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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: Trouble on Friday 02 November 07 14:18 GMT (UK)
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Can anybody help with information regarding a WWll RAF camp at Fairlight, nr Hastings. What was it for, who was there, anything known?
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Hi Trouble
Just by googling there are a few websites about RAF Fairlight
http://www.thesoutheastecho.co.uk/11_group_airfields.htm#FAIRLIGHT
this is just one of many
regards
ricky
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Thanks Ricky will look at that site, hoping to find someone with first hand info about the camp.
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Hi Trouble
If not getting any feed back, you could always start a thread on this site
http://www.worldwar2exraf.co.uk/index.html
ricky
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There was a Chain Home Low radar station at Fairlight during WWII and it became a ROTOR radar station post war.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/f/fairlight/index.html
Martin Briscoe
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Hi Anybody interested. I was stationed at RAF Fairlight from 1955 until it closed in 1956. When I was there it was a CHEL radar station.
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Hi Anybody interested. I was stationed at RAF Fairlight from 1955 until it closed in 1956. When I was there it was a CHEL radar station. If you want any more info please email me at *
* Moderator comment: personal e-mail address removed in accordance with RootsChat general practice, to prevent others abusing it or spamming. Please use the personal message system to exchange e-mail addresses. Thanks
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Hi Anybody interested. I was stationed at RAF Fairlight from 1955 until it closed in 1956. When I was there it was a CHEL radar station. If you want any more info please email me at *
I am sure the RAF Air Defence Museum (http://www.radarmuseum.co.uk/) will give a good home to any photographs etc that you have and also they often publish people's memories in their newsletter.
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Hi everyone,
I would welcome any further information about RAF Fairlight (or indeed its more secret and short lived sister station RAF Grangewood) from anyone (or from their family members) who served there at any time. I have amassed a lot of information both about the WW2 period and the Cold War period but would particularly like to hear personal recollections or see any photos. I am a local historian and am trying to get together a definitive account for the Village archive.
Anything more that Geoff or Martin can tell me would be good.
Many thanks.
Haydon
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Not familiar with RAF Grangewood, must look it up.
Have you tried the ARG forum (https://www.airfieldresearchgroup.org.uk/forum/index)? You will have register but worth having a look.
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From RAF Signals 1939-1945
Eastern Gee-H Chain
26 Nov 19942, Beachy Head was rejected because too close to some vitally important wireless equipment. A new site was chosen at Fairlight, which was renamed Grangewood to avoid confusion with the CHL station.
Seems to have become operational 1st July 1943
At the end of 1943 intelligence sources warned of a new pilotless weapon so coverage was wanted over France and two prototype light mobile stations with reserves were sited at Worth Matravers and Grangewood.
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This is a summary of what I have about RAF Grangewood. Some of this detail I owe to Mike Dean whose knowledge of RAF radar is encyclopaedic.
This station’s history is shorter than that of its sister station RAF Fairlight but it was every bit as important. The two stations were less than a mile apart.
It came into being early in 1943 at a time when electronic measures were being developed to aid allied bombers to reach targets in occupied Europe more effectively.
It opened officially on 19 February 1943 in a requisitioned house and adjacent grounds, then called Poppylands on Hill Road at Fairlight. The site was on the crest of an east/west ridge overlooking the sea. It took the name Grangewood from the nearby 17th century rectory though there is no evidence that the old rectory premises were ever used for any military purpose.
Peter Harrild, who served at the station from 24 April to November 1944 (from 11 May as OC), writing in 1993, recalls the location, equipment and personnel.
“The main unit in Hill Road was in existence from about February 1943 – Dec 1944. It had two 90ft wooden towers (for aerials) & a number of Nissen huts housing the equipment, & the entrance in Hill Road had a guard hut with RAF police manning the gate. Also in the compound was a small house (called at that time “Poppylands”) which, in 1943, was empty & had been requisitioned by the RAF for use as a store & rest area & for somewhere to cook for those on watch. Neither of the radar units in Fairlight had living accommodation & the personnel were therefore billeted in Hastings, Ore, Fairlight or Fairlight Cove.
At that time the Radar equipment we were operating was extremely secret (it was in fact a very accurate Navigational Aid System called G-H, or Type 100, used for blind bombing over France and Germany). There were probably only 45-50 personnel on the unit, of which 20 or so were women (WAAF Radar Operators). And, maybe because of the secrecy of our work & the comparatively small number of people involved, we were a very close-knit & happy crowd, & a lot of our social life was with others on the same unit (tennis on the courts in Alexandra Park, a cricket team which, in 1944, played about 20 matches against local sides, mostly on the Hastings County Ground, visits to the theatre in Hastings, in Eastbourne, & in Brighton etc.).”
A scatter of Nissen huts was erected in the garden of Poppylands to support the mobile and fixed equipment which was installed over the spring and summer. The first operation involving RAF Grangewood took place on 4 October – unsuccessfully. However, the first successful operation occurred a few days later between 22.30 and 23.15 hours on 7 October 1943.
Operations, exercises, training and testing continued during the autumn and the site was camouflaged on 17 November. In December a site to the west of the nearby coastguard station was chosen as location for the station’s mobile equipment and shortly after, on New Year’s Day 1944 a permanent guardroom was commissioned. Air Marshal Roderic Hill, the then Chief of Fighter Command and thus the senior officer responsible for the Air Defence of Great Britain, visited the site soon after on 14 January. In February work was started on installations in the land around Poppylands including weapons pits and other ‘hard’ items. Remnants of these are still visible.
Grangewood was active in the spring and early summer of 1944 supporting offensive raids, especially by the USAAF, in France. The station played an important role in the air operations on D-Day being operational from 23.45 on 5th June to 04.45 on the 6th. Then, on 15 June 1944, the first ‘pilotless planes’ were observed over the site. This was the start of the V1 (Doodlebug) campaign and Fairlight rapidly started to bristle with Anti-Aircraft guns, including along the Hill Road ridge where RAF Grangewood was sited.
As the summer wore on and the invasion front moved deeper into France, Grangewood played more of a training role and mobile equipment was redeployed elsewhere in the UK and into France. The station ceased operations at 18.00 hours on 30 November 1944.
On 2 January 1945 orders were issued detailing how Grangewood was to be put on a Care and Maintenance basis pending further decisions.
On 24 July 1945 authority was received for the closing down of the AMES type 100 at Grangewood w.e.f 6 July. Buildings were to be cleared and authority was given to de-requisition the site if it were not required for future commitments. [AIR 26/119]
So the brief but intense period of service of RAF Grangewood came to an end. The equipment was dispersed, fences were dismantled and the house returned to civilian use. When Peter Harrild organised a reunion of Grangewood personnel in 1993 he found little had changed; even the wartime owner was still there. “I had expected that the site would have had houses built all over it & be unrecognisable, but apart from large trees & undergrowth over part of it it has changed very little – the concreted tracks right across the site still there and also the concrete foundations of what used to be the Transmitter & Receiver buildings (Nissens).” [Letter to Cathy Walling, Hastings Museum, 30 Aug 1993, file in Hastings Museum]