View of transmitter/receiver building from NE.
SC 642939
Description View of transmitter/receiver building from NE.
Date 24/8/1997
Catalogue Number SC 642939
Category On-line Digital Images
Copy of D 21724
Scope and Content Transmitter/receiver block, World War II Chain Home Low radar station, The Ward, Deerness, Mainland, Orkney Islands From the outbreak of World War II in 1939 early warning of the movement of enemy aircraft was based on Chain Home systems of Radio Direction Finding (RDF) or radar, as it became known, a technique which had been developed in secret since 1935. Forming part of an East Coast Chain Home series which provided long-range detection, two stations were installed in Orkney, one at Netherbutton on East Mainland, about 9.6km south of Kirkwall, and another at Whale Head, close to the north-eastern tip of Sanday. The main features of the stations were the receiver blocks and transmitter blocks with their associated masts and generators for the electricity power supply. In order to remain operational in the event of attack or damage, most Chain Home stations, including the two Orkney sites, also had standby generators and held duplicate equipment in reserve installations which were described as buried or remote. Fuller coverage of Orkney was also provided by a small number of Chain Home Low and Chain Home Extra Low stations, which, as their names imply, were designed to detect low-flying aircraft operating below the range of the Chain Home system. This view shows the upper end of a combined transmitter and receiver block which was built, probably in 1942, to replace earlier units on this hilltop site. Immediately behind this viewpoint is one of the three underground bunkers which were built in Orkney in 1975 as Royal Observer Corps (ROC) monitoring posts and were manned until the ROC was stood down in 1991. 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.
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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap
Attribution: © RCAHMS
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