Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017789
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017789
The former First World War seaplane base, situated at Stannergate just E of Dundee, was one of several established by the Royal Naval Air Service along the E coast of Britain for conducting reconnaissance and anti-submarine operations. Occupying a 25-acre (10.1 ha) site on the banks of the River Tay, the base was initially equipped with two hangars and a slipway, suitable for serving seaplanes such as the Short 184. The hangars were possibly transferred from an earlier base at Port Laing on the River Forth (NT 134811). By April 1918 a third hangar of more substantial dimensions had been erected, with adjacent slipway, along the E side of the site in order to house the larger Curtiss H-12 and Felixstowe F2A flying-boats. This hangar, which can be identified as the tall building in the middle background axial with the slipway, is now all that remains of the original complex.
Classified as an F-type hangar-of which two later examples built in the 1920s also remain in Scotland at Evanton, Ross and Cromarty, and West Freugh, Wigtownshire, 46-it has a structural frame of all-metal construction set out on a 17ft (5.18m) regular grid. The main area measures 204ft (62.18m) in length by 104ft (31.70m) over a clear roof span, with headroom ('ceiling') of 27ft (8.23m). There is, in addition, a single-storeyed range which extends along the W side. The trusses are of lattice-style construction, and the principal wall-members-cast with the maker's name 'THE FRODINGHAM IRON & STEEL CO LTD, ENGLAND'-are made up of U-channel sections. Externally, the end-walls are reinforced with raking members, but the main architectural feature of the building is the E wall, which was capable of being opened in sections over its entire length. Framed wheeled doors, each 51ft (15.55m) in width, were manually operated by a crank-and-chain drive. The minimum of fixed supports were used to carry the guide-rails and eaves-girder; these supports comprised latticed stanchions at each end and raking frames at the midpoints, where the girder spanning the double-width central opening is deeper and projects above the eaves-line. Both the roof and walls were clad with corrugated asbestos sheeting of the 'Trafford Tile' pattern, then a relatively new material.
Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’ (1986).
