A rare military site dating back to the height of the First World War remains virtually untouched on an exposed headland at Burray Ness, on the Isle of Burray, south of Orkney Mainland. Constructed at some stage between 1914 – 1918 (most likely in around 1915 when the scale of… Read More »Interpreting Burray Ness
This article aims to bring together a number of sources of information I have in order to demonstrate the extent of requisitions undertaken by the army, typically for short duration, in support of surges in violence but also for the accommodation of the newly formed Ulster Defence Regiment in the 1970s.
The 1930s and 1940s saw huge advances in the development of radio and radar technologies, with one of the most sophisticated networks of Radio Direction Finding (RDF) being deployed in the form of Chain Home stations around the coast of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Running concurrently with the development… Read More »Second World War Microwave Experiments
In the mid-1990s trials were being undertaken at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, England for a new type of airborne surveillance platform. In the days before Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) were common place in military aviation, it was thought that an airship could be used in Northern Ireland to provide surveillance… Read More »Blimp over the Border
Between 1969 and 2007, both the British Army and civilian population were under attack. It was a dynamic conflict, both in terms of geography and threat, during which there would not necessarily be a winner, just a lesser loser. And there were three sides; republicans, loyalists and the security forces,… Read More »Fortifications of Operation Banner
There are many elements of operations in Northern Ireland that will remain secret, and rightly so. But as time moves on historians, academics and enthusiastic amateurs will slowly uncover details which I am sure all but a select few would have had exposure. As the saying goes “a little knowledge… Read More »Was there a secret intercept station at Divis?
For those of you who are familiar with the beach at Murlough Bay nature reserve, you may have noticed a rather unassuming pile of rubble. Without interpretation you may have thought this had been dumped some decades ago, but it provides a convenient sitting place or playground for adventurous children.… Read More »A study of the pillbox at Murlough Beach
25 unskilled labourers, 6 carpenters, 4 steel fixers, 2 concrete workers, 1 mixer driver, 1 superintending officer One of the privileges of collecting contemporary military manuals (see the full list of publications in my library here), is that every now and again I stumble across a snippet of information that… Read More »How long did it take to build a pillbox?
The use of radio technology transformed the air war during the Second World War. In a short space of time RADAR was born and fine tuned to detect and track approaching enemy aircraft, radio direct finding (RDF) was used to detect illicit communications, ships and submarines as well as tracking… Read More »Downhill Radio Navigation Site
One rainy afternoon in lockdown, I thought I would do some research on finding evidence for the WW2 radar sites that were once dotted around Northern Ireland. Finding photographic evidence of what were once secret installations is still quite tricky almost 80 years on! I have been fortunate enough to… Read More »Radar in Northern Ireland 1939 – 1945