World of Piees

So first off I found on the 100th BG’s website that Crosby has written a piece mentioning these double rooms in the WAAF site, highlighting in particular how he searched for a roommate after James Douglass went home.

This wasn’t helpful in terms of finding the layouts, but I did find it insightful and super interesting.

Again on their website I managed to find a picture of one of the two WAAF sites while combing through their photo archives. This image proved to be particularly helpful.

I did a google search and found a published document titled Wartime Huts: The Development, Typology, and Identification of Temporary Military Buildings in Britain 1914-1945 (link) published in September of 2017 by Karey Lee Draper, Faculty of Architecture at the University of Cambridge.

An interesting little side note, one of the farmers who worked the land on Thorpe Abbotts, home of the 100th Bomb Group during the war, was a man known as Farmer Draper. It’s obviously unlikely they’re related, but I found that to be a neat coincidence.

This document, as referenced in the title, discusses the different types of prefabricated structures, including ones used in WWII. The following diagram from the article has examples.

Now, the picture of the 100th’s WAAF site above has a couple different kinds of structures, but the ones most commonly used on RAF and USAAF bases were the concrete BCF huts and the asbestos Uni-Seco huts.

Unfortunately for me, none of the WAAF site building at Thorpe Abbotts remain in a state that would allow me to get a good idea of their interior, but there were hundreds of air bases in England. Though most were dismantled and returned to agriculture, there are some with partial structures and ruins still remaining.

RCF EXPLORES on YouTube has an amazing video titled RAF BOURN ACCOMMODATION HUTS where he walks through some of the BCF structure ruins on an abandoned RAF base. From his video, I was able to piece together rough floor plans of these BCF hut.

To my (and his) surprise, many of the structures had the interior walls and supporting structures somewhat in tact, which is rare given most times farmers would break down the walls and use the building to store equipment. Following along on his video let me put together floor plans for several of the structures he explored.

These huts are special because they weren’t just one large room in addition to the fact that they had bathrooms attached. This tells us that these buildings were used for higher ranking officers.

Much of the layout, especially regarding the bathroom set up, is an educated guess given all the metal pipes were removed long ago. I know for a fact which small space had the toilet because some of them still had the toilet mostly in tact!! The layouts varied in size and configuration, but there was always a bathroom at one end with a toilet and what I can only assume is a space for a shower or sink (or maybe another toilet?). I found it especially interesting that they all seemed to have a lounge or living room-like space with a fireplace/stove. In general, the room sizes are exactly what I was looking for, and reasonably explain how it was that Crosby had a room he shared with another individual. All of these details fit perfectly into Crosby’s narrative and descriptions of what the WAAF huts might have looked like on the inside, and I’m delighted to have found the YouTube video walking through RAF Bourn.

And I did manage to find some pictures of the interiors of housing for higher ranking officers in other bomb groups. They are a good reference even if they’re not for the 100th BG as most often these bases were built with similar structures.