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Down the hole on surveillance.

At no time, to my knowledge, was there any break in night surveillance work, not even when the changeover from 537 SU to 210 SU took place. Neither can I remember any instance, when I was in charge of a surveillance watch, when the radar was, even temporarily, taken off the air through malfunction or for maintenance. Occasionally, though, a technician would, during his routine rounds, find a valve that had gone 'soft' in one of the consoles or equipment racks. In this case he would seek permission to take that particular PPI or Height Display out of service for the few minutes it took him to replace the valve. In these rare instances the aircraft plotter or operator would temporarily move to another console, his work otherwise uninterrupted. Even during normal day watches our surveillance work continued and was interrupted only during periods of routine maintenance.
I was responsible for maintaining the 'B' Flight watchkeeping roster, so can positively state that, subject to leave and other commitments, night watches came round every five weeks or so. Controllers who were still under training were not qualified for night watchkeeping duties. Also, sickness could have its effects on the frequency of one's watches. On checking the gaps in my Log Book, it appears that during 1957, I did maybe eleven such watches, with two in October.
There was only one instance when I was alone on nights that I was allocated fighters. I shall describe the episode fully a little later on. However, when on nights, and doing the evening watch, it was often the case that a full (day) watch would also be present when there was night flying control work.1 If there was enough trade for us, then I could be allocated fighters and do a session or two. All these sessions have already been mentioned in a previous chapter, only a few of which were recorded in my Log Book as 'surveillance control'.
Most evening and night watches were boring in the extreme. Even when things became frenetic, as they sometimes did, we had orders not to write anything down other than in the plotter's logs, and to say nothing to anyone who did not need to know. Discussion of such events, within hearing range of those who didn't already know, was strictly taboo.
It is for this reason that I am wholly reliant on my memory for what I am about to relate in the rest of this piece; some events, therefore may be recorded in the wrong order, but I hope at least to give an overall impression of night watch work and tell of some of the, as far as I am aware, unrecorded happenings in which I was involved. I shall not describe events on a watch by watch basis.
As did any Officer i/c night watch I had complete responsibility for the whole tech site during my watch. All personnel had their orders. The radar technicians and the Service Police in the Guardroom all knew what to do without any special attention from me. Only if there was an unusual technical problem did the NCO i/c the Radar Office bother me, or me him. I had my security checks to do, as already described, otherwise my attentions could be almost entirely devoted to the surveillance crew who were usually about a dozen in number. As a watch crew, we were responsible to 83 Group for passing plots to them of all aircraft and any other phenomena observed during the watch. Watches were organised so that all watchkeepers (except me) had rest periods. No-one could stare at a PPI or other display the whole time.
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1 In this case the day watch on night flying duty in the evening would already have done the morning watch.
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