Elspeth Henderson

NAME:  Elspeth Candlish Henderson

DOB: June 16^th 1913

Elspeth was the daughter of a professor of law at Edinburgh University. She was educated at St Denis School in Edinburgh and Harrogate ladies’ college. After leaving school, she travelled around Europe and became proficient in German and French

Elspeth joined the WAAF in January 1940. After two weeks training to be a plotter in the ops room of a fighter base, she was posted to Biggin Hill. She was soon posted to corporal, giving her the responsibility of supervising other WAAF plotters as they displayed the progress of incoming enemy bomber formations.

In the last few days of August 1940 the Luftwaffe concentrated on knocking out the fighter airfields in the south-east of England; and Biggin Hill, one of the most important, suffered heavily

During this period, when there were six raids in three days, the then Corporal Elspeth Henderson was on duty in the operations room, responsible for maintaining the vital contact between the airfield operations staff and the controllers at Fighter Command headquarters, Uxbridge.

On August 30 nine Junkers 88 bombers delivered a devastating attack on the airfield. An air raid shelter was completely destroyed, and a number of WAAFs sheltering in an adjacent slit trench were amongst the 39 people killed. Others were entombed, and Elspeth Henderson was one of the first to help to dig them out.

After spending the night in makeshift quarters with her WAAF colleagues, she was back on duty the next day when the Luftwaffe attacked again. She maintained contact with Uxbridge despite the bombs bursting on the airfield. Later that afternoon the ops room took a direct hit, and she was knocked over by the blast; but she carried on with her work. "There was nothing much else we could do, anyway," she commented later.

Elspeth Henderson maintained contact with Uxbridge throughout the raid but, as fire broke out, the staff was ordered to take shelter. With her commanding officer and the rest of the staff, she hurriedly left the burning ops room through a broken window and threw herself to the ground as more bombs exploded.

Her warrant officer shouted at her to move - she was leaning against an unexploded bomb.

Using hastily repaired telephone lines and signals equipment in a temporary operations room, Elspeth Henderson maintained contact with Fighter Command headquarters and the Observer Corps posts. Sporadic raids continued until September 7, when the Luftwaffe turned its attention to London. On November 2 it was announced that Elspeth Henderson and two other WAAFs - Sergeants Helen Turner and Elizabeth Mortimer - had been awarded the Military Medal for their "courage and example of a high order". The commanding officer of Biggin Hill said: " These three girls have shown amazing pluck." Throughout the whole of the Second World War, there were only six awards of the Military Medal to members of the WAAF

Elspeth left the service in 1946 with the rank of squadron officer. In July 1974, she returned to Biggin Hill, where a road in the RAF married quarters was named after her. In recent years the site has been demolished, but it has been announced that the new housing development on the site will include roads bearing the names of the three WAAFs and the former fighter pilots who flew from the Battle of Britain airfield.

Elspeth married Alastair McWatt Green in 1949.

Elspeth’s daughter, Heather Redfearn, said: “My mother believed very firmly that it was morally wrong that men were being sent out to fight on the front line, and were risking their lives, while single women like her could literally sit at home and lead quite a normal life.

“But what a turnaround it must have been for her – one moment taking dictation in Edinburgh, and only months later in the very thick of the action.”

Elspeth Green died on August 24 2006 aged 93.