Plotters were employed on an early form of air traffic monitoring that played a vital role in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, particularly during the

Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...

The Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

and the bombing of British cities that followed. They worked at individual RAF stations' Sector Control Rooms or in the central Group Control Rooms that directed the operations of RAF fighters. The majority of plotters were female, members of the

Women's Auxiliary Air Force The Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), whose members were referred to as WAAFs (), was the female auxiliary of the Royal Air Force during World War II. Established in 1939, WAAF numbers exceeded 180,000 at its peak strength in 1943, with over 2 ...

(WAAFs).

History

Captain Philip Edward Broadley Fooks transferred from the

Royal Garrison Artillery The Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) was formed in 1899 as a distinct arm of the British Army's Royal Regiment of Artillery serving alongside the other two arms of the Regiment, the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) and the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) ...

to the Anti-Aircraft Defences, Home Forces in June 1918 and he suggested displaying the latest information graphically on a large horizontal map at central London control near Horse Guards in

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. This map was marked with a grid upon which different-shaped and annotated pieces representing the airborne forces were colour coded to the clocks to distinguish fresh from older information and were manipulated with wooden rakes by operators guided by information read to them from the incoming reports from field observers and acoustic detectors.

Reports

By World War II the control room (depicted in countless films) was essentially the same as in World War I, however, by then plotting depended on reports from the newly installed

Chain Home Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the off ...

radar stations that detected aircraft approaching the coastline, and the

Royal Observer Corps The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December ...

posts that spotted hostile and friendly aircraft over land.

Data management

Such reports were fed to a

Filter Room A Filter Room was part of RAF Fighter Command's radar defence system in Britain during the Second World War. The filter room at Fighter Command Headquarters lay at the top of the Dowding system - the integrated ground-controlled interception ne ...

, where Filter Plotters processed the mass of incoming data by hand and fed a digest to the underground Operations (Ops) room. Deighton, Len, ''Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain'', Vintage, 2008, There, information about aircraft movements was passed to a large number of plotters stationed around a giant table bearing a map of the section. Details about the number of aircraft, their position, height and bearings were transferred to counters that were positioned and moved around the map by the plotters, in a similar way to a

croupier A croupier or dealer is someone appointed at a gambling table to assist in the conduct of the game, especially in the distribution of bets and payouts. Croupiers are typically employed by casinos. Origin of the word Originally a "croupier" meant ...

at a roulette table, using plotting rods that were adjustable in length and magnetised to pick up the plots.

Responsibilities

Each plotter was responsible for aircraft movements in a particular sector, changing the plots regularly so that the whole picture of a raid could be monitored by the Group controllers who were stationed in a gallery above the plotting table.

References

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External links