Ice-cream

Anthony Horowitz said: "And that's one of the things I like most of all about writing it, is that you read books and you find things that people just don't know about. An example - it's a small thing, but Mr Smith, the character in Eagle Day, the fourth episode, says he's an ice-cream seller. 'Stop me and buy one!' Now, just that - 'stop me and buy one!' - to me, suddenly, just those words put together takes me back to 1940! I mean, I wasn't alive then; I wasn't born for another fifteen-odd years, but still, just those words - I'm there! And then he adds that he's lost his job because, first of all, his truck was taken away for carrying blood around, blood transfusions, and anyway there's no more ice-cream. And both those details again give me enormous pleasure. The fact that somebody, in 1930 or '40, sat down and said 'we've got to transport blood; how can we do it? Oh - we'll take the ice-cream vans' - that's very English, isn't it? I think it's just a wonderfully rich detail. And the fact that there was no more ice-cream, one of the things that went out, just comes together and it makes the character live and it adds a reality to the show."

Link: A Conversation with Anthony Horowitz
Episode: Eagle Day, Bad Blood


IFF

Identification Friend or Foe: radio device fitted to aircraft in order to identify the aircraft as friendly when approaching home radar stations.

Episode: Eagle Day


Internees

Enemy aliens living in Britain at the time of WWII were interned in camps by the British authorities. Known Nazi sympathisers were also rounded up as well as many other citizens under Regulation 18B. In the first two years other aliens were also interned, including refugees who had fled Nazi Germany to escape persecution. By mid-1940, 8000 internees had been gathered into camps, to be deported to the Dominions. The deportation policy was changed when many ships carrying internees were lost at sea by enemy torpedoes, after which enemy aliens were interned in camps in Britain only.

Most internees had been released by the end of 1942. Many of those remaining were repatriated from 1943 onwards. It was not until late 1945 that the last internees were finally released.

Link: National Archives


Isle of Wight

Situated between Bournemouth and Portsmouth on the south coast and separated from the mainland by The Solent. During World War Two the Island was heavily defended and made a restricted area. In 1940, the fall of France and occupation of the English Channel Islands opened up the real possibility of an invasion of Britain, and the Isle of Wight was historically a beachhead. Throughout the war the Medina River was jammed with destroyers and warships under construction and repair. PLUTO, the Pipe Line Under The Ocean, crossed the Island where fuel was stored ready for the D-day forces on the Normandy beaches.

Link: Multi-map
Episode: Eagle Day


Ismay

General Hastings Ismay 1887-1965
Educated at Charterhouse and Sandhurst Military Academy. 1905: commissioned into British Army. During WWI: fought in Somaliland. 1926: joined the Imperial Defence Committee. May 1940: now a major general, became Chief Staff Officer to Winston Churchill and a member of the Chiefs of Staff (COS) Committee acting as joint advisers of the War Cabinet on military policy. 1946: retired from the British Army as a full general, after which served as chief of staff under Lord Mountbatten in India. 1951: appointed Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1951-52) by Churchill. 1952-57: was the first Secretary General of NATO. Autobiography, The Memoirs of General Ismay published in 1960.

Episode: The German Woman, War Games