The Royal Observer Corps

I am most grateful to Clive Sanders who supplied this photograph with his father Walter (No 6 back row) and other members of the Deddington crew of the ROC taken in 1943/44. They are identified below from left to right.

Front row: (11) Bill Berry, (12) George Cotteral, (13) Bill Holiday, (14) George Deeley (Ldg Observer & 2 i/c), (15) Observer Officer (later Observer Lieutenant) K W J Grigg, (16) Chief Observer Douglas Hopcraft, (17) Smith, (18) Ernie Dodd,   (19) Bob Churchill.

A further interesting piece of information came from Jack Malcher (1 above). The very first - and top secret -  operational British jet aircaft, the Gloster Meteor,conducted some of its test flights from Enstone and Barford airfields in late 1942 and was tracked by the Deddington ROC crew who were somewhat mystified by the speed it was travelling at. The aircraft became operational in 1943.  Derrick Robbins - whose recollections of living in Deddington as an evacuee can be read by following this link - also recalls seeing and, more particularly, hearing it, " I came back to Deddington on a school break late 1943 and took a bike ride one afternoon. I was just north of Adderbury on the Banbury road when a twin engine plane flew E to W pretty low. Unusually it made a swishing sort of sound which was completely unlike the usual beat of a propeller driven plane. I did not know it at the time but it was the experimental Meteor jet."

No plans exist of the building in the picture - which replaced a very comfortable fully funished dug out - but as it lasted into the 1950s there are still some who remember it. Brian Fuller remembers the dug out and taking tea up to his father when he was on watch. The tower (as it was called) stood on the then allotments (now a housing estate) on the North side of the Hempton Road - see location map below. Unusually it was a two story brick building - most ROC buildings were wooden huts - with an external iron staircase to an upstairs viewing room. Tar felted panels could be rolled back for access and clear viewing. Furniture consisted of old upholstered bus seats which were convenient for sitting and leaning back to scan the sky with binoculars - and also for courting couples!

Training of the Corps in aircraft recognition was by means of 3" x 2" cards containing  B & W silhouettes on one side and identity on the other - an early form of 'flash card' familiar to schoolchildren today. The full set of cards belonging to Percy Franklin (No 10 in photo) are still in the family. A small selection of the 200+ cards in the collection can be found by following the links below. The cards are numbered in case you wish to test your recognistion skills.
                          Luftwaffe silhouttes
                          RAF silhouttes
                          Answers to recognition quiz

Information provided by Derrick Robbins

The text that follows was provided by Derrick Robbins as just one in a series of e mails which have been edited into a composite article about Deddington in the early years of WWII.  Derrick was evacuated to the village as a young boy and his crystal clear and extensive recollections about life at that time can be found here.

"What was the Royal Observer Corp? I hear you cry. 1 would hazard a guess that there is hardly anyone alive in Deddington who could really answer that question. Started way back in 1925, the ROC, then just Observer Corp, was formed to report on enemy aircraft movements in time of war. When the Second World War actually broke out, the plan was immediately put into operation and observation posts were put in all over Great Britain. These were manned by two men in shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all unpaid volunteers. Mostly over 50 years of age and too old for active service (although there was one volunteer aged 15), they wore Royal Airforce blue battledress, a black beret with a silver badge and carried a military gas mask. Their task was to report on the height, direction and speed of any aircraft entering their air space. If the aircraft were German, then this information would be transferred to a fighter pilot allowing him to proceed directly to his foe and save time searching for it. Also a downed pilot could be picked up in a short space of time. What about radar detection?, you might ask. In the 1940s radar was still in its infancy and could not pick up low-flying aircraft; nor could it detect height or speed, or if it was friend or foe.

Deddington had its own observation post in the middle of the allotments which were then up the Hempton Road where the (post war) Daedings estate was built just past the old council houses (with Roman numeral numbering) on the north side of the road.

There is no record of how many enemy aircraft they called, but they would have reported on planes going to and fro on the devastating attack on Coventry, and on the two unexploded bombs which fell into a field south of the village. Some volunteers with above average spotting ability were transferred to an elite section known as Seaborne Ops and were put aboard ships lying off the French coast two days after D-Day to help the gunners avoid friendly fire on the numerous allied aircraft in the air at the time.

The ROC was stood down in 1992, when aircraft flew too fast and too high to be seen with the naked eye. There is no doubt that all ROC volunteers were a great asset to the war effort and helped save a number of lives, as well as helping win the war. I take my hat off to all of you. 

Incidentally the ROC was reinstated in 1947 for a short while. I guess that was around the time of the Korean War when I was in the army"

Information provided by the ROC Museum

With thanks to Tony Maatz: Deddington Observation Post opened at map ref.P464319 (see map below)  in December 1938 as 4/Z4, ie Z4 Post in No.4 Group Oxford.  In March 1939 it became 12/Q2 but was re-allocated to Oxford Group (re-designated No.3 Group) in November 1953 as 3/K2.

"Aircraft Observation Posts were manned in shifts from a Post strength of up to 25 Observers including a Head Observer and two Leading Observer Post Instructors.

Posts were linked by telephone in threes and fours, called Clusters.  There was an Officer in charge of each Cluster.  There were no Officers in a Post Crew. It is therefore likely that the Officer in your photograph was the one in charge of the Cluster.  He was known as a Group Officer. Wartime records are rare because instructions were issued in 1945 to send them for salvage, ie pulped to help the paper shortage."

More information about the ROC can be found on their museum website

Information provided by Primrose Buckle (neé Roberts).

Major Roberts (father) and his family lived at Deddington Manor from 1932 to 1946. Mrs Roberts (previously Pyman) helped with the health care of evacuees. Primrose's step brother Lawrence Pyman was the Spitfire pilot who died in 1941 over France and is commemorated on the War Memorial. Primrose became a plotter in the ROC crew in Oxford. She recalls "I used to hitchhike every day to Oxford...no one ever told me there was a post in Deddington! I joined up in Oxford encouraged by our officer Miss Cooper of marmalade fame.  On night duty we slept on iron beds in 2 layers - bunks - with huge square mattresses called "biscuits" - you had to search and search for 3 the same thickness as if the middle one was too high you were bent up!  I once asked (as I was in the plotting post in the new Bodleian) what the delicious smell coming from the kitchen was...got very short change -"thats for the officers breakfast" -WE got doorsteps."