RAF Stoke Holy Cross - the buried reserve (transmitter)

Image: © Evelyn Simak Taken: 8 Nov 2015

Site of the buried reserve > http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4736168 - an underground operating centre for the transmitter site of RAF Stoke Holy Cross > http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/RAF-Stoke-Holy-Cross-Chain-Home-radar-station/1 which was a Chain Home radar station during the war. Although sections of concrete have been displaced and gathered into a heap > http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4732592 the underground structure is still intact and its entrances are protected by heavy steel-framed concrete slabs running on steel rollers (one depicted here). This single hatch was for personnel and there is also a wider hatch for plant access. "Chain Home" was the codename for a ring of coastal radar stations built before and during WWII. The system is otherwise known as AMES Type 1. It was devised by Sir Robert Watson-Watt's Air Ministry research station near Bawdsey, Suffolk, and consists of radar fixed on top of a radio tower mast called a 'station' to provide long-range detection of aircraft. The Chain Home stations were arranged around the British coast, initially in the South and East but later the entire coastline, including the Shetland Islands. The system was dismantled after the war, but some of the tall steel radar towers were converted to new uses > http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1533128. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home

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