contact with each other on the landline link between the two sites and this was an opportunity to put faces to voices.
At Rothwesten the tech site was within the same perimeter as the domestic site. There was a typical American brashness about it. Everything was over-labelled and highly coloured, and it struck me as being very scruffy and unclean. Each serviceman seemed to own an over-large, dirty, car. Even within the confines of the camp they seemed to drive everywhere instead of walking. They were generally obese, appeared unfit, and looked as though a good long walk would kill them. We were given a welcome talk by the Commandant in his office. He sat in a high-backed chair, smoking a cigar, and talked out of the side of his mouth. The Stars and Stripes stood overbearingly in a corner. Through his window we could see, at the top of a very tall pole, an even larger version of the same. After this 'Buddy Chat' we were taken to see the radars. Their performance was undoubtedly better than ours and the operators were keen to show everything to us. The working conditions were worse and much was under canvas. Heating was by large blower heaters. We asked why this was so, and were given the answer that it was to allow of rapid dismantling to retreat to a safer base in the event of hostility.5 We remarked on the poor conditions and were told "War is hell" and then someone said "Why should there be any difference in a non-shooting peacetime tactical situation?" We were not particularly impressed with this attitude, but envied their having more powerful radar. As far as I could tell they had an AN/FPS search radar and an FPS6 height finder. We were taken, inevitably, to their PX.6 We had no Dollars so could buy nothing. There were abundant stocks and everything was very cheaply priced. We were also shown the Community Centre, and could see extensive rows of married quarters and barracks. The entire camp seemed unbalanced in as far as it having a very small tech site within an over-large, over-cushy, domestic 'Little America' environment. Whilst technically of great interest, my feeling was that, in the event of an outbreak of hostilities, there was far too much domestic hamper to enable them to either operate or move with any degree of efficiency.
Back at Borgentreich, in the ensuing months there was very little 'trade' for us Fighter Controllers. There was so little that, even though the work was shared fairly evenly, I did not accumulate the necessary 100 PIs to qualify until June. The performance of our radar was poor for most of the time and it took great skill to continue to estimate and plot, in chinagraph pencil on the surface of the PPI, the movements of aircraft under control when the radar was fading or had temporarily gone blank. Sometimes sorties even had to be aborted because of this. At other times signals on the Type 15 could be so strong that the paints on the PPI would appear as a full circle. Whilst the range could be read off, the location in azimuth could be very hard to determine. The paints for two aircraft at, or close to, the same range would merge and the overall picture become meaningless. A quick change to the Type 14 equipment would sometimes solve the situation but not always. It was not unusual for us to swing a Type 13 radar across the likely area so as to pick up the aircraft and read off their azimuth location from its strobe line on the PPI. We could 'lose' fighters as they turned and therefore had to estimate their position and point of reappearance so as to keep them under our control. The pilots, of course, had no idea of the difficulties we were experiencing. Our cabin assistants, with their Craig computers, were invaluable to us estimating, as they did, the probable location of aircraft under control when we couldn't 'see' them. We had to be resourceful.
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5 Our own need for mobility was for us to be able to move to another site so as better to prosecute the aims of battle in a tactical situation.
6 The equivalent of our NAAFI but in supermarket style and with what appeared to be a wasteful amount of stock, including luxury items. This was taken to the point that there was no need for any off-camp shopping or mixing with the local German population.
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