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My father's role as a pioneering engineer is partly accounted in Alfred Prices's Book, The instruments of Darkness. Alfred Prices has given permission for me to add this extract.

He had married my mother, Anita Dworkin, in December 1940. Anita was from Bethnall Green and they were Jewish - dad was second generation, mother first generation English.

As a child they told me stories of sheltering in the Underground during the Blitz and the problems of getting Kosher meat. My mother's father once sent them some in a package, but when it arrived it was rotten - from that dat forward, both became vegetarians.

My father was 25 when the war started and this is his story (as told by Price).

'In the fourth week of October 1942, General Montgomery launched his great offensive at El Alamein, and within eleven days the Axis front had broken and the marathon retreat had begun.
Now came the fruits of victory.: Rommel's Afrika Corps had been well equipped with radar, and as the German troops withdrew many of the sets had to be left behind. Mr Derek Garrard (expert from the Telecommunications Research Establishment ) flew out to Egypt to see what he could pick up. He soon found the very quantity of material now available was likely to be an embarrassment, and when he returned to England he approached Mr J B Supper at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Supper na dhis five-man team gladly undertook the work of examining the German radar equipment, but they could have no idea of the magnitude of the task. Soon captured equipment was arriving at Farnborough by the lorry load and Supper's men were aghast at what they found in the first few crates: the filth and the smell, the shattered state of the equipment, the sizes and weights to be handled - all these made the task of analysis seem impossible. It would have to be handled as a major engineering project. Supper asked for large accommodation, mechanical handling equipment and five times as many men as he now had. Within two weeks the Director of the Establishment at farnborough, had emptied one of the precious hangars of its aircraft and made it available to Supper, and cranes, fork-lift trucks and men arrived to swell his team.
Garrard had laid down three main requirements for Supper's section: first, the collection of labels off the pieces of equipment from which valuable Intelligence could be gleaned; secondly, the General analysis of German radar techniques; and thirdly, a search for anti-jamming circuitry.
As Supper became more familiar with the German equipment, he felt inclined to attempt the full working reconstruction of the radar sets as well. A Wurzburg set had been recovered almost intact. Its missing and broken parts were replaced with substitutes cannibalised from wrecked radar sets. To determine the circuit layout from the radar set itself took many hours of skilful and painstaking work - it is far more difficult than building a set from an existing circuit diagram. Supper's biggest worry was that some scarce component might be burned out by the premature operation of the set while not fully repaired: he had only one Wurzburg transmitter valve, for example. To prevent this, each unit was assembled and tested independently, and studied for compatibility with the other units, before being passed as fit.
At last the captured Wurzburg was ready for testing.
Supper recalls how they switched it on and it worked, though not for long, as it had its foibles and required some nursing. Gradually thay learned to tame it, and soon they 'saw' their first aircraft on it:(Supper speaking)'I telephoned the news to Garrard Within a a few hours he arrived at Farnborough accompanied by (Dr R V ) Jones and (Charles) Frank (Physicists). The three of them were like schoolboys on their first visit to the Science Museum. They jumped on and off the wooden platforms surrounding the radar, they turned hnadles and knobs, and they touched every part of it with loving caresses'. Supper was puzzled by this display of exunberance; he had naturally expected the Intelligence people to share his pleasure at a fine job of reconstruction, but why this boisterous joy? Gradually it dawned on him that for over two years these men had pored over maps and photographs, sifted and analysed reports from agents and slowly and painfully built up a mental picture of the enemy radar capability. Here for the first time was the tangible reality of their endeavours - a working Wurzburg fully manned by an operational crew. And it turned out to be exactly what they expected.
Supper's team was increased until it numbered some thirty-five men, including several RAF and USAAF personnel. Working Freys and Seetakt radars began to emerge from the rubble, and Supper was able to tell Garrard in some detail what to look for when he went 'beachcombing' on the battlefields of Africa, and later Eyrope, inorder tomake good his deficiencies. Garrard rarely let him down.

(My father is still living, now 89 years old - but he is in a home and has a very poor memory - of no use to help me with his story - which I his youngset son must tell as best I can.

I will look through some of his correspondence with my mother during the war for more tales)

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