By the time of the Battle of Britain, we were producing quite a lot of gear, and I remember a meeting when it was decide that for reasons of safety, half of our ASV stock of parts was to be sent down to Siemens at Woolwich where they were to duplicate our assembly operation. We had our own RAF transport by then, and sent a big load of stuff down, but that very night, Woolwich was bombed and we were called upon early next morning to send down a team of people who could recognise the ASV parts among the debris, and bring it back; I believe about half of the delivery was saved.
The duplication was then arranged at Cossors, Chadderton near Manchester, and this arrangement lasted through the war; as each equipment entered into production at Malmesbury, we passed drawings of all parts and tools to them and a close and friendly co-operation ensued, Their factory like mine, was nominally under control of their Board of Directors, but, except for certain administrative purposes, we both operated as completely independent units taking our orders direct from the Ministry of Aircraft production.
By this time, some bright boys at the Admiralty had tried and succeeded in using our airborne ASV for detecting ships and submarines at night or in fog from destroyers and frigates using a hastily rigged masthead aerial array. This brought us into close liaison with the Admiralty Signal Establishment at Heslemere under Captain Brooking - an association which lasted throughout the war and made us many friends in the Navy.
One of the worst problems was that, the gear having been designed as light as possible for aircraft use, it was, in Navy terms, terribly flimsy. On one trial in the Channel, when a gun was fired or a depth charge dropped, all the valves jumped out of their sockets and we had hastily to design special shock absorbers and valve retaining collars. This development of ASV led to close liaison with the Navy's installation section and there was a regular to and froing with various naval depots on the Bristol Channel, the Clyde and Mersey.
The Navy version was being introduced faster than the Admiralty back room boys could issue their various "bibles" covering installation, servicing etc. and after an agonised appeal from Admiral Noble C in C of North Western approaches, we turned our hostel over to the Navy for fortnightly crash courses in fitting, setting up and servicing, for 25 naval ratings and Petty Officers. There was no means of doing this officially, although it became known as H.M.S. Rodbourne, and as the necessary contract for training and accommodation would have taken months, it was agreed that the Navy would provide motor transport to and from Malmesbury, and each rating was given a mess allowance of about 25/- per week and a ration card, duly passed on to the housekeeper.
All this went very smoothly, but for two mishaps; one Sunday afternoon, the housekeeper; our Irish setter got into the dining room through an open window and wolfed the lot! The second arose from my having received from Admiralty, a report on some tests in the channel on this new equipment. The same day I had to go up to London for a meeting and when I arrived that night at Aston Clinton where we always kept a room available to avoid staying in London, there was an urgent message for me to phone a London number.
This turned out to be a lady assistant at the canteen supply depot where I had called on route, who had found on her desk an Admiralty Report marked "Top Secret" which had slipped out of my brief case. She said she would sleep with it under her pillow, and would I collect it the next morning!
The next development was when the Army's Radar Development Section at Christchurch (ADRDE) got hold of an ASV set and adapted it for use in locating aircraft for the searchlights. This was called SLC (Search Light Control) or Elsie for short. The Array A.A. Searchlight Command, more hidebound than the other services had hitherto been vainly trying to locate low-lying aircraft with huge acoustic listening devices, which were quite useless.
This new use of ASV brought great improvement in Searchlight Control, although the effect was as much to unnerve enemy pilots as to secure hits by the guns. A.A, Command took up this development with enthusiasm, as although they were using the famous GL (gun laying) radar equipment for Anti-air-craft gun control, it was a very large apparatus mounted on heavy trucks together with the Diesel generator.
The whole of the SLC unit weighed no more than about 150/200 lbs and we rapidly diverted a hundred or so of these sets from the Fleet Air Arm by our usual unofficial "ways and means" system, after a few visits to ADRDE and the temporary seconding to us of two of their boffins. Sometime during that winter (1941) I persuaded the Army Searchlight Group under A.A. Command to bring along a complete installation and erect it on a nearby hill.
We arranged for the RAF at St. Athan, with whom we closely collaborated on Coastal Command installations, to send over one of their target planes. As a good deal of the blanket of secrecy on Radar had then been lifted, we asked the new mayor, Dr. Hodge and some other town notables, to come and see how our equipment worked which improved our relations with the town tremendously. The demonstration was open to our employees, most of whom had never had a chance to see our gear in use.
