Water tanks, view from South West.

Description Water tanks, view from South West.

Date 23/5/1997

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

Catalogue Number SC 670081

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 21619 CN

Scope and Content Water tanks, World War II signal station, Stanger Head, Flotta, Orkney Islands In World War II military activities in and around Scapa Flow generated a complex communications network of wireless, cabled and manual signals equipment associated with all three armed services. These ranged from traditional methods of intelligence-gathering, monitoring and signalling, as practised in World War I, to the sophisticated systems of detection and communication which developments in radio and radar offered. The Royal Navy possessed its own radar network (known as AES, Admiralty Experimental Stations) with at least one station in Orkney, on Ward Hill in South Ronaldsay, but its land-based communications operated mainly through a local group of Port War Signal Stations at Stromness (Ness Battery), Kirkwall (Rerwick Head), Lyness and here at Stanger Head on Flotta, where this range of brick buildings, grouped around a four-storeyed tower, replaced a World War I signal station which had stood on the western side of the island, centred upon an equally lofty but timber-built tower designed in the manner of a ship's superstructure, complete with bridge. This view shows two surviving water tanks of standard Braithwaite pattern which served the military camps on Stanger Head. Throughout Britain in World War II, such tanks were a common feature on military and civilian sites where special or additional water supplies were required. Mounted on concrete posts so that the collected rainwater could be gravity-fed, the tanks were made up, as here, with prefabricated pressed steel sections bearing a characteristic saltire-shaped pattern, the sections being bolted together to an appropriate size, in this case square with four panels on each side. 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/670081

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap