Derby's air-raids

The historical series of those very neat books from the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust now includes The Rolls-Royce Tay Engine and The BAC One-Eleven by Ken Goddard (ISBN 1 872922 19 8, £9.00), and An Account of Partnership, Industry, Government and the Aero–Engine by George Bulman, who gives a wonderful account of early flying, the RAE, the RFC/RAF, engines of all kinds and the Schneider Trophy races, (ISBN 1 872922 21 C, £15.00). The Bombing of Rolls-Royce at Derby in Two World Wars (ISBN 1 92922 22 8, £9.00) describes the Zeppelins and how they operated (fascinating!), a light plane episode and the attacks in WWII.

It reminds me of being sent to R-R Derby during the war from the RAE with the editor of The Motor, and of how we left his car clear of others in the car park so as to be able to drive it to open country if R-R were raided, how the factory was disguised by smokescreens which one night coincided with a thick fog, so that you couldn’t even see the kerbs, and how suited civilians (me) who entered the workshops were apt to have empty milk bottles slung at their ankles…

These were interesting, if not entirely happy days.