Norman Noel Williams in the New Zealand Air Force during World War 2

Norman Noel Williams at Wigram

I don’t have nearly enough information about Norman’s service record apart from tracing the locations he served and information about the locations. I will provide basic information and there might be others that could fill in the information that I can include at a later date about Norman’s service that I could quite possibly have overlooked.

 

Norman Noel Williams was born in 1923 and lived in the Whangarei area. On his service record he said he was a Civil servant and had passed the exam. On enlistment he entered the army through 4 Battalion in Wellington in Johnsonville on the 29 of May 1942, aged 22.

He spent around 6 weeks with the territorials before going to the RNZAF on the 9 of July 1942. No idea for the reason for this apart from would have received basic training. He ended up at Wigram a day later on the 10 of July 1942. Some of the training that was listed with his service record was some shooting and throwing three live grenades while in Swanson. Wigram was the air force base in Christchurch New Zealand. Swanson was located in Auckland and was a training area for the air force during World War 2.

 

His overseas service began with him being sent to Norfolk Island as part of N Force. The occupation while in the Air Force was that of a wireless operator, which would be radio communications. Norman was stationed at Norfolk Island for close to a month from the 27 March in 1943 to 14 April 1943. From April he became part of 14 Squadron. This squadron had been moved to Espiritu Santos in Vanuatu from various areas in the pacific.[1] From June the squadron would end up in Guadalcanal fighting the Japanese. From 26 of May, Norman would be stationed in Vanuatu.

 

When looking up some of the place names that were in the service record, the location of Espirito Santos sent me to Brazil. That did not seem to be possible for the New Zealand air force to be sending people. Another location was an island called Espiritu Santos which is the main island of Vanuatu. Sounds a lot better for the New Zealand air force to be located. I wasn’t too sure about the spelling at the time. The island was an important base for the United States and shared the airfields with New Zealand.[2]

 

Norman would be on Espiritu Santos until Christmas Eve of 1943, where he would be transferred to Number 1 island group, which was located on Espiritu Santos until it was relocated in January 1944 to Guadalcanal, which by then the group was responsible for a number of aircraft and eventually a large number of personnel.[3] Norman would be with the group until 15 of April in 1945, where he ended up in the BDRP (Base Depot Reception Pool), but it wasn’t exactly clear where this was located. More research is required and Google isn’t telling me much at all. He was part of this group from15 April to 17 April in the same month. Though after a small gap in time that I cannot work out, he was listed as being back at Espiritu Santos as part of BDTP, which is another term I cant make heads or tails of unless I am not reading the service record properly. He would be there from the 23 of November 1944 until 1 December 1944. From the 2 of December 1944 to 26 September 1945, Norman would be part of the Number 6 squadron (fb), which turns out to be the Flying Boats/ although amongst the slang it could also mean fighter bomber.[4]

 

Looking at the dates Norman served the gap might have been when he was sent home and came back. The first lot was from 27/03/1943 to 17/04/1944, a period of 1 year and 1 month. The second lot was from the 23/11/1944 to 26/01/1946, a period of 3.3 years. The writer could have gotten confused over the dates further up with trying to follow the service record. It never said if he served on the aircraft, but you would have to assume that he did as he had the important roles as a wireless operator.

 

He was eligible for the Medals

1939/45 star

Pacific star

Defence medal

War medal 1939/45

NZ war service medal

 

 

Sources

 

Norman Noel Williams WWII service record

 

RNZAF Slang

https://www.cambridgeairforce.org.nz/RNZAF%20Slang.htm

 

No 14 Squadron RNZAF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._14_Squadron_RNZAF

 

Number 1 Islands Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._1_(Islands)_Group_RNZAF

 

Naval Advance Base Espiritu Santo

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

 

Kiwis in the Pacific during WWII

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/kiwis-over-the-pacific-the-rnaf-in-world-war-ii/

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[1] ‘No 14 Squadron’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._14_Squadron_RNZAF, accessed 31/12/2024.

 

[2] ‘Naval Advance Base Espiritu Santo’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Advance_Base_Espiritu_Santo, accessed 31/12/2024.

 

[3] ‘Number 1 IIslands Group’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._1_(Islands)_Group_RNZAF, accessed 31/12/2024.

 

[4] ‘RNZAF Slang’, Cambridge Air Force, https://www.cambridgeairforce.org.nz/RNZAF%20Slang.htm, accessed 31/12/2024.

 

A Grandfather’s Legacy

Image from the 1963 travel diary. loading the land rover for the trip to Paris

2024 has been an interesting year family history wise through both loss and gaining new collections of records. To make the whole event even more interesting was the distance since I had to travel to New Zealand from Australia to bring them back with me. I have previously written about the little bits about my grandfather’s legacy like gaining one suitcase of family history stuff including 8mm film and digitising his voice letters. It did turn out that my Grandfather, Claude Williams was a very interesting bloke and respected by many people. I will include some of the photos of the memorabilia I ended up with in my possession

 

One of the suitcases

The biggest change occurred when my grandfather became ill, and I travelled to New Zealand in May thinking it would be the last time I see him. Luckily he was able to become slightly better, but unable to live in his home that he had build during the late 1970s. I would say at 93, it was a great achievement. Unfortunately, he had to move into a nursing home as he had been unable to look after himself as the last illness had knocked him around quite a bit

 

Grandfather's Nepal Visa

Doing a tidy up, I ended up with photographs that included slides and some family history records of his own research. It was then that I began learning a little more about his life as at the time I had heard little bits about his trips overseas. The first trip over I ended up with a few photos and other things including 8mm film that I had not realised were his. I had thought it was to do with his late brother as they were in the bottom of a wardrobe. One of the suitcases that arrived back in Australia was around 20 kilograms.

 

Party invitation for 1956 Olympics

When he passed away several months later, I helped with the clean up at the house and found even more interesting records that I had no inkling existed still. Some I was handed and some I just accidentally found sitting amongst photo albums. Some of the documentation included postcards that were my grandfather’s mothers from around 1915 when her brother went to the Western Front via troopship, textbooks from around the 1940s when he was in school, a boarding pass from 1962 for the vessel that would take my grandfather from Singapore to Fremantle, talking letter tapes that I would later get digitised. I never knew many of these records existed let alone in excellent condition for their age especially the older postcards. My grandfather was really good at documenting parts of his journey to Europe in the 1960s as there were fuel usage guides and how many miles they had travelled per day to get to the destination with his friends before separating in India, where he ended up in Nepal. The passport for that particular journey was also found containing the many stamps for the countries he passed through. The items I ended up with, I will treasure and there are still many more that I still have to go through. I should mention that there are random diaries

Passage boarding pass for ship from Singapore to Fremantle

 

Some of the stories I ended up hearing about were just as interesting especially from the old timers who are still part of the North Kirra Surf life saving club. I knew he had helped build the building and was a life member, but he was the only qualified carpenter on site and the others were directed by him as they were unqualified. The story is that there are many bent nails in the building. He was actually happy that I had digitised the 8mm film that I had come across and you never know there might be more too somewhere. The talking tapes that were part of the collection, I did get developed and that is another story. I do happen to have a good collection of photos of his house being built and that does include the hand drawn building plans he made that went with the development application.

 

Iran Passport stamp from the passport

It might be near the end of December now, but I am still going through the photos slowly and the other records too including the receipts. The funny thing is when it gets tidied up and then you don’t know where you are. I have ended up with an incredible collection that I will treasure.

 

check in receipt for a flight in 1949 New Zealand

 

Links to videos and other blogs

 

The Suitcase

https://tangaroa81.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-suitcase.html

 

Grandfathers mystery 8mm film

https://tangaroa81.blogspot.com/2024/08/grandfathers-mystery-8mm-film.html

 

Digitising voice letters

https://tangaroa81.blogspot.com/2024/11/digitising-grandfathers-voice-letters.html

 

1963 8mm film from England to Paris

https://youtu.be/svyDxk1f_lo

 

8mm video North Kirra and parts of the Gold Coast

https://youtu.be/1XEIJLLk9Ck

 

1962 Brighton Car Rally

https://youtu.be/S6U8miGiBmY

 

8mm film Sydney to Auckland by ship possibly late 1959 or 1960s

https://youtu.be/CuNV4Od2qTs

 

Digitising Grandfathers voice letters

 

The tapes

It is always interesting when you come across obsolete technologies that were amongst your grandparents belongings that you never even knew existed. Being the age where everything is basically digital the older technology has been rendered obsolete even if they are something like 50 or 60 years old. Then there is how they were stored as that could have impacts on their playability in the future. I would hate to think what would happen if I had lost the ability to get things like the voice letters digitised.

 

 Recently I came across some talking tapes that were similar to cassette tapes, but were more along the line of the 8mm film I also had. There were around 5 tapes that belonged to my grandfather and I don’t know what was on them. They did seem to be in really good condition too. I didn’t have anything to play them on, nor even knew what year they would have been made. I was wondering if there was anything recorded on these tapes. Was there scandal or something just ordinary like what everyone used to do with cassette tapes and record the radio.

 

The function of these tapes seemed to be pretty much as the name suggests. You talk into the tape recorder of some sort, and then send them on like a letter in the post. Though I guess they could also be used for notes when writing letters. They had been stored in my grandfather’s house for a number of years as the house he had been living in was built between the late 1970s and 1980s. Before then their movements could have placed them anywhere, but they were in good condition.

 

Wanting to know what was on them intensified once my grandfather passed away, and I wandered into a camera shop to ask about some Kodachrome film I had as well. At the same time I asked about the talking tapes and the sales person couldn’t help me as it was something he had never seen before. I asked if he would know if the National Film and Sound Archives might know. He did reply if they replied back.

 

I emailed the National Film and Sound Archives other wise known as the NFSA. They responded within 24 hours with a list of people they use as they said they couldn’t specifically recommend one. I emailed several on the list and went with the one who responded, although for reasons the email ended up in the spam folder, but that is something I always check.

 

The company was a local one based in Canberra and the business owner was the one responding to my email. He asked for pictures of the tapes and if I knew anything else. The tapes themselves were in pretty good condition especially when one had the date stickered on the side saying 1972. The audio specialists even had an IMDB page of their accomplishments in the film industry, so I knew they would look after my tapes when I sent them on. I will put a link to their website in this blog.

 

I express posted the tapes to Canberra and wasn’t expecting them to even have a look at them for at least a month. I assumed that they would be extremely busy with other jobs. Within a week they had the tapes digitised with a report on what was on them. They even included a USB of the audio. Several had music from the radio and made it sound like the computer game Fallout. One had my grandfather reading the news and one had him actually using the tape like a talking letter. I would say it was worth it just to get it done or else the tapes would have degraded over time. I was told three of the tapes were acetate based tapes that went out of date around the late 1960s and 1970s. They did include an excel spreadsheet on what they did recover from the tapes, so that was pretty good. I believe they did an excellent job and communicated with me what they could do.

 

Links

 

Infidel Studios

https://www.infidelstudios.com.au/

 

IMDB page for Duncan Lowe

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9206443/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_4_nm_4_q_Duncan%2520lowe