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"...
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RAF Watnall's Joan Wyndham in her swimming cossie...
RAF Eye's surviving WW2 static water tank, shown here, is of a
similar design to RAF Watnall's "swimming pool"
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RAF Watnall's pool 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 leisure time use. WAAF officer Joan Wyndham, who worked on the plotting tables at Watnall, 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.
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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. |
Who was Dizzy, Joan's naked swimming companion?
He was none other than the 26-year-old Battle of Britain ace (and future Wing Commander) Hubert Raymond 'Dizzy' Allen DFC. Joan recounts several slightly drunken bar side chats in the Officer's Mess at Watnall Hall with Dizzy. Recovering from battle wounds he was acting as 12 Group's Tactics and Gunnery Officer. He had a very forthright manner, suffered no fools and became a controversial character post war with his series of biographies. The provocatively titled "Who Won the Battle of Britain?" was a critique of RAF structure, training, leadership and doctrine before and during the air campaigns of 1940. He also maintained the Battle of Britain was mostly won by a handful of experienced pilots mostly Czechs and Poles who had been trained outside of the RAF system.
There are plenty of stories about Dizzy... "On 66 Squadron, the older and perhaps more worldly-wise Pilot Officer ‘Dizzy’ Allen’s neck-scarf was the perfumed silk of a seventh veil dancer stolen from a London nightclub!"
Joan and Dizzy's chats could get quite deep. One in April 1945 followed the discovery of the horrors of the concentration camps...
"Spent a Benzedrine-ridden night crying for the suffering of the children, and railing against God for allowing such torture. I've been thinking an awful lot about God lately, and have drunken sessions with Dizzy in the bar - he is also a Catholic though a lapsed one, so he understands.
'How terrible to be God,' he says. 'Imagine having the world on your conscience!'
My mind lately has been in a state of turmoil. I just don't know whether I believe any more or not. It is the first time that doubts have ever entered my mind, but I think I'd rather have an imperfect God than none at all, and no meaning to anything. If children are going to suffer at least let them have a loving breast to fall back upon in the end, not just a cold darkness.
'Oh,' says Dizzy, I can see you are a hopeless case - you still really believe in the whole bloodstained farce.'
It's all very well for him, he lost his faith years ago, while my feeling are still in a terrible muddle."
Normal high-jinks were resumed not long afterwards though...
"We spotted Gussy and Vlady sitting entwined in the dark of the Ladies' Room with a bottle of vodka between them listening to the Warsaw Concerto all very romantic. Dizzy put on the most hideous mask he could find and jumped on them from behind terrible screams! Then the rest of the drunken horde rushed in, somebody got the piano and we did all sorts of crazy dances. Dizzy is a wizard dancer, he leaps all over the floor like a cat. At midnight we all went over to the WAAF Mess for sausages and tea in the kitchen."
Best quote to sum up Dizzy's background came in a 1978 BBC interview called "A Fine Blue Day". While talking about the diverse range of social classes among the pilots, Dizzy says in his elegantly clipped Oxford English... "Oh there was no snobbery or anything like that." The interviewer asks if he had a car in the RAF to which Dizzy replies... "Oh yes, I had a two litre Lagonda, my pride and joy." Apparently he had his victory stripes on his car as well as his aircraft!
It was later exchanged for a 3 litre Bentley. Perhaps this is what he used to drive Joan to RAF Watnall's pool the evening it was floodlit by car headlamps?!
His actual car is quite well known...
"Love to see a Lagonda painted as " Dizzy" Allen's of 1940, complete with his victory markings on the side, in the car park - on the Illustrious airfield he once flew from. See Tangmere Station Supreme by Wing Commander H.R. " Dizzy" Allen DFC."
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Dizzy's actual Lagonda
fitted with WW2 blackout headlamps |
And from the Lagonda owners club...
"I have recently been reading a very interesting book, Battle for Britain, the recollections of Wing Commander H. R. ‘Dizzy’ Allen, DFC. These excerpts are
included with due acknowledgement to Corgi Books.
Dizzy flew Spitfires during the war and it was after his first crash and release from the RAF hospital that he recounts, “Reluctantly I climbed into the two-litre Lagonda which was my pride and joy and
drove home.” Following the next crash-landing he continued, “I found another pilot available
to drive me down in the Lagonda as my arm was still in a sling and I couldn’t drive. He kept crashing the gears, much to my fury, although there were admittedly quite a few tricks one had to learn to make a
clean change of gear in that car.”
However, the Lagonda story concludes a little later with the explanation...
“I had exchanged my Lagonda for a three-litre Bentley and I was given extra petrol coupons for the purpose of making staff visits to the stations when the weather was too bad to use the communications aircraft.”
There are further references to the Bentley in the book and of course his Royal Air Force exploits are fascinating. I am reassured to find that I am not the only one who has difficulty in changing gear with
a two-litre Lagonda. Does anyone know if Dizzy’s Lagonda still exists and if so, who owns it now?
ALAN ELLIOTT"
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You can read more about Joan Wyndham's surprisingly liberated time at RAF Watnall in the related tale here...
https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2026/06/sex-drugs-and-raf-watnall-comforts-of.html
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Notes and Sources
Joan Wyndham - Love Lessons, a wartime diary https://archive.org/details/isbn_0749321768/page/389/mode/1up?q=pool
RAF Eye https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4512405
Watnall from above https://www.inspirepicturearchive.org.uk/search_results/keyword/watnall/page/7
This is a 45 min version
RECORDED c. 1978
45 MINUTES
Frank views from a Battle of Britain fighter pilot.
Hubert Raymond ‘Dizzy’ Allen
“It was the only time I was really sure I’d had it. I had to lob down at Biggin Hill, wounded in the right arm and with 45 neat bullet holes in the aircraft. The hood wouldn’t open, the brakes and flaps had been shot out of gear, and I’m damned if I didn’t land smack in a bomb crater!”
https://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/AllenHR.htmhttps://rafa.org.uk/blog/2024/08/19/battle-of-britain-pilots-memories/
Review of Wing Commander H R 'Dizzy' Allen's memoir Battle for Britain A day later so a bit of catching up to do. Day 3 of my book reviews. Battle for Britain:Recollections of Wing Commander H.R Dizzy Allen DFC. Written by Hubert Raymond 'Dizzy' Allen published by corgi in 1975 book length 212 pages with 4 pages of black and white photographs. A review.
Hubert's story should be regarded as a classic if it is not already. A memoir that only covers the wartime but also his post war career. In terms of getting to know the author as a person is very little in the terms of his childhood and education. Unlike other memoirs from this period of aviation. Drawn up from a log book. Hubert's memoir start's off in May 1940 with the conclusion of his flight training prior to a flying posting. A posting to fighter's by the skin of his teeth to 66 squadron,upon his arrival and lack of flying experience on Spitfires was sent on his first solo. Following his combat readiness training took part in his first combat operation in mid-June 1940 lasting through out the Battle of Britain,which was not with accident.During the latter part's of the battle,followed a mid-air collision with a fellow Spitfire pilot which resulted in the bailing out and and a resulting arm injury.After his recovery and a posting to a command of Spitfire.Hubert led his squadron in the various offensive operations over France,before a non-flying posting with the first airborne division. After his time with the first airborne division,a posting to teach the American's the techniques of interception in their P-47's,which saw the author taking a flight in a P-47 despite not having flown the type before. After which the reader is given an opinion on the aircraft. As well as this posting another posting another non-flying one as such followed,a gunnery and tactics staff officer on the build up to the D-Day landings in which was to improve such air fighting skills. This phase of the book takes the reader up to the war's end,and takes up the post war years the dawn of the jet age. An interesting and a bit different of which I have never read in any memoir was the air force of post war Holland. A posting that the author was attached to see where they could improve in terms of aviation. Another part I found rather interesting was the life and times of a first generation fighter jet squadron including life on base and of course the deployments to armament practice camps. The reader also gets an understanding on what it was like to plan fly-pasts for various occasions,in Hubert's case the 1953 coronation fly-past which was a challenging task in terms of getting the aircraft together and ideal weather for the flying conditions for the day of the fly past. The memoir concludes with the thoughts of the replacement aircraft for the aging Meteor aircraft,which included the author's flight in the Supermarine Swift,and the authors flights all across the world. All in All a very enjoyable read from the first page to the very last,a book I can highly recommend.
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Dizzy's type of motor, a 1931 Lagonda 2 Litre
‘Low Chassis’ Speed Model Tourer
at the Imperial War Museum Duxford.
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