Unidentified (specialist wireless?) RAF units - WWII - North Africa

[Happyhaddock]

I'm new to this forum, so please forgive the lengthy first post. In brief I am hoping those more knowledgeable than myself may be able to help with the meaning of some unfamiliar acronyms I have listed below.

I am researching my grandfather's WWII service history which the family believe was almost entirely served in the deserts of North Africa. Given the ad-hoc way in which new and specialist teams can be formed and disbanded during wars we may never make sense of all the units he was attached to. However if anybody knows what any of the following "units" may be, or even if they can make an educated guess, I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

(as all of the following units are taken from my grandfathers barely legible official service records, any plausible variants based around similar looking characters/numerals are to be considered as possible alternatives)

3SS or 5SS :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown
5th Withering? :writing was such poor scrawl this unit could really have been anything
63SP :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown -
         63SP (or possibly 635P) is the unit my grandfather spent the longest with and where he seemingly ended the war, and as such it is potentially the unit that may prove most interesting to our family.
10BC    :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown
AHQWD :assumed to stand for Air Headquarters Western Desert
Hn Hearington? :writing was such poor scrawl this unit could really have been anything
HQ (U) 32fwing :assumed to be a poorly written HQ (U) 328wing, the significance of the U is not known
HQ 33fwing :assumed to be a poorly written HQ 338wing
ISOR   :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown
ISS :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown
MEAST :could this be as simple as a generic statement he was shipped out to the Middle East?
MESS :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown
WJAAF :could this be a poorly written NWAAF - North West African Air Force?
YRC :unit purpose, location and/or activities unknown

My grandfather died in old age having never spoken candidly about what he did in WWII. Coming from a family who ran a successful maritime salvage business he was already a skilled engineer and a well qualified wireless telegrapher before joining the armed forces. He always maintained that he had enlisted in the RAF sometime before war had broken out, though the evidence suggests this may have been in some sort of volunteer reserve capacity rather than as a full time career.

His eyesight was such that he would never have passed the medical for any kind of active combat role, nor would he have been quite as young as most RAF recruits when war was declared. However, odd comments he did make lead us to think that he may have had a peripatetic life in the RAF. That he was living mainly out of tents and trucks as part of a small specialist communications team working in advance of the main military occupation. There have been suggestions that for his entire service in the RAF he was never once able to return home to my grandmother in Lincolnshire, and throughout his life he maintained that he had never, ever, flown in an aeroplane..

Our suspicions of his wartime activities possibly being a little unusual had been enhanced by the fact his brief military service record seemed to contradict the majority of what we thought we knew. It simply showed that after a few brief months he was discharged from the RAF as an "air gunner" on medical grounds (presumably poor eyesight?) before war was even declared. Consequently we had no official record of him ever having gone to North Africa, let alone what he actually did for the RAF whilst there. However my family have recently discovered that he actually had more than one RAF personnel service number/record.

Anyway, whilst this discovery hasn't yet answered any of our questions they have delivered photo-copies of a few additional hand-written and barely legible official service records which our family are trying to make sense of.

 Whilst reasons for most of his moves from unit to unit are not given, those transfers prior to late'41 are ascribed to "H" or "HH" which I believe to stand for "Headquarters Holding". Quite what this actually meant for my grandfather I am not sure, but it seems to imply that he may have spent the early part of the war "twiddling his thumbs" without proper assignment if the RAF didn't quite know how best to utilise someone whose background and skills may not have fit the profile of other "new recruits".

In short all we have so far been able to make out about my grandfather is that he seemed to have been a highly accomplished wireless operator, but with the fairly minor rank of LAC (leading Aircraft man?). However the lengthy list of as yet unidentified units he was attached to between 1941 and the end of the war could hide all manner of possible connections to different activities in different locations. So, if asked to speculate based upon what little we so far know, my best guess might be to infer that my grandfather eventually ended up working in the North African desert as part of a Wireless Observation Unit reporting enemy movements back to HQ. However I have no idea if any of the as yet unidentified units listed on my grandfather's service record actually support such a hypothesis or indicate anything more about his service.

Many thanks

[q98]

It is possible his work was related to the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO) which fed directly into Bletchley Park where the Enigma cyphers were broken.
The following links may be of interest:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j ... W4GqvXKmuA
http://ticktalk.shawwebspace.ca/pages/v ... ronometer/
http://www.thehourlounge.com/thread/vie ... _70209.pdf
http://ticktalk.shawwebspace.ca/pages/v ... ronometer/
http://www.iwm.org.uk/search/global?que ... .x=9&.y=10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-stations
http://ystations.webs.com/militaryyservice.htm

q98

[Happyhaddock]

Thanks for the reply but most of the links seem dead and those that are active don't seem to have any specific connection to North Africa.

Nevertheless I'll look into the CSO to see if any of their activities seem relevant to my grandfather

[rafcommands]

Best way forward is to post an image of the supplied service record/s.

The slant that you are giving in your transcript is distorting the true picture

eg As to no official record of being in North Africa - the service record in your transcript does not seem to concur with your statement.

I doubt he went straight to a Staging Post overseas from first posting to Signals School in the UK and YRC is either PRC or No.X RC depending if it was one of the first or last noted in the chrono order of postings.

H was Home Force not Headquarters and HH was not twiddling thumbs it shows he was on headquarters Establishment as casualty replacement and would have been attached to a unit subordinate to that Headquarters.

Ross

[Happyhaddock]

As mentioned in my initial post, we were also confused as the only service record we initially had showed that my grandfather was discharged from the RAF before war broke out.

It was only the recent discovery that he had a second RAF personnel number, and hence a second service record that has opened up these new avenues of research into his time in North Africa.

This second record documenting my grandfather's service during the war is barely legible with very poor handwriting in places, in other places the writing is so faded bits seem missing where even supposedly simple entries you would expect to be dates don't seem to have enough numerals in them to make sense as periods of time.

This forum seems to only allow very small sized file/image uploads (I work professionally as an artist so I'm used to various on line forum set up for sharing detailed images). Nevertheless, if you'll forgive the low resolution scan of a photocopy of what was already a barely legible document, then below should hopefully be an image of the relevant part of my grandfather's second service record.

many thanks in advance for any help others can offer in making sense of some of the "units" mentioned.

Cheers

[carlineric]

There is a chapter on North Africa in Michael Paterson's book "Voices of the Code Breakers" which may give an insight into what was happening with intelligence work in North Africa. The book is the personal accounts of the people involved in the transmission and decoding of intelligence.

Eric

[Happyhaddock]

There is a chapter on North Africa in Michael Paterson's book "Voices of the Code Breakers" which may give an insight into what was happening with intelligence work in North Africa. The book is the personal accounts of the people involved in the transmission and decoding of intelligence.

Eric

Thanks, I don't know if my grandfather was directly involved in code breaking and decoding intelligence, but in truth other than him being an accomplished wireless operator we don't know what he was doing in North Africa, so at this point it is all speculation.

HH

[rafcommands]

That's better - making more sense.

His pre war service meant recall on commencement of hostilities but his training was too far out of date to mean return to trade.

He attended No.2 Recruit Centre at Cardington for initial attestation but due to the influx of recalled personnel the RAF training machine was not capable of suddenly ramping up so he was returned to civilian life on Reserve.

Back to Cardington a few months later and after initial kitting/medical etc posted to No.7 Recuit Centre at Morecambe (typical RC unit for signals bods).

After No.7 RC a few months as ACH general duties at units awaiting space on a signals course at Signal School (either No.3 or No.1). Later in the war the system was streamlined so bods passed out from one unit then were immediately assigned to the next unit in the training sequence.

Holding placement until next course at No.1 Signals School started and on passing out paper assignment to Middle East. This was when the paperwork was allocated rather than actual arrival in theatre.

MESS is when he arrived at Middle East Signals Section (the 50/42 is not a date but a file reference to the 50th file opened in 1942 by the unit - this goes for all the other similar references).

At this point he was on the strength of HQ and Wing in the western desert as part of the HQ/Wing establishment and would have relocated with these units as they passed from place to place in the mobile desert war and into Sardinia/Italy

Finally a posting to No.63 Staging Post for transfer to Home Echelon and a short stint at a holding unit before final posting to No.102 Personnel Despatch Centre and demob.

Regards
Ross

[q98]

Operation Husky, the liberation of Sicily, commenced on 10 July 1943. 328 Wing was based at Protville II from June to October 1943. Reformed in early June 1943, 328 Wing squadrons operated torpedo-carrying Beaufighters, Martin Marauders, Baltimores, Wellingtons, US Spitfires and Aircobras. Protville, was located approximately 18 km north of Oued Lill; 25 km north-northwest of Tunis. As there were two airfields at this base, 1.5 miles apart, hence the reference to Protville II.