Chain Home, RAF Canewdon
A history of one of the first radar stations
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(This information comes from an illustrated Powerpoint presentation given at Canewdon Village Hall on 8 September 2013 by Andy Tyler. To see the complete presentation, as a PDF document, please click the link after Downloads at the end of this article.)
When Hitler came to power in Germany and began to build up the country's military strength, British politicians realised that the country was totally unprepared to fight a possible war. The main danger was seen to come from German bomber aircraft which would not be detected by existing technology until it was too late to do anything to counter their threat.
A research progamme was set up to experiment with producing more advanced early warning systems which eventually led to what became known as RADAR. To start with, a system consisting of steel towers and wooden towers was to be built in strategic positions near the east coast of England. It was code named “Chain Home” and Canewdon was to be one of the sites.
RAF Canewdon was built in 1936 as one of the 20 stations in Chain Home. Just six months before the start of World War 2 all 20 stations were operational 24/7. They worked by detecting enemy aircraft at sufficient distance from the coast for fighter planes to be scrambled to intercept the bombers before they reached their targets.
Before the end of the war the technology at Canewdon became obsolete but after the war the towers were used for training purposes (see Paul Bennet's Climbing Test) and the site was not fully dismantled until the 1970s. One of the Canewdon steel towers was re-erected at the Marconi research facility at Great Baddow and is one of only five of the original 60 towers still in existence.
The Ex-RAF Aerial Erectors Association website can be found here. The site contains more information about the various aerials used by the RAF including those at RAF Canewdon, scroll down the main page for Canewdon material and personnel. Also find a report on Defence Area 48 (Canewdon) here. Thanks to Sid Barker for providing these links.
Thanks to Peter Thomas for providing the two maps above, the first is an aerial shot showing the Chain Home site in 1948 and the second is a modern Google Earth map of the same area.