Wartime Decca

This story looks at events in the Decca Studios in Broadhurst Gardens West Hampstead during World War Two.
 

Decca Studios, 1963

Arthur Haddy (1906 to 1989)
Arthur Haddy was the chief engineer at Crystalate and then Decca Studios which took over the building in 1937. During the War he was asked if Decca could help remove the static noise in intercepted radio signals picked up from German aircraft by the chain of ‘Y’ listening stations which were spread around the coast. He went to the Y HQ in West Kingsdown Kent to collect some wax recordings which were sent to the studios for improvement. The cleaned recordings were returned to the RAF to assist transcription, before they were sent to Bletchley Park.

Arthur Haddy, 1970s (Getty Images)

The company was also asked by the Government to develop a method of detecting submarines from their engine noise. An important event occurred on 27 August 1941 when the German U-boat U-570 was surprised by a Coastal Command aircraft which dropped depth charges while the submarine was on the surface forcing the crew to surrender. The vessel was captured and taken to Britain for testing and detailed examination. This included sound trials at the Admiralty Research Laboratory’s acoustic range in Loch Goil, a small sea loch in Scotland. During comparative tests with British submarines, it was discovered that the sound profile of the German vessel had a different frequency range. 

Haddy said ‘A German submarine sounded quite different from an English submarine. There was no mistaking it once you knew what to listen for. But the tell-tale difference was a very high frequency sound. We had to build a disc cutter that would handle the full range of human hearing. We built one that would go up to around 16kHz. Then we recorded the propeller noise of the captured German sub and the noise of a British sub. On headphones you could clearly hear the difference’. The recordings were used to train Coastal Command to detect submarines and then guide aircraft and destroyers to depth charge the enemy. The work by Decca was used to produce high fidelity hydrophones for the Navy, and Haddy was awarded an OBE.

After the War, the technology was used to produce the much improved sounding, wider frequency range 78rpm records which were labelled ffrr, (Full Frequency Range Recording). 

Francis Attwood, Decca’s advertising manager, suggested a trademark of the letters ffrr coming out of a human ear and this first appeared in the Gramophone magazine of July 1945. The technique led to the noted realism of Decca’s classical recordings. It was also applied to the pop side, for Decca best-selling artists such as Mantovani, Charlie Kunz and Ted Heath.

Decca made a number of other vital technological developments during the Second World War. In 1943 the company developed Decca Navigation, a form of direction finder, where a chain of high frequency radio transmitters sent signals to aircraft and ships. It became operational in January 1944 and was crucial to the Allies’ success during the D-Day landings in Normandy. The work by Decca was seen as vitally important and an armed guard was stationed at the studios.

A tragic wartime death at Decca Studios
Recently, former employees of Decca met for one of their reunions. One of the group produced a photo, and asked if anyone knew where it had been taken in the studios. Derek Varnals who had worked there as an engineer said it was the old canteen in the basement. Derek is best known for his work on all the Moody Blues albums, but he also recorded hundreds of other famous artists during his seventeen years after joining Decca in 1963. 

At the reunion, some people said they had heard that a young woman had died in the canteen during the War. When he got home, Derek who knew the story, searched the online British Newspaper Archive and found an account of the inquest in the Hampstead News of 8 April 1943. 

Sheila Hayward had been a secretary for 14 years at Crystalate and its successor Decca when she was found dead in the canteen late on 30 March. She had lived with her parents in Eversley Park Road Winchmore Hill. At the inquest her father said that 31-year old Sheila had been engaged for nine years but called it off five months ago. Later she believed it was a mistake, and since January when she heard her fiancé was missing in action, she had fits of depression and had told her mother she had nothing to live for. 

The pathologist said her death was due to carbon monoxide poisoning from the gas cooker in the kitchen, and the verdict was she had taken her own life.

Wartime production
The blackout imposed during the Blitz led to a demand for records and Decca was busy during the War. Using the master numbers, Derek Varnals calculated that Decca made 2,770 records during the six years of the War. That is an average of about 40 records a month.

Decca Studio One control Room, 1948 (Derek Varnals)

Here is a short YouTube film of Derek taking about some auditions and recordings at Decca, including Lulu, Them with Van Morrison,  and other bands.