En route from France to England in 1942, a chance encounter with two American SOEs in Ireland led Betty Norton to join the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry). After training as a coder she was sent to serve as a WT operator in North Africa, where she worked in blistering heat and sometimes for 16 hours at a stretch. In her interview, Betty shares fascinating insights about her life and work during service, and the constant innovations needed to keep coded messages secure. After falling ill with malaria and jaundice, Betty was sent back to France where she could continue working closer to home, and she recalls the difficulties and unhappiness of life under occupation. When the war finally ended, Betty was demobbed in France but it wasn’t until she returned to London that she experienced the true relief of freedom.

As an evacuee, Frances McLaren was unable to go to university after leaving school at 18. Instead, on the advice of a friend’s father, she joined the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment, and so began her remarkable career. After completing her training, Frances started off in the lab, working on the development of hull launching tanks on seaplanes and landplanes, before progressing to flight tests in the Sunderland flying boats. Her career went from strength to strength and she talks in detail about her central role in one of Britain’s greatest bombing missions, the Dambusters Raid, and her work on the top-secret Highball (bouncing bomb) experiments. Frances was also involved in other experimental projects including those focused on survival, with one in particular being the development of flotation devices for planes ditching in water. She recalls with humour how she had to cajole others into joining her on some of her test missions. Frances’ extraordinary story provides an eye-opening insight into the myriad ways women played an active role in the war effort, sometimes at the cutting edge of innovation and development.