All pillboxes are concrete, but some are more concrete than others
I am going to make a bold statement that may cause some heated discussion. All pillboxes were made of concrete. Concrete is an incredible building material, first used by the…
Site Visit Part II – Randalstown Forest, Second World War Defences
The pillbox is synonymous with the Second World War. Thousands were constructed across the United Kingdom (and Ireland) to defend high-value areas or as part of a National defensive line.…
Wartime transmission experiments and two unknown sites in County Down
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…
A study of the pillbox at Murlough Beach
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…
How long did it take to build a pillbox?
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…
Downhill Radio Navigation Site
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…
Radar in Northern Ireland 1939 – 1945
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…
Second World War Aircraft Direction Finding Part I – Background
The start of the twentieth century was a post-industrial technological arms race, and the traces left behind are like a timeline of pioneering developments in an attempt to outsmart our…
Second World War Aircraft Direction Finding Part II – Locating the Sites
In the second part of this article I will pull together information and images from across a number of sources in an attempt to interpret some of the cryptic remains…
Site Visit – Rifle Range, Divis
In the hills above Belfast on Divis is a disused 600 yard military firing range, constructed in 1943 most likely to accommodate training for the high numbers of American troops…