Secret Scotland

It’s not been a good week. First, the loss of a 20V 5 A supply threatened to knock us offline for an indeterminate period, and the best we had in the spares box was 15 V (albeit 30 A), it might have been possible to raise it, but risky given the possible operating margin. Remarkably, even though it was a sealed, switched mode supply, deciding there was nothing to lose, cracking it open (literally, as it was one of those sealed-for-life blocks) revealed a fault that had been there from day one. Second, although the time taken to fix the supply meant I didn’t have to move to the fallback PC (wouldn’t have happened anyway - currently too cold where it lives), it is still used every week for other duties. Had we had to depend on it, we’d have been out of luck, as this week saw it ‘die’, in so far as Windows decided to manifest a lockup-at-boot problem this particular machine had suffered in the past. There’s no fix, and it needs a Windows re-install to clear it - we know, we’ve tried all the fixes for similar symptoms as provided by MS in response to the errors found in the bootlog, none of them worked, not even a little bit. So, a close brush with coincidences that almost wiped us out until May, when it got warm again!

On a similar time-based theme, just before losing days to the above, we had resurrected our Tiree page, abandoned a few months ago as it was becoming too involved, and we didn’t have a model to handle the volume or type of data that it was throwing up as we dug around, and it is a most interesting place as far as its World War II past is concerned. Developments on some other pages since then have suggested how to handle the info, and we’ll hopefully get it tied up in the next week or so. Spending some time on this will now be of benefit, to finalise a method for tackling this sort of info in an organised way, as we have come across some similar info after coming across what appeared to be an isolated Coastal Defence radar station towards Scapa Flow. Digging around the archives revealed that we had found a Research Station, and that the position was actually one of a series of specially commissioned coastal radar intended to detect submarines approaching the Home Fleet moored in Scapa Flow.

If you’re familiar with HMS Royal Oak, then it’s worth noting that this defence was to the south and east, while the U-Boat that sank the Royal Oak had taken advantage of tidal conditions to defeat the blockships defending the fleet from the north west approach.

Yet again, wandering around some other sites of interest brought to light a site we were completely unaware of.

Gin Head lies on the south side of the Firth of Forth, to the east of Dunbar, and in sight of Tantallon Castle.  At its simplest, Gin Head was the site of a Chain Home / Chain Home Low radar station, part of the country’s World War II early warning system that alerted the RAF to incoming enemy aircraft. This system was such a well guarded secret that the Luftwaffe failed to recognise its significance - allowing the RAF to scramble its fighters only where enemy aircraft were actually attacking (much to their repeated irritation, as the RAF always appeared to be in the right place at the right time), rather than flying continuous sorties in the hope of being airborne in the right place at the right time, which quickly have stretched it to breaking point. The Luftwaffe did eventually realise the towers that carried the radar antennae were significant, but too late, and even when they did attack them (down south), although they brought the system down, they broke off the attack too soon, and the damage was quickly repaired, restoring the system. Failing to realise the true significance of the towers they had attacked, the Luftwaffe’s attentions were diverted elsewhere, leaving the system intact.

The radar station was extended in 1943 with the addition of a Research Establishment directly to its east. Although we have little information about the precise nature of the work carried out there, it was definitely used to test and develop radar systems for use by the Royal Navy, and to investigate captured German radar equipment. It played a part in the preparations for the D-Day landings in June 1944, when its facilities were used to test radio countermeasure equipment.

There’s little detailed information about the work carried out there, and it was taken over by Ferranti, now Bae Systems Avionics Ltd, at Crewe Toll, but was abandoned in recent years, and is now the subject of a planning application for conversion to domestic use.

Further detail can be found on our pages for the Gin Head Radar Station, and the Gin Head Research Establishment.