The “plotting rooms”

Archibald Lawrie of Kingskettle has written with an explanation of the mystery photograph which appeared in the column earlier this week.

“Just before the Second World War,” he says, “Robert Watson-Watt – later Sir Robert Watson-Watt – working at Park Place, Dundee, developed the world’s first RADAR (Radio-Direction-AndRanging).

“By 1940, this invention enabled the British defence system to erect a series of 360-foot tall steel towers around our coasts which held early radar equipment able to detect the height, speed and direction of incoming enemy bombers. This was called the Chain Home System.

“The information fed from these early electronic devices was sent to underground ‘Plotting Rooms’ where it could be coordinated with information from other areas by RAF personnel. The nearest Chain Home radar station guarding our shores in Courier Country was at Douglas Wood, north of Dundee.

“At the end of the Second World War all those radar stations were ‘mothballed’ but by 1950, when a Cold War with Russia was a possibility, they were re-opened and manned once again to detect the height, speed and launching sites of possible incoming Russian missiles.

“In the 1950s I was a senior aircraftsman carrying out my National Service duties in a travelling team of RAF radar technicians. We were responsible for the maintenance of all Chain Home sites in Scotland and as such spent 17 days every six months at Douglas Wood before it was finally superseded by more modern radars.

“There were no plotting rooms at Douglas Wood but I think that they might have been housed underground in Dundee.”