AES7 - Sæból, NW
Iceland
In May 1940 British & Canadian forces invaded and occupied Iceland
because of its strategic importance and to deny the Germans access. In 1941 the
Admiralty decided, in the light of the U Boat threat in the North Atlantic and
the danger of German surface raiders getting among allied merchant shipping,
that a Coastal Defence U Boat Station should be constructed in NW Iceland to
provide radar cover in the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. It
should be noted that the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had transited the Denmark
Strait just before sinking HMS Hood and damaging the Prince of Wales on 24 May
41 - this engagement may have hastened
RN actions. At its narrowest point the Strait is 180 mile wide.
Accordingly, Lt Jack Addison Lewis (qualified as a Civil Engineer), RNVR and Captain MacDonald, a Royal Marine Engineer, plus a number of naval personnel were despatched to
Iceland to begin the work of erecting AES7. To begin with the labour force
consisted of Royal Marine Engineers and some local Icelandic men. Lt Lewis had
been the first CO of AES4 on Unst until 17 Jan 42 so work would have begun as
soon after that as the arrival of equipment and the weather would have allowed.
Weather was to be a far more significant factor at AES7 than at the other 6
AES, as will be seen in some of the photos which follow. Lt Donald Macaulay Carmichael,
RNVR, soon arrived to join Lt Lewis to help run the operational unit. There
appears to be little material published about this station so I have included
some material from Feachems collection which applies to the period before he arrived in Iceland.
The station was built near Sæból, NW Iceland, between Aoalvik and Ísafjörður.
The base camp was built
near sea level close to the shore of Aoalvik Bay and the first radar, an
NT273, was set-up on a knoll close to the nissen hutted accommodation.
Looking
at modern satellite images I believe that the location of the Base Camp can
still be detected. The next two pictures
were, taken from "Zoom Earth" and, for those of you with a desire to
look for the site, I think that the Lat & Long of the accommodation is: 66°
20' 22.19N 23° 6' 2.44W.
The
base camp can be seen in the next photo. The tall masts were for radio
communication. The tallest tower
contained the fresh water supply, the four circular structures in the right
foreground were cooling towers for the generators and the nissen hut on the
left was the officers' quarters:
In
winter the snow could reach quite a depth, as can be seen in this montage,
which shows Lt Carmichael by a radio mast (it soon blew down!)
The station
was very isolated with all equipment, personnel and supplies having to be
brought in by sea from Reykjavik, about 180 miles away. In the beginning small
craft had to be used to move supplies from larger vessels to the shore and in
1942 a short pier was built, complete with a narrow gauge track to make it
easier to bring shipments across a
narrow stretch of boggy ground. The photo which follows shows the pier and,
next to it, a 30' Norwegian boat called "The Viking", provided by the Admiralty. It and local boats
were used to unload freighters in the
first year. In the picture below Lt
Donald Macaulay Carmichael is leaning against the wheelhouse and one of the
Icelanders in the water is Benedickt
Magnussen:
The movement
of stores was greatly improved in 1943, when two beach landing craft were made
available.
The next two
pictures show some of the crew and two of the officers who were there early on.
I don't have a list of names, the only
identities for those in the photos I have are for the officers in the middle of
the back rows. Lt Jack Addison Lewis in the first and Lt Donald Macaulay
Carmichael in the second:
The only
other serviceman I know who did a tour of duty at AES7 was Leading Seaman Smith, who can been seen in the following
photo, taken on Fair Isle in 1940. According to Feachem he "became a useful Leading Seaman in
Iceland":
Two of the Sæból inhabitants; firstly an
unknown local tending his potato patch:
and;
secondly, Benedickt Magnusson, whose
brother Jon was a leader of the community:
The road was impassable to vehicles once the winter snow arrived. Supplies had to be sledged from the base camp to where, on the steepest
part of the slope, a stretch of 2'gauge railway had been laid. It had a petrol
driven Ace winch at the top and another half way up, the winch cable having to
be unhooked and changed in the middle:
It is worth noting that the largest load carried on the rail track was
over 16 cubic metres and weighed more than 2 tons. Once the equipment or stores
reached the upper winch there was still nearly
a mile to go across the plateau to the radar. The road had been laid all
the way to the upper radar site. However, there was sometimes snow on the
plateau for 9 months of the year - this
problem was first solved in traditional manner
- teams of ratings and sledges:
Should there be too much snow for the bogies to use the track, sledges
sometime had to be used all the way from the base camp and connected to the
winches!
Later a third winch was added to help move supplies across the plateau when the weather permitted.
Accommodation, the NT273 radar
(possibly an NT273S) and associated equipment had to be moved from beside the
Base Camp and erected on the plateau when the weather was suitable - not an
easy feat with snow on the ground between Sep 41 and Jun 42. Deep concrete
foundations were laid for a turntable (normally used as a gun mounting), and a radar hut was mounted on the turntable.
The radar aerials and their reflectors were then fixed to the sides of the hut
and assembled as this sequence of pictures shown:
Rather than the nice tidy image above, personnel would have
been used to seeing the radar looking more like this for much of the year:
The first 2 officers in charge of AES7, Lewis and Carmichael, were
required to serve 12 months in Iceland. Feachem arrived in the Spring of 1943,
shortly after handing over command of AES6 at Dunnet Head. A second radar, the NT277 became operational in 1943.
It was planned that the radar crews would spend three weeks at the upper
site followed by three weeks at the base camp at Sæból in the winter months, changing to two week shift pattern in the
summer. It was fine to have a plan but
it was very weather dependent and watch changeovers were often delayed.
Accommodation at the radar site consisted of two double-skinned, streamlined
huts, joined by a low corridor. The huts were specially made by the firm
"Car Cruiser Caravans". Behind them was nissen hutted space for
stores, messing and a diesel engine for power:
In the winter months the conditions could be quite extreme:
For air defence the upper site was equipped with a 20mm Oerlikon
anti-aircraft gun, which is under canvas at the extreme right of the next
photo, the seaman is unknown and the NT273 is in the background:
The Oerlikon was similar to this one:
The location of the upper station can still be detected on modern day
satellite images and the roadway to & from Sæból is clearly visible:
The only fresh food supplied to the Unit though official channels was a
regular delivery of potatoes and onions. To rectify this, a barter system with
the local inhabitants was introduced. Issue rations, such as corned beef, were
exchanged for small amounts of fresh meat, eggs and fish. It was noted that, in
the Spring, a boats crew could catch enough cod in one afternoon to feed the
Station for a week. Leisure pursuits, apart from fishing, included riding local
ponies in the summer ans skiing in the winter. A few of the ratings volunteered
to extend their tous of duty.
The records indicate that Lt Carie-Fenton arrived to take-over the Station
in Oct 43, so it was probably then that Feachem left for a spell of leave
before commencing a tour of duty at the
Admiralty.
Admiralty
After returning from Iceland Feachen spent a year in the
Admiralty Signals Department, before being drafted to his last command, which
was in the Orkney Islands.
AES5 - South
Ronaldsay
AES5 on South Ronaldsay in
Orkney, was built on the top of Ward Hill at a height of about 390', roughly 3
miles south of the community of St Margaret's Hope. South Ronaldsay itself lies
at the south eastern corner of Scapa Flow, anchorage for the Home Fleet during
WWII. In RAF terms it was a Chain Home Low, and later a Chain Home Extra Low,
radar site.
Lt Feachem was posted to AES5 as the Commanding Officer in Dec 44. He
had just spent 12 months working in an Admiralty post in London and was looking
forward to putting his previous experience on radar units to the test again. I
believe that the equipment when he arrived consisted of a Naval Type 277S, a
radar with a 10cm wavelength and optimised for the detection of surface targets
and an AMES Type 2 CHL radar, operating on a wavelength of 1.5m and with
a good medium to high level performance against aircraft:
According to Admiralty records
the unit also had a height-finding radar, a Type 13 (Mk 1). The Type 13
Mk1 was originally intended for use by the Army but they were not keen on the
equipment and they rejected it. The manufacturer, Marconi, produced only 13 sets and they were
subsequently offered the Navy. It was designed for providing the height on
incoming aircraft and operated on a 10cm wavelength. The equipment was mounted
on a searchlight type trailer and the signals were fed to a separate cabin. The
illustration which follows has come via Mike Dean:
The abbreviation in the above
diagram, CMH, just means - Centimetric Height Finding.
The duties of a Commanding Officer can be very varied and, when young
men are serving a long way from home, it is sometimes necessary to become
involved in delicate matters. The name of the seaman in the letter below has
been obscured, even though it relates to a period more than 70 years ago:
Some of Feachems' thoughts on
his arrival and time on South Ronaldsay: "We drove
round the harbour, past the Church of Scotland hut into the village, up the
main street of some 200 yards, past the squalid Murray Arms Hotel, round a
difficult and dangerous corner and up a steep hill, past the Army Sick Quarters
and the NAAFI on into open country. The road undulated, first up a long rise
and then down with Widewall Bay to the right, then up past a little school to the
corner from which the south end of the island could at last be seen. The radars
on the Ward Hill had been visible since leaving Thurso, but now they could be
distinguished as a set of aerials on low dark buildings at the top of wide Ward
Hill. As the car swept along the range of the base huts could be distinguished.
Round a corner, down a dip and then up sharply the car turned abruptly from the
road to the track leading to the camp.
After
a little more than 12 months away it was a great relief to be back in a
wardroom of one's own again - for the whole habit of those previous 4 years was
not lightly forgotten. --------------- I assumed for the last time the command
of an AE Station. I could make a contrast between this and my other commands.
First, AES1, when the war was young and the work was new - not only new to us
but to the crews, and indeed, to the technical staff whose task it was to
create the instruments we were to use. Second AES3, then eventually AES2 as
well, the only double command in these northern stations. Here the strain of
1940 had overhung the routines, and although the routines were becoming familiar,
there was still a lot to learn - lots about the slowness of events beyond one's
control - structural programmes and replacements. Lots about weather, and men
and marines and the enemy. Then it was AES4, for 2 short periods as relieving
officers on leave. Then AES1 again, and then AES6 on Dunnet Head where, being
on the mainland, one was subject to visits from all kinds of officials. Then
the great experience of AES7, Iceland's remotest station for servicemen, naval
radar's biggest job, once again pioneering. But coming to AES5, which I had
never seen before, in December 1944 was not as
coming to other commands had been, I knew all the answers to all the
standard questions - knew when to be patient against the forces of nature, with
men, with facts, above all, not to worry uselessly. I found as I handled the
daily and hourly problems that they were just like handling the controls of a
familiar car which one hasn't driven for some time. There was a quintessence of
the experiences at other stations which had, perhaps aided by the twelve months
away, been welded into an Achievement, a Profession. Here though, there was a
greater accord with the men than had been possible in the circumstances of the
other stations. The Petty Officer Daniel D Moreland for example, took me down
to the local AA (anti-aircraft gunners) mess, for an evening with beers, songs
etc, at frequent intervals - crude but comradely. My songs were delivered the
first night with such nerves as I cannot describe. But it worked; and it welded
AES5 as nothing else could
So the winter passed, with all the
normal struggles - no food because of the snow, no watch because of faults in
the apparatus - and so on, all overcome satisfactorily. And the war, the German
war, was won although Orkney and Shetland remained on unaltered watch for two
weeks for fear of surprise desperate German
raids from their as yet uncapitulated airmen in Norway. Then the station
started disintegrating. Groups of men were posted elsewhere until by the middle
of August we were an about half strength, about 25 men. Watch was now kept by
day, watching training flights. Then came the end of the Japan war, VJ day, 15
August. Still a few men remained until, on the 8 September we all left, handing
the station over to the RAF lock, stock and barrel. We drove for the last time
down the hill, and as we left there was only one of the AE stations left under
RN operations - Wilkinson still has Saxa Vord, though not for long.
------------ In the last light of the calm September day I saw the aerials of
the Ward Hill and of Dunnet Head gaunt against the now peaceful skies. The last
command was ended nine months after it had begun."
A few of the AES5 buildings remain and the site is still in use by BT.
These pictures from 2015 were taken by Martin
Briscoe. The first one shows what appears to be an engine house:
The second picture is of a rectangular building which looks like it once
had a radar aerial mounted on its roof:
Old RAF photos indicate that there were nine nissen hats, at least
three machine gun posts and possibly an anti aircraft gun emplacement in the
vicinity of the operations site.
Post War
After the war was over Feachem was released from the Royal
Navy in 1946. Making use of his University qualifications from Cambridge he
resumed his career as an archaeologist. From 1947 until 1965 he worked for the
Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS).
He did much field work and produced many learned papers. He wrote extensively
on Scottish, Celtic and Roman settlements. He also researched early agriculture
in the UK, again publishing his findings. Whilst at RCAHMS Feachem discovered a
large amount of useful archaeological information by studying RAF aerial
photographs with a stereoscopic viewer. At some stage during his time with the
Royal Commission he met and married Kathleen, also an archaeologist. They each
continued working individually and with
others, but completed a number of "digs" together, including a Viking
house at Drimore in South Uist and at Duncarnock Hill Fort in East Renfrewshire.
In 1963 he published a book entitled "A Guide to
Prehistoric Scotland", which was dedicated to his first wife Kathleen
Megan Feachem. In 1965
there followed "The North Britons : the
prehistory of a border people". The Guide to Historic Scotland sold well
enough to be revised and reissued in 1977. this edition being dedicated
to his son, Richard Charles Alexander Feachem.
He married his second
wife Dr Anne Ross, a Celtic scholar who was a fluent Gaelic speaker, in 1965. This
is also the year he left the RCAHMS and began working as an
archaeologist with the Ordnance Survey. Anne wrote
numerous books on Celtic history and mythology, the most famous being "Pagan Celtic Britain", first published
in 1967 and reissued a number of times. She appeared in several media programmes
as a Celtic specialist, even
introducing 8 episodes of "The
Celts" for the BBC Radio 3 in 1967 and appearing in another series of the
same name for BBC TV in 1987, but she
was most proud at having lectured at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington,
DC.
After a spell with the
Ordnance Survey Feachem left to become a freelance archaeologist . This allowed
him a degree of independence and the opportunity to contribute to several of
his wife's books as an illustrator. Unfortunately he died in 2005 and his wife Anne in 2012.
Acknowledgements:
Richard Charles Feachem for
permitting me to reproduce material from the collection of his father - Richard
William Feachem
Mike Dean
Bob
Jenner
Martin
Briscoe
Irene
&Tony Mouat
David
Waters
Unst
Heritage Centre
Sandison
& Sons Archive
Shetland
Amenity Trust
Shetland
Museum
ADM
116 - 4275
ADM
116 - 4897
However, I accept responsibility for any mistakes and will be happy to make
corrections where necessary.
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