The surveillance crew worked in the C & R room, to the left of the bunker upper corridor. The remainder of the bunker, save for the rest rooms, toilets, and the Radar Office, was not used at night, although it was kept fully operational. Nothing was switched off. Apart from the sound of the air conditioning and the dull electric hum from the equipment cabinets and their cooling fans, all was eerily silent in the areas not in use.
During night watches it was difficult to maintain concentration watching a radar screen, its trace rotating four times a minute, for much more than an hour without one's eyes becoming glazed. Most Watch Officers had their own ways of dealing with this. Some, quite wrongly, had a kip in the rest room and relied on an NCO to wake them up if any unusual paints appeared. This was, of course, not the official way to behave, and it certainly didn't set a good example.
As at the old tech site, I encouraged the Airmen to write letters, darn their socks, read a paper, or whatever, provided they also kept an eye on the PPIs and, (this was important) whatever they were doing could be instantly dropped, literally, when the need arose. Some lads brought knitting or other handiwork. Fortunately, down in the bunker there were no white-tailed flies to bother us, only the rare gremlin which sometimes crept into the equipment.
For myself, I was able to sit in a corner of the dim C & R room where there was a small spotlight. I usually took something to read. It was also a chance to catch up with correspondence relating to the Armoury and the Cinema. I even did two Correspondence Courses on Estate Management whilst on night watches.2 When I had finished these courses I took to doing embroidery as a constructive therapy. As was my routine, I went to the rest room every hour or so until 05.00 and had a cup of coffee, then I changed to an hourly cup of tea for the remainder of the watch. Biscuits were available if I wanted any - at a nominal cost per packet. I always told the NCO i/c the surveillance crew where I was going so that he could call me if anything unusual showed up.
Night watch highlights usually consisted of watching and plotting aircraft flogging up and down the Berlin air corridors, and the progress of the Met balloon launched somewhere to our northwest at about 02.00. We could see these Berlin transport aircraft much more clearly than previously, and we could see the Met balloon to a far greater altitude. Very soon after watches commenced at 210 SU the Unit at Waggum and our other satellite Station were both closed down as they had now become redundant.
With our much improved radar visibility we were able to watch Eastern Bloc aircraft more effectively. They, like the RAF, tended not to fly after midnight but just occasionally there would be some sort of exercise and we would watch as paints formed up into formations, usually on summer evenings and during weekends. All these paints were plotted, recorded, and 'told' to Group straight from the PPI. Our own plotting facilities in the well of the bunker were not used during surveillance watches; there was no point. Sometimes we saw aircraft doing night aerobatics when there was a full moon and a clear sky. We also saw them doing practice interceptions but these were rare. Such activities gave us something to study and helped pass the time. Most nights there was nothing beyond the predictable and time would drag.
We had a scare one summer morning, just as day was breaking, when there was obvious jamming from outside our coverage to the east. I phoned Brockzetel and they could see it, so could the USAF at Rothwesten, whereas Üdem couldn't. It grew more intense by the minute. We checked again with each other and all radars were reporting it on a parallel heading (the exact same bearing), with no calculable point of convergence. Comparing notes again, we Duty Watch Officers thought that
___________________________________
2 This was an extension of my previous agricultural interests. The course was free and organised for me by the RAF Education Service whose representative at Borgentreich was Fg.Off. Alan Calderwood.
230