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Drumlemble Radio Station

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Local records indicate that a World War II Decoy Radio Station was established at Drumlemble, by the Fleet Air Arm, with the aim of diverting enemy bombers.

At the same time, Breakachy Radio Station is reported to have been built nearby.

Nothing remains of this site, which is now occupied by a number of farm buildings, identified as Highfield Piggery on more detailed mapping than can be shown online.

While we do not have any current references to the subject detail, it is understood from local historians that this decoy radio station was not simply a local diversion, meaning it was not associated with the defence of HMS Landrail (RAF Machrihanish), but was involved in the long distance disruption, or jamming, of radio navigations aids intended to guide enemy bombers to targets in Britain.

Night time bombing was extremely inaccurate, the typical figure quoted for unaided British missions is that only 5% of the payload landed within 5 miles of the intended target. Attempts to improve this were made using Pathfinder squadrons, intended to spot the intended target and illuminate it with incendiary flares. This was still dependent on navigation and visual observation, and met with limited success. The real breakthrough came with radio navigation aids (on both sides), which allowed the bomber to fly 'blind' and release their bombs without having to visualise their target, some systems even carried out the operation automatically, releasing the bombs when the system signal indicated the aircraft were over the target.

Rather than simply jam the radio-navigation beacons, which would have been immediately obvious and just led to more alternatives being developed, the scientists 'Bent the Beams'. This did not mean actually bending the navigation beams, but involved over-riding the enemy signal with another similar, but offset version, with the intention of fooling the enemy into believing they had actually reached and bombed their intended target. This was supplemented with false broadcasts of damage reports, ultimately resulting in the waste of time and resources.

External links


Aerial views


Map

⚠ (:gma-point lat=55.4072188 lon=-5.6947636 text='Drumlemble Radio Station' :) ⚠ (:gma-map view=hybrid :)

⚠ [[!World War II]] ⚠ [[!Decoy]] ⚠ (:WPCategoriesList:)

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