 1940. Dr Sarah-Louise's new book 'The Women Behind the Few' puts the Women's Auxiliary Air Force back at the heart of Britain's war, exploring what they did- collecting and disseminating vital intelligence- that led to the Allied victory.You can also visit the secret RAF bunker in Uxbridge, find out more about the Battle of Britain Bunker Museum here: http://battleofbritainbunker.co.uk/Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm standing on a sunny afternoon in a suburb of Northwest London. You would not guess, you walk around these quiet residential streets, that beneath my feet lies an incomparable treasure. One of the most important World War II sites anywhere in the world.

This is where the RAF secretly built one of their group headquarters, RAF Uxbridge. And it's from here that the men and women of the RAF conducted their successful defence of Britain during the Battle of Britain. Certainly one of the decisive clashes of the Second World War. The defeat of Hitler's Luftwaffe, Hitler's air force, as it tried to knock Britain out of the Second World War, the defeat of Hitler's Luftwaffe, Hitler's air force, as it tried to knock Britain out of the war in the summer of 1940. The reason that Britain won the Battle of

Britain was of course because of the heroism, the bravery, the skill of those young pilots who flew those Spitfires, Hurricanes and other aircraft in the skies above particularly South East England. But there's a hidden story about the Battle of Britain and it involves not just those young men but many young women as well. Without the young women of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force those fighter pilots would have enjoyed far less success and very much reduced chance of survival.

These young women made an enormous contribution to the victory of the RAF and the survival of survival. These young women made an enormous contribution to the victory of the RAF and the survival of Britain. I'm here in our exhibition to talk to a historian, Dr Sarah Louise Miller, who's been doing fantastic work recently, putting women back at the heart of the story of the Second World War, where they belong. She's going to talk about this place, why it was at the heart of such an incredibly sophisticated air defence system, and the central role that women played. Enjoy. T-minus 10.

The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Dr. Sarah-Louise, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Where have you brought me, this quiet corner of suburbia?

Well, it's actually a very, very important place in terms of 1940 in the Second World War. This is Uxbridge, and it's now a museum, the Battle of Britain bunker. And as the name implies, in the Second World War, that's exactly what it was. It's an otherwise very unremarkable suburb of northwest London. Extremely. So you wouldn't have guessed it's like the beating heart of British air defence in World War II. Well that's the whole point you wouldn't want it to be super obvious get some German bombs dropped on it straight away it's quite handy that it's hidden away it's quite safe for the people working there and it's secret which is exactly what it needed to be. Standing here now I couldn't tell that there was any Second World War infrastructure here whatsoever. Nope completely missing isn't it from the landscape. So where is

it? Underground so we're going to go down lots of steps over 70 steps to get to the operations room. A lot of people talk about top secret things but this was top top secret. A lot of people talk about top secret things but this was top, top secret. A lot of people talk about Bletchley like it's the great secret of the Second World War and it definitely was but it wasn't the only one. Fighter Command's downing system is another very well-kept secret. We're going to geek out about that downing system in just a second as we go down there but first of all what particularly interested you in this site? I am interested in this site because of the phenomenal role that women played here at this very location and in this system. It's one of those integral to the war kind of roles and it's just not known about. And it's been my kind of mission to get people to know about it.

Okay, I'm following you. Lead on. Let's go. Down. Okay, I'm following you. Lead on. Let's go. Down. Okay, so we've got the classic 1940s brickwork here. Strictly no admittance, it says.

So there's a guard room here or a checkpoint. Yeah, it's one location you're going to want to keep guarded in the event of an invasion. A couple of World War II rifles there. And we're going down. Oh, listen to this. Why was it so deep underground? You obviously want to avoid damage in the event of a Luftwaffe bombing raid and it's also handy to keep it hidden. Was this how the women came to work every day? They have to climb down these stairs? Yes indeed kind of like going into the underground in London and actually some of them had to have UV sunlight treatment with lamps because they spend eight hours a day down here and if they

were on the night shift for a week they are going to start lacking vitamin D. They had UV sun lamp treatment. Were women in the RAF before the war, or was this a wartime emergency? It was a wartime contingency. So it did exist, the Women's Royal Air Force did exist in the First World War, but was disbanded in 1919. And then in 1938, 39, when war is looking likely they decide women will be needed again, and the Women's Auxiliary Air Force is born. So we've hit a level here. We're walking through corridors. There's ducting and pipes above our heads and on the side of the corridor.

And we're entering, whoa, the most incredible room. People can hear the sound changing. It's echoey. It's like a church almost. A giant plotting table in the middle, huge big map of southern England and a bit of northwest France. Tell me what this room is. It's kind of enigmatic to the untrained eye, isn't it? It doesn't make immediate sense.

And it's a very specific room to a very specific skill set. And a number of people who were trained to do things in here that nobody else knew they were doing. So the big map in the middle, this is a group operations room. So the air force is split into four groups in England and we are in an area known as 11 Group, which is obviously during the Battle of Britain going to take the brunt of the hit from the Luftwaffe. Is that sort of southeast England? It's sort of London and the home counties? Exactly, the exact area the Luftwaffe are Is that sort of south-east England? It's sort of London and the home counties? Exactly, the exact area the Luftwaffe are going hard at.

So the map is showing the area that this particular group is responsible for protecting. And the map, it's kind of trying to realise a picture of an air battle. So we're looking at the first kind of air traffic control system. Nowadays you're looking at a screen. Back then you're just looking at this huge map. Exactly. This is the world's first integrated air defence system.

And that means drawing lots of different elements of defence together to work together in a system to protect this area of England. So in that way it is very unique and groundbreaking. Okay, so you've got a map there's a excellent wax work of a young lady in the in the WAF what's her job she's got one of these odd almost like a a snooker queue or a pool queue is she moving these objects around them out to show where German and friendly units are? Yes she is a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and her role is a plotter she's, that's what this work

is called. The wooden blocks on the table that have numbers on, that doesn't make any sense to most people but once you are told what that means it makes perfect sense. So you can see she's wearing a headset and she's got like a microphone looking thing. That is a telephone system. She's connected to Bentley Priory which is the headquarters of Fighter Command, and they will be telling her information that she's then depicting on this map, and she's moving it with what looks like a casino croupier stick, and that is because this information is updating literally every five minutes. Through this plot, they're allowing the commanders to kind of visualize what's going on and then where all the different units are,

because just before this, in the First World War, it was a matter of take off have a fly around see if you see any enemies shoot them down and come back and refuel yes but now you're saying actually here come the enemy across the channel you you and you take off over here and try and intersect them exactly you can see on the wall we've got the different sectors that are in this particular group those are fighter squadrons based at these sectors. And they are told, based on the information being plotted on this map, where they need to be at any given time to intercept incoming Luftwaffe raids, which is incredibly frustrating for the Luftwaffe.

And we actually have records of Luftwaffe pilots arriving over Britain and saying, what is going on? There's a welcoming committee here in the form of Spitfires and Hurricanes. So you mentioned these boards up on the wall. These are a thing of beauty. They look like an old-fashioned railway station departure board. So there's columns, 602 at Tangmere, Northwell, 25 Squadron.

So they're all squadrons. And then I'm looking closely and there's little lights that say, this squadron is available. this squadron is in position, this squadron has left the ground, this squadron have sighted the enemy. So the commanders here know what every single squadron is doing in South East England. They know where the Germans are and they can try and direct them. And it's the women that are doing all of that hard work. It's the women that are coordinating all that.

There's about 20 WAF around this table, so it can get quite crowded. And it is very, very fast paced. So they are literally providing real time intelligence to the RAF at any given moment as to the current air picture. Which is exactly what still happens today. Yeah. And if you have an air force that's outnumbered by two to one that's a force multiplier That's incredibly important and that's because your Air Force isn't just wasting all its time and precious fuel and man-hours Just flying randomly around the White Cliffs of Dover They only have to take off and land exactly when you know the enemy's coming exactly

So they can get the aircraft in the air within about 90 seconds of being ordered into the air And then they can be within you you know, 15, 20 minutes, right where a raid is incoming. So all those amazing pictures, the Battle of Britain, all the lads, they're lying out there on the grass, they're snoozing, they're reading the newspaper. Then the bell goes. That's because a WAF has rung up that particular airfield

and said, right, you guys need to get up and expect the Germans will be over you in five minutes. Exactly, because they're also doing the disseminating of the information that's being collected here. They're getting on the phone and saying, OK, sector, you need to get your chaps in the air as quickly as possible. We have a raid at these exact coordinates

at this suspected altitude. And that's the information on the blocks. So you would get the information. Is it hostile or friendly? You don't want to shoot down your own aircraft, so you need to know where they are. Is it hostile or is it friendly? Estimated number of aircraft in a raid, very useful.

Estimated altitude, estimated direction of travel. You can see the arrows on the map. That is giving them an idea of which direction it's headed, probably London most of the time. So the kind of skills that you would need around the plotting table, I don't think are that common. You have to have a lot of dexterity. there's a lovely word in an air ministry file they needed women who were unflappable and the information coming in over the headset from Bentley Priory would be something like this hostile 0140 plus h harry 3020 northwest repeat can you? I can't, and I'm glad you're here to tell me what that means. I don't think I could repeat it either. So, hostile 01. It's a hostile

raid, and 01 is the number of the raid. Every raid had a number, so they could keep track of them. 40+, more than 40 aircraft in this raid. Okay, big one. H. Harry. You can see on the map, you've got letters depicting the different, big one. H. Harry. You can see on the map you've got letters depicting the different sections of grid. H. Harry. Harry's the original phonetic for H. So that's roughly where it is on the map.

So it's roughly H, which... Right at the top. Which means it's off kind of Great Yarmouth, lowest off the coast of Norfolk. Yep. Then you've got exact coordinates, 3020 northwest. And that's going to be plotted with one of these little wooden blocks

to depict exactly where that raid is, and they'll continue to update that information and have it move almost real time, so within three to five minutes usually. So one of these young women quickly gets a block, puts that information on it, and then will move it along with her croupier stick. Yes. And that means that another young woman can say, right, I'm going to talk to a squadron of Spitfires or Hurricanes and make sure they can fly up over North Weald and intercept

it. Yes. You're having that information coming in through your headset and plotting it at the same time, which is quite difficult to hear and do. And I'm guessing if you say, can you repeat that please? That's not very popular. No, definitely not. You need to be fast and accurate. And then the people doing the calling, you can see there's a balcony behind us. Those people up there, lots of telephones. Those are the people calling the sector operations rooms and the airfields and saying, we need you to get spitfires and hurricanes in the air. But they're also calling air raid defence units,

anti-aircraft artillery units, they're handling ground defences as well. You listen to Dan Snow's History It, there's more coming up. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to solve the biggest mysteries of the Middle Ages. So many of these travellers who went out looking for Presto John, what did they think they were hearing? We explore cutting-edge research.

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out that these raids are coming in from? That is one of my favourite parts of the whole system. Me too. Bentley Priory is the headquarters of Vita Command Stanmore, and their information is coming from a new and developing technology known as radio direction finding, or as we know it today, radar. So there are radar sites all the way around the south and southeast, southwest coast of Britain, and those

are also largely manned by WAF. So you've got women in sometimes in caravans on cliff tops, windy cliff tops, you've got women in caravans who are using this technology to monitor aircraft over the channel and it's difficult because sometimes a big flock of birds can actually show as a contact on a radar. So the observer corps are helping in that way to distinguish between an aircraft, sometimes a friendly or a hostile, so aircraft recognition skills. But mostly it's women in vulnerable locations on cliff tops because you need the altitude for the radar technology. And these are 360 foot tall towers. So the Luftwaffe can see them and assume that

they're fairly significant so it's dangerous it's dangerous work and there are even accounts of caravans being blown over in the wind so it's a tough job and so those big huge tall towers some which you can still see today they're blasting out radio waves those are hitting the metal on the fuselage of the German planes, bouncing back and giving you a rough distance bearing of any new attack forming up over Calais or in the channel. Yes, they're going to give you the kind of fundamental information you need to know for air defence.

And that shows as a kind of a wiggle on the screen on a cathode ray tube. And that information then has to be analysed. So it goes straight to Bentley Priory where there is a filter room, which is also largely... Looks like this. Yeah, it looks really like this. And there are WAF in there too. So they carry out a process known as filtering because that information that comes in from a postal radar site is quite raw and scientific in nature. And you need to be able to filter out anomalies and kind of corroborate bits of it

until you've got what they called a track of information. And that's what these wooden blocks are with the numbers. That's a track. And then when they get near the coast, you mentioned the observer corps, those just keen people who are good at recognising aircraft sitting there having a cup of tea and looking at the sky on the cliffs.

And the radar data is being confirmed by human beings yeah so radar only faces out to sea at this point in the battle of britain after a raid comes in over the coast and it's over land the radar can't really help that much anymore so the observer core pick up the slack and are visually watching which obviously you need good weather for so if you have bad weather that's tricky And that's why the initial intelligence is so important, because you can estimate from initial contacts where a raid might be headed. But the observer corps are definitely key, very key and very overlooked, actually, in the history of Battle of Britain. So on the 15th of September 1940, Battle of Britain Day, the climax of the Battle of Britain, this table actually seems to be set up for that huge German

raid. So going straight to London, try and knock, blast London to bits, knock Britain out of the war by flattening its capital. Just to get everyone up to speed, what was Hitler trying to achieve during the so-called Battle of Britain? So Hitler decides before the Battle of Britain that he needs to remove Britain as a kind of thorn in his side in terms of his occupation. He's split-screening across Europe and Britain's annoying, frankly, in that mission. So he issues a directive stating that he plans to invade and, if necessary, occupy Britain. And this is Operation Sea Lion, the intended invasion of Britain. But in order to be able to do that, he needs air superiority because

he can't risk aerial attack of an invasion fleet. So the Battle of Britain is this kind of head-on collision between the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and the Royal Air Force. And the Luftwaffe is sent to try and remove the RAF as a threat. So they come over in force and the RAF has a real battle on its hands to defend against this numerically superior force that is menacing toward them and to defend Britain at the same time from falling bombs. And those bombs are falling on RAF airfields, on cities, on ports. They're trying to sort of bomb the RAF but also maybe hopefully try to bomb Britain out of the war, perhaps even get Churchill to surrender. They want to decrease

British morale. They want people to lose faith in the government and to urge surrender. And bombing civilians is a pretty effective way of doing that. It didn't work, as we know, but that was the intention. And so the RAF's job is to take off from these airfields that we can see in front of us, like Biggin Hill and Manston and Tangmere, fly up in the air and shoot down those German bombers before they can do damage in the UK. That's the idea, yes.

And in order to be able to do that effectively, it's obviously tremendously useful to know where they're going to be, in what kind of strength, and where they might be heading. That sounds obvious, but no one had ever done that before. That's not how air war had worked

to that point in history. This was a new idea that you could control the war in the air like that. Yeah, and it was largely thanks to a man, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who was the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, based at Bentley Priory. And it was kind of his passion play to make that happen. He understood the importance of putting information in a system where it could be used effectively at the right place at the right time

and to be able to act based on it in terms of defense presumably that must have been super intense and busy down here it must be exhausting for the women working here it must have been incredibly busy and very tense because you know what's riding on this you know it's life and death and all of these blocks on the table this is signifying that every single unit was up. There's no reserves. And Churchill famously said, what have we got by way of reserves on the 15th? And the answer was, we don't. This is it. And Churchill was in this room. He was. So he was asking that question of a commander in this room. Yeah. And he was very aware of losses. I think it's about a quarter of the pilots didn't come back.

And he was speaking to General Ismay just after this visit. And Churchill said, don't speak to me. I've never been so moved. And I imagine it would have been obviously very moving because you're watching a battle. You're away from a battle, yet you're actually watching it here and you're hearing reports and learning about numbers of aircraft shot down and stuff. It's a very intense experience to be in,

watching these highly professional women moving things around. You would have felt like you were part of it. Absolutely. And I think one of the main concerns of the Air Ministry when they asked women to do this role was that emotionally they just wouldn't be able to handle it because it is so fast-paced and it is so stressful and tense. But for the most part, I think the fact that lives depended on it,

some of them knowing they had husbands, fiancés, brothers who were up there in the Battle of Britain in those aircraft actually drove them to do a better job because they knew what rested on it. Let's talk more about those women. What kind of age were they? Did they volunteer for this? In the Battle of Britain, they were all volunteers because conscription did not apply to women until 1941. So there were about 250,000 women in the WAF over the course of the Second World War,

and thousands of them were involved in the doubting system. So they were volunteers to begin with from 1939 all the way through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, all the way up until conscription in 1941. They were aged between 18 and about 40, most of them. Many of them straight out of high school joined the WAF, because they felt very strongly about it. Watching brothers not come home, fiancés, sweethearts not make it back,

and seeing the emotional impact of that on friends and family, a lot of them were driven to join up. And seeing the emotional impact of that on friends and family a lot of them were driven to join up and seeing the destruction in London. I've also heard it said that women were just simply better at this they had the skills required perhaps weren't as obvious in men. Yeah I think there's a tendency especially if we look at propaganda from the times join the WAF and free a man to fly that kind of thing you get this kind of idea that the only value of the WAF was to fill a post on the home front and be a substitute. But when you look at what they actually did and how well they did it, the testimony of many senior RAF officers as to how well they did it, you begin to realise that actually they were very, very effective in this

role, unexpectedly so. They kind of surprised people in that way, but it wasn't initially expected. What were their living conditions? Like you mentioned that some of them had to have sunlamps, but did they live nearby? Was it fun? Did they get out at all? Or was it pretty grim for them? I spoke to two 98-year-old service women on Sunday

and they were absolutely full of how much fun they had in the services. They were both straight out of high school and put off going to university until after conflict had ceased. But there was plenty of kind of off-duty fun to be had. It was a stressful job, eight hours on shift, so you'd be quite tired. But they all speak of the way in which camaraderie got them through and they made friends for life they did things they never forgot they threw dances and famously loved the American servicemen attending those they did plays for the senior officers so they had a lot of fun they were billeted usually in nearby because the trouble was military bases weren't set up for thousands of women to come and live on them so they had to initially before they could build barracks for them

and Nissan huts and stuff, they had to be billeted in the local community, which often meant a local family having a spare room that they could lend out to a couple of WAF. And it wasn't without danger, was it? You mentioned some of the exposed positions on the clifftops getting blown over. Was it Biggin Hill? I think WAFs were killed when their operations room had a direct hit. Yeah, Biggin Hill was hit very badly, almost completely flattened. And there were WAF deaths in the line of duty,

which was something the Air Ministry weren't really sure how to handle. Hadn't had to cope with that before. And I think there was a lot of hesitancy in taking women onto... I mean, they were famously non-combatant. You get the ATS women who could load an anti-aircraft gun, but then had to step aside for a man to fire it because they didn't want women in this kind of combat taboo situation but needs must and as the war went on and the manpower crisis got worse and worse they really just didn't have a choice and it

became clear it's like that Eleanor Roosevelt quote you never know how strong a woman is until you put her in hot water like a tea bag and I think that was really the situation with women in the West. They were thrown into the thick of it in danger, sometimes didn't have a choice about being involved in combat and ultimately rose very much to the challenge. Tell me you must have come across some extraordinary women in both your research and in real life because you've met so many of them as well they are absolutely fantastic and they're all extremely humble they have this kind of attitude of it was war that's literally what some of them have said to me it was war and that is nothing special I am nothing special and we can look at them and recognize how they kind of rose to that challenge and I'm not sure I could

I've tried plotting I've tried listening to tune into German frequencies and I can't do it. One of them said actually in a war you do what you have to do and you don't know what's inside of you until it's tested. But one of my favourites in particular is a lady by the name of Faye Gillan. So we've talked about Fighter Command here today but the WAF were present all through the Air Force and also in Bomber Command where there's obviously a very high rate of loss and they're doing equally as important difficult dangerous work and Faye Gillant is actually Guy Gibson's personal intelligence officer in the Dam Busters raid and she's tasked with some pretty interesting things including letting Lincolnshire farmers know why their cows have stopped milking because of the very low flying aircraft practicing for the

dam busters raid flying at about 60 feet and she's told go and explain to these hungry farmers and the people of Lincoln why we nearly knocked the top off of Lincoln Cathedral spire why the cows are unhappy and she has to do all of that without letting any single piece of information slip as to what they're actually doing so they're at risk risk, they're in danger, they can't tell anybody. They can't tell husbands, they can't tell parents. Many of them have said, I really wish I could have told my dad what I did, or my mum, but they died not knowing because that oath of secrecy that they took,

they took very, very seriously. And they're just made of such tough stuff. I suppose it's understandable that women after the war felt that credit should go to those young men who flew and burned to death and crashed the channel and sacrificed so much. But there must have been quite a lot of misogyny as well. Why has their role been completely forgotten?

It's interesting because there's definitely a tendency to view what women did as support work. And that is frustrating to those of us who have kind of extensively researched what they did, because it makes it sound unimportant in terms of the course of the war. And I think I would argue that it's not peripheral history, that the history of women in the Battle of Britain and the war in general is not peripheral, it is mainstream. And if you look at something like the doubting system, it is very likely that without the women involved in this system, we would not have won

the Battle of Britain. And the implications of that are many and very worrying, frankly. I wonder if today, with our focus now on the programmers and the hackers and the information war and everything, whether we're more able to respect the role women did in similar jobs to that back in the 1940s whereas at the time it was all about who's running around stabbing people and shooting them and it's inevitable isn't it when you get backroom intelligence work if you do it right it's not meant to be public knowledge you've done something wrong if intelligence work does become public and And we have watched things like Mission Impossible and all the kind of crazy adventure films where intel is made to look very glamorous.

Often it looked like clerical work. If you look at this situation here, it's not clear what she's even doing, this woman. But when you know what it is, you know it's integral intelligence work that looks like clerical work, then it's easy to understand how it was overlooked and misunderstood. It's just so important to remember that for all the heroism and the skill of those young men that were flying those Spitfires and Hurricanes, without the women doing that work around this table, they would have been flying blind. It would have been completely pointless.

It could have been carnage because they were outnumbered and outgunned. So we talk about the few. Well, we should remember the women as part of that we should have a name what do we call them or do we just include them in the few i think we would call them the women behind the few because they are behind them in the sense that they are supporting them and kind of undergirding them but they're also behind them in terms of they've been lost in historical memory because we do owe so much to those pilots but it's very easy to focus on the glamour of a Spitfire and a Hurricane and a man in an RAF uniform who looks very dapper

and suave and to forget that there were lots of people behind them who made what they did possible. Well they've been forgotten by too many people and well done you for getting them back in the historical record. It is my great pleasure and passion to be able to do so. They're fantastic. Tell everyone how they can learn more about this. What's the name of your book? The book is called The Women Behind the Few, and it's about women across the Royal Air Force involved in air intelligence during the Second World War, including things like photographic interpretation, the plotting, and all the things we've been talking about here today, the Special Operations Executive, Bomber Command, Fighter command, you name it, they did it.

Thank you very much. you