The tunnel system known as Lord Airey’s Shelter is still owned by the Ministry of Defence, except the Tracer cave which is under the guardianship of the Gibraltar Museum. Access is tightly controlled and limited to around 20 people per year, with guided tours arranged through the museum for a… Read More »Operation Tracer, Part 2 – Exploring the tunnel
To date the primary role (…) has been against threatened attack from Spain across North Front. Owing to changes in the Situation during the past year, a seaborne attack is now considered possible. The primary role (…) has been changed to an anti-tank and anti-landingcraft one. This extract shows a… Read More »Operation Tracer, Part 1 – Gibraltar’s castle in the sky
My research into locating Second World War direction-finding stations has been ongoing for a few years now. However, after back and forward emails with author and historian Ian Brown, I think we now know much more about these sites. One of the main aims of this research was to locate… Read More »Second World War Aircraft Direction Finding Part III – Mapping the Network
Boundary stones, not to be confused with Ordnance Survey datum points, are somewhat of an enigma. Historically they delineate boundaries of military sites, however, their use is not consistent – some sites have them, others do not, and as for design, there are many different styles. Their use appears to… Read More »Military Boundary Stones
Great Britain found itself occupying Cyprus in the summer of 1878 after a political deal that saw the Mediterranean Island traded for British support against an increasingly aggressive Russian expansion across Europe. Fraught with nuance from the outset, Britain had already refused the offer of Cyprus three times previously and… Read More »A history of the early British military occupation of Troödos Mountain, Cyprus
A lesser-known British Colonial outpost, Ascension Island could be the secret lair of a Bond villain. It is a dormant volcano, approximately 88 square kilometres in size, 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa; and more often than not these days is surrounded by sharks. There is no indigenous population;… Read More »British Coastal Defences of Ascension Island
This article looks at the coastal defences of the Falkland Islands between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.
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?
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?