I see there is a set of shiny new aerial photographs from 2007 included in the RCAHMS record.  I'll link them into the page.

I see our dear friend RCAHMS has resurveyed this site and posted quite a long report.  I'd be inclined to question some of their conclusions.

Ta, I've been ambling through our page and updating it based on your visit and later info. I'd no idea about the updated RCAHMS report because it was the one I spent two days trying to open when they were offline, and had given up and wouldn't have been checking again.

Just had a quick look for now, and I reckon their engine room with no engine signs is what we now see as a workshop-come-store.

I wonder if it's worth quoting any detail, given their remarks about records not matching reality on the ground.

While general description of stuff on the ground don't warrant it, it's probably as well to always make sure anything specific like gun detail is always prefixed by something like "records indicate" or similar, just to show it came from a source, preferably the RCAHMS link using our shiny new "reference" link that we have now.

Have to say I've been doing this anyway, not just for every single record, just those where the info we summarise is solely dependent on the RCAHMS record.

For those items where the RCAHMS record is just additional to what we have from aerial views or a visit, I just leave it as an External link.

Going back to the new Larkfield info, I happen to prefer my own take of four HAA and two LAA emplacements. Why just pick on the two additional emplacements to demolish, unless they were made of "toffee"?

Surely their "compartmentalised" structure is just the instrument pits?

They have completely missed the GL Radar ramp again - which I just added to our page this morning

I've got the ramp pic online, but yet to add, as you have a lot of pics, and I'd like to make a better selection now, which is what I'll be doing next.

Yes it is a strange report.  Why do they think that the instrument pits are the remains of buildings.  the walls are finished and capped at the present height.  It makes no sense.

The extra emplacements were surrounded by single brick walls, quite easy for boys to push over which happened in 1956 and is therefore not that recent.  There was a grass fire there in May and the corners of one of these bases was exposed.  I was hoping to be able to examine the holdfast fixings as I remember them as being different in some way but the fire did not destroy the brambles enough to make this possible.

The so called engine room is a strange assessment.  They seem to use it for any building they cannot understand.  It did have cast iron vents on the roof but no exhaust vent!  Since we have found one of these buildings with a paraffin notice and no smoking signs on the walls it is unlikely to have housed an engine.

Not only have they missed the ramp but also a small water tank at the corner of the wood to the south east.  Also no mention of the pile of demolition debris at the entrance - their pics should show them what it was.

Ok, looks like I better wind back from thoughts of the two extra guns being LAA if you have knowledge of holdfasts in those emplacements, even if they were flimsy.

I'm not excusing them for the odd interpretation, but it may be that someone is simply unfamiliar with the detail, and a bit of training is needed. They may be better at ancient, rather than modern, historic interpretation.

I'm reminded of the Time Team dig on Shooter's Hill, commented on elsewhere, and which was quite heavily criticised negatively. Although I have yet to see the whole programme, I did manage to catch the latter part, and while the team were clearly looking at something new to them, they did have specialist help and advice, and from what I saw, the criticism was, I think, unfair. Dare I say that with the benefit of seeing part of the programme, the comments might be deemed to fall into the "anorak" category. Hope we're not on route for that award!

Maybe RCAHMS needs some help

(Totally irrelevant, but thought I'd mention I'm watching the Beeb's Thirties in Colour, which is at the Dunoon Highland Games, and has a clip of the paddle steamer leaving afterwards, loaded with so many folk packed like sardines and listing decidedly to starboard as it steams along.)

I think mention of the single brick emplacement walls was mentioned initially.  It seemed to suffer from blue pen disease!

I have decided to try and help our old friend.  DE will probably be spluttering in his coffee.

I don't recall that level of detail about the supplemental emplacements, but that's no guarantee, although this page still has a near complete history and I can't find that detail in there, so I think it's "new" info.

It would be interesting to ask our friend if they have a policy regarding amateur, or personal, contributions from interested parties such as...  us.

I've only made a couple of additions, but suffered the the same "lost" symptom that you recently described, and wonder if it's a polite let-down. However, I am a real old cynic, and might just be seeing something where there's been nothing more than a lapse by busy people - done it often enough myself

I seem to be rubbish at tying in the initial thing, so I'll need a bit more of a clue

(Still to get to pic revs - every time I sit down, something else crops up.)

Just a quck update, as I noticed that the last few pics in the gallery are of the light emplacements, although they don't specifically mention single brick, the pic caption may be what you were recalling.

Actually I get the impression they are pleased to have the input.  From time to time things go missing when the system crashes but who has a system that never crashes?

Seems the holders of the purse strings are tightening things up and less site surveys will be carried out.

Hmm... as a one time network administrator, having even one thing go missing is not acceptable. Well, that's what the managers kept telling me, but there's what they want, and what the real world can deliver

If they're short of cash, maybe they should be getting together with the aerial mapping/imagery folk, instead of flying their own surveys.

Maybe the budget will make them actively pursue amateur input, after all having dozens of eyes on the ground would be better than having only a few professionals touring around at a snail's pace.

Appaerntly records show that Larkfield never had a radar at least between 1939 and 1945 so the ramp  may be a later addition.  I have no memory of it from the 1950s, that is to say I don't remember if it was there and I don't remember if it wasn't.

Re the roofless buildings which areattached to the Command Post ( to the NW? ) he refers me to DP 040632.  This means nothing to me . Can you unravel it?

The roofless buildings (instrument pits) are on the SW on my map - have you been infected by my E/W affliction? Or is he seeing something we don't in the aerial view, and that you didn't pick up on when you were there? The Fx3 zoom I just mentioned drills down nicely onto the Live Search view of the site and shows the detail of this structure.

I just happened to be looking at Kilgreggan's view, and it looks much the same regarding the pits.

I can't help on DP 040632 - it's not a grid ref with that prefix, and my thought that it was perhaps a National Archive record proved fruitless, as their site search comes up with nothing for this reference. Although this assumes that this is a references that can be picked up from their web search - it may be a record not included in that system.

One thought, from reading other RCAHMS records, is that it might be a reference to the Department of Public Records, and the numbering system of the Public Records Office. They'll presumably have easy and free access to that, not enjoyed by the likes of us.

Another chance observation, as I began to review the Drumcross entry.

This wasn't obvious at the time when it was first assembled, but in the RCAHMS/Guy entry there is a reference to a "gun store". Relatively rare, but I think the same description did appear in one or two others.

Now that we've got a better handle on the buildings to be expected, the only building left for this title to belong to is the workshop and store that we now recognise.

I wonder if the gun store, as opposed to a consumables or parts store, is likely?

There might be a need to store guns occasionally, but once they're mounted, and secured on their holdfast, why take them off and stick them in a store? Wouldn't it take a considerable time to dismount and move a gun, and need engineers, not troops?  And I doubt if they would have had a spare two.

Guns are outdoor things, and a tarpaulin would be quicker and easier.

I am involved in a bit of discussion with rcahms over this site.  They have decided that the building we have down as a workshop/store is an engine house(!).  Thiis because there are signs on a WWII pic of a trench from it to the emplacements and it must be a cable trench.  The second reason is that there is no other building that could have been an engine house and they are convinced that there must have been one.  This flies in the face of my site visits to several type L sites where no evidence exists in any of the buidings of anything which could have beeen engine mounts.  The is no exhaust port in any of them and no ducts visible in the floors - all the cabling was in conduits and so could not have fed the whole site.  Lrkfieeld was probably fed off the mains but could have had a mobile standby generator.

See what happens when no-one goes and writes a book on the subject!

It would be nice to have plans, even generalised ones, to refer to.

They (rc) are not perfect - see the missing GL ramp - and if there are no provisions for an engine to run, then you haven't got an engine room, no matter how much you'd like to.

One could go completely off the wall and put the trenches down to cabling for the radar and firing computer, maybe they liked their comfort and built the predictor into the workshop? Why would not a workshop have test gear wired to the guns?

You've highlighted a point that has worried me about some sites, namely the lack of an engine room. I suppose a mobile generator is the obvious solution. I don't go for the local electrical supply being used, primarily because of the locations - many were inconvenient - and local supplies would have been at risk during a raid, and might have been lost or even switched off at source deliberately. Mobile power seems likely, and there are the odd shelters on the emplacements - what was in them? Not crouching troops surely. Then there's the question of how many batteries were armed, how many were active, even if armed. There are a lot of intangibles we could raise, but just haven't. We'd never get answers, let alone definitive ones as far as I can see. You could probably lose a year of your life just sitting in a library trying to track down the Clyde gun data in detail itself, let alone Scotland.

Oh for a proper reference book. Maybe there would be something to be had if we were near Kew and the National Archives? Pity I don't have the opportunity of three or four Sunday drives down to London any longer, would have been handy to have been able to drop in. But then again, the Congestion Charge would have been murder if it was based on my "unacceptable" car!

Apparently the records indicate that Larkfield was never fitted with radar which makes sense to me knowing the terrain.  I don't remember the ramp from way back, it could have been added when the footpaths etc were layed by yts trainees.

Yes why not crouching troops?  HAA Batteries would have been useless during a raid unless it was a high level raid and even then I would expect all to take cover in the eventof a local attack.

I would have thought that defence sites would have been on special circuits that would have been permenantly connected whatever happened to the civilian supply.

If you pop the breakers at power or substation level, then tough for anyone supplied by it, eg hospital or internet provider, hence the huge standby systems they have. There are very few "special circuits", and if a raid kills a station, then there's no power - period.

Incidentally, I've just learned about some "new" weapons (relative to the war). Bombs can now be deployed which contain thousands of metal fibres, intended to settle on power lines and cause them to trip - used in Iraq if story is accurate. This has been further refined to a much finer form of conductor which can be dropped in clouds, and is fine enough to be drawn in by things like PC cooling fans. These are intended to build up and coat items, causing them to fail.

Batteries had a limited range and could only throw their shells so high (18,000 feet I think, but this can vary of course), so had to be firing near vertical, sorry for the troops, but the last thing they'd need is a shelter during a raid. Light batteries were considerably less capable, maybe around 8,000 feet. This is a lot shorter than the guns' range across ground, thanks to gravity acting almost directly against the shell's path. If it was a local attack, wouldn't they still have been shooting at a closer target with a better chance of hitting it?

If the ramp was a later addition, then no mat would be needed and the terrain irrelevant, as the kit would have been centimetric. It would also have been mobile, so the record might not include such an arrangement.

Thinking a bit further, I wonder if the ramps were used for anything else?

Maybe they had radar controlled searchlights, or perhaps even some of those wonderful acoustic detectors illustrated in the old archive material?

As ever, I'm just having a bit of a waffle to see what pops out. We did find that gunner's manual a while ago, but like all these finds, although it mentioned AA gunnery, it seems to be regarded very much as the poor relation, and only ever gets a few lines, and little detail. All the meat is concentrated on the noble art of gun laying at a distance, and the further the better.

Back again, I had another thought.

As noted, a definitive bible on batteries would be nice, but without such a reference, it seems we are all having to make reasoned guesses based on what we see.

On that basis, it occurs to me that there is no requirement for engine room and the like at every site, dependent on how and when it was equipped.

For example, I'm sure some batteries had no need of any power at all, or any sort of radar. Guns would be moved by operators winding hand cranks, and gun laying would be set by the gunners in response to setting shouted (or passed by intercom) to them from others looking into optical range and height-finders. It was only as things advanced that these settings were transmitted to the guns, and the predictor was brought into service, bringing a degree of analogue computing to the process. As things progressed, more power was needed thanks to the increased automation, and the guns were taken over by the radar (centimetric - able to lock onto aircraft).

Looking at the aerial views of some of the batteries in remote areas, but nonetheless significant like Loch Ewe, it is clear that they (probably) didn't have any features other than the emplacements and command posts that still remain, and the roads and tracks worn into the ground suggest they had no additional building that have been lost. in many cases, associated building like camps can still be identified from ground marking, but there are none for magazines or engine rooms.

Yes, rambling away again

Yes I wondered how much power the earlier batteries required with hand cranking and no thermionic radar.  It can't have been all that much, just a few lightbulbs in the Command Post as the rest would have been blacked out.  The other thought I have is that if these buildings were engine houses and therefore essential to the operation of the battery why are they not earthed up?

I think there is a bible on HAA batteries but my copy has not yet been printed 2 years after my order - Dobson's AA Command.

Having just been in one of the upper north wards at IRC I had a reasonable view of this site and was quite surprised to see a group of 3 or 4 young men carrying out what appeared to be a detailed exploration or survey on all the buildings  the other day.  I have no idea who they were.