How Stormy Down played vital part in the war effort
It trained more than 10,000 Allied air and ground crew in World War II and now the contribution of little-known RAF Stormy Down will finally be commemorated with a plaque and a Battle of Britain flypast
“A LOT more went on here than people realise.”
So said Rob Taylor of Porthcawl Museum and Historical Society as he started to tell the story of the World War II airbase near the town.
Not many have heard of RAF Stormy Down and of those that have, many still mistakenly believe it was a decoy set up to fool the Nazis.
In reality, the elevated and wind-swept airbase was a production line for the gunners badly needed by RAF Bomber Command, where the life expectancy for air crew was six weeks at best.
Men aged 18 or 19 would be rushed through an 18-month course in just eight weeks, sometimes less if the weather was fine, at Stormy Down and promoted to sergeant before being sent off to war.
They came from Britain but also from India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Poland.
As well as gunnery courses there was flying training and bomb training. More than 400 air observers were trained there and some 2,000 flight engineers from RAF St Athan did a short ground gunnery course there too.
A ground armament school was also based there and it trained 1,800 RAF and WAAF armourers.
Among the aircraft used there was the Hawker Henley, the Boulton Paul Defiant, the Avro Anson and the Whitley Bomber, which had been superseded in active duty by the Halifax, Sterling and Lancaster bombers.
Rob and other volunteers from the town’s museum, including his wife Ann, Martin Little, Carole Field, Chris New and Ceri Joseph have spent the best part of two years researching the base’s history and now they have put on an exhibition, which will run until the end of October.
They are also working with the RAF and Cenin Renewables, which owns the renewable energy park called Parc Stormy on the site of the former airfield, to organise a VIP event there on Sunday, July 2.
A permanent commemorative plaque and stone will be unveiled by the Lord Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan and a Lancaster, Hurricane and Spitfire will also stage a fly past.
Rob hopes it will mark the start of better recognition of the contribution made by RAF Stormy Down to the war effort.
“People generally don’t have a clue what went on there,” he said. “And we are finding out more every day. The more I dig, the more I find.”
As part of their research, Rob and the other volunteers have learned about those stationed there, the fate of those trained there after they left and have looked into the circumstances of the 53 people killed there.
Some of the stories they have uncovered include:
Frank Garbas of the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was posted to Britain in the summer of 1942 and was assigned to the gunnery school at RAF Stormy Down. He later transferred to 617 Sqdn, the Dambusters, on March 25, 1943. Less than two months later he died when his Lancaster was damaged by flak through colliding with a pylon near Marbeck on the dams raid. He was 20 years old;
Sgt Bluczynski, of the Polish Air Force, was based at Stormy Down and was performing a low-flying exercise in a Lysander two miles east of Port Talbot when he struck high tension cables, crashed and caught fire. Also on board was tow operator AC Hocknell. Both were killed. Sgt Bluczynski is buried at Nottage Cemetery, Porthcawl;
Sgt Bill Smithen, who was based at RAF Stormy Down between January 3, 1942, and March 14, 1942, was from Essex and came to Wales to complete rear gunner training. While here he met his wife Betty, from Port Talbot. He was sent to serve with RAF Coastal Command in Iceland as a rear gunner in a Short Sunderland Flying Boat protecting the Arctic convoys. His family lives in Porthcawl and his granddaughter has donated his flying cap, goggles and log book to the museum’s exhibition. She has also donated his “blue nose certificate” given to those airmen who crossed the Arctic circle. On the day he took leave in 1944 to marry Betty, his crew was shot down and killed;
Wing Commander Ira “Taffy” Jones, a former World War I flying ace, was a trainer at Stormy Down in World War II and an eyewitness from the Air Training Corps in Port Talbot, who has spoken to Porthcawl Museum, has confirmed a muchrepeated legend about him as he saw what happened from the Morfa dunes. In 1941 a Junkers 88 bomber was spotted over Swansea Bay and “Taffy” took up an unarmed Hawker Henley which he used to harass the bomber. Then he opened the canopy of his Henley and fired at it with a flare gun. Clearly bemused the crew turned the Junkers towards Somerset and, on the other side of the Bristol Channel, were met by Spitfires who shot it down;
During the war air cadets were also hosted at summer camps at Stormy Down, during which they would be given valuable flying experience. They included young ATC member Richard Jenkins, who later became better know as Hollywood legend Richard Burton.
Cenin is inviting anyone with an interest in World War II to the VIP event at Stormy Down on July 2. Gates open at 12.30pm and the fly past takes place at 2pm.
To be put on the guest list for the event, email Jessica King at jessk@cenin. co.uk or call 01656 760550 by Monday, June 26.