Yorkshire How We Won the War

September 3rd, 1939...

and families all over the country flock to their radios...

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN: '...no such undertaking has been received,

'and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.'

In that brief moment, life in our country

changed forever. World War II had begun.

But victory wouldn't be assured by military might alone.

The Blitz, evacuation, rationing, the loss of loved ones...

The war on the Home Front meant that everyone had to do their bit.

From the country's women, who took on everything - farming,

factory work, even flying Spitfires,

to the nation's auxiliary firemen,

who worked through the terror of countless air raids,

this is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

This is How We Won The War.

I'm travelling across the UK, on a journey to discover how

different regions made unique contributions to the war at home.

I'll be looking at the lives of ordinary citizens

and the incredible efforts they went to throughout the war years.

Today, I've arrived in the UK's biggest county - Yorkshire.

Starting on the edge of the North York Moors, I'll pass through Hull,

before making my way south to Sheffield.

On today's programme, I'll be discovering how a hero

led a city through dark times, only to feel the long arm of the law...

He was a cheerleader for the local population.

Obviously somebody who people looked up to.

..hearing how a fighter squadron got a morale boost

from unusual quarters...

They went off on a mission and they shot down six enemy aircraft,

and they all thought, "Wow, this is really making a difference here."

..and meeting two women who endured unimaginable conditions

to keep our troops well protected.

We knew the boys were wanting what we were doing,

so we just got on with it.

Yorkshire's factories were producing many vital supplies

-for the war effort.

-STEAM WHISTLE BLOWS

The mills in Bradford were producing material for parachutes.

Spitfire gears came from Meltham. Top-secret midget submarines were built in Huddersfield.

But, of course, all these products, and the people that made them,

depended on transportation, to stop the war effort grinding to a halt.

MUSIC: "Coronation Scot" by Vivian Ellis

'I've come to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in Pickering

'to find out how trains kept us on track during the war.'

They were very much part of the war effort.

Munitions were moved by rail.

The raw materials to build all the aerodromes were moved by rail.

All the troops, of course, were moved by rail, so it was a huge logistical exercise.

About 500,000 extra trains were run during the war

just to move troops around the country.

Across Britain, locomotives were saving lives -

moving evacuees to safe havens,

while special ambulance trains ferried the injured.

But the railway workers were risking their lives,

as the tracks soon became a target for Hitler's bombs.

There were 395 people actually killed while they were working

on the railway during the Blitz and nearly 2,500 were injured.

And, unlike many occupations,

the railways kept going through the air raids.

And you imagine working up, for example, in a signal box.

They're built high up in the air so the signalman can see what's going on around him.

You imagine working in one of those in the middle of an air raid,

and yet thousands of railway men and women did just that sort of thing.

In some ways, of course, it's impossible to imagine

the sheer pressure the country's railway staff faced,

carrying out back-breaking work under the constant threat of attack.

'But I've been offered the chance to get some idea of what daily life was like on the railways.'

Duncan, this is an absolute beauty. When was it built?

It was built in the '30s,

for the Southern Region, as a heavy freight engine.

So it definitely saw some wartime service?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

All locos like this were used all over the Southern Region.

They did munitions, participated in the retreat from Dunkirk.

They also participated in transporting troops

and supplies down, in readiness for the D-Day landings.

-So it definitely played its part?

-Oh, absolutely, yes.

-Can we get on board?

-Course we can, yes.

After you... Fabulous.

STEAM WHISTLE BLOWS

There, I'm a fireman for a day!

It's a timeless experience, this. There's nothing about this

that has changed in, what, 70 or 80 years?

Yes, 70 or 80 years, still exactly the same.

The principle is, burn the coal, boil the water, use the steam.

-We're getting up some speed now, aren't we?

-Yes.

One of the things that strikes me, Duncan,

is just how vulnerable trains were during the war to bombing and so on.

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

You're in a situation, with locos like this,

where there was absolutely no cover, whatsoever.

-Yeah.

-They didn't run with any lights on.

The lights were off, so the only light they could see, when they were actually being attacked,

was the light from the fire.

What drivers and firemen would do was, they would fire,

then shut the door straight away, and try and make sure

there was no light coming from the locomotive, whatsoever.

They were very experienced railwaymen,

so they could tell you where every signal was, they could tell you where every piece of track was.

They could feel it all through their feet,

so they knew where they were without even looking out.

STEAM WHISTLE BLOWS

Now, there's many an old timer that would say the railways won the war.

What would you say to that?

Absolutely. Without any shadow of a doubt.

Without machines like this and other machines,

many of which were used during the war, we'd have lost.

No doubt about it.

Very much the unsung heroes of the whole job, I feel,

the men that worked on the railway.

They worked in extremely hard, difficult conditions,

in all sorts of weathers.

Never moaned about it, never complained about it,

and just got on with it.

Without them, we'd have lost.

York Station was a strategically important

interchange on the East Coast line during the war.

But on the 29th April, 1942, disaster struck.

In retaliation for an RAF attack on the German medieval port of Lubeck,

the Luftwaffe launched raids on cultural cities,

the targets apparently plucked from the Baedeker tourist guide to Great Britain.

The devastation wrought upon the city that night would be recorded

in detail by York citizens, as part of the Mass Observation Project.

Started just before the war broke out,

it's a collection of almost 300,000 pages of personal writings from civilians.

Diarist Noel Fish was living in York when the attack began.

"28th April, 1942. I am awakened at 3am by Susan.

"There are planes overhead and a bomb has just dropped not very far away.

"A few moments later the sirens begin wailing

"and we know that our turn has come.

We dress and go downstairs.

"Over the city, the sky is brightly lit

"with the whitish blue light of incendiaries,

"which soon changes to a red glow, as the buildings catch alight.

"The raid lasts for about an hour, and when it is over

"I go down into the city to see if there is anything I can do to help.

"The station buildings and the parcels office is ablaze.

"The Minster seems to have escaped damage,

"and towers majestically in the red glow of the fires.

"The streets are littered with glass and debris,

"and as there does not appear to be anything I can do to assist,

"I return home to bed."

York's railway station was heavily pounded by the Luftwaffe

during the attack.

800 passengers were rescued from the Kings Cross to Edinburgh train,

which had just arrived.

But two railway workers weren't so fortunate.

One was station master William Milner, working a late shift.

His daughter Brenda was 13 on the night the planes flew overhead.

And I recall my mother shouting, "Come on, they're here."

And the bombs were dropping at the same time

as the siren was sounding.

We had an Andersen air raid shelter out in the garden,

but usually that had water standing in it,

so my mother and I sat under the oak dining table and stayed there,

with the budgerigar in his cage.

By six o'clock that morning, William still hadn't returned home.

Brenda's mother cycled to the station.

She went onto the bridge, which goes over the platforms,

and a huge pile of rubble,

and somebody said, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid Billy's under there."

An experienced first-aider, William had been helping get passengers from trains

when he decided he would need his kit.

It was a decision that would cost him his life.

He went back into the office and the building was burning by that time

and it collapsed on him. He never got out.

Fearing the worst, William's wife faced travelling home to break the news to Brenda.

She simply said, "I don't think you've got a daddy any more."

And then later that morning,

one of his workmates came and told us they'd found his body.

He was clutching the first aid box.

William was identified by his watch chain with twelve tags -

one for each year he'd qualified as a first-aider.

He was just one of many railway workers killed during the war,

a young life cut tragically short in the line of duty.

He wouldn't have thought about what he was doing, I think,

apart from, he needed his first aid equipment and he'd go and get it.

He wouldn't really think, "Will I get out?"

So he was very courageous and brave.

The York raid left 92 residents dead

and over 9,000 buildings destroyed or damaged.

It was the worst bombing the city would experience.

William Milner's gallant actions are commemorated in a plaque at the station,

a testament to the bravery ordinary people were able to summon

in the face of absolute terror.

Less than an hour's drive from York

is another place which was ravaged by the German bombing campaign.

It's thought that outside of London,

Hull was the most blitzed city in Britain.

Just like York, Hull had its fair share of heroes.

One man would help steer the city and its people

through its darkest days.

He'd rise to the top of Hull's civic circles,

but would suffer a dramatic fall from grace.

I've come to meet local journalist, Angus Young,

to find out more about this remarkable man.

This man, Robert Tarran's been a subject of your investigations. Tell us a bit more about him.

Yes, he was certainly a leading member of Hull's

good and great, if you like. He was a councillor,

he became Sherriff of Hull during the war,

he was Chief Air Raid warden during the war.

A very well-connected businessman,

who went on to big things nationally, as well.

Tarran had established a building company, employing 10,000 people from scratch.

As well as local civil projects,

it picked up Ministry of Defence contracts when war broke out,

constructing air fields and coastal defences.

But there was more to Robert Tarran than bricks and mortar.

He was in charge of an air raid warden corps,

of 4,000 volunteer civil defence staff.

So, a small army of staff to command

through an extremely difficult, testing time.

A lot of air raid wardens were killed during the war.

He had to maintain public morale

when the infrastructure was, literally, battered.

On the 7th of May, 1941, the Luftwaffe launched

a series of devastating raids upon the city.

By the end of the war, 1,200 people in Hull had been killed

and 85,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.

Throughout, Tarran was at the forefront,

tackling fires and maintaining morale.

But that wasn't the limit of his wartime efforts.

He also had to organise mass evacuations into the surrounding countryside,

where people slept rough in farms and outlying countryside

and then returned to the city the next day, to find out if

their house was still there, whether their whole street was still there.

He actually slept in a pig sty on one occasion out on an outlying farm

just to, basically, lead by example, if you like.

In August, 1941, Robert Tarran proudly welcomed

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the city,

showing them how Hull's citizens were demonstrating resilience in the face of devastation.

He was a cheerleader for the local population.

He was obviously a leader, obviously somebody who people looked up to.

With 152,000 people made homeless, housing was a major problem,

but Tarran would come to the rescue yet again.

He obviously saw a city in ruins around him

and he was a building entrepreneur, a building dynamo, if you like,

and there was an opportunity there for him to re-build Hull.

In 1944, Churchill announced the Emergency Factory-Made

Housing Programme, designed to solve the housing crisis,

by building half a million prefabricated temporary houses.

NEWSREEL: This showhouse can be seen in Milbank, near the Tate Gallery, London.

Tickets of admission obtainable from your local authority.

Robert Tarran would improve on the government's original design for prefabs.

'Jerry Noble has brought me to one of the few still standing,

'at Eden Camp Modern History Museum in Malton.'

Welcome, Jules, to the 1940s.

This is a prefabricated house,

or the "prefabs", as they were known.

-The kitchen is in advance of what many people would have lost in the bombing?

-Absolutely.

'Tarran's houses could be built in a week,

'and were a gleaming godsend for their new inhabitants.'

This is nice!

This is the lounge, living room.

This is the lounge, with lovely corner windows, very bright.

'But the pristine prefabs weren't the perfect answer to the housing crisis.'

They ended up costing as much, if not more,

than a traditionally-built house.

-Seriously?

-Seriously.

Doesn't that defeat the whole object of the throw-up prefab?

In a way, it does, but it did go together quickly and efficiently,

and that was one of the things that Robert Tarran was really strong at -

getting the housing done for the people who really needed it.

Let's continue our tour, Jerry.

Ah, the bathroom!

A fully-fitted bathroom.

This would have been the height of luxury, wouldn't it?

People wouldn't have been used to having their own bath.

-This would be luxurious!

-Absolutely lovely, wouldn't it?

'Between 1945 and 1948,

'nearly 160,000 temporary prefab houses would be built.

'Of those, almost 20,000 were "Tarrans".'

He was ingenious.

He built masses of infrastructure for the war and -

including these prefabs -

he will be remembered forever, really, in Hull.

Local hero Tarran had helped deliver new homes to a generation.

But problems with some of his Ministry Of Defence contracts

meant he was about to find a new home, too.

Questions started to be raised about the company's finances

and it led to, eventually, a police investigation.

Tarran faced three charges in the end

and, as the man who was responsible, ultimately, for the company,

was found guilty on the charges of false accounting.

There was public outcry at the verdict.

I think there was widespread shock at the time.

Here was a man who was a hero to the people of Hull during the war

who, within two years of the war ending, was being sent to jail

in Leeds to serve a sentence.

Robert Tarran would eventually go on to win an appeal,

but he'd never recapture the glory days spent in the company of royalty.

He left Hull behind and moved to Scotland, where he died in 1955.

The Luftwaffe brought horror to the people of Hull.

But those tasked with protecting our skies were also deeply affected.

Keeping spirits up was an incredible challenge.

But members of an auxiliary RAF squadron, formed here in Yorkshire,

would discover one of the quirkier ways to keep morale high.

In 1936, 609 West Riding Squadron

was formed at RAF Yeadon.

The young civilian recruits all lived nearby

and were fast called into action.

They'd help with the evacuation of Dunkirk,

but their relative inexperience saw heavy losses, and morale took a battering.

The guys were flying

several intercept missions every day. They weren't getting the rest.

They were seeing their friends

being shot down. In fact, people purposefully didn't make friends.

The squadron soon moved to Biggin Hill,

numbers bolstered by an influx of foreign,

mainly Belgian, pilots.

Two quirks of fate that would lead to salvation,

in the form of a bearded beast.

Now, just up the road from Biggin Hill was a pub called the Old Jail pub,

whose landlady was a Belgian, and one evening,

one of the Belgian pilots came back to the squadron with a young goat

whom he'd been given by the landlady.

And this goat was christened William

and this was the start of his experience with 609 Squadron.

William became the mascot of 609 Squadron

and quickly settled into life on the base.

He'd be fed cigarettes and drink beer, and everything,

and he got worse as he got older.

Rising through the ranks to become Wing Commander,

William the goat earned the right to a salute.

Morale was soon on the up - and so was the hit rate.

The squadron commander, before they went off on one mission,

saluted William. They went off on the mission,

and during the course of that, shot down six enemy aircraft

and they all thought, "Wow, this is really making a difference here."

Wherever the squadron went,

William followed - even when 609 was sent to France.

On the one fateful occasion he was left behind,

his absence was sorely felt.

The squadron morale sank quite substantially and everybody was down in the dumps

until the adjutant was tasked by the squadron commander

to find William and get him back here as soon as possible.

And it was written down in the squadron rules that he was

never to leave the squadron ever again.

609 became the first Typhoon squadron to celebrate 200 kills.

But when it came to the commemorative ceremony,

William the goat had his own ideas on how to celebrate.

He decided to go on a bit of a rampage,

drinking lots of beer,

and other drinks besides, and his normal ration of cigarettes,

eating everything in sight, ruining the flower arrangements,

knocking young some ladies about. He didn't care what he did,

because he was the top dog, and if he wanted to do something,

then there wasn't going to be a right lot you could do to stop him.

William the goat would end the war as a twice-decorated Air Commodore,

earning an honorary Distinguished Service Order and Flying Cross.

To his squadron, he was a goat like no other.

I'm sure that having the relaxation of messing around with William

at the end of the day, probably, probably helped,

but most of the time, he was just his normal, cantankerous, naughty goat self.

I'm now heading on to Sheffield, where discoveries in the 18th century led to the city

becoming a world centre of high-grade steel manufacturing.

In World War I, Britain had to import

the massive amounts of steel needed from America.

This time round, Britain needed to be more efficient,

using its own factories and supplies.

I've come to Sheffield's Kelham Island Museum

to hear about one way we achieved just that.

What was key about Sheffield was, it made about 70%

of Britain's output of alloy steel

at the beginning of the war.

That went in to all types of things, but particularly importantly,

it went into, for example, aero engines. And, as we know,

a key aspect of the war in 1940 was the Battle of Britain.

The Merlin engines which drove the Spitfires, there you have Sheffield alloy steel.

So these alloyed steels were absolutely crucial to the war effort.

And that made Sheffield really special.

It was, if you like, the main arsenal of the Empire.

'The mills in Sheffield also rolled out flat plates of steel

'that would later arrive on the frontlines as tanks, trucks and ships.'

Now, as we can see just looking at some of the old plant that's behind us,

it's a very heavy, very dangerous industry.

What were conditions like for most of the people employed in it?

Well, put it this way - I don't think you or I

would have liked to have worked in these plants.

You had to be tough. It was hard work, it was hot, it was dangerous.

Health and safety were not factors like they are today, so it was tough.

Now, before the war, this was predominantly a male-orientated industry,

-but of course, all that changes during the war.

-Yes, it does.

The key resource allocation of the war was manpower, of course.

And the huge demands that the war made, so women became

a crucial aspect of the change.

They were drafted in to a whole range of different activities,

into the steel plants, into the engineering plants.

They very quickly adapted themselves to very difficult,

dangerous work and made a huge contribution to the war effort.

They were fantastic.

'Kathleen Roberts and Kit Sollitt were just two of the Sheffield women that ended up

'working in the unforgiving steel industry in Sheffield.'

Was it a very intimidating environment for you?

Ooh, it was. I was terrified, first day.

I was set to work in the foundry,

and the fella that was doing the job had been called up.

And I said to this chap, "I'll never stick this,"

and he said,

"You'll have muscles like mine," and he showed me his biceps.

I says, "I hope not."

This was a pretty rude awakening to what had been,

very much, a man's world. What was your experience like, Kathleen?

My father worked in the steel works,

so I had a bit of a background of what the steel industry was about.

And he thought it was appalling women were having to work

in the steelworks.

And my first day into the rolling mills, I thought, "Oh, my goodness.

"I'm going home. I just can't do this, there's no way I can do this."

The noise nearly drove you mad, and the dirt and the oil.

It wasn't a job for a woman, but I got on with it.

I did it.

Women like Kit and Kathleen kept the steel foundries

and mills running around the clock to keep our troops supplied.

But it wasn't only harsh conditions and long hours they had to deal with, there was also the danger.

It's like the top of a volcano,

the converter, when it was showering out.

And I had to put a damp sack over me head.

I'd go underneath it

and get caught with some sparks from the slag coming out.

And they sort of, like, burnt in your skin.

I got loads of them on me arms and me feet.

And you were lucky if you didn't get one on your face.

Oh, there were many accidents.

Fingers off, hands off...

When there were big paring machines

cutting in, the blades cutting in to sheets, there was no guard,

and if you weren't very quick,

you'd lose your hand, and things like that.

There were some really nasty accidents happened.

But you were also taking some pretty serious chances,

because it was clearly a target for the German air force.

When the sirens went, we worked through those.

We never stopped the machines. You couldn't.

Once they were going, you'd got to finish what you were doing,

and that was it.

-So no air-raid shelters for you?

-No.

In 2010, Sheffield's women of steel were honoured with a trip to 10 Downing Street

and a letter of thanks from the Veterans' Minister -

recognition at last for their extraordinary wartime efforts.

We lost our youth, all of us, because we were all young women.

So it was five lost years, really.

Do you think the same way, Kathleen?

Yes, I do. Yes. We worked jolly hard in our youth.

And we did it, we never complained, we never asked for anything,

we just did it.

We knew the boys were wanting what we were doing

and so, we just got on with it.

And, when I think about it...

it sort of brings a lump to my throat, that we did this, you know.

Because it seemed impossible at the time.

And...

you know, we succeeded,

and we showed the men a thing or two.

The women who put their lives on hold,

and on the line, to keep the nation fighting

were part of a vast civilian army who, these days,

are all too often forgotten.

But like so many of their generation, they took it in their stride.

They did what they did without complaint

and without expecting anything in return.

Women and steel proved to be a war-winning combination

and, without their efforts,

ultimate victory may well have been a very distant prospect.

Next time, I'll be travelling on to the Midlands,

where I'll be discovering how the factory workers of Birmingham

provided just about everything our troops needed.

You name it, we made it.

50% of all small arms used by the British forces

in the war were made by the BSA.

I'll also be hearing how thousands of American paratroopers

affected the pretty girls of Nottingham...

Nearly all the men had gone to war, hadn't they?

Anything in a uniform would be attractive to any of them.

..and finding out about the war efforts of a group of women

who kept essential supplies flowing on our waterways.

We stuck on the mud, we broke ropes, we banged into things.

We did everything you could conceivably imagine wrong.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd