Ringtail Monument Relocation The HMS Ringtail Monument that was built during 2004 has been relocated across the road to the new ringtail retail park. Photo Courtesy of Lawrence Critchley but Photograph by Mike Dawson The new monument and memorial garden have been relocated outside of the new booths supermarket. Photo Courtesy of Lawrence Critchley but Photograph by Mike Dawson The bronze sculpture of the WW2 fleet air arm pilot is designed and built by Peter Hodgkinson Photo Courtesy of Lawrence Critchley but Photograph by Mike Dawson The supermarket itself has been designed to resemble a WW2 aircrafthangar and stands on part of the airfield site Inside Booths is this Display Area of H.M.S.

Ringtail Lawrence Critchley Temporarily Putting up The Ringtail Flag near the Monument For a Photo-Shoot by Mike Dawson. The monument and the flag will eventually be moved to a new permanent location near the new nearby ‘Booth’s’ Supermarket. (Note: The supermarket has been designed to look like a hangar)

Airfield Record Site Plan Burscough Airfield Royal Naval Air Station HMS Ringtail is 1 mile North East of Ormskirk in Lancashire. The OS Reference is: SD425114 The Airfield Code is: -A4 The airfield opened on the 1st of September 1943 and closed in May 1946. On the 15th of Jun 1946 the airfield was transferred to care and maintenance and on the 5th of May 1955 was transferred to the Admiralty Dockyards Department.

There were 4 runways to admiralty specification, i.e. 3 runways of 1,000 yards long by 30 yards wide & the 4th runway aligned with the prevailing wind of 1,240 yards long by 30 yards wide. The runways were constructed of concrete and surfaced with tarmac. The visual angle of approach at night was airfield lighting (Naval and RAF installed).

Living quarters were built on 2 camps ….. camp 1 off Higgins Lane and camp 2 off Abbey Lane to accommodate 189 officers, 1,204 chief petty officers and ratings, 15 women’s Royal Naval Service Officer’s and 355 women’s Royal Naval Service Chief Petty Officer’s and Ratings, and also, the Medical sick bay was in the station area on the east side of the airfield. Airfield facilities consisted of: Communications equipment was: M/F and One Line M/F H/F 4 T Lines H/F Ground Radar Intermediate GCI Homing Radio D/F Beacons YG Aircraft Radar Test Base Available 2 Wind Socks … one on the west side of the landing area inside the taxi track and one at the intersection of the runways on the east side 4 Armouries to accommodate 4 squadron’s 2 x 70 feet in diameter compass swinging bases Meteorological office on the ground floor of the control tower Machine gun and cannon test butts north of the landing area near the hangars 3 aircraft dispersal standings off the taxi track close to the control tower Explosive area on the north west side of the airfield. Practice stocks for provision of 1 T.B.R & 4 F.R.

Squadrons 8 Flood light standings And 1 cloud height search light Aviation fuel storage (holding 68,000 gallons) Motor transport fuel storage (4,000 gallons) Oil storage (4,000 gallons) The Control Tower 1943 The control tower was situated on the east side of the landing area outside of the taxi way. It had 3 stories with an internal stair case and the air watch office was on its roof (on the photo below the air watch office has been removed). For reasons unknown the control tower was originally built with just 2 floors, and the air watch office was on top of the 2 floors below as you can see?

We think, that the control tower only had the earlier 2 floors because the airfield’s had to be built so quickly (by McAlpine’s) Later, an additional 3rd floor was added to comply with the standard naval watch office design (drawing number 3860/42) as you can see in the image below. The Ground Floor The ground floor was offices for the meteorological section and consisted of 3 offices: Met office Senior Met Officers Office Met Teleprinter Office Also, ladies and gents toilets and store room. A stair case descended down to a small basement which housed the central heating boiler and PBX telephone equipment.

The First Floor The first floor consisted of 4 offices: 2 General Offices 1 Air Staff Officer Office 1 Commander of Flying Office The offices were divided up with glass and wood partitions with message hatches and 2 doors opened out to the platform outside. The Second Floor The second floor was for flying control and consisted of 1 office. There was only 1 office (compared to the other offices) simply because the rest of the floor area consisted of just seating and desks.

The Roof The roof of the control tower was accessed by a steel vertical ladder through a roof hatch and this lead to the Air Watch Office and also sited on the roof was the communications mast and lighting gantry. For safety, hand rails were fitted around all the corners of the roof. The ground to air signals square was immediately north of the control tower.

The hangars consisted of 32 admiralty ‘S’ type mainhill hangars (traverses size 60 by 70 feet and door height 17 feet and door width 55 feet) dispersed around the taxi track & were intended to store 6 – 8 aircraft with their wings folded. 18 of them were for the squadron with earth traverses, 14 of them were used for storage Also 2 Callender Hamilton Hangar maintenance hangars (size 110 feet by 185 feet). 1 Callender Hangar was the ARS Workshops and the other Callender Hamilton Hangar was the reserve servicing workshops to 4 – 6 sqadron scale. The size of the Callender Hamilton Hangars had a span (width) of 90 feet and 185 feet in length with a door height of 23 feet …. drawing number 3546/43. Some hangars are in their original positions & others have been moved to other areas on the airfield.

The Air Station was used mainly by day and night fighters. After the airfield closed in 1957 it was used by crop-spraying aircraft and by a parachute club.

The sub station is split into 3 sections. The main switch room is in the centre of the building and is 20 ft long x 15 ft 3 inches wide, with a front right sliding equipment door and the opening size is 6 ft wide x 7 ft 8 inches high, and the rear exit door is 6 ft 7 inches x 2 ft 11 inches. Background heating was provided by 2 electrical wall heaters controlled by room stats.

The left side of the building has 2 transformer cubicles 1 and 2. Both cubicles are 9 ft high x 9 ft 8 inches wide, with double doors and the opening size of both doors is 8 ft 2 inches high x 7 ft 10 inches wide, with 1 high level air vent and 2 low level small vents in each cubicle housing a transformer of 10,000 volts high voltage with secondary output of 3,000 volts medium voltage. The right side of the building is an office and store and is 20 ft long by 10 ft wide, with a rear opening that is 6 ft 7 inches high by 2 ft 11 inches wide.

Inside height of all rooms is 11 ft 9 inches. High level windows in switch room and store room for natural light. The building is built of 13 and a half inches of solid brick walls supporting the reinforced concrete flat roof.

A heavily protected brick blast wall 13 and a half inches thick and 8 ft 6 inches high. It runs full length of 3 sides of the building where door entrances are present. All cabling between switch room and transformer cubicles are run in the solid concrete floor ducts with removable slab covers.

All cables are lead sheathed steel tape. All cables entering and leaving the building are run in clay pipe cable ducting. The sub station switch gear is 10,000 volts primary with high voltage oil circuit breakers enclosed class QA151 type JB721.

Secondary voltage is 3,000 volts medium voltage, with oil circuit breakers type BP11 that are supplying ring mains that go out to outdoor district area transformer plinth secondary sub station feeder pillars in to useable 415 volts 3-phase supplies. All switch gear is made by the British Thomson Houston Co Ltd Rugby England. Note the voltages medium and high are different to the ones used currently.

Electricity North West are still using transformer number 1 cubicle which is still referred to as electricity sub station 414226 R.N.A.S. (Royal Naval Air Station)

Parachute Packing House & Store Building 104 The parachute packing house & store is situated at the side of the sub station building (on camp 3) opposite what was the admirals house (called ‘the retreat’) and is where the parachutes were hung and dried and then re-packed ready for use again and carefully maintained. The store had suitable housing that was adequately heated, lighted and ventilated for drying and airing the parachutes. The tall part of the building with the 3 tall windows (known as the ‘loft’ and shown below) had a long flat table underneath that was used to help packing and had a pulley system at high level where the parachutes were hung to dry before they were packed again.

The 3 tall South facing windows (shown below in the photo) were for good natural light and is the actual front of the building. The lower building on the left is the parachute store and the taller part on the right is the parachute packing room. The building was built of brick in stretcher bond with 2 reinforced concrete roofs for added protection. (B&W photos below taken in the 1970’s)

The following photos are of the master post No.45 located on Pippin Street on the airfield perimeter in a large square-gated fenced compound. 1,563 of these posts were built throughout the country, 8 square miles apart in clusters of 3 or 4. 1 post in each cluster being the master post, with a VHF radio. Woodvale & St Helens being in Burscough’s cluster. The post opened in April 1962 & closed in September 1991.

The entrance hatch leads to a 15 foot vertical ladder down to an underground chamber measuring 7 foot by 16 foot by 7 foot high. A chemical toilet is located in a small room at the bottom of the entrance ladder. The main monitoring room houses the 3 observers & their instruments.

The cluster was linked by telephone landline to each post in the cluster & group headquarters. Group headquarters being at 21 group control Langley Lane Goosnargh North of Preston. In the event of the landlines going down the radio master post was used as a back up.

A petrol electric generator set was used in the posts to charge up the batteries for lighting & for the VHF radio. The post instruments consisted of a ground zero indicator sighted on the side of the entrance hatch above ground to record the position & height of a nuclear detonation. This consisted of a 4 pin hole camera in 1 enclosure.

Light sensitive photographic papers recorded the position & size of the fire ball of the bomb. A bomb power indicator was used to detect the size of the peek pressure of the blast of a nuclear bomb by an above ground baffle plate fed down a pipe to a bomb power indicator meter below ground. A fixed survey meter for measuring radio active fallout was carried out by using a plessy dose rate meter radiac PDRM 82F from the monitoring room.

A radiac meter head (also known as the guiger muller head) was pushed through a flange in the monitoring room ceiling up a tube to the outside. The radiac meter head was connected by a coax cable to the radiac PDRM82F meter display. The Ventilation Stack (The ventilation stack showing the round dome cover for the aerial connections.

BOMB POWER INDICATOR (BPI) Provided that the distance from ground zero is known, the power of a nuclear weapon can be calculated from the peak over-pressure produced by the blast wave. The Bomb Power Indicator is designed to record this pressure. External to the monitoring post exists a baffle plate.

This baffle plate consists of two metal discs that is screwed onto the top of a pipe that leads down into the underground monitoring post. The over-pressure from a nuclear explosion would be funnelled through the two plates and down the pipe into the monitoring room whereby the over-pressure would be detected on the Bomb Power Indicator (BPI). The BPI works in the following way:- The over-pressure from the explosion makes its way down the pipe into the BPI, and is detected by small bellows.

One side of the bellows is exposed to normal atmospheric pressure. Attached to the bellows is a push rod which bears against a level fixed to a spindle. When the bellows are expanded, a pointer attached to the spindle moves over a dial reading from either 0 to 5 Pounds per square inch (PSI) or 0 to 50 kilopascals (kPa).

The pointer not being actually attached to the bellows, does not return to zero after the passage of the blast wave but is left indicating the peak over-pressure reading. It may then be reset to zero by means of a spring-loaded rod operated by a small push button.

P.E.S. Petrol Electric Set Generator. The monitoring post had no running water or electrical connection, water was stored in jerry cans in the post.

Electricity for lighting and power for the radio was by 12-volt batteries being charged up by a P.E.S. petrol-electric set. The P.E.S. was a swan/ Morrison generator consisting of a Villiers four-stroke engine coupled to an alternator direct current. When the post was not operational the P.E.S. was stored at the bottom of the entrance shaft in the toilet area together with its charging leads.

When the post became operational the P.E.S. was hoisted up the entrance shaft by means of the cargo net /rope. The observers were told to never store petrol inside the post. Petrol jerry cans were stored in a refuge pit dug outside of the post within the compound.

WB1401 CARRIER SPEECH WARNING RECEIVER The WB1401 equipment in the post are armored and waterproof and is normally mounted on a wooden board on the wall of the post above the left-hand end of the post table. The WB1401 consists of the receiver, Loudspeaker and the line filter unit. The WB1401 is connected to the post telephone circuit it receives signals and spoken messages which are transmitted at a very high frequency and filtered out of the normal speech traffic before it reaches the L.S.T.or the control telephone system.

The unit has its own battery trickle charged by the line current from the serving telephone exchange. In the event of a nuclear attack, a high pitched warbling sound would be broadcast over the receiver followed by the spoken message ATTACK WARNING RED repeated three times. Warning Receiver Instruction Card Incoming Landline Connection Point This is the left hand wall of the monitoring room looking from the door.

Regarding the image above, we were confused at first why there would be a (seemingly) fully functioning ROC post at Goosnargh right next to the main old HQ. We originally thought that it was there for training purposes but we sent the query to Nick Catford of Sub Brit and this is his reply: “HiGary & Malc Yes all sorted. This came from Mike Norris of the ROCA at Preston “The current owner of the control, a security company still maintain an interest in the ROC.

In fact the manager allows our ROCA meetings to be held in the former control about every six months, in return we have provided him with various item of memorabilia. The post you see has actually been recreated from parts salvaged from a local post (36 post Catforth/Inskip) which were for a temporary display in a museum. Later transferred to the control, the features on your photograph are only the surface items.

A full sized mock up has been recreated inside the control in a former tank room. He has made a quite superb job of this, right down to the battery powered lighting!” I think that answers it. Below is a photo of the monitoring room they have created in the bunker.

I think it looks pretty good. Not sure about the post radio box and of course the carrier receiver and speaker should be mounted on a sheet of chipboard painted grey. Nick”

Built on the former site of the WW2 9 group control, the group HQ opened in January 1962. To offer a greater level of protection to survive a nuclear attack the bunker was semi sunken into an earth banking. The roof and walls were constructed of 1 metre thick reinforced concrete.

The bunker housed state of the art ventilation/heating and filtration plant and 2 standby electric generators. The main entrance was through 2 gas tight blast doors made of steel and inside the building there were male and female toilets, a canteen, dormitories were also built. Water tanks were provided for sinks and a decontamination wash room.

The control room collected information from all 21 groups ROC monitoring posts including Burscough’s post to establish the location of height power & fallout of a nuclear explosion. The group headquarters close in 1992 and is now used for private commercial use. ROC Control Room (When Operational in 1991) (Photo by Terry Tracey)

HMS Ringtail – New Material

Additional photographs and documentation about HMS Ringtail, the Royal Navy air station that played a crucial role in naval aviation training and operations during World War II.