Page 7 - Leonard Tebbenham

Wing Commander and died in 1991. His beautiful set of medals together with his logbook sold for
£75,000 in November 2014.

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On January 7 1946 Flying Officer L. Tebbenham was appointed O.C RAF Draft on the
requisitioned HMT Nieuw Holland for the seaborne return to Britain. The ship, built in 1927 and
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modified as a troop transport in 1940, left Lagos on January 8 at 08:00, called at Takoradi,
arrived at Freetown at 09:00 on January 12 , left the following day at 18:00 and finally reached
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Glasgow on January 22 at 16:00. He was released from duty by both the RAFVR and the Air
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Ministry from 104 Personnel Dispatch Centre at Hednesford, Staffordshire on January 24 1946.

AFTER WW2 – UNIVERSITY & FAMILY

He re-joined Northampton Polytechnic as a laboratory assistant in March 1946, working there until
he was able to be re-admitted to UCL in October to finish his degree. He also joined the UCL
Engineering Society. During his first long vacation in 1947 he worked for the BBC as a vacation
student at Brookmans Park and Broadcasting House during July and August.

Many servicemen had their education interrupted by WW2 and Leonard was no exception;
however he was successful gaining a B.Sc (Eng) in July 1948.

Leonard and Blodwen’s only child Roland was born during 1948 and in the spring of 1949 the
family moved from their rented flat in North Kensington to a semi-detached house in South Ruislip,
Middlesex, where they resided until the 1970s. Leonard started work the Dubilier Condenser
Company, North Acton, on electrical plant instillation. However he really wanted to work on
microwave transmission and returned to UCL to conduct research in July 1952. He never
submitted the results of his experiments using the then fast- developing microwave technology
and also declined to produce an M Sc dissertation; though he remained on good terms with many
members of UCL staff and colleagues in subsequent years. During 2009 one of his old colleagues
told me that Leonard was investigating what is now termed the ‘cosmic microwave background’,
but I have no means of confirming this.

A CAREER IN ENGINEERING

In 1955 Leonard joined the General Electric Company; Applied Electronics Laboratories at
Stanmore, Middlesex. This site was later to become Marconi Space & Defence Systems. He
worked in the Microwave Division developing components for aircraft, guided weapons and
communications systems. He was admitted to Chartered Engineer status as an AMIEE in March
1959. He held a patent jointly with his employer for a novel method of synthesising temperature-
compensated waveguide filters. He was closely associated with the project to install new
technology in the communications earth station at Goonhilly, Cornwall, which included novel
microwave filters thereby exploiting his earlier interests. He was promoted to lead a Microwave
Development Group in 1969.