Local resident, Len Denett, was in the the Merchant Navy during World War II. He came to Aberdyfi onboard the requistioned coaster, CAMROUX III, and cooked for the army personnel who set up the Ynyslas Range. His ship was later involved in some of the experiments that were undertaken there, as his interview with Medwyn Parry reveals...
(Voices recorded: MP = Medwyn Parry, RCAHMW, LD = Len Denett)
MP: This is Medwyn Parry, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments, talking to Mr Len Dennett, who was a crew member of HMS Camroux that operated in conjunction with the Ynyslas Rocket Range. Len, can you tell us a bit about your early life and how you ended up at Borth.
LD: .... once I left school I did a bit of errand boy delivering groceries. And then when I was sixteen, I started working in hotels and restaurants. And then at eighteen I became a chef and from there onwards I was working in private service as chef. I used to go, in the summertime, on their private yacht cooking and then in 1938 that was taken over by the navy and I was on that until HMS Salamander (a minelayer) squashed us against a jetty in Grimsby and so we got paid off for that and I then I came and went back to work in a hotel in Ramsgate until May 1940 where I had an opportunity to work on HMS Camroux. At that particular time, it was being controlled by the Royal Air Force balloon establishment at Cardington. That was the barrage balloons. We came, as I say, and joined her in Ramsgate in May 1940 and we came down to Fishguard with the Royal Air Force personnel on board and we came up to Aberporth and they used to erect the balloons. And they used to hang models of the mosquito plane - mosquito bomber (it was a fast bomber) - they used to submerge models of those on balloons and then Aberporth used to fire rockets... They were what they call shadow rockets in that when they passed something they would explode. And that's what they had these model planes and they used to be testing these shadow rockets and they were very successful during the war. When the bombers were coming they used to fire ram loads of them in front of the planes and, of course, they all used to explode. And then another one they used to fire up after the shadow used to let little parachutes out. When they used them, used bombs underneath and the planes used to run into them and by all accounts that was always in. They were stationed on Blackheath in London. By all accounts they were very successful.
MP: Now, when you were working in liaison with Ynyslas, whereabouts was the ship moored? Did it have a permanent mooring nearby?
LD: In Aberdyfi.
MP: On the opposite bank of it. That was where you were operating from?
LD: That's where we were operating from.
MP: What sort of duties were you carrying out directly with Ynyslas?
LD: Well, first of all, when we first went there, we had army personnel onboard: officers and men. I forget - I think there was about twelve or fifteen army personnel onboard. Then the rockets were being fired - they were testing the rockets that were coming up from Trecwn. Trecwn was the ammunition base down south, down Wales' coast there.
MP: Near Fishguard.
LD: Fishguard, yeah. And then they were (Ynyslas were) firing the rockets up the estuary and then the army personnel - because we came under, at that particular stage after being with the Air Force, we came under the Royal Ordnance Corps, under the army - so army was on board and after the firing of the rockets and so forth from Ynyslas, they were made and fired from certain spots where they should land in certain spaces, you know. So they used to fire these rockets up and then at low tide the army would go up and see if the ones had fallen where they wanted them to fall. See I've told you this before I think, because when the invasion barges came in to pave the way for us to land wherever it was they went, they used the range finders so that they perhaps set one hundred bloody rockets off at various stages to kind of build a road. Clear the rocks or whatever so that all the tanks could land. That was the idea of the system.