The Tannhauser Twit

Dear Simon,

Back in 1950, I was doing my National Service in the RAF and was serving as an aircraftman signals clerk at North Weald in Essex. This was a famous airfield which had been in the front line of the Battle of Britain. Some of the airmen who were in that battle were still at this station.

This was the period of the Berlin airlifts, followed by the Korean War, so the airfield was still very much on an operational footing. My role was as a teleprinter operator and to use the public address system for the camp personnel. This was in constant use and to this day I can remember the frequent call: “Would the duty crew report to air traffic control immediately,” this to service the constant flow of aircraft landing at North Weald.

One day at a signals meeting, our station commander (CO) said we should be more relaxed about life at our airfield and the usual morning call at 6.30am, which announced the time and date to all, could be changed to add some music. He was a classical music fan and produced many records and an old gramophone for me to use, placing it against the broadcast unit and pressing the transmit key. This I did, and we enjoyed a few bars of music as a wake up call, it was quite a success.

The pleasant experience did not last long. One morning, I set the unit and gramophone up as usual, deciding to play Wagner’s Tannhauser, and off I went to make my morning tea. The problem was I had forgotten to wind the gramophone up and, slowly, the speed ran down and the music became a dreadful dirge, grinding away with Tannhauser. It seems the grim noise over the public address system sounded like an elephant in pain with the record barely turning and booming away. The phones began to go mad as everybody rang to stop the din – all were very much awake at this stage.

The CO was quite livid and took the gramophone away immediately. Forever afterwards, I would be spotted in the dining rooms/mess and called the “Tannhauser Twit”, which clearly I was.