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Newspaper Articles . The Battle of Britain and Operation Sealion . Letters
The following photographs are taken from the book entitled Flame Over Britain and have been contributed by Ron Clayton.
They feature trials of a flame barrage similar to that used at Shingle Street. The originals are currently kept in the photo archive of the Imperial War Museum.
Bawdsey radar Station
Depicted are the radar masts situated at the entrance to the River Deben near Woodbridge. This station detected the enemy force being assembled during the last week of August, 1940 at Zeebrugge which set off across the North Sea to land along the east coast at Shingle Street around 9.00pm on Saturday August 31st 1940.
Darsham radar station
This is the only photograph thought to exist of Darsham radar station, situated in Darsham village off the A12 near Saxmundham. The steel transmitter pylons seen in the background stood 360 feet high and are of similar construction to those used at Bawdsey. The station was the most powerful along the east coast owing to the distance between it and the Norwegian airfields.
The height was primarily to counteract the curvature of the earth as it was not possible to bend signals over the horizon and there were no satellites to make use of at the time.The family shown in the photograph owned a nearby garage situated on the A12.
From left to right the people shown are Kathleen Thirkettle (my future wife), her uncle and aunt, brother Terry and mother; Alice.My attempts to obtain a clearer picture of this station through the Imperial War Museum in London, the RAF museum in Hendon and the Duxford museum were all unsuccessful. The response I received was that no records exist of this station.
It would appear that Gordon Kingsley who wrote the book; Birth of the Beam had the same problem obtaining a picture of Bawdsey radar station- as I am sure these would otherwise have been published in his book. Thanks to him, I was able to obtain pictures of the radar pylons at Bawdsey.
These two radar stations played a most important role in the events of August 1940. They detected the build up of enemy paratroops set to drop between Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The signal due to be sent by the invasion force at Shingle Street was never sent owing to the disaster which they suffered. The importance of these two stations must not be under-estimated as they played a crucial part in defeating the invasion attempt.
The pylons at Darsham were blown up in the 1960s.Ronald Ashford
