Salisbury Spitfire memorial to honour secret workforce

Salisbury Spitfire memorial to honour secret workforce

Another favourite subject of mine now; an aircraft from a different war, which has featured on these pages many times before - the Supermarine Spitfire.

In this case it is the fascinating and largely untold story of the secret production lines set up in and around the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire following the bombing of the Supermarine's main factory in Southampton at the height of the Battle of Britain.  While that facility recovered from the attentions of the Luftwaffe, nearly a dozen top secret production sites were being hurriedly established in such unlikely locations as motor garages, bus depots, sheds, back gardens - even hotels and bedrooms for a variety of smaller parts.  These small-scale assembly lines were nevertheless able take the pressure off the remaining factory in Castle Bromwich in the Midlands and went on to produce over 10,000 Spitfires, a frankly amazing achievement made all the more so by the fact that the majority of the workers were unskilled locals - young women, boys and older men overseen by just a few skilled engineers.



Salisbury’s best kept secret comes to light

This astounding feat has only really come to light in the last four years - having remained mostly forgotten in the intervening eight decades - thanks to the hard work of a local charity and historians, following the creation of a documentary by a Salisbury-based filmmaker.  Featuring interviews with surviving members of the workforce (whose admirably stoic reticence in respecting the secrecy surrounding the work - much like the Bletchley Park codebreakers - meant that even their own family members were unaware of their involvement until the documentary came out) the Secret Spitfires film was a welcome and long-overdue acknowledgement of the incredible efforts and sacrifices made by the people of Salisbury during some of the darkest days of the Second World War.

source - Salisbury Journal

Inspired by this documentary local residents set up a charity in June 2019 with the aim of creating a lasting memorial to these sterling workers and their hidden accomplishments in the form of a replica Spitfire to be placed at one of the shadow factory's sites, now part of Salisbury Rugby Club.  I'm delighted to see that in the intervening year enough money was raised to make it a reality and last month the full-scale fibreglass Spit was completed at the specialist manufacturers in Norfolk.  It now awaits its final erection on the site in Castle Street, Salisbury, (when Covid permits) which will also serve as the terminus of a splendid-sounding tourist trail complete with blue plaques at other known locations of the factories in the city area.

source - Secret Spitfires Memorial

Once again this is a welcome example of civic pride and recognition of an important aspect of local [WW2] history and one I am very pleased has come to fruition.  It certainly sounds as though it will prove of great interest to both the people of Salisbury, for whom this stirring story of their townsfolks' role in the war effort will be a new and exciting one to them, as well as students of Second World War history (myself included) and I congratulate everyone involved in seeing it through successfully.

Bomber Command centre to 'echo' Lancaster shape

Bomber Command centre to 'echo' Lancaster shape

Readers may be familiar with the memorial to RAF Bomber Command that was unveiled by HM Queen Elizabeth II in Green Park, London, a couple of years ago.  Until then there had been no official memorial to the bomber crews who died during the Second World War.  Now there is soon to be a second - as well as the first museum devoted to that arm of the RAF - in Lincoln, to further honour the men of Bomber Command.

source

Both edifices look to be magnificent.  The monument - to be called the "Spire of Names" - will tower 164ft into the sky and feature the 25,000+ names of every bomber airman from Lincolnshire who perished in the conflict.  Sitting on Lincoln's Canwick Hill it will overlook the nearby Lincoln Cathedral, which was well-known to locally-based bomber pilots as both a navigation aid and a welcome sight upon returning to base.  Recently the Spire project was given an anonymous £750,000 donation, allowing it to go ahead.

As detailed in the main article, the nearby visitor centre has been ingeniously designed to resemble the outline of an Avro Lancaster bomber, that most famous mainstay of RAF bomber squadrons.  It is also set be named The Chadwick Centre, after Avro's chief designer Roy Chadwick.

All this adds up to an excellent and beautiful form of remembrance for all the brave men of the RAF Bomber Command, as well as those at the Avro works and doubtless many more local and national war heroes to boot.  I'm sure it will be a credit to Lincoln and all the airmen who gave their lives in service to their country.

Town's air raid disaster fund found after more than 70 years

Clacton air disaster fund found after more than 70 years

An interesting local story here as one of my county's well-known seaside resorts receives an unexpected windfall after the chance discovery of a long-forgotten disaster fund left over from the Second World War.

Initially started after a German Heinkel He111 bomber crashed in the town on the 30th April 1940 - destroying sixty-seven houses, injuring 160 people and resulting in the first two civilian deaths on mainland Britain of the war (as described in this fascinating newsreel I found, above) - the account went on to receive further contributions not only from local residents & businesses but also holidaymakers, passers-through and even famous bandleaders of the time Joe Loss and Billy Cotton (both of whom were known to donate money to worthy causes).  It was consequently dipped into for the next few years but in 1950 the remaining £243 13s 6d was put into a Post Office Savings Account and then, it seems, promptly forgotten about.

Had it not been for an office clear-out at the town hall the money may have gone unnoticed indefinitely, but now the original ledger and other related documents have been discovered and show that - after 73 years - the account is in credit to the tune of £1,700!

source

While that may not sound like much of a return on seven decades of interest (even taking into account inflation, decimalisation and other factors, the 1940 fund's original sum of £1,244 12s 0d would be equivalent to about £55,000 in today's money!) it's still seventeen hundred pounds more than Clacton thought it had and I'm delighted to see that the council intend to put it towards a permanent memorial to the original disaster, one that will complement the already-existing inscribed bench.

It seems suitably fitting and splendidly serendipitous that a fund set up in the wake of a wartime tragedy to help the people of Clacton during the dark days of the conflict is able to be used today to commemorate the local victims and ensure that the original incident is never forgotten.  I shall look forward to seeing Clacton's new memorial, to be erected thanks to these long-lost monies.