WLA - Timeline

'38-'45 WLA

1938: Lady Denman is approached by the Ministry of Agriculture to re-form the Women's Land Army (WLA). She begins go make plans in terms of national organisation and recruitment, but there are delays in taking these proposals forward.

25th January 1939: A National Service handbook lists the ‘Women’s Land Army’ as one of the civilian organisations which women could volunteer to join in the event of war.

1st June 1939: The Women’s Land Army is re-formed, with Lady Gertrude Denman as Honorary Director. Recruitment begins for Land Girls in earnest. Wages were set as follows: 28 shillings (£1.40) weekly pay (10 shillings less than the average farm wage at that time) for a 50 hour week (48 in winter). Half of that (70p) to pay for food and accommodation.

29th August 1939: Lady Denman sets up the Women’s Land Army headquarters at her home, Balcombe Place, Hayward Heath, West Sussex.

1st September 1939: Germany invades Poland.

3rd September 1939: War is declared on Germany by Britain, the British Empire and France.

December 1939: 4,500 Land Girls working on the land.

January 1940: Food rationing begins in Britain.

April 1940: The Land Girl, a monthly magazine, is published by the Women’s Land Army, with Margaret Pyke as its editor.

June 1940: 6,000 Land Girls working on the land.

March 1941: ‘The Land Girl’ launches a national appeal for members to recruit other new volunteers. New minimum wage from 1st March 1941: 32 shillings (£1.60) (for up to 48 hours a week) for a Land Girl billeted off the form, 16 shillings (80p) for a Land Girl billeted on the farm (plus free board and lodging), plus overtime pay.

May 1941: All British women aged between 19-40 have to register at labour exchanges for war work.

June 1941: 14,000 Land Girls working on the land.

July 1941: HM Queen Elizabeth agreed to become Patron of the Women’s Land Army.

September 1941: ‘In the Event of Invasion’, Land Girls are encouraged to stick to their jobs, but ‘The Land Girl’ issues advice on how to disable tractors if in real danger of capture by the enemy.

December 1941: Churchill’s wartime government passes National Service Act (No.2), allowing for the conscription of women.

29th December 1941: Minimum wages increased to 38 shillings for 48 hour week (or 18 shillings with free bed and board).

April 1942: The Women’s Timber Corps is formed in Britain. More than 4,000 Lumber Jills are employed in forestry throughout the war. They were employed by the Home Timber Production Department of the Ministry of Supply.

20th April 1942: Miss Clemence Dane, in a BBC radio broadcast, refers to the Women’s Land Army as the ‘Cinderella Service’, in the notion that it is taken for granted and its importance being overlooked. This is the first time the Women’s Land Army is referred to as the ‘Cinderella Service’.

June 1942: 40,000 Land Girls working on the land. The Land Army Benevolent Fund is started by Lady Denman to provide financial assistance to Land Girls who suffered illness or accident as a result of their work.

3rd July 1942: Queen Elizabeth hosts a 3rd birthday party for the Women’s Land Army.

February 1943: 53,500 Land Girls working on the land.

June 1943: 65,000 Land Girls working on the land – producing 70% of Britain’s food.

August 1943: Recruitment to the Women’s Land Army is stopped by a decision of the War Cabinet (more workers were needed in the aircraft production industry).

29th August 1943: BBC Women’s Land Army broadcast referred to the uniform rationing clothing coupon arrangements, Women’s Land Army correspondence courses in agriculture and horticulture and Proficiency Tests begin.

December 1943: 80,000 Land Girls working on the land.

3rd January 1944: Recruitment to the Women’s Land Army re-opens.

May 1944: Women’s Land Army headquarters moves back to London, but returns to Sussex after doodlebug attacks begin.

July 1944: First complete series of Proficiency Tests had been completed.

January 1945: Special consideration given to Land Girls who had been in the Land Army for 3 or more years who want to transfer to their home counties.

16th February 1945: Lady Denman resigns as director of the Women’s Land Army over the decision to exclude members of the Land Girls from post-war financial benefits.

8th May 1945: VE Day – end of war in Europe.

● Operations

39-08-24 Mobilisation .. Britain

39-9-1 The Polish German War 39-10-6 ..
39-9-1 Evacuation Plans & Operation Pied Piper ..     
39-9-3 England declares war 45-5-7 .. 

39-11-30 Soviets invade Finland 40-3-13 .. 

40-4-9 onward = Kampf um Norwegen =  40-4-9 Invasion of Norway & Denmark 40-6-10 .. 

40-5-10 Chamberlain out, Churchill in, Invasion of 4 Neutral Nations ..
40-5-10 Benelux Invasion & Battle of France 44-6-6 .. 

40-5-10 Invasion of Iceland .. Operation Fork 

40-5-12 Battle of Sedan 40-5-14 Bombing of Rotterdam .. 

40-5-25 to 40-6-4 Dunkirk Evacuation - Dynamo + 40-5-26 to 40-6-4 Dunkirk - Operation Dynamo + 40-6-1 Dunkirk - June 1 1940 ..

40-6-15 Operation Aerial/Ariel 40-6-25 .. Allied evacuation through French ports 

40-7-3 Battle of Mers-el-Kébir - Operation Catapult .. French fleet attacked by RN
40-7-10 Battle of Britain Begins ..
40-7-16 Directive 16 .. Hitler announces Unternehmen Seelöwe . 
40-8-12 Bridge Busters - Raid on Dortmund-Ems Canal .. 
40-8-13 Adlertag & Unternehmen Adlerangriff ..         
40-8-18 Attack on RAF Kenley - Battle of Britain ..
40-9-8 Blitz, Cromwell, Sealion Postponed 40-9-14 ..   

40-10-31 Battle of Britain ends ..                                                                                                                    

41-5-18 Bismarck - Operation Rheinübung 41-5-27 .. 

41-6-22 Unternehmen Barbarossa .. Nazi invasion of Russia 

41-12-7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 .. 

42-2-11 Unternehmen Donnerkeil - Operation Thunderbolt .. Kriegsmarine evades detection in channel dash
42-2-27 to 28 Bruneval Raid - Operation Biting .. 

42-6-12 Operation Squabble  .. Solo Beaufighter raid over Paris
42-8-3 Operation Pedestal 42-8-15 = during Siege of Malta ..
42-8-19 Dieppe Raid .. Failed Operation Rutter .

43-5-16 Dambusters - Operation Chastise ..  

43-7-5 Unternehmen Zitadelle - Battle of Kursk .. Tank battle, Eastern Front

Logistics of D-Day ..  

44-6-6 D-Day - June 6, 1944 .. Operation Neptune

44-6-6 D-Day - Overlord, Neptune ..
44-8-25 Siegfried Line Campaign 45-3-7 ..
44-9-19 Hürtgen Forest 44-12-16 ..
44-10-12 Aachen 44-10-21 ..

Ardennes, Battle of the Bulge 

Italian Ardennes Offensive - Operation Winter Storm 1944 > .

45-3-7 Battle of Remagen 45-3-17 .. 

45-4-23 Battle of Berlin ..
45-4-26 Arrest of Pétain ..
45-5-5 Battle for Castle Itter ..
45-5-8 VE Day - Victory in Europe .. 
45-5-8 VE Day - Churchill's speech ..
45-6-21 Post-war Berlin ..

external .

5 Famous WW2 Covert Operations .  

●● Intelligence, Espionage ◊

⧫ Astropolitik - Geopolitics of Space ..

⧫ Autonomous Robotics, Weaponry ..

⧫ Budgets ..

⧫ CIA ..

⧫ Cryptography ..

⧫ Espionage ..

⧫ Foreign Students ..

⧫ Government, Logistics - Hybrid Warfare ..

⧫ Intelligence Analysis ..

⧫ Intelligence Officers ..

⧫ Internet ..

⧫ IP Theft ..

⧫ MI5, OSS Personnel ..

⧫ MILDEC - Military Deception ..

⧫ Organizations - Intelligence ..

⧫ R&D ..

>> STEM >>>

⧫ Surveillance, Spyware ..

⧫ Terrorism ..

⧫ Wargaming, Hypothetical Warfare ..

●● Education, Training .. 

Innovation

Authoritarian Impediments to Innovation ..

Authoritarian Impediments to Innovation ↠

Aerial Photography

Spartan Mosquitoes and Aerial Photography > .

> Surveillance, ISR >>
Aerial Reconnaissance - SuHo >> .

Operation Hillside - Cartography Unit ..

Battle of the Beams

RV Jones, Knickebein, X-Gerät > .

Himmelbett Radar System - Luftwaffe | War Stories > .

CIA, MI6, FVEY, XX - Intelligence, Espionage, Cyber >> .

Lorenz Beam ..

The Battle of the Beams was a period early in WW2 when bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing in the United Kingdom. British scientific intelligence at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of their own increasingly effective means, involving jamming and distortion of the radio waves. The period ended when the Wehrmacht moved their forces to the East in May 1941, in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union.

Prior to the war, Lufthansa and the German aircraft industry invested heavily in the development of commercial aviation, and systems and methods that would improve safety and reliability. Considerable effort went into blind landing aids which allowed aircraft to approach an airport at night or in bad weather. The primary system developed for this role was the Lorenz system, developed by Johannes Plendl, which was in the process of being widely deployed on large civilian and military aircraft.

In WW2, the Lorenz beam principle was used by the German Luftwaffe as the basis of a number of blind bombing aids, notably Knickebein ('crooked leg') and the X-Gerät ('X-Apparatus'), in their bombing offensive against English cities during the winter of 1940/41. Knickebein was very similar to LFF, modifying it only slightly to be more highly directional and work over much longer distance. Using the same frequencies allowed their bombers to use the already-installed LFF receivers, although a second receiver was needed in order to pinpoint a single location.

The X-Gerät involved cross-beams of the same characteristics but on different frequencies, which would both enable the pilot to calculate his speed (from the elapsed time between crossing the Fore Cross Signal and crossing the Main Cross Signal), and indicate when he should drop his payload. The calculation was performed by a mechanical computer. Lorenz modified this system to create the Viktoria/Hawaii lateral guidance system for the V-2 rocket.

When the British discovered the existence of the 'Knickebein' system, they rapidly jammed it, however, the 'X-Gerät' was not successfully jammed until later. A later innovation by the Germans was the 'Baedeker' or 'Taub' modification, which used supersonic modulation. This was so quickly jammed that the Germans practically gave up on the use of beam-bombing systems, with the exception of the 'FuGe 25A', which operated for a short time towards the end of Operation Steinbock, known as the "Baby Blitz".

A further operational drawback of the system was that bombers had to follow a fixed course between the beam transmitter station and the target; once the beam had been detected, defensive measures were made more effective by knowledge of the course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_beam .