TWENTIETH CENTURY DEFENCE SITES of TYNE and WEAR

Section 3 The Second World War
Chain Home Extra Low sets, in July of 1942,
and this came into use by the end of the
year. The equipment would have taken the
form of a parabolic aerial receiver mounted
on the roof of a building. This particular type
of equipment was a static design, unlike
some other radar sets which were able to be
dismounted and transported easily. Some
time between January 1943 and January
1944, the Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low
station at Marsden was shut down. The
nearby Chain Home Extra Low may have
remained open until the overhaul of the radar
system in 1947, when it was decided that all
Chain Home Low and Extra Low sites
outside of the ‘defended area’ (principally the
south east coast of England) should be
dismantled (Lowry 1996 and Dobinson
2000).
29 Dinnington, Ground
Controlled Interception Station
(HER 5888)
Codenamed station 14G, this was used for
guiding night fighters onto attacking
bombers. The earliest stations were “mobile”
- they had equipment on wheeled caravans
and temporary wooden hutting.
“Intermediate” stations had aerial arrays
mounted above and below a metal gantry,
with separate operations huts. “Final”
stations built from 1942 onwards had a brick
operations block, known as a “Happidrome”,
with a single rotating aerial array, with the
equipment housed in a well underneath
(Lowry 1996 and Dobinson 2000). The
Dinnington GCI Station was in operation by
April 1941.
Anti-aircraft batteries
(Fig 3)
Light anti-aircraft batteries used smaller,
faster-firing weapons, such as standard
machine guns like the Lewis and Bren guns,
to target low flying aircraft.
31
30 Usworth, Bren Gun site (HER
5402)
This was a light anti-aircraft battery,
positioned to defend the approach to the
airfield.
31 Earsdon, weapons pit and
pillbox (HER 5366)
A weapons pit was typically a position cut
into the ground for the protection of artillery
or machine gun, with an adjacent pillbox.
Heavy anti-aircraft (HAA) batteries typically
used large calibre ordinance, suitable for
targeting high flying aircraft. Until late 1940
virtually all HAA sites were temporary,
consisting of earthwork gun pits and tented
accommodation. Guns were generally
mobile. By the middle of the war, static HAA
batteries were constructed on an industrial
scale, with extensive supporting infrastructure.
They utilised a number of different
types of weapon, ranging from a 3 inch 20
cwt gun (the standard HAA weapon during
WW1 and used well into WW2), which could
fire a shell to a height of 23,500 ft, up to a
5.25 inch Mk 2 gun, which could fire a shell
up to 43,000 ft. Some of the first 5.25 inch
batteries were positioned on the coast and
had a dual coastal defence/anti-aircraft role.
A typical HAA gun site consisted of a
command post (rectangular concrete or brick
semi-sunken structure often protected by
earth banks), and was usually located at the
centre of a 39.6m radius semi-circle of gun
pits. There would also be one or two
shelters, one for gun maintenance (limber
gunner’s shelter) and the other for the gun
detachment. Ammunition was stored in
magazines. Instruments and spare parts
were kept in the gun store. Domestic HAA
sites also had Nissen and timber huts,
workshops and garages and often a sewage
treatment plant. A concrete service road led
from the main gate via the magazine around
the command post, with offshoots to each
gun pit. In plan this gave the site a “four leaf
clover” shape (Lowry 1996, 48-59).