‘Remarkable’
PAT DAVIES, WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN SOME OF THE MOST ICONIC MOMENTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY, IS MADE FREEMAN OF THE BOROUGH
SHE intercepted secret German communications and passed them to the code breakers at Bletchley Park during World War Two – the same team who went on to break the Enigma code.
Later, working as a producer at the BBC, Pat Davies was integral to delivering live coverage of the moon landing in 1969 to mystified viewers in the UK. The autumn after, she arranged a sit down with Neil Armstrong, and listened as he described the powdery quality of moon dust in a West London hotel room.
Mrs Davies, now 96, has been involved in some of the most iconic and decisive moments of the 20th century.
On Tuesday, the Chiswick resident was conferred with the Freedom of the Borough, the highest honour Hounslow Council can award in recognition of her services to the Nation and the Borough. At a ceremony at Chiswick Town Hall, councillor Sam Hearn outlined an incredible life.
During World War Two, Patricia Owtram (as she was then) worked at the listening posts known as Y Stations intercepting and transcribing German military communications.
As an 18-year-old, she sent these via teleprinter to Station X, where the code breakers worked in Bletchley Park. She was able to fill this post, she said, because her grandfather had once told her to label the drinking water tap in German to help their cook, who was an Austrian refugee.
She remembered: “Our grandfather couldn’t get English cooks who wanted to be in the Lancashire countryside.”
The grandfather found an agency helping Jewish refugees who had escaped from Europe.
One day he handed a young Pat a German dictionary and asked her to label the drinking water outlet.
“That somehow made me the interpreter, because most of the cooks couldn’t speak much English.”
One cook from Vienna stuck around, and the young Pat became fluent as she spent the evenings chatting to her. Teenagers of the time, she said, “were pretty dull”.
Her wartime carrier began with a test to gauge her grasp of German.
She remembers: “I was rather alarmed because I thought maybe I’d have to be a spy and jump out of an airplane or something in Europe.”
“I was very relieved when I went for the Wrens general training. At the end of the course I was told I was going to be an interceptor in the wire service… I would be trained to intercept German ships’ radio communications.
“I was 18 and couldn’t wait to get involved with the war effort.”
She said the memory of that time that sticks out most was during the tense hunt for a U-boat that had surfaced to relay communications.
“It was quite the most tense listening time I ever remember, because they had to try and get a fix on it before it went down again. They were sinking our convoy ships at that time in 1942 and 1943. We all held our breath as they got bearings on this U-boat, and I think we did succeed and they did sink it.”
What followed was a successful academic career at St Andrew’s, Yale and Oxford, and Mrs Davies decided to become a journalist.
She worked for the Daily Mail in Manchester where she began her TV career as scriptwriter and then trainee producer at the newly-formed Granada TV.
She then joined the BBC, moving to London in 1964. At the BBC, she is credited with creating the formats for, and then producing, University Challenge, The Sky at Night and Ask The Family. She also produced the famous edition of the Sky at Night during the moon landings of 1969, working closely with well known presenters, Sir Patrick Moore and James Burke.
She remembers the incredible tension in the studio as Armstrong’s lunar lander touched down. “We were all stiff with anxiety, we all hoped they would be alright and land safely, and then take off safely and not be sort of stranded on the moon. I couldn’t admire their courage more than I do.”
She would end up meeting Armstrong himself the autumn after. She said: “I hastily got a hotel room in Notting Hill Gate and a BBC camera crew.
“He had been doing a lot of interviews where the press would ask him about the cost of NASA and that kind of thing.”
Her presenter was more interested in the quality of the moon rock and the moon dust. “They were things he did want to talk about, they got along very well. I liked him very much.”
Hounslow Mayor Tony Louki, who presented the award to Pat, said: “I am delighted to confer this Freedom of the London Borough of Hounslow award to Mrs Davies and personally offer my congratulations on her remarkable life.”