1950s posting to Hong Kong and Labuan

The Spy Who Raised Me Podcast

15-02-2020 • 22 mins

In this episode Iain Craigie talks to daughter, Jane Craigie, about his posting to Hong Kong with a secondment to Labuan. It was in the late 1950s, so WWII was still fresh in minds and diplomacy. Iain’s bases were Direction Finding (DF) Stations - rudimentary huts using HF radio. His Hong Kong posting was near the Chinese border. The conversation will take you through the importance of DF stations, how they were connected, the British intelligence interest in, and the secrecy of the Chinese; and the ‘fun’ these young RAF men had aged early 20s. Iain’s lucky still to be with us - one of their pranks was setting light to old WWII munitions’ dumps left behind by the Japanese on Labuan.

*please excuse the slight outages in audio - one of the dual mics I’ve been using has a fault. Must buy some new ones - any recommendations for an iPhone?

Thank you so much for listening, Jane Craigie