RAF Watnall's pop-up wartime "swimming pool"

So wartime RAF Watnall was rigid military discipline and no fun? Not at all! There were plenty of high jinks, parties and skinny dipping at the impromptu "swimming pool"...

RAF Eye's surviving WW2 static water tank is of a
similar design to RAF Watnall's "swimming pool"

It was actually a shallow, open-air static water tank used to hold a supply of water for fire fighting but was commandeered by the staff in the summer of 1945 for their own use. RAF Watnall's WAAF officer Joan Wyndham writes about several times the pool was used, including for a friend's "demob" (demobilisation) party...

Wed, 23rd May 1945 - There has been a great new addition to our social life. We now have a swimming pool! In fact it's only a static water tank, about four and a half feet deep, but it it very warm and surrounded by trees and grass. It gives the WAAF officers a wonderful chance to lie out in their scantiest costumes and be chatted up by the pilots. All around us the camp swarms with German prisoners breaking stones - blond, sulky boys who peer through the bushes and mutter lewd suggestions which luckily we can't understand. I feel really sorry for the poor devils...

Sat 2nd June 1945 - Oscar, Kit and I spent the whole afternoon playing a kind of water netball in the pool, fighting and ducking each other like school kids.

Mon 10th Sept 1945 - The sad news is that Dizzy is leaving. Last night he and four other types gave their de-mob party at the Mess. Most of them were wearing bowler hats, but one squadron leader who had just come back from leave turned up whizzed as a bee, carrying his six-month-old son and heir slung in a basket on his back. His hair was tied up with red, white and blue ribbons. We got very merry on buckets of Pimm's No. 1, and danced with cans of beer on our heads. Speeches were made, saying what a damned fine fellow everybody else was, and what a damned good show it had been to work with them.

At midnight a procession headed by Dizzy set out for the pool. Cars were driven down and the water floodlit by their headlights. The men dived in naked, having first asked permission of the ladies present. I granted it readily in view of my short sight, and slipped away to get into my own bathing-costume.

The water was beautifully warm and we jumped and danced like moths in the light shafts. When I came out all the men seized me and started to dry different parts an arm or a leg until I was nearly pulled apart. As I went back to my hut I turned and saw that the de-mobbed men had broken into an office and were beginning to throw all the furniture into the pool. I caught a last glimpse of Dizzy, stark naked, balanced on top of a bobbing desk like Neptune on his chariot. He stood poised there for a moment, one arm up-flung, his tawny hair plastered over his eyes. Then the desk gave a final lurch and toppled him into the water.

RAF Watnall c.1953
Where's the pool?
Perhaps the conspicuous dark square to above the huts?
It is marked as LWS on the plan below. Something "Water Supply" perhaps.
It is close to the fire fighting station.