The Real Moggy
The real Moggy was my father, who was born in 1920, and who volounteered for the RAF at the begining of 1940 at age 19. He was not able to achieve his ambition of training for flight crew, due to his sight, but went into general airfield defence duties throughout the period of the Battle of Britain, being stationed at Biggin Hill and Ford.
In 1942 he volounteered for airborne radar tecnical training, and became a qualified airborne radar technician. He then served at a number of Bomber Command stations, and was finally at RAF Upwood in Huntingdonshire, where he worked on the airbourne radar in the Pathfinder Mosquitos of No. 139 Squadron.
Sadly he died from a heart attack in 1979 at the absurdly young age of 59. I miss him. He worked with computers in the 1960s when that word meant a warehousefull of equipment. He left me a useful attitude. "A computer" he used to say "is a pretty looking but pretty stupid bead frame". Were he with me today I have no doubt he would be playing EAW and telling off everyone who got the details of the Mosquito wrong, as indeed I remember him telling me off for putting guns on the bomber version of the airfix kit!
In the centre is my mother (next to her sister who is in the land army uniform), who is now at the ripe old age of 81 and still regales me with tales of the blitz: the incendiaries that came through the roof, two floors and landed on the sofa which had to be dragged rapidly out into the street, the bus conductor who had to kick another incendiary off the running board of his bus, the Scouts who fished yet more incendiaries out of the organ loft and saved the local church. Crouching in the Morrison shelter in the living room. The landmine which demolished John Bull Arch and "The Ancient Forresters". Running for cover when the Luftwaffe visited London Bridge Station where she was waiting for a train. The "rockets" which demolished half a street, and only then you heard coming, and the "doodlebugs" whose progress you followed by listening for the engine stop, hoping that wouldn't occur overhead.