Introduction

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Two threats faced the North-East: air-attack and invasion, but the two were not entirely separate; without complete air superiority, no invasion could possibly succeed. The cutting edge of air-defence was of course provided by fighter aircraft. During World War I these were flown by the Royal Flying Corps, and in that era there were two Landing Grounds within six miles of our village. The first at Currock Hill near Hedley-on-the-Hill was in use from October 1916 to April 1917, the second at Horsegate, across the road from the golf course club-house, from 1917 until the end of the war. Both were used by No 36 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. In World War II the task fell to the R.A.F.'s Fighter Command with its headquarters at Bentley Priory near Stanmore. The North-East was covered by No. 13 Group of Fighter Command which was based at Kenton Bar, Newcastle and led by Air Vice-Marshal R.E. Saul. Under the Group came a number of Fighter Sector Headquarters controlling the fighter squadrons on one or more airfields.

At the outbreak of war our immediate area was covered by Usworth Sector, to the south there was Catterick Sector, and to the north Turnhouse Sector. Usworth Aerodrome was opened as early as October 1916 and was first known as West Town Moor and then Hylton. It was used operationally until the end of the World War I, but during World War II, apart from serving as a Sector Headquarters, it was principally used as a training station. The Sunderland Balloon Barrage made it unsuitable even for this function and the last training unit left in June 1943. In 1963 it became Sunderland Airport and more recently the site of a Nissan Car Factory. One large hangar survives and there is an excellent aircraft museum nearby. On March 10th 1941 the local Sector Headquarters moved to the newly opened Ouston Aerodrome. Ouston Aerodrome was used by operational squadrons from its opening in 1941 until July 1943 after which it was used for training purposes. After the war it remained in use by the R.A.F. for many years and then served as a temporary substitute for Newcastle Airport for five months in 1967 while the airport was being altered. Ouston Aerodrome is now an army establishment known as Albermarle Barracks and serves a number of functions including a wartime role as a regional armed forces headquarters and, most controversially, as a regular overnight staging point for military convoys carrying nuclear warheads.

Acklington Aerodrome was the principal fighter station in the Usworth/Ouston Sector throughout the war. It opened in 1938 and was home to more than 30 operational fighter squadrons during the war years. It also acted as a diversionary airfield for heavy bombers including 17 Lancasters returning from a raid to Berlin on January 3rd 1944. After the war Acklington was used for both operational and training purposes and continued in use by the R.A.F. until 1972. Latterly it housed Air Sea Rescue helicopters until these were moved to Boulmer. A large part of Acklington Aerodrome is now a prison. Boulmer Aerodrome was, according to most reference sources, opened as a training aerodrome in March 1943. However, it appears that prior to that date there was a decoy aerodrome, or "Q" site, there; bombing records show an attack on a "Q Station near Boulmer" at 2355 on September 16 1940, and the grid references given for the bomb impact points place them within the present aerodrome. As well as its Air Sea Rescue role, the present day R.A.F. Boulmer also houses a radar station for air-defence and military air traffic control purposes. Woolsington Aerodrome was opened on July 26th 1935 as a civil airport. Although it was requisitioned by the R.A.F. at the outbreak of war it was little used. It did see some operational flying in 1940 by a detachment of 72 Squadron and it served as a "satellite" for both Acklington and Ouston, but its main wartime function was as the home of 83 M.U. (Maintenance Unit) which recovered crashed aircraft from all over the North of England - it was a scrapyard for aircraft wreckage. Some Air Sea Rescue work was also undertaken from Woolsington during 1943 using Ansons and Walruses. After the war Woolsington returned to civilian flying and is still very much alive as Newcastle International Airport.

Catterick Sector had only one airfield, Catterick itself, but very occasional use was also made of R.A.F. West Hartlepool (also known as Greatham) which was little more than a grass strip, and R.A.F. Thornaby, a Coastal Command Aerodrome. Catterick Aerodrome itself was opened on November 27th 1915, saw continuous service during both wars and is still in existence. There is still occasional flying from Catterick and until very recently it served as a training school for the R.A.F. Fire Service and as the headquarters of the R.A.F. Regiment. Turnhouse Sector controlled squadrons at Turnhouse, Drem and Prestwick Aerodromes.

Fighters would have been of little value without the means of detecting enemy aircraft and there were two principal means of doing so - the Observer Corps and Radar. The North Eastern Group of the Observer Corps (Royal Observer Corps or R.O.C. from 1941), No 30 Group, was formed in January 1938, and an Operations Room was established in the back room of the Post Office on Providence Row, Durham City (the bricked-up entrance can still be seen), with a Reserve Control at The Junction, Durham Castle (this was used for a few months in 1943 during alterations at Providence Row). The Administrative Headquarters was in a separate building at 51 Claypath. A network of Observer Posts, simple wooden huts with nearby sandbagged "redoubts" for observing, was also established throughout the North-East and more posts were added during the first two years of the war bringing the total in No 30 Group to 43.

A start was also made in recruiting Observers and Centre staff and establishing the necessary communications. The nearest posts to Rowlands Gill were Tantobie (Post K3) under Head Observer Robert Watson, Prudhoe (Post K4) under Head Observer J. Fewster, Springwell (Post E4), Kenton (Post D2), Castleside (Post K1), Washington (Post E2), Ponteland (Post L3) and Slaley (Post K2). The Corps was mobilised during the Munich Crisis and finally called into service on August 24th 1939. Eleven of 30 Group's posts situated near high ground, including Prudhoe, Castleside, Ponteland and Slaley, were also involved from 1942 or 1943 in air-safety activities. Under the code name GRANITE these posts were equipped with flares which were lit to warn aircraft that they were in danger of flying into nearby hills. The procedure was used when the cloud base was below 1000 feet, and in daylight it involved the use of four red flares arranged in a 30 feet square -at night a single flare was used. The flare or flares were lit when the Post was given the code word GRANITE or if the observers themselves thought that any aircraft were in danger. The R.O.C. Groups surrounding the Durham Group were 9 Group (York), 29 Group (Lancaster), 32 Group (Carlisle) and 31 Group (Galashiels).

The R.O.C. Centres were dominated by a large horizontal map on a plotting table around which stood a number of "plotters" each of whom had telephone contact with three or four observer posts. As their title suggests, they plotted the positions of reported aircraft on the plotting table using counters. On a raised dais overlooking the table were the Duty Controller, Assistant Duty Controller, Duty Controller's Assistant, Sector Liaison (who received information from Sector Operations about the movement of friendly fighters), Chief Teller (who passed plots to the local Fighter Group), Sector Teller (who passed plots to the Sector Operations Rooms), Inter-Centre Teller (who passed information on aircraft leaving the Observer Group area to adjoining Centres), the Sea Plotter (whose name disguised his function -he received radar plots from Fighter Command via the local Fighter Group) and the Recorder (who maintained a continuous record of tracks on the plotting table). All R.O.C. personnel wore R.A.F. uniforms with "Royal Observer Corps" shoulder flashes.

After the war, in 1951, a new Centre was opened at The Sands, Durham City, and Durham Group was renumbered as 23 Group in 1953. Between 1959 and 1962 all the posts were given underground protected accommodation as befitted the Corps new role of reporting on nuclear blasts and fallout. The Tantobie, Springwell and Kenton Posts closed in 1968 but the others mentioned above continued until the R.O.C. was "stood down" on September 30th 1991 at which time all posts and the Centre at The Sands were closed, and the personnel discharged -yet more victims of the illusory "peace-dividend". For the sake of a very small annual saving -the service was very largely manned by volunteers- an infrastructure which would cost hundreds of millions and a great deal of time to restore has been destroyed. In a manner typical of a government organisation, the closure closely followed the installation of an expensive computer-based national communications system known as M.S.X. which replaced a teleprinter network. The R.O.C. still exists but in a greatly reduced form. There are only 250 R.O.C. Observers in the country all manning Nuclear Reporting Cells (N.R.C.s) in armed forces establishments and all managed directly by the R.A.F. No 11 Group at Bentley Priory. The only N.R.C. in the old Durham Group area is at R.A.F. Boulmer which is manned by perhaps a dozen R.O.C. personnel. Contrast this with 400 or so in the Group prior to the recent stand-down and in excess of 1,000 during the war years.

The first 15 Chain Home Radar Stations were brought into 24-hour use on Good Friday 1939 and by the outbreak of war all 20 covering the East and South-East coasts were in operation. At this time Radar was officially known as Radio Direction Finding but for security the stations were termed Air Ministry Experimental Stations (A.M.E.S.) - Type 1. By the end of the war there were about 50 of similar design in use. A typical "East Coast type" consisted of three or four 350 feet steel towers in a line about 180 feet apart supporting the transmitting aerials and four 240 feet wooden towers carrying the receiving aerials. There were separate transmitter and receiver buildings near the respective towers -the displays and operators being in the receiver building. Standby underground, or "buried", transmitter and receiver installations were also provided in case of bomb damage to the surface buildings. The nearest Chain Home Station was at Ottercops Moss beside the A696 road south-east of Otterburn and there were others at Drone Hill, north of Berwick, and Danby Beacon, east of Guisborough. All Chain Home Radar Stations had direct telephone lines to Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory. A radio station now occupies the site of the Ottercops Moss Station but nothing can be seen of the wartime installations. The underground rooms, however, are intact but are flooded. A long building still standing at nearby Raylees was the wartime fire station for the Station and the living quarters were nearby. The Chain Home Stations operated in the 20-30 MHz radio band and had a range of about 200 miles for aircraft at 35,000 feet and 40 miles for aircraft at 3,000 feet. One of the 350 feet steel towers at the wartime Stenigot Chain Home Station, east of Lincoln, is still standing; it is used to train R.A.F. aerial erectors!

The Chain Home Radar Stations had a very limited range when it came to low-flying aircraft and to deal with this problem there was initially a "fence" of trawlers positioned off the coast to spot low aircraft. By the Autumn of 1940, however, a second network of radar stations was in use. These Chain Home Low Radar Stations or A.M.E.S. -Type 2 were set up around the east and south-east coasts, usually very close to the sea and often on cliff tops. These were very different from the Chain Home Stations; they had a rotating aerial, looking rather like a large bedstead, mounted on a tower which was either 20 feet or 185 feet in height according to the local topography. Next to this was a small concrete control room containing the transmitter, receiver and display equipment. The nearest were at Shotton, Cresswell, Bamburgh, Cocksburnpath (south-east of Dunbar) and Flamborough Head. The stations operated at around 200 MHz and had a range of about 30 miles for aircraft at 1,000 feet. Chain Home Low Radar Stations passed their "plots" to the nearest Chain Home Station by telephone line, and they forwarded the information to Fighter Command Headquarters. These stations could also detect ships and some had a secondary coastal defence role.

Another source of information about potential air attack came from the R.A.F. "Y" Service, who listened to enemy radio communications. The headquarters of this service was at Kingsdown in Kent and there were monitoring stations, or Home Defence Units (H.D.U.s) as they were known, around the English coast and in every theatre of war where the R.A.F. was active. The H.D.U.s were staffed by expert linguists and equipped with sensitive radio receivers. Their function, amongst others still classified, was to monitor R/T (speech) transmissions from enemy aircraft and their controllers, and they were frequently able to provide Fighter Command with an early warning of raids, often as the aircraft were assembling many miles outside radar range. The nearest H.D.U. was at Castle Hill, Scarborough - a popular town for such establishments; the Royal Navy also had a monitoring station there which played a big part in pin-pointing U-Boats in the North Atlantic and even today there is a similar installation at nearby Irton Moor which has close associations with G.C.H.Q. at Cheltenham.

The control arrangements of Fighter Command were somewhat complex and revolved around Fighter Command Operations Room, Group Operations Rooms and Sector Operations Rooms, all of which resembled the R.O.C. Centres described above -a large plotting table and a raised dais for controllers, tellers and liaison officers. Information on aircraft movements from all sources was quickly passed by telephone line to the Filter Room at Fighter Command Headquarters. Here the staff had information on the movements of all "friendly" aircraft and they attempted to pick out those aircraft which were either definitely hostile or at least unidentified. Information on these aircraft was then passed to Fighter Command Operations Room, who informed the appropriate Fighter Group Operations Room, issued public air raid warnings and informed Anti-Aircraft Command. The Group Operations Room then scrambled the appropriate fighter squadrons and immediately handed control of the fighters to their Sector Operations Room who maintained contact with the fighters by radio and directed them to the approximate location of the enemy aircraft. The local R.O.C. Centres also maintained constant contact with both Sector and Group Operations Rooms to ensure that the latest information on the whereabouts of the enemy and the opposing fighters was available to the controllers. The Group and Sector also kept in touch with the local Anti-Aircraft and Searchlight Operations Rooms. There was a rather humorous exchange between one Fighter Group and the nearby R.O.C. Centre - the R.A.F. Controllers arrogantly insisted on labelling a particular approaching aircraft as "Unidentified" despite protestations from the R.O.C. whose observers had identified it as "Hostile". Eventually the R.O.C. Teller was heard to say "Your unidentified aircraft has just dropped four bombs on Renfrew. May we now be permitted to describe it as hostile?"

Such dismissive treatment of R.O.C. reports was not unusual. When the aircraft flown by Hitler's Deputy, Rudolph Hess, was first observed visually by Head Observer G.W. Green at Post A3 Chatton, Northumberland (at 10.10 p.m. on May 10th 1941), he identified it as a Messerschmitt Bf110 and so reported it to the Durham R.O.C. Centre. When this was reported to No. 13 Group Headquarters at Kenton Bar, however, they insisted that it must be a Dornier Do17 because the Bf110 had insufficient range for a round trip to this area. Of course Hess had no plans for a round trip, but quite what his plans actually were remains somewhat of a mystery to say the least. The Messerschmitt Bf110 eventually crashed near Glasgow at 11.09 p.m. and Hess drifted slowly to earth by parachute to begin a lifetime behind bars -his only freedom came with his death on August 17th 1987.

The R.O.C. Centres themselves sometimes disbelieved their own observers. At 6.00 a.m. on the morning of Sunday December 24th 1944, Christmas Eve, Observer J.S. Hutchinson of Post F3 at Sedgefield suddenly exclaimed "DIVER-DIVER-DIVER" to his plotter at the Durham Centre followed by a height and bearing. DIVER was the code word for a V1 Flying Bomb or "Doodlebug". The Centre no doubt suspected an excess of Christmas spirit and did not act on the information until reports came in of a massive explosion north of Spennymoor. A V1 had landed on the cricket field at Tudhoe destroying the pavilion and damaging two churches, a vicarage, an orphanage and 390 houses. Fortunately it caused no deaths but eleven people were injured. This V1 was one of 40 air-launched from Heinkel bombers off the coast between Skegness and Mablethorpe and aimed at Manchester. Many had gone off course including the Tudhoe V1 and one which landed in Northamptonshire, and only one actually hit Manchester, but there were 35 deaths, most of them in Oldham. The air-launching of V1s was a tactic employed by the Nazis after the V1 launching ramps were captured by the Allies.

The first time the air-defences of the North-East were seriously tested was around noon on August 15th 1940 -Adler Tag or Eagle Day when the Luftwaffe tried to strike a decisive blow against the R.A.F. as a prelude to their planned invasion. Their intelligence was very poor and they had been led to believe that all the front-line fighter units had been sent to the South-East leaving only inexperienced pilots to defend the North-East. The truth was rather different; the R.A.F. rotated the squadrons and those being "rested" in the North-East rather resented their relative inactivity. Most had already seen a great deal of combat and they knew that their comrades in the South-East were having a rather trying time. In short, they were itching to get back into the fight. On this day they were to get their wish. Just after noon 13 Group scrambled four of 72 Squadron's Spitfires, led by Flight Lieutenant Ted Graham, from Acklington when the inexperienced operators at the Chain Home Station at Ottercops Moss reported "3+" and then "30+" hostiles approaching the coast from the north-east. Ted Graham's radio message when he first sighted the enemy has become legendary but is unprintable; basically he expressed, in colloquial manner and with a slight stammer, his utter amazement that, instead of the 30 or so aircraft he was expecting to face, there were more than 90; 72 Heinkel bombers with an escort of 21 Messerschmitt fighters.

Nevertheless the Spitfires fell on the enemy and more Squadrons were scrambled in response to Ted's message -Hurricanes of 79 Squadron from Acklington, Hurricanes of 605 Squadron from Drem, Spitfires of 41 Squadron from Catterick and Hurricanes of 607 Squadron from Usworth- and the enemy were decimated. They lost eighteen of their aircraft and the raid broke up in utter disarray although a few bombs did fall on land. This was the last daylight raid on the North-East by General Stumpff's Luftflotte 5 based in Norway and Denmark -most of his planes were transferred elsewhere and the remainder were used on anti-shipping duties. Nationally about 1,000 enemy aircraft attacked Britain that day, 161 were destroyed, 61 probably destroyed and 58 damaged. Anti-Aircraft guns accounted for 23 of those destroyed, 7 of them by the Tyne and Tees Guns. An interesting statistic - in the whole of 1940 anti-aircraft batteries destroyed 444½ enemy aircraft; the half being an aircraft badly damaged by an A.A. shell and finished off by a fighter.

Major changes were made to the control arrangements during the first half of 1941. The R.A.F. had experienced great difficulty intercepting enemy aircraft during the hours of darkness because the existing radar did not pinpoint the enemy aircraft accurately enough to enable the Controllers to direct the fighters to within visual range of the enemy. Similarly the R.O.C. could only give estimated positions based on the sound of the aircraft. The first innovation was Airborne Interception (or A.I.) radar which enabled fighters to home on the enemy from well outside visual range. The first A.I.-equipped fighters in the North-East were probably the Beaufighters of 406 Squadron which formed at Acklington on May 10th 1941.

The second change was the introduction of Ground Controlled Interception (or G.C.I.) Radar Stations. Operators in these stations were able to follow both the enemy aircraft and R.A.F. fighters and they could speak directly to the fighters by radio and direct them precisely for interception. They were able to distinguish between R.A.F. and Luftwaffe aircraft because the former carried secret I.F.F. (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment which, when properly triggered by a signal from the ground, would transmit the identification and height of the aircraft to the G.C.I. Station. The nearest G.C.I. stations were at North Steads between Acklington Aerodrome and Widdrington Station; Seaton Snook at the end of Brenda Road, Hartlepool; Dirleton near North Berwick (a disused airfield originally known as East Fortune); and Patrington east of Hull. These stations were all in operation by May 1941.

Yet more changes, made in 1943, involved the installation of Filter Rooms at Fighter Command Group Operations Rooms so that radar information could be processed locally rather than at Fighter Command Headquarters. At the same time communications was improved between R.O.C. Centres and Group Operations Rooms and direct communications was set up between certain R.O.C. Centres and G.C.I. Radar Stations; this was to enable the R.O.C. to get I.F.F. identifications and heights from the G.C.I. stations and to provide the G.C.I. stations with visual confirmation from the R.O.C. observers. No 30 Group at Durham had direct lines to North Stead and Seaton Snook G.C.I. Stations.

Immediately after the war Dirleton and Patrington became Sector Operations Rooms and the radar system was gradually revamped. During the early 1950s there were Centimetric Early Warning (or Chain Home Extra Low) Radar Stations at Crosslaw (near Dirleton), Cold Hesledon (near Seaham) and Goldsborough (north of Whitby) and G.C.I. Stations at Boulmer and Seaton Snook. All had protected underground accommodation for the operators as did the new Sector Operations Rooms at Barnton Quarry, Edinburgh and Shipton near York. All but one of Britain's present Air Defence Radar Stations are long range G.C.I. stations -the nearest being at Boulmer on the Northumberland coast. Although the large rotating scanners of the old 80-series radars have now disappeared, the station is still active; it now uses modern electronically controlled 90-series radars which have no moving parts. Each radar station actually has one or two of these radars which are completely mobile and can be set up anywhere at short notice. These are all part of an integrated N.A.T.O.-wide system, but each mobile unit can, as a last resort, operate completely independently and direct fighters to their targets. There other stations in the country similar to Boulmer (including, until recently, Staxton Wold to the south of Scarborough, a war time Chain Home site), and a long-range Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (B.M.E.W.S.) base at Fylingdales on the North Yorkshire Moors. Here, as recently as October 1st 1992, a new system -externally a three-faced sawn-off pyramid- has replaced the three famous "golf balls". There are now only two Sector Operations Centres covering the whole country, both are at Radar Stations -Buchan near Aberdeen and Neatishead in Norfolk.

The wartime defences against aircraft attack also included Anti-Aircraft Guns, Searchlights and Barrage Balloons. The Anti-Aircraft Guns were of three types "Heavy" or H.A.A. Guns, generally operating from fixed sites, "Light" or L.A.A. Guns which were rather more mobile, and Anti-Aircraft Light Machine Guns or L.M.G.. The North-East was protected by the 30th Anti-Aircraft Brigade which was part of the 7th Anti-Aircraft Division of the Royal Artillery under the command of Major-General R.B. Pargiter. In 1940 in the Tyne/Wear area there were 54 H.A.A. Guns, in the Tees area, 30, and in the North-East as a whole there were 50 L.A.A. Guns and 321 L.M.G. -nationally there were 2870 H.A.A. and 7970 other anti-aircraft guns at this time. The H.A.A. guns of the Tyne Gun Defended Area (G.D.A.) were manned by men from the 63rd Regiment Royal Artillery (headquarters at The Green, Sunderland and from January 1940 at "Cranshaws", Osborne Road, Newcastle), the 64th Regiment (headquarters at 23 Victoria Square, Newcastle and from October 1940 at Low Fell) and the 66th Regiment (headquarters at Northcliffe House, Gallowgate, Newcastle).

The Anti-Aircraft Batteries in the North-East were controlled from No 405 Gun Operations Room (G.O.R.) which was located in the main hall of Low Gosforth House, a large mansion just to the south of Gosforth Park Racecourse. There was also a Reserve G.O.R. -at first this was at Northcliffe House, Gallowgate but was moved to "Moorlands", Elmfield Road, Gosforth in August 1940. Gun Operations Rooms in neighbouring Gun Defended Areas were located at Craigie Hall, South Queensferry Road, Edinburgh, (No 403 G.O.R.) and at Yarm on Teesside.

There were also H.A.A. guns on or near the Fighter Command Aerodromes. The L.A.A. guns were sited at many Vulnerable Points throughout the area - the radar stations, for example, each had two static Bofors Guns. There was even a contingent from the 39th L.A.A. Regiment based at Consett, presumably to defend the Steelworks. In addition most military camps had some anti-aircraft defences of their own -the nearest being an U.S. Army camp in Ravensworth Park during the later stages of the war. An Anti-Aircraft Training Battery was set up on December 1st 1940 at Dunston Council Schools and they also used the Tyne G H.A.A. site at Wyomns on Fellside Road at Whickham - very close to the present location of Whickham Comprehensive School. The Anti-Aircraft Gunners were in the unusual situation:- army personnel completely under the operational control of R.A.F. Fighter Command. As described elsewhere, the Home Guard took over some of the Anti-Aircraft duties in 1942 and were entirely responsible for the operation of the Anti-Aircraft Rocket (or "Z") Batteries.

After the war some of the H.A.A. sites were maintained and many additional sites were prepared (there were no guns on these sites, of course, they were simply concreted areas with mounting studs for the guns). Near Rowlands Gill, the Wyomns site at Whickham was maintained and additional sites were designated at Tanfield Moor (near Hobson, Burnopfield); two locations at Horsegate near Chopwell; Marley Hill (near Causey); Brown Hill Farm (West of Chopwell); and Beamish Colliery. Altogether in 1951 there were some 33 sites in the Tyneside Gun Defended Area. The Lobley Hill H.A.A. site was not maintained after the war but some of the huts associated with the site were put to good use -they served as a school for a while. During the early 1950s a new Gun Operations Room was built near Low Gosforth House. This was a reinforced concrete bunker with one storey underground and one above. The whole of the Anti-Aircraft system was abandoned around 1956 because it had little answer to fast-flying jet aircraft, but the G.O.R. can still be visited as it is now the headquarters of the Northumberland County Record Office. Low Gosforth House, the wartime G.O.R., was demolished in 1978 and a new housing estate occupies the site.

In World War I it was common to site searchlights and anti-aircraft guns together, there was just such a site at Winlaton, probably between Twizell Avenue and Blaydon Burn, but in World War II such arrangements were much less common, in fact there appears to have been only one in the North-East and that was the "Wyomns" H.A.A. site on Fellside Road at Whickham. The nearest W.W. II searchlight site was at High Spen. This, like all sites in the area, was manned by men from the the Royal Artillery attached to the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and it was initially located at Bone Hill opposite Towneley Terrace. Being so close to houses, the crew, 16 or so lads from all over the Country, were very well looked after and few had any need to do their own washing or darning. One member of the crew, Verdun C. (Vic) Smith, married a local girl and now lives 200 yards or so from Bone Hill. Towards the end of 1943 the searchlight was moved about half a mile to a new site, just a short distance down Rickless Bank from the Road End (Excelsior) Club, in a field between the sewage works and the drift mine. This site had better facilities than that at Bone Hill and was allocated a second, smaller, searchlight in addition to that brought down from Bone Hill. Their stay at Rickless Bank was very short because the Battery was moved to the Isle of Wight in February 1944 as part of the increased air defences of the southern ports which were to feature in Operation OVERLORD, the forthcoming Allied invasion of occupied Europe. The Rickless Bank site was then taken over by United States Army's 225th A.A.A. Searchlight Batallion -as were all of the North-East's searchlight sites- but before the year was out it was converted into a Prisoner of War Camp.

The table below shows the nearby searchlight sites in 1944 when the Americans took over in the area. However, by that date, several sites had been closed because of the reduced threat of air attack. An incomplete list from 1942 shows additional sites in the area at Flint Hill near Tantobie and at Wheatley Hill near Burnhope; and earlier still there was one at Broomhill Farm on Ebchester Bank. The earliest site in the area, incidentally, was in the grounds of Hamsterley Hall; this was set up immediately after the outbreak of war but it only lasted a few months.

Instructions to expose (switch on) the High Spen searchlight came by radio from the Battery's Troop Headquarters which was located in a concrete building at Home Farm, Beamish (now part of the Beamish Open Air Museum). This headquarters also controlled the searchlights at Beamish, Ravensworth, Flint Hill and Wheatley Hill. The Troop H.Q. received its operational instructions from the Tyneside Searchlight Operations Room which is believed to have been in the same bunker which housed Fighter Command's No 13 Group Operations Room under the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Offices at Kenton Bar. The Searchlight Operations Room had direct links with the R.A.F. Sector Operations Room (at Usworth or, later, at Ouston) and with the Group Operations Room. Later it also had links with the local G.C.I. Radar Stations. Although operationally under R.A.F. control, the Searchlight organisation was administered by the army's Anti-Aircraft Command. Most searchlights gave an amazing 210,000,000 candle-power and, as well as the obvious function of illuminating enemy aircraft to aid the A.A. gunners, the searchlights were also used to illuminate barrage balloons if friendly aircraft flew too close and to point towards nearby airfields to assist lost aircraft. Nationally some 2,540 searchlights were deployed, almost all controlled by S.L.C. (Search Light Control) Radar equipment mounted nearby.

Balloon Barrages were also used extensively to defend vital industrial areas. The barrages in the North-East were the responsibility of No. 33 (Balloon Barrage) Group based at Sheffield; it was commanded by Air Commodore S.W. Smith. Within the Group there were three Balloon Centres, at Newcastle, Sheffield and Hull. The Newcastle (No. 15) Centre was responsible for the barrages on the Tyne and Tees and controlled three balloon squadrons. These were 936 Squadron, based at Benton, which looked after 40 balloons (3 of them waterborne) on the north of the Tyne; 937 Squadron, based at "South Tyne" -whatever that means- which looked after 32 balloons (3 of them waterborne) on the south of the Tyne; and 938 Squadron, based at Billingham, which looked after the 32 Balloons around the industrial areas of Teesside. Very few of the balloon sites are known except those from which balloons escaped or caught fire and caused damage - these were at Western Avenue, Atkinson Road, Rye Hill, Elswick Road, Ouseburn Tip, St Michael's Road and City Road, all in Newcastle, and at Dunston Park. Another balloon location is known, it was beside Scotswood Bridge and was probably the nearest to Rowlands Gill. A balloon at this site was shot down in flames by the bomber which attacked Spillers Warehouse in Newcastle on July 2nd 1940.

The balloons were massive and each required some 20,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas to inflate it fully -an inflated balloon was 66 feet long and 30 feet high. The balloons, nicknamed "Pigs" by the operators and "Shiners" by the R.A.F., were tethered by strong steel cables from winches. Although the cables were certainly capable of slicing a wing off any aircraft unfortunate enough to hit it, the main function of the balloon barrages was to force the enemy to fly higher and hence make accurate bombing difficult. Many R.A.F. planes unfortunately did strike balloon cables and crash including a Hudson bomber carrying a Rowlands Gill lad, George Alexander Matthews -this happened at East Boldon on July 14th 1940. There were enemy losses too, including a Heinkel minelaying aircraft which was brought down at South Shields in the early hours of February 16th 1941 and a Dornier Do217 which came down at South Bank, Middlesborough, at 6.20 p.m. on January 15th 1942.

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