On 30 September 1939 the Harrogate Advertiser announced the first local service fatality– Pilot Officer James Calvert had died in France. The paper noted that his father had been killed in the “last war” and that James had been married only two days before going to France. He died on 19th September. He had been piloting a Fairey Battle on a photo training mission. The plane developed engine failure. He attempted an emergency landing near Chalons sur Marne but the aircraft crashed and burst into flames. The other two crew members died instantly but James was pulled out alive and taken to hospital where he died later that day He is buried at the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery at Clichy.

On 20 April 1941 a Handley Page Harrow twin-engined transport aircraft of 271 squadron took off from RAF Doncaster on a training flight. The pilot, thirty-year-old Edward Procyk, was from Poland but the rest of the crew was English - Flight Sergeant Price, there to train three young wireless operators and air gunners, including Kenneth Beevers aged 21. One of the engines caught fire when they were flying over Devon. Procyk attempted to land the plane in fields but failed and it crashed near Okehampton killing the pilot and the three trainees though, somehow, Sergeant Price survived. Kenneth Beevers was from Harrogate. He had attended Harrogate Grammar School and at the outbreak of war he is recorded as working as an assistant on a newspaper and living in the centre of Harrogate at 24 Tower Street (now the TravelLodge) with his parents, 61-year-old Henry, a grocer, and 59 year-old Eleanor Beevers. How proud, though concerned, Henry and Eleanor and their daughter Marjorie must have been when Kenneth joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. How distraught they must all have been when they heard the news of their son’s untimely and senseless death. He is the only Harrogate lad I know of who is buried in the War Graves cemetery at Stonefall.

Those two stories remind us that the real history of Harrogate during the war is an amalgam of the hopes, fears, joys and sorrows of all of its inhabitants, of how they coped with change, with enforced absences, with privations, with dangers, with uncertainties, and with tragedies. It is a history unwritten and unwritable, a history to be imagined and never to be forgotten.

Tonight I want to talk a little about the ways in which Harrogate’s war was like that of so many other places and also about what made its war very different. Like most towns Harrogate lost many of its inhabitants for the duration as they were called up for service. But unlike many towns Harrogate also saw a major influx of people which meant that during the war its population increased rather than decreased. I’ll talk a little about the inhabitants and a little about the incomers and what they were doing to help win the war. But the incomers story has yet to be fully understood. I have a list of documents lodged at the National Archives that relate to those incomers and their work. That list is 560 pages long, and every entry equates to a file or a bundle of files that all need to be read to fully understand what was happening in Harrogate during the War. As far as I know no one has yet even scratched the surface of that work.

But those incomers helped win the war. So this talk could be called Sleepy Valley Awakes How Harrogate fought back against Hitler and his Reich. Why Sleepy Valley – well, according to the Ripon Gazette this is what this area was referred to during the war by the military authorities. Its official name was the ‘Claro Joint Area’ and it covered Harrogate, Knaresborough, Ripon and Nidderdale to Pateley Bridge.

So why if sleepy was it important to our war effort? Well, because it was deemed so safe that critical organisations and staff were transferred here. What did safe mean? Well safe from invasion. We now know that if Operation Sea Lion had been launched the Germans would have invaded the south coast. But at the time all the southern and eastern parts of England seemed to be threatened. This led to pressure to develop a volunteer home defence force. Established in May 1940 as the Local Defence Volunteers and renamed in July by Churchill as the Home Guard this force became truly national and extended even to safe areas like Harrogate, though the 6th Harrogate Battalion West Riding Home Guard was actually headquartered in Ripon. And safe also meant safe from air attack. The air war and fear of it dominated much thought both before and during the War. A widespread fear of the power of the bomber pervaded the 1930s. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stoked the fires in the Commons on November 10, 1932, by saying “I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed.” The flames of panic were fanned by popular films such as Alexander Korda’s 1936 film of HG Well’s Shape of Things to Come with its devastating air raid on Everytown. But it was assumed that the Germans would target carefully and not waste bombs, so if there was nothing of importance in an area, it was deemed safe, unlikely to be bombed. And because of that, the idea developed to move functions and organisations deemed critical to the war effort from obvious target areas like London into these safe areas.

Did it work? Well yes and no. Somehow the Germans got to know that the Air Ministry was moving to Harrogate. After the war this German target list was discovered and Harrogate is number two on the list. So the Luftwaffe bombed the Majestic hotel at about midday on 12th September 1940. But their intelligence was wrong. No civil servants were there, only normal guests. A Junkers 88 dropped three bombs. One destroyed the villa at the corner of Swan and Ripon Roads, another exploded in the hotel’s garden and one came to rest on the third or fifth floor of the hotel (accounts vary) and fortunately did not explode. The explosions caused some windows to shatter nearby in town. But, perhaps surprisingly the Germans never tried again, so they missed the opportunity when the Majestic was later heavily involved in war work. Indeed, there was little other bombing in Harrogate during the war though Betty’s was hit with an incendiary in 1942 and the month before the Majestic bombing a stick of bombs had been dropped along the Nidd valley between Knaresborough and Bilton.

So Harrogate did, indeed, prove to be a safe area. But at the time no one knew that would really be the case and so all the normal precautions and preparations were made for war. And in this, being designated a safe area, caused some problems. The provision of sufficient air raid shelters became a concern in Harrogate through the winter of 1939 and the following Spring. Not enough was happening. Householders were encouraged to build their own Anderson shelters but it was clear that communal shelters would also be necessary. However, as late as March 1940 the Advertiser was reporting that Harrogate Council was making representations to the West Riding Council to expedite the provision of shelters for the public. It suggested that the fact “that construction work has not begun earlier is probably due to Harrogate not being an emergency areah” and concluded, “It is expected that the schools’ shelters will be ready in case of an emergency by the time the schools re-open after the Easter holidays.” Shelters to accommodate about 4000 children in elementary schools had in fact been under construction since the beginning of the year. By the next month the paper was able to report “There are erected, in the course of erection, and projected about 40 Air Raid Shelters in Harrogate. Delays in the provision of these,” it then suggested, “could be traced to the Ministry for Home Security.” And finally in May it reported that “the Emergency Committee of the County Council have agreed to carry on immediately with the work of constructing air-raid shelters in the town.” And that “much delay had been due to Harrogate not being an emergency area.”

The communal shelters included one in the Brunswick railway tunnel (beneath Langcliffe Avenue off the Leeds Road) – the old line that ended in a station on the Stray near Trinity Methodist Church. This had been inspected several months before the outbreak of war as a possible shelter. Later in 1940 the Ministry of Aircraft production initiated an investigation into underground sites suitable for turning into aircraft factories. The Brunswick tunnel was among the sites considered but it was rejected as it was already in use as a shelter.

Of course, as well as sheltering from bombing you could be a little pro-active and try to shoot the enemy planes down. In the Second World War we had basically two types of anti-aircraft guns – the heavy ones, that shot at high flying bombers and protected key military and industrial targets. Leeds had 51, Harrogate none. And light ones, that shot at low flying raiders. 6 days after the declaration of War The Advertiser announced that “the local home-defence light anti-aircraft battery, is now fully recruited….150 men have been recruited.” They were given drill hall accommodation by the Royal and Ancient Order of the Buffaloes at their Grove House home on Skipton Road. I do not know, however, whether they were ever issued with a gun to shoot.

And as well as fighting back there were many precautions to be taken. At the beginning of the War Harrogate had already recruited some 800 ARP workers – first aiders, ambulance drivers, messengers, fire-watchers, Wardens. On 21 October 1939 the Advertiser announced that
“Exercises by the combined A.R.P. services of the Claro Area will take place on Sunday afternoon at 3 o’clock…the appropriate parties will be directed to deal with the ‘damage’ and the ‘casualties’ caused by the ‘air raid’…. The public is asked not to interfere in any way with the work of the parties and also to comply with any requests made by A.R.P. workers. Certain streets will be stopped and it may be necessary for pedestrians etc to move their positions.” The exercise included a high explosive bomb dropped in Bower Road creating a crater which blocked the whole roadway.

In case water supplies were interrupted by bombing Harrogate Council provided several large water tanks at strategic points throughout the town. Grown-ups at work and children in school practised what they would do when the bombs dropped.

But best to stop them dropping. And in the days before GPS and when much bombing was done in the hours of darkness to avoid interception by fighters, if you couldn’t see the target you didn’t know it was there. So the blackout was introduced to prevent enemy aircraft finding built-up areas. It was controversial. On 2 December 1940 Chairman of Highways Committee, Charles Whiteley, wrote to the Advertiser saying that during the war the previous high standards of snow ploughing and gritting could not be maintained due to reductions in manpower, difficulties of transport “but most of all to the blackout which makes it practically impossible to do any of the above operations after dark.” At a Rotary meeting at the Café Imperial the previous October Rotarian Mr R Kirk was asked to speak briefly on black-out restrictions. He thought they were too rigid and spoke of two people he knew who had been injured through colliding with lamp posts, whether they were in cars or on foot was not stated. But that was not the worst of it. On 23rd September 1939 The Harrogate Advertiser had reported on the inquest into the town’s first black-out fatality, writing, “Mr Arthur Williams, 60, a joiner of King’s Road was knocked down by a bus in crossing the Skipton road at the Westmoreland Street junction to go to the County Hotel. The coroner recorded that “The lighting of the vehicle was in accordance with war restrictions.”

As well as being dark and dangerous life in wartime Harrogate was disrupted by the arrival of evacuees. On 21 December 1940 the Harrogate Advertiser announced that there were over 700 evacuated children attending schools controlled by the Harrogate Education Committee

Food supplies soon were under pressure and so rationing was introduced in an attempt to be fair to all. From January 1940 restrictions were placed on an increasing variety of foods. In Harrogate communal feeding centres were established at three churches and the cricket ground. Womaned by the WVS they were intended to ensure that no none went without. In addition there was the British Restaurant in the Wesley Chapel for those who had run out of ration coupons.
Self help was encouraged. Initially, though, Harrogate Council drew the line at the keeping of hens on Council estates. But when the Government said they were for the idea the Council relented and on January 13th 1940 the Advertiser reported that the Council had agreed that up to 12 hens could be kept on an allotment with no added rent payable provided the tenant paid for the cost of a hen house - £17 – to the approved design including netting, fencing and a gate.

The Council had, though, been quicker with the provision of additional allotments. In October 1939 they announced that an experimental allotment would be established in the Valley Gardens under the direction of the Parks Superintendent. And the next month they decided that “In order to cut the cost of mowing the Stray next year” they would “permit sheep grazing on the land. And in July 1940 it was announced that 50 acres of the Stray were to be ploughed up for food production, this increasing to 85 acres by 1943. Crops grown on the Stray and elsewhere on public open spaces in the town included wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, sugar beet, flax, swedes and carrots.

Harrogate and its inhabitants also played their full part in supporting the various government campaigns to raise money and material for the war effort. When a national campaign was launched in the late summer of 1940 to raise money to replace lost Spitfires, the Mayor of Harrogate launched a local campaign to buy a Spitfire to be named after the town. The climax came on 13 October with a Spitfire concert in the Royal Hall, before which 9 planes performed aerobatics over Harrogate. On 2 November the Mayor sent Beaverbrook a cheque for £7000 and Harrogate got its named Spit. The fund-raising was greatly helped by the publication in the Advertiser of the exploits of Sergeant-Pilot Ronald Fairfax Hamlyn, youngest son of Mr and Mrs WH Hamlyn of Dolvean, Leeds Road, Harrogate. Sergeant-Pilot Hamlyn had shot down eight Nazi planes in three days, for which he received the DFM. A Spitfire pilot of 610 squadron known as The Pied Piper of Harrogate he was one of the first pilots to become an ace-in-a-day when he downed a Ju 88 and four ME 109s in 3 sorties on 24 August. It was good timing for him. The day before he had pranged his plane when landing at Biggin Hill and before and between his 3 sorties he was waiting outside the COs office to answer a charge of negligence. Only after the third sortie did the CO have time for him – to tell him he was recommending him for the DFM! He survived the war and ended his career as a Wing Commander.

Then there were the campaigns to turn waste metal into weapons. One Harrogate lady was concerned about the fate of her knight in armour statue fearing it might be removed from scrappage and used by someone else as an ornament. She was assured that all metal went to the scrap yard and was turned into war material. She was told specifically that her “knight in armour would fight in this war.”

Now, everything I’ve mentioned so far, and more, was, of course also happening up and down the country. I’d now like to turn to what made Harrogate’s experience of war different. And that all revolves around the fact that Harrogate was part of the Sleepy Valley, the Claro Joint area, a safe area. Added to that, what made Harrogate special within the Claro area was that, as a spa town it had lots and lots of hotels. It could accommodate not only normal evacuees in people’s homes but organisational evacuees, service people and civil servants in hotels and requisitioned schools, too. Added to which it was fairly centrally placed in the country with good rail links north and south. For these reasons Harrogate had been chosen as a major host town in plans for the dispersal of government from London. It was also accepted that in some of the chosen host towns new buildings would also be required to accommodate various of the relocated units and departments. So, plans were made to purchase land in towns like Harrogate to build temporary offices. And I’m sure most of us remember them, the huts near the Cricket Ground. They housed almost 1500 staff at the end of the war. The huts were actually known as TOBs – Temporary Office Buildings. They were designed to be erected swiftly and cheaply. They were all the same – a central spine with twelve wings. Between one and six units and a separate canteen were erected on 12 sites during 1940. These are still used by the University of Worcester. The TOBs were designed by Sir James West, Chief Architect for the Ministry of Works. He was more than a jobbing architect and, for instance, designed the wonderful neo-classical College Hall of RAF Cranwell. In many towns much of the requisitioned accommodation was given up once the TOBs had been constructed, but not in Harrogate. Here, there was a need for both and, so, for the most part, the hotels and schools stayed requisitioned throughout the war and sometimes well beyond.

So who and what came to Harrogate? Let’s start with the services. Queen Ethelburga’s College became a training and accommodation centre for the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) and housed many of the intelligence and signals girls working at the Y station at Forest Moor. The Y was a shortening of WI, which itself was short for wireless and their role was to listen to German signals, on radio sets like this to analyse it if uncoded or, if coded, to feed it through to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park for decryption and analysis.

In the summer of 1939 militia camps for the expanding British army were built around the country. Here is a picture of the one at Ripon being constructed. In Harrogate, the old First War camp site on Penny Pot Lane was chosen and a camp was built there and occupied before the outbreak of war. Five years later the camp was taken over by the US Army as its 116th General Hospital, one of a number established to deal with the casualties anticipated during the liberation campaigns in Europe. And in 1947 it became the Army Apprentices College.

In August 1942 the Harrogate Advertiser announced that the HQ of the Women’s Land Army in Yorkshire was now in Harrogate with a staff of 23.

Other service personnel who came to Harrogate in the war were principally members of the RAF. Indeed, Harrogate became something of an RAF town. First to arrive were RAF Signals and Motor transport staff. They were working in The Crown Hotel by October 1939. And they were the first of many. RAF Harrogate, as it was known locally, consisted of a number of establishments. In 1941 the RAF Medical Training establishment moved to Harrogate, spread between the Huts, the Grand Hotel, and Ashville and Pannal Ash colleges.

And in 1943 The Air Ministry’s Psychological Test research section was established at Greyfriars, Kent Road. They carried out a series of experiments on over 1000 pilots to establish why some were more accident prone than others and how they might be identified early in their service careers. And in the Sun Pavilion and Colonnades of the Valley gardens they did a series of tests on night vision capabilities.

There was also a Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) training centre at the Huts. WAAF recruits were billeted in hotels in the town – including the Adelphi in Cold Bath Road and the Studley in Swan Road. And they were drilled outside the hotels. This led to the comment in the Harrogate Advertiser on 23 November 1940 that “Much admiration is being expressed in Harrogate for the smart and soldierly bearing of the WAAF.”

The other big RAF establishment in Harrogate was No. 7 Personnel Reception Centre, located in the Majestic. Its chief job was to process aircrew returning from overseas (especially after training courses). These returning aircrew stayed either in The Majestic or in other hotels while waiting for posting. One of the largest contingents was over 700 aircrew billeted at The Queen’s Hotel in Harrogate (now the Cedar Court). Charles Matthews, a Coastal Command Pilot who returned from training in Halifax, Nova Scotia eager for action but, was held at the Majestic Hotel until a posting could be arranged remembered: “During 1943 and later, many recently trained airmen pilots, Sergeants, Flight Sergeants newly returned from Canada came to stay at the magnificent hotel in Harrogate Yorkshire called 'The Majestic'. The grandeur and magnificence of the building, were lost upon these nineteen-year-olds. They only wanted 'out' from this place of confinement. You only had so much to spend, and the pub wasn't the best value upon which to spend one's meagre pay.”

Some junior RAF airmen were not so lucky with their accommodation, however. In the early days some with no assigned billets were directed to the Royal Baths where they camped in cubicles of the Ladies Intestinal Lavage Department that normally flushed out the intestines of female patients with bowel and stomach disorders.

But the greatest influx of people to Harrogate was of civilians. The Huts soon became the home of Post Office staff. But the vast majority of those who came to Harrogate were civil servants from London involved with the air war, staff first of the Air Ministry and later, of the Ministry of Aircraft Production. This had been created by Churchill in May 1940 to speed up the making of planes, and headed by Lord Beaverbrook, whose controversial methods led to short term wins and longer-term problems.
The British Government’s pre-war planning for War assumed that London would be quickly devastated by bombing. So, a scheme was drawn up in 1936 to evacuate from London civil servants in key departments. Those involved in intelligence and operations were to move to the northern suburbs of London. This, known as the Black move never happened. The others were to be spread around the Midlands and the North. This was known as the Yellow Move and it did happen.

The Air Ministry was to be split between 10 towns, all but one between Birmingham and Bath. The exception was Harrogate. Harrogate was to take primarily the Air Ministry's Departments of Planning, Production, and Research. In 1939 with a staff of between 2,600 and 3,500 (accounts vary) it was described as being ‘a very vulnerable basket of precious eggs’. At the outbreak of war these staff were relocated to Harrogate, some 1,670 places being immediately available. Initially five hotels were requisitioned to accommodate their work and so as time went on were many more. Some of these, like the Crown, which did not revert to a hotel until 1958 or 9, were to be occupied by Government departments for a very long time. And from then on during the war there was a flux of civil servants arriving in Harrogate or returning to London as the threats, circumstances and departmental responsibilities changed. As a result, it is all very confusing. Different accounts of who was where when give different answers and appear to conflict, whereas in fact most are correct snapshots of a very fluid situation.

Not everyone thought it a good idea to spread the organs of government around the country.
Director General of the research section of the Air Ministry at the time was Arthur Tedder, later to be Deputy Supreme Commander SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) under Eisenhower. He did not favour the move to Harrogate. Asked after the War why it happened he said “Panic and ignorance. The Home Office and Air Ministry (which should have known better) expected an immediate and devastating attack on London. Not possible from where the Luftwaffe was based at that time nor for long after. However, off we went at three days’ notice. Special trains, deadly secrecy, great fun. Mind you, few of us had ever been to Harrogate and none of us had spent a winter there – and what a winter that was.”

In this Yellow programme the code letters Zeta Alpha stood for Harrogate and only when on their way did those going learn the name of the place they were going to. Some learnt at Doncaster, others not until they arrived in Harrogate. But as one of the relocating staff said “Not that we were any the wiser. None of us in our section of the train knew where Harrogate was.”

The Office accommodation immediately available was not always best quality. At first some worked in hotel bathrooms with planks across the bath as a desk. “Sometimes we found it convenient to put some of our files on the lid of the lavatory seat” reported one civil servant working at the Crown. One of the civil servants working at The Grand remembered “No office furniture was available and much of the really beautiful and luxurious hotel furnishings was pressed into service. Dressing tables and chests became desks; wardrobes housed files; boards were laid across baths to provide further accommodation for typewriters and documents.” It was cold in winter. “I remember always being cold – my hands were covered in chilblains in spite of wearing mittens.” At the Wellington Hotel, cypher clerks working at night found “we never seemed to have enough coal at night for the very large open fire”

How many civil servants came? On 3 January 1940 the Advertiser ran an article titled A population puzzle. There were too many people in Harrogate – about 52,000. The issue of ration cards had shown an unexplained 2500 in addition to the known 4000 civil servants. Now, 4000 civil servants is some 8% of the town’s then population. That’s equivalent to about 5 ½ million immigrants arriving at once in the UK today. They must have made an impact.

And many of these incomers were billeted on locals. Unfortunately, not all the civil servants were happy with their accommodation. In early 1942 the Advertiser published a letter sent to the Mayor by a civil servant of 23 years standing following criticism of “Harrogate Hovels” at a conference in London. He said that the view expressed at the conference was that of a minority. “The bulk of us, I am sure, have very pleasant recollections of our treatment in Harrogate….”

So out of Harrogate went many to serve in the forces and in came all these other service personnel and civil servants. So, who were these people who relocated to Harrogate? How did they find Harrogate after life in London? Joan Tyler was typical. She left school aged 17 in February 1939 and took a job as a Clerical Assistant in the Research and Development of Engines section of the Air Ministry in Berkeley Square. As soon as war was declared on 3 September her section was relocated to Harrogate. She travelled north by train on 10 September and was bused from the station to her digs in Starbeck. “I had become a “Guinea Pig”, the name given by the local people to the Civil Service evacuees. This was because we had a guinea deducted from our weekly salary to pay for our bed, breakfast and evening meals. The seven shillings remaining from my weekly pay had to cover bus fares to and from Harrogate, lunches, etc!” She worked in the Grand Hotel in Cornwall Road, the sprung floor of the ballroom bearing the weight of all the filing cabinets she tended. She worked hard and long hours. “My job brought me into contact with two aero engine contractors, - Rolls Royce and Napier. As clerical staff we provided a support to the engineers who were involved in the research and development of the Merlin and Sabre engines. “The overtime pay was very welcome as we needed extra clothing to cope with the cold weather. My hosts fed me very well and also introduced me to members of the local church and its social clubs. “We were permitted to hold two dances a week in the ballroom at the Crown Hotel, at one shilling per person! For the Saturday night dance we had the hotel orchestra and on Wednesdays some colleagues from the department formed a passable substitute. No transport was available to take us home afterwards, so we would walk across The Stray and several more miles to Starbeck. I can still remember singing “Run Rabbit Run!” on the way home especially through the snow.” In the Spring she went walking on the Moors and punting on the Nidd at Knaresborough.

Now, what were all these civil servants doing in Harrogate and how significant was their work for the war effort? As I suggested earlier it is impossible to give a final answer to that question. The research has not yet been done. But one thing is clear. Harrogate-based staff were involved in decisions about the development and supply of everything required for the air war – from factories to aircraft to clothing.

We were woefully unprepared for War in 1939. Rather like today not enough had been spent on defence and everything was in short supply. On 22 September 1939 the British Government approved the development of a new programme for aircraft production rising to nearly 2500 planes in the third year of the war – 1941-2. By the time it was published in January 1940 it had become known as the Harrogate programme. Because it had been developed and finalised in Harrogate. On that programme and on other decisions taken in Harrogate the fate of the country was to at least partly depend. And it wasn’t just the development of it but its successful implementation that was driven from Harrogate. Civil servants in Harrogate were key to the organising of aircraft production. For instance, in the Spring of 1939 all Spitfire production was based at the Supermarine factory at Woolston, Southampton. There was another factory built by Morris Motors with government money at Castle Bromwich set up to build Spitfires, but production had not yet started. Harrogate civil servants were involved in the rapid transfer of this factory to Vickers and the beginning there of aircraft manufacture. Eventually the factory turned out just over 12000 Spitfires.

But it wasn’t just about aircraft frames. In addition, the Directorate of Equipment, based in Harrogate, was responsible for all the various equipment installed in aircraft which was changing throughout the War – navigational, electrical, optical (bomb sights etc), hydraulic (landing gear) and including power-operated turrets as well as all the weapons and ammunition. Increasingly some equipment was being supplied from US and this was different - different screw threads etc – and all these differences caused issues that had to be sorted out. This work was driven from Harrogate.

Harrogate was also involved in research and development. When the Air Ministry was evacuated to Harrogate among the sections sent out of London was Research and Development under its Director General Air Chief Marshal Sir Roderic Hill who set up his office here. I suspect though, but do not know, that he went back to London in the summer of 1940. Another section to be transferred to Harrogate in 1939, where it remained till August 1940 was the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate. Its prime purpose was to ensure that all RAF and RN equipment was constructed to approved designs and was fit for issue. And Civil servants in Harrogate were also concerned with providing the spares and replacement parts that kept aircraft in the air. Unglamorous but essential work.

The Battle of Britain was critical to the winning of the war. Had we lost there would have been no allied victory in 1945. Instead Germany and Russia would have slugged it out and we, now, would either be Nazis or Communists. That that did not happen is due to the fact that we won a truly British victory – by not losing. And those civil servants who transferred to Harrogate played their part. Critical to success in the Battle of Britain was the complex network of communications involving radar, wireless and the eyes of the observer corps that allowed Dowding rapidly and accurately to deploy his fighters. The development of the air communications that bound this defence system together was run from Harrogate by Sir George Lee, Director of Communications Development since 1939.

Of course, things didn’t work perfectly. Dispersal had its problems. Long hours on difficult train journeys to and from London to liaise with colleagues were necessary. Communications weren’t as good as they should have been leading to waste and argument. No, things were far from perfect during the War but Britain’s production of aircraft and equipment rose from its woeful pre-war low to outstrip Germany’s, just, from 1941 to 1945. Harrogate-based civil servants played an important part in defeating the Luftwaffe and winning the War. A fact worth remembering