Name Eileen Younghusband | Role WAAF airwoman | |
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Books One Woman\'s War, Men I Have Known, Not an Ordinary Life | ||
Eileen Muriel Younghusband, BEM (née Le Croissette; 4 July 1921 – 2 September 2016) was a filter officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in World War II. She worked in the filter room, a top-level British air defence hub which assessed radar reports in order to give air raid warnings. Later, while posted to Belgium, she was part of a team of mathematicians who alerted Allied forces to the location of V-2 rocket launch sites.
Contents
Younghusband completed a university degree at the age of 87 and subsequently published three books about her wartime experiences: two memoirs and one children's book.
Wartime service
Eileen Le Croissette was born in London in 1921. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in 1941 at the age of 19, and was trained at RAF Innsworth, near Gloucester, and RAF Leighton Buzzard. Commissioned as an assistant section officer in November 1941, and promoted to section officer in October 1942, she was posted to 10 Group Fighter Command at RAF Rudloe Manor, Corsham, near Bath, where she was deployed as a filter officer.
In this post, she was responsible for assessing the information gleaned from Chain Home coastal radar stations, estimating position, height and number of enemy forces in the air – essential for establishing Britain's defence network and giving air raid warnings. These teams had a matter of seconds to calculate accurately the whereabouts of both friendly and enemy aircraft. This information was essential since the RAF had a limited number of fighter aircraft and trained pilots, and limited supplies of fuel.
After further training at RAF Bawdsey, she went to 9 Group, RAF Barton Hall, and then to Fighter Command headquarters at RAF Bentley Priory, Stanmore. In 1944, she was posted to 33 Wing, RAF Second Tactical Air Force at Mechelen (Malines), Belgium, with a small team of women using their mathematical skills to detect the mobile launchers of the V-2 rockets aimed at London and the vital port of Antwerp. "Our job was to extrapolate the curve of the V-2 from the place it landed back to the launch site, and we did that once we knew the fall of shot and we got the position of the top of curve, we then used a slide rule in geometry to find the launch site," she told the BBC. Allied aircraft could then bomb the launch vehicles. She remained at Mechelen until June 1945.
Following VE Day she was seconded to the Breendonk concentration camp, where she acted as a guide and interpreter (she was a fluent French speaker), relaying to RAF personnel the realities of war. She resigned her commission on 14 December 1945 and moved into hotel work.
Later years
Younghusband graduated from the Open University at the age of 87, and wrote two volumes of memoirs, Not an Ordinary Life (2009) and One Woman's War (2011), the latter dealing more specifically with her wartime experience. She later adapted her books for children and in 2016, just weeks before her death, her children's book Eileen's War was published.
Recognition
Younghusband campaigned on health and education issues, such as cuts to adult education, and she was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to lifelong learning. Britain's Got Talent finalist Nathan Wyburn created a portrait of Younghusband from wartime images of her to commemorate her World War II work.
A life-size statue of Younghusband as a young WAAF officer stands in a replica filter room at the Battle of Britain Museum at Bentley Priory.
Personal life and death
Younghusband married physical training instructor Peter Younghusband in 1944 and they had a son, Clive, in 1946.
Younghusband died in hospital in Cardiff on 2 September 2016, at the age of 95.