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LACW. Angela Kathleen Mottram
Womens Auxiliary Air Force Home Defence RAF Decoy & Concealment Group
from:Enfield
Angela Mottram served with the WAAF at GPO Shepperton in Col Turners Group on Decoy and concealment, Mum didn't get a chance to tell us much about her war service as she wasn't sure if her group's papers were still covered by the official secret's act but when Colin Dobinson's book Fields of Deception was published for English Heritage, she realised that she was free to speak!
Born in 1920 she was a secretary in London. Most of her brothers joined up in the RAF so she decided to do the same and in 1940 joined the Home Defence RAF Decoy & Concealment Group that was being created by Colonel John Fisher Turner and run out of Shepperton Film Studios. As the WAAF girls in the group were largely used for signals (they were put into one of four groups for different types of signals) this required shift work so she opted to live in digs rather than travel from her home in Enfield. Mum was sent to Morecambe to do some of her signals training. She told me that they were pretty boring signals that she was receiving and sending! Her section was working on providing the raw materials needed for the dummy aircraft and pyrotechnics for the fake airfields, towns and aircraft factories. Even though she said that the work wasn't very glamorous, it was secret as, once a fake site became identified, it was compromised so had to be abandoned in case the enemy spotters discovered it. They would then be inclined to doubt the authenticity of other decoy sites.
Another section of Colonel Turner's Group took signals from the operators of the decoy sites giving estimates of the number of pounds of enemy bombs that landed there, so deflecting them from other real key places like towns and cities such as Sheffield and Hull, and aircraft factories such as Bristol. Their estimates are thought to be conservative but still total several thousand tons of deflected bombs. Something to be proud of!
The attached photos were taken on the Shepperton Film Studios site where they had their offices, as well as having the assistance of the studios' carpentry and set-making teams. The old house, Littleton House, is visible in the background just after it had suffered bomb damage hence the tarpaulins. Mum always felt guilty about this as she swapped her night shift so that she could go to a dance, and then the colleague that she swapped with was injured during the air raid that happened at Shepperton while she was doing Mum's shift.
Mum said that the full group at Shepperton was made up of WAAF and actual RAF flyers (some retired ones), all under the watchful eye of Colonel Turner. They were also included in some of the work for Operation Overlord. Mum's particular friends in the group were Isabel McFadden (known as Scottie), Joan Duxson and Pat McLaren (who emigrated to Australia).
