Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Orford ... - English Heritage

The First World War
In 1915, the Armament and Experimental Flight of the Royal Flying Corps was transferred
to Orford Ness, which became formally known as the Aircraft Armament and Gunnery
Experimental Establishment. Its main areas of investigation were machine guns and gun
sights, bombs and bomb sights, navigation, aerial photography and the development of
parachutes. The main construction work at this date included the levelling and draining
of the southern end of the King’s Marsh to create a flying field. To its south along the
northern edge of Stony Ditch supporting buildings were laid out alongside a roughly west
to east single track, later to become known as ‘The Street’. A tramway also ran alongside
Figure 3: First World War Royal Flying Corps Headquarters building, note the use of cement
block construction. This view was taken in the 1990s, it has since been demolished. (c) English
Heritage AA99/08438
this route and back to the quay. The largest buildings were two Belfast truss aeroplane
sheds, or hangars, the westerly one stood until about 1950 and the easterly one into
the 1980s. A contemporary photograph (Wainwright 1995, 75) also shows that there a
number of temporary hangars along the southern edge of the flying field. To protect the
station from flooding a Chinese labour battalion was drafted in to construct a seawall,
which has subsequently been known as the ‘Chinese Wall’ (Cobb 1998, 12). For some
time German prisoners of war were also held on the spit and used in construction work.
By the end of the war the station occupied 1022 hectares and comprised about 46
structures, with a complement of 612 personnel (TNA:PRO AIR1/453/15/312/26 Vol.6).
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