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Sydney Partridge, born in London in 1922, tells us of some memories around 1941 whilst in the RAF, during World War II.
'Immediately after leaving the Radar Training School at Yatesbury, I was posted to Fairlight CHL station, a few miles east of Hastings, where I got three months experience of the UK's defensive radar system. The 'chain' of radar stations along the south coast comprised the 360 ft. high aerated CH stations at Dover, Rye, Poling and Ventnor, and their CHL stations at Dover, Fairlight, Beachy Head, Truleigh Hill, Bembridge, Ventnor and the Needles.
The CHL stations had overlapping zones covering the English Channel and ours was from 90 per cent round to 320 per cent, and our neighbours, Dover and Beachy Head overlapped us on each side. We were on high ground, a few hundred feet up, and on a clear day we could see the chalk cliffs of France, running down to Boulogne. On our radar set we picked up the strong responses (echoes) from the cliffs along to Dover and Beachy Head, also the headland of Dungeness and, across the Channel, the cliffs of the French coast were permanent echoes about 30 miles away. We also picked up radar responses from ships in the Channel, the occasional coastal convoy of small ships, but they kept pretty close to shore in order to be close to the coastal anti-aircraft guns, for protection from attacks by German aircraft.
This was the period Sept/Oct/November 1941, 12 months after the intense aerial activity of the Battle of Britain and 3 to 6 months after the German attack on Russia. Most of the German war effort was concentrated on the Russian front, and the U-boat attacks on our convoys in the North Atlantic. The German Army was also reinforcing the Italians in Libya. Air activity across the Channel was mainly nuisance raids by small numbers of aircraft or occasional heavier raids on the industrial Midlands, the North and Scotland, which went by routes that did not pass over our area, so we did not see a great deal of hostile aircraft.
When we tracked a hostile coming close to our station, one of our watch used to go outside to try to get a 'visual' to pass on to the Filter Room in augmentation of our radar 'plots'. Mostly we just worked on in the dark, working around the clock, with a 4-watch system (8 a.m. to 1 p.m., 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 8 a.m.). We would do the morning and evening watches one day, the afternoon and night watches the following day and have 24 hours off after the long night watch ended at 8 a.m., until 8 a.m. the following day. This meant that the equipment was kept in operation all the time, day and night, apart from routine maintenance.
I can remember only one occasion when we couldn't keep the aerials turning and that was one day when the wind was at storm force. The wind was buffeting the 'flying bedstead' so much that we had to lash the aerial with guy-ropes from the four corners, mooring it to rings wet into the ground. However, even then the radar beam was still being sent out in the direction designated for our 'tied up' conditions, so that if aircraft wandered into our beam, we could at least get its range and approximate bearing (within the 11 degrees wide beam), and pass that data to the Filter Room. They could then amalgamate it with information from our neighbouring radar stations who might, or might not, be similarly 'tied up'.
After 3 months operational experience at Fairlight I was sent to Sopley GCI for 3 weeks training on GCI equipment, at the end of which I was to embark on a troopship to 'we don't know where'. That 3 weeks ended a few days before Xmas 1941 and I had those few days at home as embarkation leave, expiring on Boxing Day. Then I reported to our Wing HQ at Keston (Kent) and was sent to the RAF overseas kiting centre at Wilmslow (near Manchester), from where my shipmates and I went to Glasgow to get onto a troopship.'
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