I have a 1938 Air Ministry map that shows ground-based navaids. It shows Mount Batten as having ‘non-tracking’ D/F equipment, but suggests Plymouth Roborough, which was a large established civilian field with customs facilities etc, had no D/F at all. I do undestand that the theoretical point of these stations was to triangulate rather than allow ‘homing’, but I’d always assumed that in reality asking for a magnetic bearing to reach a station (QDM) and then flying it (pinpointing position when the bearing reversed) was very common practice from the 30’s on. It was anecdotally how civilian airlners did it.
My questions are – was this really the case, and there really were only two D/F stations in SW England in 1938 (Mount Batten and Exeter) and was it still the case in 1940, and a pilot could not in fact call for a QDM from Roborough?
By: Beermat - 26th January 2017 at 15:17
..and the answer is yes, thanks to the now forgotten ‘Maybury Scheme’ which was a central government plan to set up a permanent network of short air routes between all UK centres of population. World War II put a stop to the scheme’s developments, but it left as a legacy a few new ‘Marconi’ D/F receiving stations, built in 1938-39 all a few miles out from their parent airfields.
One such was at Plympton, which served Roborough.
There is so little written about this subject – but there are some scraps of sources if you Google deeply enough!
By: Beermat - 26th January 2017 at 09:37
Thanks smirky! From the images I was able to glean that Plymouth had HF/DF (and this is what I was getting at) by 1945. So big question for me is.. did they in December 1940?
By: smirky - 26th January 2017 at 09:06
this might be interesting, maps from 1945 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201787979186
Sign In
January 26, 2017 at 8:29 am