The administration site is situated north west of the technical site. It contained the station offices and it was from here that the day to day administration and running of the station was carried out. It contained the central registry, pay office, operations room, and the office of the Station's Administrative Senior Officer. He was second in command to the Commanding Officer. No part of this site remains. It was demolished in the 1980's. It is now the site of a telecommunication transmission tower.
Picket posts were placed at the entrances to all the dispersed sites to control traffic entering and leaving the sites. Here it was the guard house to the Administration site. The post was manned by airmen on a duty roster.
The building was a small Nissen hut of similar construction to those on the technical site but reduced in size to three bays and measuring 16 ft wide by 18 ft long. Constructed of corrugated steel sheeting with T-shaped (in section) arched steel ribs at 6 ft centres. Concrete floor.
The building is no longer extant.[2007]
There were two of these buildings. They held the central registry and the Station Administrative Senior Officer's [SASO] office.
Nissen huts 16 ft by 36 ft each. Constructed of corrugated steel sheeting with T-shaped (in section) arched steel ribs at 6 ft centres. Concrete floor.
The buildings are no longer extant.[2007]
This was the main operational planning area, the bit you see on wartime films where the WAAFs are plotting the aircraft, in this case on a large blackboard. This room could be turned into a sealed unit with it's own air supply. It would have contained the ops room clock. This distinctive piece of equipment had its dial painted with triangles in a trio of colours, red, yellow and blue at a succession of five minute intervals around the dial. The colour indicated by the minute hand at the time a report came in would be the colour given to the message and plotted on the ops room map. It enabled messages to be sorted so that time was not wasted on out of time information. This colour coding process and the elaborate communications network behind it created a highly effective and efficient system.
My memory is that there were briefing facilities including a blackboard on the rear wall and maps showing the areas of operation. The maps were on a roller blind type mechanism.
This building was of permanent brick, cement rendered and with a flat, stressed, concrete roof. The whole building was covered with black bitumen.
The building is no longer extant.[2007]
Operational planning was carried out in this buildings on instruction from Group.
The building was a Nissen hut with temporary brick 16 ft by 36 ft. Constructed of corrugated steel sheeting with T-shaped (in section ) arched steel ribs at 6 ft centres. Concrete floor.
The building is no longer extant.[2007]
The room had facilities for briefing crews prior to operations.
A Nissen hut 16 ft by 36 ft. Constructed of corrugated steel sheeting with T-shaped (in section) arched steel ribs at 6 ft centres. Concrete floor.
The building is no longer extant.[2007]
The broadcasting system was first introduced on RAF stations in the early part of 1940. Its purpose was to enable operational instructions to be passed clearly, rapidly and simultaneously to personnel stationed out on the dispersals and those on the main technical area. Essentially the system comprised microphones placed at the main operational centres, such as Station Headquarters and the control tower. These microphones were connected to the main speech broadcasting building which housed the amplifying equipment and from here cables ran out to loudspeaker units located around the aerodrome.
The speech broadcasting building was situated in the north eastern corner of the Station Headquarters site. The amplifying equipment was permanently connected to the AC mains with both normal and standby circuits at medium voltage. To prolong their lives amplifying valves were not fully energised until the switches at the microphone points in Station Headquarters or the control tower were energised. The main apparatus in the speech broadcasting building comprised an amplifier rack located in a temperature controlled room.
On 5 October 1943 Mr Warren of the AMWD, Launceston, visited the aerodrome to check the tannoy system.
The building was constructed of permanent brick with a flat reinforced concrete roof.
The building is no longer extant.[2007]
In order to establish whether operational flying would be effective one of the things that had to be determined was the cloud ceiling. The altitude of the base of a cloud formation is called the ceiling. One way to calculate the height of the cloud base is to shine a spotlight vertically to the clouds. The spotlight projects a narrow beam of light on to the cloud base. The height of the cloud is calculated by using a clinometer located at a known distance from the projector to measure the angle of elevation included by the illuminated spot on the cloud. From trigonometry, the height of the cloud base is equal to the distance of the observer from the ceiling light projector multiplied by the tangent of the elevation angle.
At RAF Davidstow Moor the spotlight and the clinometer were 1,000 ft apart. The spotlight was located in a field to the east of the Station Headquarters site and the clinometer was in the north west corner of the site.
The site is no longer extant.[2007]
Two in number Stanton type air raid shelters as manufactured by Stanton Ironworks company, Nottingham. They were capable of holding up to 50 men each.
An enclosed structure of pre-cast concrete sections which bolted together to form a tunnel of the required length. The entrance was in a wall of concrete block and at the opposite end was a concrete 'chimney' for use as an emergency exit. The shelter was covered with earth to provide bomb splinter protection.
The shelter is no longer extant.[2007]
Two in number latrine buildings, one for WAAF's and one for airmen.
Constructed of cement rendered concrete block with external piers at 10 ft centres. A single pitch roof of corrugated asbestos cement sheeting.
The buildings are no longer extant.[2007]