The post you are reporting:
Rather disturbed that these masts can be pulled down without any consultation concerning their historical significance. They formed part of the world's first early warning system and were fundamental to our winning the Battle of Britain. I always thought that the memorial constructed at Capel le Ferne might have been better located at Swingate where the statue of the pilot would be beside the radar masts which made the victory possible. Will return to this subject later but the article below will give some background to the significance of the masts. It is one which I wrote for the Dover Express some years ago:
DOVER AND THE DAWN OF RADAR
Known to Dovorians as the "Three Sisters," the giant steel masts at Swingate behind Dover Castle are a lasting monument to a time when they were a vital link in the fledgling radar chain that enabled the RAF to win through to victory in the Battle of Britain. The blue skies over Dover in that simmering summer of 1940 were tormented with the writhing contrails of Messerschmitts, Heinkels, Junkers and Dorniers engaged in a desperate dance of death with the Spitfires and Hurricanes vectored onto them through the ceaseless vigil of the electronic eyes far below.
The story begins with a tiny bomb falling into the back garden of a rectory in Harold Street in Dover in 1914, the first bomb to be dropped on England. Aircraft development was rapid and by the end of the Great War London had been bombed on numerous occasions by Zeppelins and biplane bombers, causing immense panic and disruption amongst the civilian population. A labyrinthine defence in depth had been constructed around London, with observers all the way out to the coast reporting back on specially installed landlines to a central control room off Horseguard's Parade controlling concentric rings of anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, barrage balloons and fighter squadrons.
Between the wars, the belief was reinforced that "the bomber will always get through." The human eyeball and eardrum were insufficient to detect bombers penetrating at will anywhere along the entire coastline and shrouded in night or cloud. Impossible numbers of fighters would be needed to maintain standing patrols. Hitler had come to power and Germany was resurgent. In the Air Ministry in 1934, a scientist named A. P. Rowe read through the available literature and concluded that Britain was doomed to defeat if a war with Germany should ensue within the next ten years. He reported this to his superior, Henry Wimperis, who alerted the Secretary of State for Air and alarm bells rang throughout Whitehall.
Robert Watson-Watt at the Radio Research Laboratory was asked to investigate whether it would be possible to construct a death ray to bring down enemy bombers. Death rays were all the rage in the science fiction of the time and the Air Ministry had previously offered a reward for anybody who could develop a ray that could kill a sheep at a hundred yards. The sheep remained untroubled. Watson-Watt's assistant, Arnold Wilkins, quickly calculated that whilst a death ray was out of the question, it might be possible to detect aircraft using radio waves.
A legendary experiment was thereupon conducted in a field close to a powerful BBC shortwave transmitter at Daventry in 1935. A Heyford bomber trundled backwards and forwards and energy reflected from the bomber caused the trace on a cathode ray tube to rise and fall. The principle behind radar was proven and Watson-Watt was so excited that he was half way back to London before he remembered that he had taken his young nephew along for the ride and left him behind.
Development proceeded apace at a site established at Orfordness and nearby Bawdsey Manor. The bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War, allied to Hitler's growing demands, concentrated minds and ensured unlimited funds. Time was of the essence and a chain of radar stations, known as Chain Home (CH), was completed from the Isle of Wight to Scotland prior to the outbreak of war. Dedicated landlines fed the information back to Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory in Stanmore where it was sifted with other information in a Filter Room and fed to the plot in the adjacent Operations Room. From there it was disseminated to Group HQ's and Sector Operations Rooms. The latter controlled the fighter squadrons in their sectors by radiotelephone, monitoring their positions by a system known as Pipsqueak. Chain Home was fully operational just in time for the Battle of Britain and constituted the world's first early warning system.
The Germans had also secretly developed radar and suspected that the aerial masts sprouting up all along the coast of Britain might also be radar. In 1939 they sent an airship packed with receiving equipment to fly up the east coast of England and Scotland monitoring the transmissions. It was tracked by Chain Home all the way. The immense power and low frequency of the transmissions completely swamped their receivers and, in one of the great miscalculations of the war, they concluded that we did not have radar.
Swingate was one of the first two CH stations to be completed. Four 360 feet high steel transmitting masts with huge platforms at the top and half way down supported wire aerial arrays fed from a transmitter block. Four 240 feet high wooden receiving masts supported dipole aerials feeding a receiver block. Prodigious power at shortwave was radiated in pulses on a wide arc out to sea and reflected from all targets in the area. Direction finder bearings were taken of the echoes which were displayed as vertical spikes on a horizontal range scale on a cathode ray tube in the receiver hut. Operation was a very demanding and skilled task to which female personnel were found to be particularly suited. Range was well over a hundred miles and bomber formations were detected as they formed up over France prior to the short-range fighters climbing to join them. An associated Chain Home Low (CHL) station was erected at Fan Bay to provide low level cover.
Swingate suffered repeated bombing and shelling attacks throughout the war, culminating in a final two months frenzy of shelling before the cross-channel guns were overrun. Three transmitter masts survive, one having been dismantled post war and another dismantled and replaced. Today they are in use by the Royal Signals and commercial broadcasters. These masts drip with history and are a potent reminder of the dark days when The Few rose to meet the onslaught of the Nazi aerial armadas.