WAAF: THE WOMEN WHO KEPT THE MEN FLYING
excerpt from the memoirs of Pauline Coppard, LACW 2019448
"We had an area reasonably near to the aerodrome that was called a Q Site and was a dummy drome with wooden planes, pilots climbing into the planes and other personnel. One night the Germans came and dropped a wooden bomb on it!
...John Cunningham was a famous night fighter pilot at Northolt and had a number of successes in bringing down enemy planes. We were told that he could see well in the dark as he ate raw grated carrots. Our Messing Officer was influenced by this and plates of raw grated carrots appeared on the tables in the mess.
But this story was only created
to fool the enemy so they would not discover that John Cunningham had Radar
in his plane. He was called “Cats Eyes Cunningham.” After the
war he became a Test Pilot.
One day when I was walking along at dusk and I saw a Diver in the distance with a fighter following it. Then I saw the red tracer bullets going into the bomb, followed by very large explosion which the pilot flew straight through. I said a prayer, and the pilot came out the other side, intact.
Fighter pilots did amazing things; sometimes they would fly alongside a V-1 bomb and rock the plane so that the aircraft wing would go under the wing of the bomb and tip it over to (hopefully) land harmlessly in the country.
Another day I was plotting a Diver and of course, our fighter. I was through
to the radar cabin and could hear the Controller talking to the pilot, when
I heard the pilot say “it's coming down now.” I looked at the
map table and the plot, and it was right overhead! After a few nervous moments
it burst about a thousand yards away. We had, of course, moments when things
got a little dangerous, but we kept plotting because others relied on it..."
* German V1 pilotless flying bombs were nicknamed doodlebugs or divers
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