Hangar, view of screen blocks from South East.

Description Hangar, view of screen blocks from South East.

Date 27/5/1996

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

Catalogue Number SC 645198

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 66951

Scope and Content World War I airship station, Caldale, Mainland, Orkney Islands In World War I air operations conducted by the Royal Navy in and around Orkney led to the creation in 1916-17 of an airfield, an airship station, a kite balloon station and four bases for seaplanes which patrolled the Fair Isle Channel hunting for enemy submarines. The airship station was established in a relatively sheltered site at Caldale, west of Kirkwall, but the two large hangars, designed to house and maintain rigid airships, were used mainly for the maintenance and inflation of kite balloons in support of the operational base at Houton on the northern shore of Scapa Flow. Kite balloons were a hazardous means of aerial reconnaissance; the observers stood in open baskets hung beneath the balloons which, secured to cruisers with long hawsers or cables, were towed, kite-like, at heights of between 500 and 1,000 feet (152 and 305m). The concrete blocks visible on the right were surmounted by rails on which wheeled screens ran down the side of one of the former airship hangars. The purpose of the large, mobile deflector screens which flanked the hangars was to steady the airships or balloons from cross-winds on entering or leaving the sheds. The area to the left, originally occupied by the hangar itself, was altered and overlaid in World War II when the site served as a depot for the Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers (REME). 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/645198

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap