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
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
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 adversaries. Two of those boundary-breaking technologies were wireless telegraphy and aviation. The story of Radio Direction Finding, or RDF, joins… Read More »Second World War Aircraft Direction Finding Part I – Background
In the second part of this article, I will pull together information and images from several sources in an attempt to interpret some of the cryptic remains from what I believe to be direction-finding sites across the country. Update 2024: Prompted to reevaluate my interpretation of these sites by author… Read More »Second World War Aircraft Direction Finding Part II – Interpreting the Remains
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 in the country. A copy of the standing orders still exist, giving an overview of the classification and type of… Read More »Site Visit – Rifle Range, Divis
On the hills approximately 6 miles to the north east of Derry/Londonderry is the small but abandoned signal station at Killylane. Constructed during the Second World War, the site was used for around 20 years as a Royal Navy shore-to-ship radio communication station communicating with naval vessels operating across the… Read More »Site Visit – Signal Station, Killylane
I first published this article in 2018 when I had spent some time in Kent and after walking the River Medway around Maidstone realised that a large proportion of the Second World War pillboxes still remained. There is no interpretation with this article, it is purely a record of each… Read More »Lower Medway Pillboxes