Chain Home radar towers

[Ovbulleid]

Hi Everyone

 

I’m restoring a model railway layout (Normandy Road, as seen in episode one of the Great Model Railway Challenge) and in keeping with its World War Two theme i’m Interested in fitting some Chain Home towers on the hill behind it. The only dimension I’ve found is that they were 110m high , which at 1:76 takes them to 1.44m or 4ft8 high, and the three towers spaced the same distance apart, so I think I would scale them down further, but first I need some accurate measurements of a real one. Given they were for finding aircraft I thought this was the best area of the forum to make the request. Many thanks in advance, Oli

[Work In Progress]

http://www.johnhearfield.com/Radar/Magnetron.htm

[Bobk]

This might help ..... http://universalviewer.io/uv.html?manifest=https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/iiif/objects/co8465602#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-6818%2C-407%2C19108%2C8124

 

[viscount806x]

Here's some stuff on Poling CH station:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chain_Home_radar_installation_at_Poling,_Sussex,_1945._CH15173.jpg

 

Includes some photos. Heights of masts: Transmitter towers 360ft, receiver masts 240ft.

[stevehnz]

Are there any CH masts still standing, it seems to me something that should have been preserved for posterity but I know attitudes were very different 70+ years ago.

Steve.

[Work In Progress]

Info on the Wikipedia page linked above your post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home#CH_today

[Ed Russell]

Many years ago I volunteered to build a couple of CH towers for a BoB club display without realising quite how big they were.

Fortunately I discovered the  existence of CHL towers and made a couple of those and their associated buildings instead!

@Ovbulleid  I doubt he ever referred to himself as Oli or even Olly - Mr Bulleid or Sir I suspect!

[Smithy]

Ed is right you need to be aware that the radar defence of Britain at this stage was divided into two distinct types: Chain Home; and Chain Home Low. Chain Home being the tall structures.

[sanguin]

I live about half a mile from the site of the  Dunkirk Chain Home station that was built in 1938.

There is only one of the steel transmitter towers still standing.

This link can tell you a bit more:   http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/d/dunkirk_ch/index.shtml

There are other links, the original structures around the site are equally interesting but rarely seen; a 240 foot steel lattice mast covered in modern aerials tends to attract the eye.

 

I had the privilege of hearing about the building of the transmitting and receiving towers from an elderly resident many years ago.

He worked with his father on the Dunkirk build, then stayed with the company and built towers around the UK.

The original timber towers were prefabricated as creosoted pine lengths that were bolted together to form lattice or warren girder sections.

They were bolted to a concrete base, each of the four main legs had its own base.

Being timber they were relatively light and to erect a mast under ideal conditions took a gang of about ten men days rather than weeks. 

However they were not rigid. Being timber and bolted, once the height got near the 200ft mark the top swayed a bit. 

Peter Rook was in his eighties when he told me about it, he said that mostly they accepted the swaying but when he worked on the towers at Scapa Flow and the wind really began to blow it was very, very frightening.

 

As the radar electronics improved the timber masts were replaced by galvanised steel to reduce the error due to the masts moving in the wind.

They remained until the site was reduced to one mast nearly fifty years ago.

From the 1950s that mast held a very large microwave dish that was part of the NORAD communications network.

This was removed in the late 1990s and we no longer had USAF vehicles visiting the site.

It is now commercially owned and used for a wide range of data links and comms aerials.

There is now planning consent for a data storage building adjacent to the mast. 

One set of proposed plans for the new building showed a design similar to on an airfield control tower to show its RAF heritage. Ain't architects wonderful?

The fact that virtually everything on site apart from the masts is either fully or partly underground and screened by large earth and brick blast walls never occurred to the designers.

 

I also have a copy of Building Radar by Colin Robinson, published by English Heritage.

At 600 odd pages it has fairly comprehensive coverage of the development and construction of UK radar sites up to 1945, but if anyone wants any more info then please PM me.

Congrats on the lovely model of the Chain Low installation, nice one Ed!

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

[viscount806x]

Because they were mostly wooden structures, these days only the concrete bases remain. These must exist in quite a few locations but for sure they are still there (I've seen them)  at the summit of St Boniface Down above Ventnor, IW.

Nige

[sanguin]

Nigel, those bits of concrete were not for the large Chain Home towers. I have learned something today, I thought it ws another name for the Vintner site.

Thanks to my magic tome, St Boniface Down was in fact a Chain Home Low site, the 'bedstead' antennae were mounted on wooden masts identical to those Ed Russell has modelled.

These were designed to detect low flying intruders from across the Channel and North Sea.

Many were operated by the Army and Navy, depending upon location and logistics.

From 1941 they virtually all featured two power-turned antennae and either concrete or wooden huts.

All were mounted to cover approaches from the sea, usually on higher ground.

Most were set in places away from civilisation and in exposed sites where the winds blew and the rain was never vertical.

 

Ventnor had a Chain Home station but I cannot say what, if anything, remains.

 

Google Earth is good at helping to trace sites, the Dunkirk one even shows the shadows from all of the masts if you use the time line facility.

John

 

 

 

 

[MR2Don]

Try this link:

https://greatbaddow.org.uk/info/great-baddow-tower.

It's not that far from me and is a well known local landmark.

[viscount806x]

19 hours ago, sanguin said:

Nigel, those bits of concrete were not for the large Chain Home towers. I have learned something today, I thought it ws another name for the Vintner site.

Thanks to my magic tome, St Boniface Down was in fact a Chain Home Low site, the 'bedstead' antennae were mounted on wooden masts identical to those Ed Russell has modelled.

These were designed to detect low flying intruders from across the Channel and North Sea.

Many were operated by the Army and Navy, depending upon location and logistics.

From 1941 they virtually all featured two power-turned antennae and either concrete or wooden huts.

All were mounted to cover approaches from the sea, usually on higher ground.

Most were set in places away from civilisation and in exposed sites where the winds blew and the rain was never vertical.

 

Ventnor had a Chain Home station but I cannot say what, if anything, remains.

 

Google Earth is good at helping to trace sites, the Dunkirk one even shows the shadows from all of the masts if you use the time line facility.

John

 

 

 

 

Thanks John, you live & learn! I've never seen images of the Ventnor towers as such but the CH station you mention at Ventnor may have been the one which local history refers to as 'St Lawrence CH'. I have seen a distant image of this and it was located along the cliff tops a little west of Ventnor town, above St Lawrence itself which is actually a 'suburb' of Ventnor.