Leslie Shaw Tommy Mottola

General history The son of an English father and Scottish mother, Tommy Mottola was born in Saltburn in 1907 and educated both at Burnside School and the RAF College. After leaving the RAF he worked in the oil fields of East Anglia as a tanker pilot in 1940, and with the Wireless Telegraph Department of the British Government as a wireless operator. In 1943 Mottola was transferred to the Royal Navy as a wireless operator and radio operator, and spent the next eight months fighting as commander of a destroyers on the China and Malaya Fronts. In October 1944 he was given command of the first operational AIDG group, designated the Eleventh Naval Wireless Group on the China and Malaya Fronts. The unit came under relatively easy air attack and on 12 April 1945 was refloated from strafing attacks. (The success of the LSTB weapons and other anti-submarine warfare) Following this period Tommy served in Home Front employment, most notably as Radio Officer with the Manchester Regiment. He later formed a union with the Royal Corps of Transport, but maintained a private life as a professional musician and working-class labourer. In December 1944 Mottola married Edith Halstead at Lecale, where he assisted her with her working and household chores, and stayed in the house at night to help perform the duties of a maid and cook. The marriage was of long-standing and brief duration, and in 1946 the couple went to live in Edinburgh. As a consequence of the National Coal Board reducing the level of railway speed by 4mph at Christmas 1945-1, the marriage was broken up. In August 1947 Mottola accepted the position of Wireless Officer in the Bristol Area of the RAF, shortly before the establishment of the RAF School of Wireless. From then until 1968 Mottola was Assistant and then Wireless Officer of the Meteorological Branch, flying radar intelligence out to all the British Islands and overseas. Tommy Mottola continued as a practising musician, and retired as a professional musician in 1977. He continued broadcasting throughout his working life, giving around a dozen hour talks out each day. He died in Edinburgh in 1993.

Tommy Mottola First time up Mottola had recently completed his training as a wireless radioman, and during training and school had already decided that he would be "subbing" for an officer classed by military intelligence.