A tribute to my father and my mother Clarice
Bill and Clarice Grace
Photo taken at a Taplow
Masonic Lodge Ladies' Night in the fifties
My father, William Grace, was born on 11th February 1903 in Tottenham, North London - some ten months before the Wright brothers first flew.
In 1910, A V Roe was flying
his AVRO Triplane over Tottenham marshes, having been evicted from Brooklands
by the Clerk of the Course.
Bill watched from below
- the sight making a deep impression on the 7-year old boy.
Alliot Verdon-Roe at the controls of one of the first triplanes he built.
Young William's father was
a third generation cordwainer - a master bootmaker and went to France with
the Cavalry
as a leather worker and
saddler. He was seriously injured and returned to England, but was
unable to work again.
He eventually died of his
injuries. With three younger sisters and a mother to support, Bill
was forced to leave school and go out
to work as the family breadwinner.
At the age of 13, he pushed a milk cart around the streets of London
in the early hours of the
morning delivering milk. In time, he progressed through a variety
of jobs,
among them working on trams
at a local terminus.
In 1920, he heard that there
were jobs to be had at a nearby airfield where a new aircraft company was
being established.
This was the de Havilland
Aircraft Company being established by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane,
Hendon, North London.
Bill was taken on as a young
apprentice.
Bill Grace's wooden tool
box - an apprentice piece made by him at Stag Lane from aircraft spruce,
ply,
brass screws and alloy aircraft
one-inch washers. Now a precious family heirloom.
Bill Grace with two of his younger sisters (Edna left, Dorothy right) - 1931
In the early post-war years,
orders were scarce and times were hard for the fledgling company.
On Friday lunchtimes, the
managers would sometimes take aircraft grade spruce and other materials
and sell them at the local
market for whatever they
could get for them in order to make up the wage packets on Friday night.
But by the late twenties,
the Moth had transformed
all of that, and the heyday of private aviation was in full swing.
Records fell to Moths and many famous pilots
were to be seen at Stag
Lane. The company developed its first engine - the Gipsy 1, and in
1927, Bill worked on the first pair of these
engines on the bench.
These two engines went into the two diminutive DH71 Tiger Moth monoplane
experimental aircraft.
Bill remembered preparing
and polishing aircraft for the annual Kings Cup Races each year.
Bill Grace's BTH magneto
spanner (BTH magnetos were fitted to DH Gipsy engines) and his step gauge,
engraved with a very early
DH logo, also seen on the covers of the DH Gazettes of 1926 below.
In 1926, the de Havilland
Aircraft Company began publishing its own house magazine - the DH Gazette.
Here are the first four
issues.
The above photo and the two
following photos tell the story of the rise and fall of Stag Lane aerodrome.
Above is Stag Lane around
1926, when the first Gazettes above were published. G-EBPR and G-EBRY
are early DH60 Moths.
G-EBGT is a Jupiter-engined
DH9C. Note the open countryside and the houses just visible at the
top of the image. High resolution image here.
Stag Lane in its heyday in
the early thirties, just before closure. Compare with the previous
image. In a few years, the factory had
expanded considerably, but
so had suburbia, which was to precipitate the closure of the airfield in
1934,
with producton and flight
operations being relocated to Hatfield. High resolution image here.
By 1934, the company was
booming and the Moth and other types were being exported worldwide.
But the airfield at Stag Lane was
being encroached upon by
the spreading London suburban sprawl. In 1930, the company purchased
land a few miles
north at Hatfield and established
a new airfield. The factory was transferred there in 1934, with just
the engine operation remaining
in the workshops at Stag
Lane.
Stag Lane not long after
the airfield closed in 1934. Houses are competely engulfing the airfield,
but the factory remained
as the DH engine works.
High resolution image here.
Bill moved to Hatfied with
the new operation. On Saturday 1st December 1934, after a busy year,
the company held its
annual dinner in the Warncliffe
Rooms in London.
Bill attended the DH annual
dinner in 1934 and had his commemorative menu autographed by 'GdeH' (Geoffrey
de Havilland),
Owen Cathcart-Jones, James
Mollison (rather scratchy - he liked his drink) and Amy Mollison.
Cathcart-Jones and the Mollisons
had just returned from Australia where they had flown their Comets in the
McRobertson England to Australia
race. (The fifth autograph is that of Leonard Henry, the entertainer
for the evening.)
The menu recorded numerous
company achievements through the year in the form of newsreel frames,
including the 'great trek'
from Stag Lane to Hatfield.
High resolution image here
.
In the thirties, Bill had
a friend of the same name in Imperial Airways.
He sent this photo of the
DH86 Express G-ADFF 'Dione' that he was flying in the Middle East.
The reverse of the DH86 photo makes interesting reading
Among the mementos that Bill Grace kept for the rest of his life was this DH brochure, dated 1937. Some selected pages are shown below.
Hatfield in the early thirties.
In the centre of the photo are the de Havilland School of Flying hangars
and the clubhouse
and swimming pool of the
London Aeroplane Club. To the right, the first factory buildings
are just going up.
When war was declared, DH
decided that they could best contribute to the war effort with a wooden
fighter/bomber based on the technology of the
DH88 Comet racer and the
DH91 Albatross airliner. That aircraft was the DH98 Mosquito.
Tiger Moth production was handed over to Morris Motors
at Cowley, Oxford to make
way for Mosquito and other production at Hatfield.
At the outbreak of war, Bill
applied to the RAF to become a pilot, but he was turned down because of
the critical nature of his work at DH's.
Bill was at that time the
Superintendent of Stores. As such, all of the components and materials
that went into aircraft production at hatfield passed through his hands.
29th September 1939 was National
Registration Day. The National Registration Bill was introduced to
Parliament as an emergency measure at the start of the war
and Royal assent given on
5th September 1939. 65,000 enumerators across the country delivered
forms ahead of the chosen day.
Householders were required
to record details on the registration forms. On the following Sunday
and Monday the enumerators visited every householder,
checked the form and there
and then issued a completed identity card for each of the residents.
Three main reasons for their
introduction:
1. The
major dislocation of the population caused by mobilisation and mass evacuation
and also the wartime need for complete manpower control and planning in
order to maximise the efficiency of the war economy.
2. The
likelihood of rationing (introduced from January 1940 onwards).
3. Population
statistics. As the last census had been held in 1931, there was little
accurate data on which to base vital planning decisions.
This is a page from the National
Register, taken on 29th September 1939 and shows Bill Grace living at 62
Aldridge Avenue, Stanmore, a couple of miles northwest of Stag Lane aerodrome.
He is recorded with the
occupation of 'Superintendent of Stores, aircraft' and living with his
widowed mother Alice and his youger sister Marjorie who was a press operator
and instrument maker.
Note that, at number 68,
three doors down there were three families, two members of whom declared
their occupation as 'Aircraft factory storekeeper, heavy'.
(Thanks to Roger de Mercado,
Secretary of the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School Association,
for this page and the one below for Clarice Grace, née Usher.)
Bill Grace's copy of the British Standard B.S. 1100, Part 5, dated 1944.
Early in the war, Bill was
taken seriously ill with a ruptured appendix and was admitted to the nearby
Redhill County Hospital, Edgware
where he was placed on the
critical list. One of his intensive care nurses was a young nurse
by the name of Clarice Usher.
Bill recovered - and married Clarice Usher in June 1942.
Bill and Clarice Grace were married in June 1942.
Another page from the National
Register of 29th September 1939 for the residents of Redhill County Hospital,
Burnt Oak, near Edgware.
Third from bottom is Hospital
Staff Nurse Clarice Usher, whose name was over-written Grace upon her marriage
to Bill in 1942.
Then, on the 3rd of October 1940, there was an air raid on de Havillands at Hatfield.
Although
the massed daylight raids were drawing down towards the end of the Battle
of Britain, there continued to be sporadic activity during daylight hours
by the Luftwaffe bomber force.
This was generally un-escorted,
mostly conducted by singleton aircraft or very small groups, and often
of little value militarily. One Luftwaffe aircraft, a Junkers 88 of Stab
1./KG 77,
was a lone raider whose
attack had an unintended although successful outcome for the Luftwaffe.
Trying
to find Reading, the crew became lost in poor visibility and accidentally
stumbled upon the de Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield. Here,
the crew executed an accurate attack
that killed twenty-one factory
workers, injured another seventy, and destroyed eighty per cent of the
materials and work in progress for the new Mosquito bomber.
The Ju-88 attacked the airfield
at low level, dropping four bombs at such low level that they skidded across
the grass and concrete apron and lobbed up into the
94 shop which was crammed
with workers and materials being gathered for the production of the first
fifty production Mosquitos.
At the time, Bill Grace
was Superintendent of Stores for de Havillands and was in charge of this
assembly of parts and materials.
The damage was catastrophic.
26 of Bill's staff died and many more were injured. Many died in
a bomb shelter inside the building
where one of the bombs exploded.
Bill, who was in one of the
outside shelters, did a quick head count and discovered that one of his
female workers was missing.
He was sprinting across
the apron back towards the hangar to find her when the Ju-88 attacked.
He was blown across the apron,
but survived. (Bill
passed away in 1975, partly from lung damage that was attributed to the
bomb blasts that day.)
The Ju-88 came around for a second pass, and eyewitnesses stated that they were machine gunned as they ran for cover.
It was
a significant blow to an important military aircraft project. The
airfield defences were alert, though, and put up a barrage of machine gun
and 40mm Bofors gun fire
which hit and crippled the
Ju-88., damaging the bomber's starboard engine and tail. The bomber
crash-landed in flames at Eastend Green Farm, Hertingfordbury,
where the crew scrambled
clear and were captured unharmed before the fire took hold.
All were captured and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp in Canada.
The gutted 94 shop along
with most of the materials allocated to the production of the first 50
Mosquitos.
More images of the enormous
damage may be found here.
At the time the building
was also home to the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School.
The downed Hatfield Ju-88
being guarded at Eastend Green Farm, Hertingfordbury.
This book contains a very
detailed account of the incident, including many contemporary eyewitness
accounts.
The burnt out Ju-88 wreckage - more images may be found here
Julian Evan-Hart's daughter
at the precise location of the crash.
Julian, Britain's foremost
metal detector expert, has recovered parts of the downed Ju-88 from the
field.
Meanwhile, Clarice was waiting
for Bill to visit her after work. By late evening, there was no sign
of him.
It wasn't until then that
a friend told her "Didn't you hear? DH's got bombed today."
Bill finally turned up at
about 3 a.m. the following morning, covered in mud and blood. There
had been chaos and carnage to deal with.
The remarkable story of the
Mosquito is told in this de Havilland film.
Part
1 Part
2 Part
3
After the bombing, the manufacture
of Mosquito components was dispersed. Being a relatively simple wooden
aeroplane, over four hundred sub-contracted
furniture factories, garages
and workshops throughout the area were pressed into Mosquito component
production. Bill's job became the co-ordination
of this massive effort.
The British-built Mosquitos
had major structural components fabricated from wood in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire,
England. Fuselages, wings and tailplanes
were made at furniture companies
such as Ronson, E. Gomme, Parker Knoll, Austinsuite and Styles & Mealing.
Wing spars were made by J. B. Heath and Dancer & Hearne.
Many of the other parts,
including flaps, flap shrouds, fins, leading edge assemblies and bomb doors
were also produced in the Buckinghamshire town.
Dancer & Hearne processed
much of the wood from start to finish, receiving timber and transforming
it into finished wing spars at their factory on the outskirts of High Wycombe.
Initially much of the specialised
yellow birch wood veneer and finished plywood used for the prototypes and
early production aircraft was brought in Liberty Ships from firms in Wisconsin,
USA.
Prominent in this role were
Roddis Plywood and Veneer Manufacturing in Marshfield. In conjunction
with the USDA Forest Products Laboratory, Hamilton Roddis
had developed new plywood
adhesives and hot pressing technology.
Hatfield rolled out an incredible
3,326 Mosquitos, plus another 1,476 at its shadow factory at nearbly Leavesden.
Such production numbers
represented a tremendous achievement under war conditions.
(A further 1,076 were produced
by de Havilland, Canada, 1,066 by Standard Motors, Coventry, 244 by the
Percival Aircraft Company, Luton,
212 by de Havilland, Australia,
122 by Airspeed Aircraft, Portsmouth and 86 by de Havilland at Hawarden,
Cheshire.
Total Mosquito production
was 7,781, of which 6,710 were built during the war.)
One perk of his job was that
Bill had extra petrol rations because of the need to visit dozens of his
sub-contractors. And if he
made the odd private journey
and got stopped, there would always be a particular sub-contractor he was
heading for!
A meeting of the Aircraft
Division Joint Production Committee at Hatfield held on April 21st 1942.
Bill Grace is seated
third from left, in the pinstripe suit. The meeting was evidently
significant enough to attract the attention of the official DH photographer.
(I found this photograph
in one of the company photograph albums at Hatfield before it closed.)
Note also the parquet flooring
of the DH Hatfield administrative building. Too small to read in
this photograph is the production plan pinned to the wall.
And here are the names and
positions of the meeting participants. W. H. Grace was the Superintendent
of Stores.
His role included co-ordinating
the supply of Mosquito parts from hundreds of suppliers across the Home
Counties and beyond.
What we might call supply
chain management today.
Note also Christopher Martin Sharp at top right, holding a file. He was later to write the definitive DH: A History of de Havilland.
This photograph was unearthed
by Roger de Mercado, Chairman of the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical
School in June 2021,
who found it in a copu of
'Our Job', issued to DH personnel during the War. It can be found
here, and incudes a couple more
references to W. H. Grace.
(Note that the two pictures
are very slightly different, taken moments apart, but Mrs. D. G. O'Dell
is absent from the first photograph.
Did she need to leave in
a hurry?!)
The Hatfield production line
focused primarily on Mosquito bomber production, while the Second Aircraft
Group (SAG) factory at nearby Leavesden
concentrated on Mosquito
trainer and night-fighter production.
Each half of a Mosquito fuselage was laid down on a massive former on which was wrapped a sandwich of ply and Balsa wood, giving the Mosqiito its immense strength.
The two halves were then fitted with their internal systems before being bonded together.
Once the fuselage halves were mated, the structure was covered in madapolam fabric, attached with red dope, evidently applied with sponges as seen here.
Until Bill and Clarice were
married in 1942, Bill lived at 62 Aldridge Avenue, Stanmore, just a couple
of miles northwest of Stag Lane aerodrome.
He also sometimes stayed
at the Stone House, a hotel across the road from the main gate at Hatfield.
The Stone House. This Hatfield landmark was demolished during the construction of the Hatfield tunnel in the eighties.
When Bill and Clarice married, a small bungalow in Goodyers Avenue, Radlett was requisitioned for them.
A sheet of headed paper of
the DH Aircraft Company Second Aircraft Group, Factory No. 2, Leavesden.
Factory No. 2 was where Mosquitos were produced.
Bill had arranged for Clarice
to transfer to DH's where she took a position as an industrial nurse at
Leavesden where, at the time, Halifaxes and Mosquitos were being manufactured.
(The reason why this particular
sheet of paper has survived is because Clarice wrote a recipe for chocolate
cake on the reverse!)
On one occasion, Clarice
was being taken around the airfield in a Jeep. While waiting at traffic
lights on the peri-track to cross the runway threshold, the driver noticed
that the pilot of the Halifax
on short finals had omitted to lower his undercarriage. The quick-thinking
driver told Clarice to
run out in front of the
approaching bomber and wave him off. The driver was wearing camouflage,
but Clarice was in her all-white
nurse's uniform. She
ran onto the runway and frantically waved the oncoming bomber off.
It overshot over her head at the last moment, went round, and landed safely,
gear down.
A rare colour photograph
of a Handley Page Halifax I which was retained by the manufacturers for
experimental work at Handley Page's Leavesden factory airfield.
Here it is shown in flight
over Kings Langley, Hertfordshire in June 1943.
Leavesden Mosquito personnel
with one of the Mosquitos produced at Leavesden outside the Mosquito flight
shed.
Third from the right, seated
in the front row is an industrial nurse. This is either Clarice Grace
or one of her colleagues.
(The figures add scale to
the size of the propellers and spinners!)
Grateful thanks to Richard
Riding for this photograph taken by his father E. J. Riding, thought to
have been taken in the summer of 1944.
At that time, the factory
was churning out Mk III's, Mk. 33's and NF36's.
Clarice became a friend of
John de Havilland who was one of Geoffrey de Havilland's sons and a test
pilot for DH's. One day he offered to take her up in a Mossie.
However, on 23rd September
1943, John was killed in a Mosquito mid-air collision near St. Albans.
The accident report states,
"During a test flight of a de Havilland Mosquito Mark VI (HX850), flying
with flight test observer John H. F. Scrope, he collided in the vicinity
of St. Albans
with another Mosquito, a
Mark VI flown by pilot George Gibbins. Both aircraft were made of
wood, and disintegrated in the air, killing all four occupants aboard.
G.F. Carter was flying as
an observer in Gibbins's aircraft".
However, it was widely suspected
at the factory that the fatal accident was the disastrous result of a tail-chasing
prank that went terribly wrong.
Weight is added to this
theory by an event that occurred only the previous month, on August 8th.
Dick Whittingham, who worked
in the Experimental Flight Test Department at Hatfield was airborne with
Geoffrey de Havilland in the prototype Mosquito W4050.
He recounts, "On the way
back to Hatfield we were passing over Welwyn Garden City when we saw a
Mosquito below us
circling over the town centre.
Geoffrey said “It’s John”, and immediately dived on to his tail, whereupon
John went
into a tight turn. As their
turn got tighter and tighter, Geoffrey said “Let me know when you black
out.” When I
eventually said “Now” he
seemed rather disappointed saying “I thought that I should have lasted
longer than you but I didn’t.”
Evidently, the Mosquito
flight test crews played this tail-chasing game regularly.
Clarice never had her Mosquito flight.
The report on the Mosquito collision in the September 2nd 1943 issue of Flight magazine.
Meanwhile Bill worked on
at Hatfield under difficult wartime conditions. The staff took turns
in firewatching every night.
He and a friend, when on
the night shift in the deserted administrative block, sometimes relaxed
in Geoffrey deH's office,
smoking his cigars and drinking
his brandy!
One night there was a serious
fire in the Mosquito flight shed. One of the fire watchers was walking
through the shed
among the latest group of
production Mossies when he noticed a slight fuel drip from under the wing
of one of the
new aircraft. Seeing
an opportunity, he decided that he could re-fill his cigarette lighter,
so he opened his lighter and held it
under the drip. When
it was full, he instinctively flicked the lighter to check it, and WHOOSH!
Up went the wooden Mossie in flames!
At the end of the war, DH's
laid off thousands of workers. Bill and Clarice bought a local tobacconist
and confectioner's shop in nearby Fleetville,
at 205 Hatfield Road, which
he and Clarice ran until they retired in November 1966.
Bill never learned to fly,
but he maintained his aviation associations by joining the nearby Elstree
Flying Club as a social member.
In the sixties, the hangar
at Elstree was full of civilianised war surplus types - Miles Magisters,
Messengers, Geminis, Austers,
Proctors, and Tiger Moths
- not to mention Tim Davies' Mk. IX Spitfire G-ASJV (MH434).
My parents would spend their
evenings at the bar with friends, but because of licensing laws, as a young
boy of ten years old,
I was not allowed into the
bar. So I spent these summer evenings sitting on the bench outside
with my Coca Cola and packet of crisps,
watching the last aircraft
land and be pushed into the hangar for the night.
When the pilots had repaired
to the bar, I would wander through the cavernous black hangar and commune
with the old aeroplanes,
some still warm and smelling
of hot oil and fuel. Naturally, I was most drawn to the Spitfire,
the Hornet Moth G-ADUR and my favourite,
Mike Fallon's smart red
and white Tiger Moth - G-AOIM.
Mike Fallon's Tiger Moth
G-AOIM at Elstree in the sixties - a frequent sight in the circuit on summer
evenings.
(G-AOIM (T7109) has now
been meticulously restored to its wartime specification by Roger Brookhouse
and is available for experience flights by Finest
Hour Warbirds.)
(Photograph with thanks
to David Whitworth)
It was beyond my imagination as a young boy of ten or twelve, that, one day, I would have the privilege to own a Tiger of my own.
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