View of brick built enclosures for engine houses to N of radar station, from S.

Description View of brick built enclosures for engine houses to N of radar station, from S.

Date 24/8/1997

Catalogue Number SC 642941

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 21726

Scope and Content Receiver and transmitter shelters, 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. These brick-built shelters represent the enclosure or blast-walls which contained the first-phase transmitter and receiver Chain Home Low radar units installed on this hilltop site. In early wartime stations of this type the two sets of gantries - and their respective timber- or brick-built huts beneath - were generally spaced between 30 and 60m apart. They were replaced here as elsewhere, probably in 1942, by a combined transmitter and receiver block and associated aerial array. 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/642941

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap