RAF Linguists Assocciation

In their preface the authors - all former Chinese linguists - state "... the story we are telling here is above all a human story..." and indeed it is. It is the story of about 300 young men, most of whom had never been abroad, who learned Chinese and then found themselves in Hong Kong, at that time a remote place and still part of the British Empire.

Read John Partridge’s review

After 1945, the main focus of sigint activity was an RAF listening station at Little Sai Wan (above) operated by 367 Signals Unit. In the early 1960s, the gradual end of National Service meant that it was becoming harder for the armed services to staff their larger organisations. After a review in 1962, the civilianisation of many of the posts was recommended and their transfer to GCHQ. As part of this process, Little Sai Wan became a civilian listening station in 1964 with the assistance of Australia who provided Chinese speakers.
Recently, Keith Scott, Geoffrey Russell and Reginald Hunt and have written a collective memoir of the RAF effort in Hong Kong called Mandarin Blue: RAF Chinese Linguists - 1951 to 1962 - and the Cold War ISBN 9780956023506