RAF Drone Hill

The Camp

• Our camp, RAF Crosslaw up the hill leading out of the village to Co'path was disguised as a holiday camp with little chalets.
  Our radar station was high up in the remote moors and buried deep underground to protect it from atomic attack. The entrance to the site was through what appeared to be a crofter's cottage. It certainly looked the part from the outside, but if you got through the front door you would find a burly RAF Policeman and his Alsatian dog. You went past the guard down the stairs and then a long walk down a long corridor, through nuclear bombproof doors and into the station itself. The underground station was designed to house the crew for at least a month totally cut off from the world should there be an atomic attack. It was a complete underground village with generators a recirculation air system with CO2 scrubbers to keep the air fit to breath, kitchen, bedrooms etc and of course the bank of PPI tubes and plotting maps that we used to observe and record aircraft movements.
• As well as being the front line of Britain's defence radar, the station was also one of the network of homes for government should we come under nuclear attack. Once you'd passed down the corridor, those atom bomb proof doors could be closed, and buried deep in the cliff you'd be safe. Because of the nature of the station it was all secret. The local villagers thought we were a death ray and we didn't disabuse them of that thought. In fact we used to take delight in keeping our secret. Our radar "looked" from 1500 feet down to sea level so we could see the fishing boats and watch them when in bad weather they would fish illegally inshore. Next night in the pub we would disconcert them by telling them where they'd been fishing. The station ran two watches that worked alternate days. For some reason we worked only daytime hours unless there was an exercise in place. I think those in charge of the defence of the Realm assumed that the Russians would stick to office hours too for their attack. At night two or us would be on guard duty with our trusty Lee Enfield 303 rifle and 10 rounds of ammunition. The government was obviously expecting a very small invasion force. While on duty we would scan the skies with our radar and then record the plot of the position of all aircraft in our area, which ranged from Aberdeen down to Newcastle on Tyne. We would also do exercises with fighters based a Leuchars - sending them off on varying courses and then bringing them back together for radar directed intercepts.
• Working on the PPI tubes was the best job, but you had to be really alert. The scanner turned at four revs per minute which meant that every 15 seconds you had to report the identity of each aircraft, its position direction and strength. It you had more than a two or three aircraft on screen you were talking flat out, and non-stop. The worst job was recorder where you had to write down all this information. The easiest job was plotter where you moved markers showing the position of each aircraft on the huge table with a map of the area. One evening when we were watching the Queen's flight into Aberdeen we had what we assume was a UFO on the screens. It was flying across Scotland at 1500 mph. We scrambled fighter planes out of RAF Leuchars but it was far to fast for them, and before long had disappeared off our radar screens.
• Our technology was such that we could clear all nonessential traffic off the screen, which we needed to do when intercepting our fighters with any enemy planes. So we were certain something was there. If it wasn't a UFO, the only other possibility was one of the American experimental X planes. The weather in Scotland had its extremes. Summer was usually almost hot and would bring all the pretty girls up from Newcastle for their summer holidays. Winter would bring freezing temperatures and snow drifts that would block the road up to the radar site. Even the big RAF 3 ton trucks couldn't get through the snow drifts. Then we'd have to haul supplies up to the site by sledge.

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