I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety

I explain in I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II that o n Friday July 20th 1945 "The Pacific Post: Daily Newspaper of the British Pacific Fleet" was launched. My dad, Norman Buckle,  saved a copy of the first edition with his diary. He was a member of  MONAB 4 stationed on the island of Ponam as part of the support network for the British Pacific Fleet in 1945. [If you click on the cuttings they're easier to read when they are on the black background.]   First page of the first edition of the Pacific Post: Daily Newspaper of the British Pacific Fleet 20/07/1945     Close-up of the main picture story.     Editorial Part 1     Editorial Part 2     From the front page of the first edition of The Pacific Post  

In the introductory pages of I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I've written about my father's background: " Norman was a working class lad who was born in 1924 and brought up in the village of Royston , near Barnsley, in South Yorkshire . He was fortunate, having passed his eleven plus, to have enough family support to go to the local grammar school at Normanton. He was studious, worked hard and passed his School Certificate. At the age of sixteen he was offered employment as a clerk at the salary of £1 - 0s - 0d per week (about £30 in to-day's money) in the Public Health Department of the West Riding County Council in Wakefield thus breaking three generations of the family's tradition of going down the pit." Norman in 1939 aged 15 years. Normanton Grammar School in 1920 Normanton Grammar School in 1925. Norman started there about ten years later. In August 1...

When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I tried to find out about the development of the island of Ponam, near Manus, in the Admiralty Islands (part of present day Papua New Guinea) as the naval air base to which my dad was posted in 1945. I was delighted to find out more last week in Hansard (the record of Parliamentary debates). In The House of Lords on July 11th 1962 in a debate to do with Naval Estimates Lord Ashbourne reminisced about the base at Manus, in the Admiralty Islands of which he had had first-hand knowledge during the war. "Within about three months of capturing the Admiralty Islands from the Japanese the Americans had turned this almost desert island into a great fleet base, with alongside berths for unloading cargo, with floating docks, with a 10,000-feet airstrip, completed, they say, within fourteen days of the initial landings on the island. The...