Post by Dave Homewood on Jul 11, 2006 20:57:08 GMT 12
I picked up something yesterday in the second hand book shop which is really quite special.
It's called "The Jimmie Allen Manual of the Royal Air Force".
At first when i looked at it I assumed it was some 1970's cheap publication. But then i realised it was more than that.
On purchasing and getting it home for a closer study I found out it is an amazing piece of New Zealand wartime social history.
This is not a book as such, it is more in the form of a magazine, but it's ratehr tattered and 'well-loved' and is actually 'bound' together by a couple of pieces of thick thread.
I soon realised why. This is a collection. Not a one-off publication.
Back in the 1940's there was a chain store (if you could call it that then) in new Zealand called Self Help. They were dairies, or mini-supermarkets. They were the first in the country where you did your own shopping, rather than handing a shopping list to the counter staff and have them retrieve everything (Open All Hours and The Sullivans-style).
Self Help seems to have sponsored and released this publication with a product called Jimmie Allen's Custard Powder. I'd not heard of the latter brandname, but it seems that Jimmie Allen was a fighter pilot - there's a coloured photo of him on the back cover! A rare thing in wartime NZ, a coloured photo.
I don't think he's a real RNZAF fighter pilot, more a Colonel Sanders marketing tool I'd think, but the photo is of a real guy in a flying helmet so i don't really know. I'd love to find out more about Jimmie Allen and the Jimmie Allen Custard Powder advertised in this publication.
Anyway, what this is is a week-by-week style installment style collection of articles that young boys would have gotten from visiting the Self Help store with Mother, and taken home to add to the foler. Each installment is 4 x A4 pages of interesting facts about the then-modern RAF and it's aircraft. Each of these, really an A3 sized double-sided sheet folded in two and punched with holes for a folder, are called Folder 1 through to Folder 12.
From what I've read of the information so far, it seems that this has to date from around the time of the Battle of Britain, maybe just after Dunkirk. The latter battle is mentioned, but it states the Defiant is "very successful" so it's before the public knew they were rubbish at least.
The folders detail RAF formations, badges, ranks, various fighters and bombers (Spitfire, Hurricane, Defiant, Blenheim, Gladiator, Beaufort, Battle, Hereford, Hampden, Wellington and Whitley).
Also Coastal Command flying boats (Lerwick and Sunderland) plus their Lysanders, Bristol Bombay, Miles Master and Oxford.
It includes carrier aircraft of the RN FAA, (kua, Roc, Osprey, Swordfish, the new Fulmar, Walrus and Osprey). plus machine guns in fighters and bombers, and the new US planes v (Airacobra, P-36, Hudson, B-17E, X.B.34 Liberator, and N.A. 40 which looks like a very early version of the B25 Mitchell.)
Also some very hokey drawings of German planes (Heinkel 112, Me109, Me110, Do215, He111 and Stuka)
Next is a section on torpedo attacks, with great diagrams, then a section of photoreconnaissance. The next section is on bombs and bombing, and then finally defeating ice on planes.
basically, this must I'm certain date around about mid-1940. At this time the airmindedness of New Zealanders was very high, and young boys would have been extremely keen to collect these very informative and attractive folders. I'm sure by looking at the condition this was well treasured by one of those boys, who's name is actually written on it in a child's hand as
J.M. Thompson
R.M. 1 Riwaka
Nelson
To me, it's as much a treasure. It's a piece of social history, both in terms of childhood nostalgia and as a great piece of grocery shop marketing. In that respect it has subtle adverts telling the reader to "ask mother to get a bottle of De Luxe Fruit Extract. There's 5 fruity flavours, and it's only 1/3 a bottle" and also "Try some Jimmie Allen Custard Powder. Only 6d a packet. And by, it's good." Self Help also gets a few plugs throughout.
And it's a piece of Air Force history from the period when our boys were being trained to go and fight in the RAF, to fly the planes detailed within. This collection probably inspired many older boys to join up in the RNZAF. Perhaps even J.M. Thompson did?
if anyone is interested I will galdly scan these great historic pages for the forum.
It's called "The Jimmie Allen Manual of the Royal Air Force".
At first when i looked at it I assumed it was some 1970's cheap publication. But then i realised it was more than that.
On purchasing and getting it home for a closer study I found out it is an amazing piece of New Zealand wartime social history.
This is not a book as such, it is more in the form of a magazine, but it's ratehr tattered and 'well-loved' and is actually 'bound' together by a couple of pieces of thick thread.
I soon realised why. This is a collection. Not a one-off publication.
Back in the 1940's there was a chain store (if you could call it that then) in new Zealand called Self Help. They were dairies, or mini-supermarkets. They were the first in the country where you did your own shopping, rather than handing a shopping list to the counter staff and have them retrieve everything (Open All Hours and The Sullivans-style).
Self Help seems to have sponsored and released this publication with a product called Jimmie Allen's Custard Powder. I'd not heard of the latter brandname, but it seems that Jimmie Allen was a fighter pilot - there's a coloured photo of him on the back cover! A rare thing in wartime NZ, a coloured photo.
I don't think he's a real RNZAF fighter pilot, more a Colonel Sanders marketing tool I'd think, but the photo is of a real guy in a flying helmet so i don't really know. I'd love to find out more about Jimmie Allen and the Jimmie Allen Custard Powder advertised in this publication.
Anyway, what this is is a week-by-week style installment style collection of articles that young boys would have gotten from visiting the Self Help store with Mother, and taken home to add to the foler. Each installment is 4 x A4 pages of interesting facts about the then-modern RAF and it's aircraft. Each of these, really an A3 sized double-sided sheet folded in two and punched with holes for a folder, are called Folder 1 through to Folder 12.
From what I've read of the information so far, it seems that this has to date from around the time of the Battle of Britain, maybe just after Dunkirk. The latter battle is mentioned, but it states the Defiant is "very successful" so it's before the public knew they were rubbish at least.
The folders detail RAF formations, badges, ranks, various fighters and bombers (Spitfire, Hurricane, Defiant, Blenheim, Gladiator, Beaufort, Battle, Hereford, Hampden, Wellington and Whitley).
Also Coastal Command flying boats (Lerwick and Sunderland) plus their Lysanders, Bristol Bombay, Miles Master and Oxford.
It includes carrier aircraft of the RN FAA, (kua, Roc, Osprey, Swordfish, the new Fulmar, Walrus and Osprey). plus machine guns in fighters and bombers, and the new US planes v (Airacobra, P-36, Hudson, B-17E, X.B.34 Liberator, and N.A. 40 which looks like a very early version of the B25 Mitchell.)
Also some very hokey drawings of German planes (Heinkel 112, Me109, Me110, Do215, He111 and Stuka)
Next is a section on torpedo attacks, with great diagrams, then a section of photoreconnaissance. The next section is on bombs and bombing, and then finally defeating ice on planes.
basically, this must I'm certain date around about mid-1940. At this time the airmindedness of New Zealanders was very high, and young boys would have been extremely keen to collect these very informative and attractive folders. I'm sure by looking at the condition this was well treasured by one of those boys, who's name is actually written on it in a child's hand as
J.M. Thompson
R.M. 1 Riwaka
Nelson
To me, it's as much a treasure. It's a piece of social history, both in terms of childhood nostalgia and as a great piece of grocery shop marketing. In that respect it has subtle adverts telling the reader to "ask mother to get a bottle of De Luxe Fruit Extract. There's 5 fruity flavours, and it's only 1/3 a bottle" and also "Try some Jimmie Allen Custard Powder. Only 6d a packet. And by, it's good." Self Help also gets a few plugs throughout.
And it's a piece of Air Force history from the period when our boys were being trained to go and fight in the RAF, to fly the planes detailed within. This collection probably inspired many older boys to join up in the RNZAF. Perhaps even J.M. Thompson did?
if anyone is interested I will galdly scan these great historic pages for the forum.
