View of dispersal bay from East

Description View of dispersal bay from East

Date 24/5/1996

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

Catalogue Number SC 643654

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 73174 CN

Scope and Content Dispersal or blast pen, 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. In the middle foreground of this view is one of the surviving earth-banked dispersal pens at Hatston Airfield. In wartime, both as a defensive precaution against raids on the hangars and in readiness for taxiing for attack, aircraft and their crews were dispersed around an airfield, parked in protective, blast-proof bays of this kind, some of which included inbuilt shelters for the crews. This pen was designed to accommodate two aircraft. 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/643654

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap