大象传媒

Radar secrets

In December 1939, I was sworn in as Sergeant Wireless Instructor in the Royal Artillery. Along with the king's shilling I was given a book that the attesting officer said would tell me how to keep my feet clean. Needless to say it didn't.

This all took place at the territorial drill hall in Deansbrook Rd, Edgware, north-west London, where the writer Godfrey Winn joined the navy as a seaman to endure and, subsequently, record the horrors of the Murmansk convoy PQ17. His book PQ17 is well worth reading.

Unknowingly, I had enlisted myself in a job that would reveal the techniques of radar, of which I was until then unaware (as it was secret). By then, of course, the Germans had better radar than ours.

Novices running the show

In early 1940 the authorities were setting up a vastly expanded army, centred on the Territorial Army and the fag-end of the regular army, the best of which was the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France. It was mainly novices running affairs, and it was a miracle we survived.

UK anti-aircraft defence was mainly provided by the Territorial Army (TA), which formed the core of the expansion needed for wartime. The consequence of this for me was that I was never with the unit to which I belonged, always attached to some other unit. Like a stage army, I was perpetually on the move, perhaps to give the impression of a larger force than actually existed. I was posted to Dover, Hoo in Kent, and sites in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and London, in the course of which I managed to train various radar operators.

My first posting

At Dover, my first posting, I was attached to a TA unit at Swingate Camp, situated to the east of the town. This was the 88th Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery, which, although manned for eight guns, had only four. Consequently, while half the men manned the guns, the rest ploughed the fields and scattered, week and week about. Later, as the expansion of the wartime army continued, the spare half went off to become cadres for new units.

The unit was raised by TA volunteers from Dover and the surrounding area, and had been mobilised at the start of hostilities. After several months it was still within walking distance of Dover and operating almost as if it were peacetime. Indeed, every afternoon a bus arrived at the camp to take a 24-hour-leave party to town. It must have seemed a very cosy way of going to war.

A cool reception

I came into the unit as something of a cuckoo in the nest. I was an unpleasant reminder that there was a war on, and changes lay ahead. One such change was a new gadget to detect aeroplanes, yet another disturbance of established life. I had also jumped into the army as a sergeant, whereas my fellow sergeants had served for years to reach that rank. I was not exactly welcome.

During my time with this unit there were no air raids, so I had no opportunity to show the advantages of radar. Later, after I'd been posted away, the unit did well. The prowess of the Dover AA (anti-aircraft) gunners is mentioned approvingly in an account of the Battle of Britain.

At the front line

At Dover they really were in the front line. The neighbouring RAF Chain Home radar was pasted when the Luftwaffe tried to smash the eyes of the RAF along with its airfields. Some of the high masts for the aerials of the CH station remained in place after the war and became a convenient support for microwave dishes for Anglo-French radio links.

Dover was a depressing posting. The site was on the top of the white cliffs, where sea mists swirled, accompanied by the mournful bellowing of sundry lighthouses on land and lightships in the Channel. The bleating of flocks of sheep accompanied by the melancholy clanking of a nearby cable railway carrying coal to the port added to the gloomy atmosphere.

A visit from George VI

An unusually memorable event was the visit to the site by King George VI, who inspected the radar set with my operators and me in it. The King was most smartly turned out as a field marshal. He said that Mr Watson-Watt had explained the system to him, but, regrettably, before he could really get into his stride an air-raid alarm was given, and he was hustled off the site. It was a false alarm. Otherwise, who knows?, I might have spoken to the sovereign.

This was in early 1940, before the war had really started, and before I was sent to the Chinese village of Hoo, near Rochester, to join a school where radar operators were trained. I was among a team of instructors who had been gathered together since before the war.

Bad news and victory rolls

It was an odd time. The war was now raging in earnest. I could see the smoke from the fires in Dunkirk. Fighters came over doing victory rolls, and the radio was full of bad news. Nevertheless, I went on instructing new radar operators and mooched around Rochester and Chatham now and again. I was allowed 12-hour leaves and occasionally a 24-hour pass and thus was able to go home occasionally.

Before the Blitz started, I was posted to Scottish Command. I didn't see Dover again until 1945, when I was astonished at what had been constructed in the vicinity of Swingate Camp. But that is not my story.

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