View of interior from South West.

Description View of interior from South West.

Date 27/5/1996

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

Catalogue Number SC 642952

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 21644

Scope and Content Former operations room, World War II Fighter Sector Headquarters, Inganess Road, Kirkwall, Mainland, Orkney Islands The hub of Orkney's intelligence gathering and wartime defences was the Fighter Sector Headquarters or Operations Block in Kirkwall which, in early 1944, was transferred to a purpose-built structure at the head of Inganess Road. Plotting and controlling aircraft movements, it was staffed mainly by Royal Air Force personnel but included facilities for all three services, including the Army's own gun operations room for the co-ordination of anti-aircraft defence throughout Orkney. The windowless wartime interior of the Fighter Sector Headquarters centred around an operations room and a large table map on which information on the movements of all aircraft, friendly and hostile, was constantly plotted. However, only RAF squadrons were controlled from here, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm having their own Control Room at Twatt. The plotting table stood in the centre of the room, surrounded and overlooked by a glass-fronted gallery containing the main offices. 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/642952

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap