View of wooden shed from North West

Description View of wooden shed from North West

Date 26/5/1996

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number SC 643652

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 66967

Scope and Content Timber shed, World War II airfield, Hatston, Kirkwall, Mainland, Orkney Islands In World War II there were four main military airfields in Orkney, two of which were originally operated by the Royal Navy (Twatt and Hatston) and two by the Royal Air Force (Skeabrae and Grimsetter), Grimsetter, now Kirkwall Airport, being transferred to the Royal Navy from 1943 to 1945. Hatston, operational at the outbreak of war in September 1939 and shortly afterwards commissioned as HMS Sparrowhawk, had the distinction of being the first purpose-built Royal Naval Air Station in Britain and the first aerodrome in Scotland to have runways with hard tarmacadam surfaces. This long shed or store formed part of the naval airfield at Hatston, now a modern industrial estate. Slightly unusually for a wartime timber building, it is two-storeyed, hence the structural need for the series of four braced steel buttresses along the rear wall. Equally unusually, the control tower at Hatston, now demolished, was also built of timber. At the heart of the Orkney archipelago, Scapa Flow was the main fleet anchorage for the Royal Navy during both World Wars. Its vital importance led to the creation of one of the most concentrated defence networks in Britain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/643652

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap